All shook up

how rock 'n' roll changed America

By Altschuler, Glenn C.

Publishers Summary:
"As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n' roll - and the outraged reception to it - in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault lines of family, sexuality, and race. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with the Civil Rights movement and brought "race music" into many white homes for the first time. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the music he sang, and some of the great early rockers were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray flannel suits. It also delighted in the separate world of the teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping teenagers differentiate themselves from others, Altschuler includes vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n' rollers, including Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly - plus their white-bread doppelgangers such as Pat Boone."--BOOK JACKET.

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ISBN
978-0-19513-943-3
Publisher
Oxford ; 2003.


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on July 1, 2003

Altschuler (Thomas & Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies, Cornell Univ.) has previously written on diverse topics related to American history. Although this marks his first foray into music scholarship, he does a fine job of discussing the musical and sociological influences that came together to form rock'n'roll. He also delves into the impact of the genre on life in America in the 1950s and early 1960s. While incorporating exte...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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