Bibliograph

Real men don't sing, crooning in American culture, Allison McCracken

Type

Label

Real men don't sing, crooning in American culture, Allison McCracken

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-409) and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Real men don't sing

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

894746159

Responsibility statement

Allison McCracken

Series statement

Refiguring American music

Sub title

crooning in American culture

Summary

The crooner Rudy Vale's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity. Although Valle and other crooners reflected the gender fluidity of late-1920s popular culture, their challenges to the Depression era's more conservative masculine norms led cultural authorities to stigmatize them, as gender, and sexual deviants. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken outlines crooning's history from its origins in minstrelsy through, its development, as the microphone sound most associated with white recording artists, band singers, and radio stars She charts early crooners' rise and fall between 1925 and l934, contrasting Rudy Valle with Brig Crosby to demonstrate how attempts to contain crooners created and dictated standards of white masculinity for male singers. Unlike Valle, Crosby survived the crooner backlash by adapting his voice and persona to adhere to white middle-class masculinity of youthful romantic white male singers. Crooners, McCracken shows, not only were the first pop stars: their short-lived yet massive popularity fundamentally changed American culture

Table Of Contents

Putting over a song : crooning, performance, and audience in the acoustic era, 1880-1920 -- Crooning goes electric : microphone crooning and the invention of the intimate singing aesthetic, 1921-1928 -- Falling in love with a voice: Rudy Vallée and his first radio fans, 1928 -- "The mouth of the machine" : the creation of the crooning idol, 1929 -- "A supine sinking into the primeval ooze" : crooning and its discontents, 1929-1933 -- "The kind of natural that worked? : the crooner redefined, 1932-1934 (and beyond)

Classification