Making easy listening : material culture and postwar American recording / Tim J. Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Anderson, Tim J.

Series:

Commerce and mass culture series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sound recording industry--United States--History.

Sound recording industry.

Sound recordings--Production and direction--United States.

Sound recordings.

Popular culture--United States--History--20th century.

Popular culture.

Sound recordings--Production and direction.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xliv, 236 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2006]

Summary:

The period between the Second World War and the mid-1960s saw the American music industry engaged in a fundamental transformation in how music was produced and experienced. Tim J. Anderson analyzes three sites of this music revolution: the change from a business centered around live performances to one based on selling records, the custom of simultaneously bringing out multiple versions of the same song, and the arrival of in-home high-fidelity stereo systems.

Making Easy Listening presents a social and cultural history of the contentious, diverse, and experimental culture of musical production that aims to understand how recording technologies influence musicians, as well as listeners', lives. Anderson connects neglected genres of the musical canon-classical and easy listening music. Broadway musicals, and sound effects records-with the development of sound aesthetics and technical music practices that leave an indelible imprint on individuals. Tracing the impact of this period on the mass media, Anderson reveals how an examination of this historical era-and recorded music as an object-furthers a deeper understanding of the present-day American music industry.

Contents:

Introduction : opening tracks

Managing the recording process and rethinking the recording bans. Buried under the fecundity of his own creations : the first strike of the American Federation of Musicians ; Counterreform and resignation : the second strike of the American Federation of Musicians

Production, reproduction, and the case of My fair lady. Which voice best becomes the property? stitching the intertext of My fair lady ; Listening to my My fair lady : versioning and the recorded music object

Stereo, hi-fi, and the modern pleasures of easy listening. A tale of two ears : the concert hall aesthetic and stereo ; Space, the pliable frontier : stereo as the new spatial palette of audio

Conclusion : the flip side (and a few concluding thoughts).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-231) and index.

ISBN:

0816645175

0816645183

OCLC:

62535993

Publisher Number:

9780816645176

9780816645183

Online:

Publisher description