Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

by Jack Hamilton Narrated by Ron Butler

Overview

Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic-and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of "authenticity" have blinded us to rock's inextricably interracial artistic enterprise.



According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Alan Light

…this is not a book looking for easy solutions. Hamilton…offers a long-overdue look at the racial dynamics of rock in the 1960s, which he argues is far more fluid than it appears at first glance…The book is most revelatory when challenging lazy conventional wisdom.

From the Publisher

From Little Richard and Chuck Berry to the Dominoes, Ike Turner, and Howlin’ Wolf, rock and roll’s founding figures were African American, yet ‘rock’ as we know and hear it now is coded white…In some of his sharpest passages, Hamilton shows how much rockism’s whiteness depended on [the] confining ideas of blackness…He contributes a new and valuable piece to a larger and still contentious project: the struggle against the essentialization of racial and ethnic identity.
-- Colin Vanderburg Los Angeles Review of Books

Ambitious and rewarding… Just around Midnight seeks to tell the story of [black] erasure [from rock ‘n’ roll], and it does so quite compellingly by bringing together artists and songs that our implicitly segregationist narratives have encouraged us to keep apart.
-- Kevin J. H. Dettmar Chronicle of Higher Education

Extraordinary…Hamilton doesn’t pretend to have all the answers in Just around Midnight but he asks all the right questions. It challenges so much of what we’ve taken for granted about rock and roll history that one reading won’t do…Any future book that deals with the social and racial aspects of popular music in the 20th century will have to contend with Just around Midnight. The bar has been raised.
-- Adam Ellsworth Arts Fuse

Brilliant…[A] valuable engagement with the unheard narrative of race in rock and roll.
-- Emma Rees Times Higher Education

To the age-old cries that ‘rock is dead,’ Jack Hamilton’s book says, ‘Think again!’ Just around Midnight considers the often-elided racial mythologies, cross-cultural intimacies, and racially-charged aesthetic obfuscations that haunt the foundations of American popular music culture. For anyone who remains easily seduced by the romance of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame canon-building, this book is a necessary read.
-- Daphne Brooks, Yale University

This new listening to the black-and-white racial politics of rock in the 1960s is full of rich insights, provocative thinking, and persuasive writing. As the revolutions of critical race and ethnic studies continue to reveal new generations of critics born in their wake, revisitations of rock history like this one will be crucial to rethinking the musical past.
-- Josh Kun, University of Southern California

As musically detailed as it is theoretically expansive, Just around Midnight reveals that popular music of the 1960s was defined by more vibrant interracial collaborations and more violent anti-black erasures than we could have imagined. This is a beautifully written and provocatively argued work of intellect, heart, and soul.
-- Emily Lordi, University of Massachusetts Amherst

As Jack Hamilton makes clear in this exceptionally perceptive work, the most common way to talk about race in rock music is to not talk about it at all…Hamilton’s text is bold, sophisticated, and brilliant. For anyone looking for a book challenging conventional narratives of music history, this is a fantastic candidate.
-- Joshua Friedberg PopMatters

Emily Lordi

As musically detailed as it is theoretically expansive, Just around Midnight reveals that popular music of the 1960s was defined by more vibrant interracial collaborations and more violent anti-black erasures than we could have imagined. This is a beautifully written and provocatively argued work of intellect, heart, and soul.

Arts Fuse - Adam Ellsworth

Extraordinary…Hamilton doesn’t pretend to have all the answers in Just around Midnight but he asks all the right questions. It challenges so much of what we’ve taken for granted about rock and roll history that one reading won’t do…Any future book that deals with the social and racial aspects of popular music in the 20th century will have to contend with Just around Midnight. The bar has been raised.

Josh Kun

This new listening to the black-and-white racial politics of rock in the 1960s is full of rich insights, provocative thinking, and persuasive writing. As the revolutions of critical race and ethnic studies continue to reveal new generations of critics born in their wake, revisitations of rock history like this one will be crucial to rethinking the musical past.

Chronicle of Higher Education - Kevin J. H. Dettmar

Ambitious and rewarding… Just around Midnight seeks to tell the story of [black] erasure [from rock ‘n’ roll], and it does so quite compellingly by bringing together artists and songs that our implicitly segregationist narratives have encouraged us to keep apart.

Times Higher Education - Emma Rees

Brilliant…[A] valuable engagement with the unheard narrative of race in rock and roll.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Colin Vanderburg

From Little Richard and Chuck Berry to the Dominoes, Ike Turner, and Howlin’ Wolf, rock and roll’s founding figures were African American, yet ‘rock’ as we know and hear it now is coded white…In some of his sharpest passages, Hamilton shows how much rockism’s whiteness depended on [the] confining ideas of blackness…He contributes a new and valuable piece to a larger and still contentious project: the struggle against the essentialization of racial and ethnic identity.

Daphne Brooks

To the age-old cries that ‘rock is dead,’ Jack Hamilton’s book says, ‘Think again!’ Just around Midnight considers the often-elided racial mythologies, cross-cultural intimacies, and racially-charged aesthetic obfuscations that haunt the foundations of American popular music culture. For anyone who remains easily seduced by the romance of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame canon-building, this book is a necessary read.

PopMatters - Joshua Friedberg

As Jack Hamilton makes clear in this exceptionally perceptive work, the most common way to talk about race in rock music is to not talk about it at all…Hamilton’s text is bold, sophisticated, and brilliant. For anyone looking for a book challenging conventional narratives of music history, this is a fantastic candidate.

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"[Hamilton] contributes a new and valuable piece to a larger and still contentious project: the struggle against the essentialization of racial and ethnic identity." —Los Angeles Review of Books

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170487707
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/31/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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