After the Ball: Pop Music from Rag to Rock (Limelight) [Paperback] Review

That's how Ian Whitcomb unabashedly comments on his own writing in the afterword to the 2nd edition.The fact that it went into a second edition (1994, the 1st was in 1972) is in itself a plug for the books' worth.

"After the Ball" is the title of one of those evergreen songs many of us somehow know about, even in the age of hip-hop,though few of us have ever heard the song.Whitcomb takes this 1892 ballad and how it set the stage for what we understand as "popular music" and "hit song"as the starting point to trace the social and musical machinery that has been grinding out pop hits ever since.Though music has always been part ouf our culture, there were not always "smash hits" and "pop songs" as we understand them today: music created and sold especially to be million sellers with broad appeal.How did music get to this place? Where does that music come from?

There is a fascinating line to trace from the sentimental ballads of the parlor, through rag-time and race music right up to rock and roll."After the Ball" is not a scholarly study of that line. It's a well informed, loving backward glance.

The move from sheet music to recording. From the parlor to the street.The influence of the two great wars. Rag-time. Jazz (such scary music).Tin-Pan Alley (ever wonder just what that was? Find out here.). Hillbilly.All the threads tie together.Whitcomb uses some individuals to bring home the story and bring the book down to earth:WH.Handy's experience with racism; Jolson and the popularizing and melding of Vaudeville and minstrelsy; Kern and the rise of the jewels of broadway;the fall of the Alle; Allen Freed and rock `n roll; Elvis to the Beatles. To his credit, although he treats each thread in turn, Whitcomb never looses sight of the fact that none of those threads developed independently. By the time we get to rock, we find that the ghosts of the past are still with us.

If you've read a little of the history, you don't need to be told again about the effects of the strike against radio and how it affected the big bands and some of the broad facts.Whitcomb touches on those high points but paints a broader, more colorful picture and comes up with some interesting facts and explanations along the way.The impact of the war between BMI and ASCAPP and how it contributed to the rise of post-war, independent artists and labels.How the Alley model of writing songs and then plugging them gave way to producers creating and selling packaged music.

The rattling good read comes with Ian Whitcomb's style.He has a pretty cleaver way with a phrase. He can be downright arch (which must annoy some readers).Occasionally the story seems jumbled but that is because he is not isolating the story to one thread.It's not just "first it was rag-time and then came jazz".All these ingredients were bubbling in the same pot.Keep your eye on the larger phenomenon and the threads become clear.

There are occasionally lulls in the narrative and occasional reminiscences (rare actually, until the end where he appends a hilarious recounting of his rise to one-hit-wonderhood in the early 60's) It's alot of history to pack into a couple hundred pages, so yes some stuff is glossed. There are a couple chapters devoted to happenings in England, territory he knows well, that could be a distraction, but they fill a gap too often ignored when looking at American pop.

Though it is not a recent book, it does not come off as dated.Whitcomb has obvously done some home work and though the book does not have a scholarly tone, I could wish at times he would include some scholarly apparatus.I trust the author, but I'd like to check some of those facts and to know the sources.A bibliography would have been valuable.I suppose Evan Eisenberg's "The Recording Angel" fills the pop/scholarly bill. AndKen Emerson's marvelous "Always Magic in the Air" fill in some of the details of 50's-60's pop music history.

So if you are even remotely curious about the pre-history of rock or especially interested in the history of popular music; if you like a little humor with your scholarship, or a little scholarship with your humor, then "After the Ball" will be a rattling good read.

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Product Description:
An irreverent and engaging chronicle of popular music dating from the 1880s, when Tin Pan Alley was founded, to the present by a British-born songwriter and onetime pop star. "Brash, learned, funny, and perspicacious." - The New Yorker

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