The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963

Excellent. Ward takes the jumbled story of the birth of rock and roll, from its roots in blues, rockabilly and country until the arrival of The Beatles on an unsuspecting America, and makes sense of it. If he's missed anyone, or anything, out I can't find it. Its always the sign of a good music history when it finds two pages for Arthur Alexander. Often very funny - particularly in his diatribes against The Chipmunks and their voicer, Ross Bagdasarian - and only occasionally repetitive, this is both comprehensive and exhaustive. And who knew that Walden Robert Cassotto would one day become Bobby Darin? In the late 50s, anything could happen

As literature, this reads more like a list than a history, but I enjoyed it anyway. For some reason following the sequence of events was exciting, yes, exciting. But that's me. Anyway, the one thing that threw me, at the end of the book the story becomes much more detailed- yes the Beatles enter the story. Apparently that was THE event that completes the early history of Rock & Roll. Me, I am more into events preceding that big deal event. The book was great despite my misgiving.

Any attempt to create a comprehensive chronology around the emergence of a new art form is fraught with potential traps, and unfortunately Ward falls into a few of them. There really is no clear path that led to the development of rock, its one of multiple influences, coincidence, happy accident, geography, social change, and (unfortunately) racism. I consider this “a” history of rock rather than “the” definitive take that the title suggests. Ward clearly knows the deep details around who recorded what and where, but his insistence on cramming all these facts into the story gets in the way of the narrative. This is a book that will remain on the shelf as a useful reference, but not one I’d recommend to the casual reader.