Book Review...Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

Some may view rock n’ roll as a course invasion of popular culture, but others, like Glenn Altschuler, have argued that it has provided a discourse for American youth to discuss issues such as family, sexuality and race. In his book “All Shook Up”, Altschuler maintains that initially rock n’ roll music gave voice to an emerging youth culture and at the same time creating a dialogue to help with race relations in the US.

Altschuler begins his book discussing rock n’ roll and its ties to race. Rock n’ roll stemmed from rhythm and blues (R&B), which at the time had a large appeal to the black urban community. R&B’s popularity was a result of black migration from the South to the North, from the farm to the city (11). As the population of blacks grew in the cities, cultures began to blend, making it difficult to separate black culture from white culture. As a result, R&B found an audience amongst white youth causing them to flock to predominately black neighborhoods to buy the latest R&B records. Although new laws were enacted to abolish segregation, eradicating racial discrimination was much more challenging, as it persisted due to parental fear that this type of music (or African-American culture) would encourage racial mixing, juvenile delinquency, and sexual immortality (37). Yet, white entrepreneurs saw the profit potential in R&B and began to whitewash the music. There was a belief that hearing a white man singing, what black men typically sang, would eliminate the fear that white women could be harmed (60). As white singers covered more African-American hits, rock n’ roll began to develop. Creatively, blacks played a large part in the production and development of rock n’ roll. For example, the Elvis Pressley song "All Shook Up" (inspiration for the book's title) was the brainchild of Otis Blackwell, a successful black producer. Overall, the birth rock n’ roll was an “act of theft… [that] deprived blacks of appropriate acknowledgement rhetorical and financial, of their contributions to American culture.” (34)

Rock n’ roll was the white man’s answer to R&B. Altschuler maintains that R&B to many Americans was the “Kinsey Report set to music, a manifesto in the movement to repeal sexual reticence.” (79) Alfred Kinsey was a scientist whose research was the forefront of sexual liberation. He believed that premarital sex was beneficial in preparing couples for a happy marriage. Although rock n’ roll was presented as being a more benign version of R&B, many controversies still surrounded this new genre. Arguments against rock n’ roll were delivered mainly by parents who blamed that the music for straining their relationship with their disobedient children. Parents were competing with their teens’ peer groups who were all listening to rock n’ roll. Parents were concerned that this type of music promoted risky sexual behavior and that it would lead to emotionally instability. In reality, parental anger was result of anxiety with teen-agers who were emerging as a powerful sector of society. Rock n’ roll was the voice of this sector. “The United States was the only country that considered this age group as a separate entity whose influence, fads and fashions are worthy of discussion apart from the adult world.” (100). Overall, society was unsure of what to do with the “teen-ager”(a term that had just been created after World War II) and to cope with the transition they found fault with rock n’ roll.

I really enjoyed Altschuler exploration of the generational conflict between the new and the old. It’s interesting to see how teenagers and rock n’ roll merged to form a frontier for marketing possibilities and future marketing exploitation. The book is a great companion piece to the recent television series “American Dream.” The series takes place in 1950s Philadelphia, where American Bandstand was filmed. “American Dream” does a great job portraying the anxieties present during the 1950s and the emerging generational conflict. However, although Altschuler devoted two chapters to the relationship between rock and race, I feel that many of the examples he sites could have benefited from more analytical depth.