Payola

Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included--the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.

Payola is as old as the music industry and continues today. Contrary to popular belief, the acceptance of payola is legal. (Only the nonreporting of it would be illegal.) The recipients of payola and the reasons behind it are discussed decade-by-decade. The early bribes to the minstrel groups and vaudeville players are traced, as are modern-day payments to disc jockeys and radio station program directors, where drugs are often given instead of cash. Particular attention is paid to 1959 and 1960 when federal investigators attempted to eradicate the practice.

American living standards improved rapidly during the twentieth-century. The rise of leisure, both in terms of time allotted and in terms of consumption of leisure goods and services, was astounding. When social critic Thorstein Veblen penned Theory of the Leisured Class, Americans were just beginning to enjoy more and better leisure. In Century of the Leisured Masses, David George Surdam explores the growing role played by leisure in the daily lives of Americans and what factors contributed to this change.

Property and Money is a simple guide to the investment and financial aspects of commercial property. Putting property into its financial context, it seeks to bridge the world of the surveyor and property developer and the investment and financial markets of the City of London. The book starts from first principles, assuming no pre-existing knowledge. It is thus suitable for students as well as more established property practitioners and its appeal extends to bankers, solicitors, accountants and fund managers whose work brings them into contact with commercial property transactions. This updated and expanded edition includes coverage of: - Principles and pitfalls of property finance - How the property investment market works - Evaluating property and its performance - Understanding property companies and their accounts - How property companies get into trouble - Bank loans, bonds, profit-share agreements, leasebacks and other methods of property finance - The crash of the early 1990's and its consequences. Based on a widely acclaimed series of articles that appeared in Estates Gazette magazine, Property and Money is complemented by an extensive index and glossary and enlivened by Nick Newman's cartoonist-eye view of the property world.

First Published in 2004. Volume II provides the hard facts and the history behind the headlines; significant 20th-century events in the evolution of all aspects of business and commerce are described in chronologically-arranged articles. The text of each article is divided into two sections: Summary of the Event describes the event itself and the circumstances leading up to it, and Impact of the Event analyzes the influence of the event on the evolution of business practice or on a major industry in both the short and long terms. Each article concludes with a fully annotated Bibliography.

This volume is an engaging and exceptional history of the independent rock 'n' roll record industry from its raw regional beginnings in the 1940s with R & B and hillbilly music through its peak in the 1950s and decline in the 1960s. John Broven combines narrative history with extensive oral history material from numerous recording pioneers including Joe Bihari of Modern Records; Marshall Chess of Chess Records; Jerry Wexler, Ahmet Ertegun, and Miriam Bienstock of Atlantic Records; Sam Phillips of Sun Records; Art Rupe of Specialty Records; and many more.

More than 600 slang terms, straight from the smoke-filled rooms of political speech, highlight this glorious guide to one of the more colorful corners of American English.

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.