Review (PDF) Encyclopedia Of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volume 1 And 2)
From John Philip Sousa to Green Day, from Scott Joplin to Kanye West, from Stephen Foster to Coldplay, The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the vast scope of its subject with virtually unprecedented breadth and depth. Approximately 1,000 key song recordings from 1889 to the present are explored in full, unveiling the stories behind the songs, the recordings, the performers, and the songwriters.Beginning the journey in the era of Victorian parlor balladry, brass bands, and ragtime with the advent of the record industry, readers witness the birth of the blues and the dawn of jazz in the 1910s and the emergence of country music on record and the shift from acoustic to electrical recording in the 1920s. The odyssey continues through the Swing Era of the 1930s; rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and bebop in the 1940s; the rock & roll revolution of the 1950s; modern soul, the British invasion, and the folk-rock movement of the 1960s; and finally into the modern era through the musical streams of disco, punk, grunge, hip-hop, and contemporary dance-pop. Sullivan, however, also takes critical detours by extending the coverage to genres neglected in pop music histories, from ethnic and world music, the gospel recording of both black and white artists, and lesser-known traditional folk tunes that reach back hundreds of years.This book is ideal for anyone who truly loves popular music in all of its glorious variety, and anyone wishing to learn more about the roots of virtually all the music we hear today. Popular music fans, as well as scholars of recording history and technology and students of the intersections between music and cultural history will all find this book to be informative and interesting.
Hardcover: 1030 pages
Publisher: Scarecrow Press (October 4, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0810882957
ISBN-13: 978-0810882959
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 2.8 x 11.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #2,325,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #68 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Composers > Sullivan #315 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Historical Period > Modern Popular #315 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Forms & Genres > Musicals
I just added Sullivan's two-volume music encyclopedia to my already stuffed shelves of music reference books. It may not be on the shelf much as I'll be pulling it down to reference so often. To echo the reviews above, Sullivan doesn't just present a "best of" list. He compiles a myriad of resources (including yours truly's own DavesMusicDatabase dot com) as a starting point, but also corrects a problem inherent in most lists - the imbalance of current songs to older songs. As any list enthusiast will tell you, "best-of all-time" lists are generally misnamed, choosing to focus almost exclusively on songs from the rock era. Sullivan gives pre-1950s songs the attention they deserve by balancing the representation not just of different eras but different genres.If that's all these books did, they would dwarf most of the competition. However, Sullivan also has done phenomenal research to give roughly one-page histories of each song, offering detailed accounts of a song's back story and importance. An absolute must-have for any fans of music history - of ANY era or ANY genre.
Yes, it's a costly two-volume set, but I had ordered it for the library where I work, and found I didn't want to let go and put it on the shelf! So I bought my own copy from . I think anyone who really likes popular music and history would find it fascinating. The set contains the story behind a large number of hit songs, back to the 1800's. For instance, the composer who wrote "Amazing Grace" had formerly worked as the captain of a slave ship. Some aspects of the song popularized by Eric Burden and the Animals, "The House of the Rising Sun," have their roots in songs of the 1700's. As you can see from the examples, the definition of "popular songs" goes well beyond the rock-and-roll era.
Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volume 1 and 2) The Record Shelf Guide to Classical CDs and Audiocassettes: Fifth Revised and Expanded Edition (Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings) The Art of the Piano: Its Performers, Literature, and Recordings Revised & Expanded Edition The Penguin Guide to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings: The Must-Have CDs and DVDs How to Use Audacity to Convert Old, Noisy, Mono Recordings into Clean, New-Sounding Stereo A Night at the Opera: An Irreverent Guide to The Plots, The Singers, The Composers, The Recordings (Modern Library Paperbacks) 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (1,000... Before You Die Books) Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album By Album, Song By Song, The Sixties And After Three Song Cycles in Vocal Score: Songs of a Wayfarer, Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied Von Der Erde (Dover Song Collections) The New Broadway Song Companion: An Annotated Guide to Musical Theatre Literature by Voice Type and Song Style Ten Russian Folk Song, Two Russian Folk Song Op. 104 Vocal Score (Shostakovich Complete Edition) The American Song Treasury: 100 Favorites (Dover Song Collections) On Eagle's Wings (Song Based on Psalm 91) - SAB (S.A.B.) Voices & Keyboard Accompaniment - Choral Sheet Music; Song Composed by Michael Joncas, Choral Setting by Douglas E. Wagner Time Song 1 (Time Walkers: Time Song) Volume 16 (Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do): Supplemental Volume to the Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do 100 Most Popular Genre Fiction Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies (Popular Authors (Hardcover)) Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925 (Haworth Popular Culture) Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History; Volume I: Chemical and Biological Weapons and Volume II:: ... Technology, and History (2 volume set) Hoyle's Modern Encyclopedia of Card Games: Rules of All the Basic Games and Popular Variations Caffeine: The Most Popular Stimulant (Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs. Series 1)
