The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one
critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it
generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify?
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. And it 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.
Rock 'n roll seemed to be
everywhere during the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage
to those Americans intent on wishing away all forms of dissent and
conflict. As vibrant as the music itself, All Shook Up
reveals how rock 'n roll challenged and changed American culture and
laid the foundation for the social upheaval of the sixties.
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