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Allison McCracken charts the rise and fall of crooners between 1925 and 1934, showing how the backlash against crooners' perceived sexual and gender deviance created stylistically masculine norms for white male pop singers that continue to exist today.Tags
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The Best LGBTQ Nonfiction
218 works; 70 members
Author Information
2 Works 28 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Real Men Don't Sing: Crooning in American Culture
- First words
- "The voice of New York is effeminate!" Such was the horrified announcement of the syndicated columnist Gilbert Swan in newspapers across America in December 1931. Swan reported that a research engineer, Dr. William Baird Whit... (show all)e, had come to this disturbing conclusion after systematically recording the radio voice in capital cities around the globe. The sound waves of Manhattan, he found, were "slightly hysterical and falsetto... a combination of [crooner] Morton Downey in his more falsetto momtns, [crooner] Rudy Vallee in the process of calling a moose and [boxer] Jack Dempsey in his usual talking voice." -Introduction
An excerpt from the 1884 song "Crooning to the Baby" conveys the way the word croon originally evoked a comforting maternal figure, typically the soothing black mammy of the antebellum South, and an idealized state o... (show all)f childhood.... Twenty years later, the term connoted romantic vocal address.... Although in both cases croon describes singing within an intimate relationship, the term broaded from the exclusively nostalgic associations of minstrel shows to modern courtship. -Chapter One, Putting Over a Song: Crooning, Performance, and Audience in the Acoustic Era, 1880-1920 - Canonical DDC/MDS
- 782.42164
- Canonical LCC
- ML3477.M37
Classifications
- Genres
- Music, Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 782.42164 — Arts & recreation Music Vocal music Secular forms of vocal music Songs General principles and musical forms Traditions of secular songs {genres} Western popular songs
- LCC
- ML3477 .M37 — Music Literature on music Literature on music History and criticism Popular music
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 17
- Popularity
- 1,453,106
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
