Tell Tchaikovsky the News
Rock 'n' Roll, the Labor Question, and the Musicians' Union, 1942-1968
Michael James Roberts (Author)
9780822354635
Hardback, published 3 March 2014
280 pages, 9 illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.513 kg
"Both a compelling labor history . . . and a music history . . . Roberts supplies fascinating views into struggles within the AFM over a developing music industry and about a music revolution."
- R.A. Batch (Choice) "Michael James Roberts outlines the American Federation of Musicians’ systematic marginalization of rock and roll musicians in the 1950s and 1960s largely due to advancing recording technologies, shifting recording industries, morphing U.S. labor laws, and an idiomatic elitism."
- Kathryn Metz (ARSC Journal) "A good look at rock music’s impact and power in its earliest phases."
- Kenneth Bindas (Journal of American History) “Roberts … has produced a work that offers many insights. … [I]t provides an excellent interdisciplinary approach to the subject at hand and comes with a comprehensive bibliography that a wide array of readers will relish.”
- Michael T. Bertrand (Register of the Kentucky Historical Society) “Music history buffs this book, by Michael James Roberts, is for you. … Roberts has written an interesting, well researched work that in retrospect is quite surprising to the average music listener.”
- Leanne Weymans (M/C Reviews) “Surpassing a simple account of class domination, working class resistance, or binary conflict, Tell Tchaikovsky the News weaves a historically rich tale of contradiction, cultural and economic intersection, and unexpected turns.”
"Michael James Roberts has written a superlative book that places class and work squarely in the center of our understanding of rock music."
- Alex Sayf Cummings (Journal of Popular Music Studies)
For two decades after rock music emerged in the 1940s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the oldest and largest labor union representing professional musicians in the United States and Canada, refused to recognize rock 'n' roll as legitimate music or its performers as skilled musicians. The AFM never actively organized rock 'n' roll musicians, although recruiting them would have been in the union's economic interest. In Tell Tchaikovsky the News, Michael James Roberts argues that the reasons that the union failed to act in its own interest lay in its culture, in the opinions of its leadership and elite rank-and-file members. Explaining the bias of union members-most of whom were classical or jazz music performers-against rock music and musicians, Roberts addresses issues of race and class, questions of what qualified someone as a skilled or professional musician, and the threat that records, central to rock 'n' roll, posed to AFM members, who had long privileged live performances. Roberts contends that by rejecting rock 'n' rollers for two decades, the once formidable American Federation of Musicians lost their clout within the music industry.
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Union Man Blues 1
1. Solidarity Forever? The Musicians' Union Responds to Radio and Records 19
2. Have You Heard the News? There's Good Rockin' Tonight: Hepcats, Wildcats, and the Emergence of Rock 'n 'Roll 41
3. If I Had a Hammer: Union Musicians "
Bop"
Rock 'n ' Roll 113
4. A Working-Class Hero Is Something to Be: The Musicians' Union Attempt to Block the British Invasion 167
Epilogue. Tuned In, Turned On, and Dropped Out: Rock 'n' Roll Music Production Restructures the Music Industry along Non-Union Lines 201
Notes 209
Bibliography 233
Index 243
Photo gallery follows page 112
