Love for Sale

Starred review from August 22, 2016
Romance, social bonding, and self-definition are readily available for the price of a Victrola cylinder, record, CD, or iTunes download, posits music critic Hajdu in this illuminating, idiosyncratic history of pop music. Hajdu (Positively Fourth Street) goes back to Tin Pan Alley sheet-music hits, then forward through jazz and swing, Elvis and rock, disco, rap, and electronica, along with many quirky detours down forgotten byroads. (Singing movie cowboys Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, he contends, held a profound sway over later country-western innovators such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.) There’s a modicum of influence-tracing here to explain the evolution of pop styles, leavened with the author’s colorful reminiscences of stars he has interviewed and his presence at the birth of the 1970s New York punk scene at CBGB. But Hajdu is more interested in how changes in music and musical technology affect listeners—the transistor radio, he writes in a tour de force section, turned listening to music into a solitary, ruminative pursuit rather than a social pastime—and how songs shape teens’ memories and tribal mores. Writing in graceful prose, Hajdu nicely balances brisk historical narrative, shrewd cultural analysis, and opinionated personal reflection in an absorbing account of shifting musical landscapes.

Strolling through the archives of pop music history with an experienced guide.There are no grand theses or postmodern theoretical turns here. Instead, Nation music critic Hajdu (Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture, 2009, etc.) approaches the vast stretch of pop history as a particularly tasteful exercise in picking tunes from an impossibly well-stocked jukebox, very much personally curated and with each choice well defended. Thus, as he notes near the opening, he can probably do without hearing "Yesterday" again ("I can barely still hear qualities I heard in the song at various times in the past"), preferring instead to spin the Beatles' little-heard contemporary tune "Tell Me What You See," because, in addition to its musical qualities, it conjures up a kiss from a high school girlfriend. That personal approach would not work if Hajdu were not so well-versed on his pop history firsthand. When he writes of the early history of music videos, it helps that he was one of the earliest video journalists, just as when he writes of one-hit wonders like the New Jersey band Looking Glass, of "Brandy" fame, it helps that he was on the scene, ears wide open, when the song came out. The author's ears extend beyond his own time span, though; he writes with knowledgeable appreciation of Frank Sinatra, Marni Nixon, and Billy Strayhorn--not to mention contemporary hip-hop. The center of his world, though, is the period when Brian Wilson, Ray Davies, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and their musical kin were making albums to set the world on fire. He even works in a quiet appreciation for disco, and with good humor: "Without getting too Ken Burns-ish about this, I'll point out the significance of the first dance craze of the twentieth century, the vogue for the fox-trot, in cross-fertilizing cultural values and democratizing social life (within the limits of racial segregation) for young people of the day." And so he does. A highly learned pleasure for music and pop-culture buffs. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2016
Music critic Hajdu's (Positively 4th Street, 2001) deft examination of the history and meaning of popular music follows its development from the sheet-music era through the dawn of records, the hit parade, radio, video, and into the digital age, demonstrating how pop songs . . . have always been part of the production of the culture. Pop music serves as a democratizing agent that introduces ideas from all corners of society. Before records, sheet music created monster hits with sales of a million copies a week, enabling the general public, rather than professionals, to make music. New recording technologies turned music into commodities, giving those without access to live music the ability to listen to live performances, creating hits and stars. Hajdu discusses how African Americans' strong influence on culture ( aesthetic miscegenation ), as embodied by minstrel shows, Fletcher Henderson's arrangements for Benny Goodman, and the origins of rock 'n' roll, along with the voices of other disenfranchised segments of the population, invigorates and sustains American music to this day, defying traditions and influencing the future. Hajdu's informative account of the evolution of popular music will be an essential purchase for all pop-culture collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2016

To chronicle America's popular music, distinguished music and pop culture critic Hajdu begins with America's pop music industry, explaining our impassioned hummings and thrummings by going back to the advent of the sheet-music industry in the late 1800s. From there, it's a personal yet comprehensive journey through the invention of records and radio, the glories of jazz, the Italian crooners beloved of Hajdu's grandmother, those rocking 45s beloved of Hajdu himself, disco vs. punk with New York as backdrop, the roar of hip-hop, and today's one-size-does-not-fit-all musical landscape. Currently with the Nation, Hajdu has given us excellent books like Positively 4th Street, but this has a bigger scope.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016

This latest offering by music fan, professor, established critic, and author Hajdu (Positively 4th Street; Lush Life) marvels at the history of popular music bolstered by interviews with major artists conducted over the years, personal experiences, and a wide range of supporting research. The author discusses how the publishing of sheet music in the late 1800s made songs accessible to millions and turned the genre into a commodity that could be bought and sold, thereby starting a "music industry." Also covered are evolutions of a variety of types of popular music (with African American artists almost always breaking new ground and leading the way), with related trips through performance, recording, dance, and video. The author demonstrates technology's contribution to shifts in the delivery of pop music as well as its creation. For example, records originally focused on the reproduction of live performances, then the artistic role of the producer grew, playing a greater part in sonic creations and manipulations. VERDICT This beautifully told history of popular music, like a great pop song, is full of memorable lines. [See Prepub Alert, 4/18/16.]--Lani Smith, Ohone Coll. Lib., Fremont, CA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.