Pop music gave birth to countless numbers of singers, bands, one-hit-wonders and music producers. Until the early 1960s, however, there were very few important producers the size of Phil Spector; who, to use author Tom Woolfe’s phrase, was the “fist tycoon of teen.” His many pop “projects” that often left a lasting impression in the […]
20th Century Alcohol & Tobacco Ads by Jim Heimann (ed.) (2018)
There has been a very peculiar relationship between alcohol and the American public, that was at work in the years of the Volstead Act (1919 – 1933), better known as the prohibition. When the ban that made illegal the “production, sale, and transport of ‘intoxicating liquors’“ was finally lifted, Americans no longer had to celebrate, […]
Yodeling and Meaning in American Music by Timothy E. Wise (2016)
Only for very short periods of time have yodeling and yodeling artists received critical attention and commercial success in the US. For most people, yodeling is not even close to singing; although the two forms of musical expression are very similar in a number of ways. And there are accounts of yodeling in (European) literature […]
Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture by Pamela Thurschwell (ed.) (2018)
Now, this is probably the best book on Mod culture so far. If not, it is the one with the best academic approach to it and a real understanding of the subculture that goes beyond pure distanced sociological writing and simplifying banalities (that are used too often in other publications on the topic). The British […]
Invasion USA: Anti-Communist Movies of the 1950s and 1960s by David J. Hogan (2017)
With motion pictures as one of the most powerful instruments to display the enemies’ (i.e. the USSR’s) efforts to destroy the trust of the American people in their country in the mid-1950s, a number of movies by US studios were produced. The plots centered mostly around Soviet spies, communist agents or Americans, who had lost […]
War Noir: Raymond Chandler and the Hard-Boiled Detective as Veteran … by Sarah Trott (2016)
Highly respected and valued by many fans of crime fiction and most likely America’s most distinguished crime writer ever, Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) together with Dashiell Hammett invented a new type of tough detective, independently of each other, they founded a style that later was described as “hard-boiled.” Many of their novels were turned into successful […]
The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero by Kevin Patrick (2017)
The crime fighter/superhero The Phantom, aka “The Ghost Who Walks, Man Who Cannot Die,” appeared first in February 1936 in The New York Journal as a comic strip. Thus predating the arrival of Superman by more than two years; two years in “comic books publishing time” is a long, long while (provided that in the […]
Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films … by Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul (2016)
Intelligence work for centuries has been an important part of a nation’s security. Over the years, the profession of “the spy” was developed and particularly during the Cold War those people – no matter from which side of the Iron Curtain – were interested in securing their respective country an advantage in information or technology. […]
Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler: My Life with Jimmy Martin… by Barbara Martin Stephens (2017)
There are several unusual aspects of this very honest and at times hard to read biography nut not because the author Barbara Martin Stephens, once the wife of famous bluegrass musician Jimmy Martin (1927-2005), chose to write in incomprehensible sentences or wrote her story very badly. The reason this title has some very difficult parts […]