Rock and Pop
For more resources, see the page Rock Music on the Popular Music Research Guide.
Recommended Books
The recommended books below include print reference sources and books on a wide sampling of topics related to rock and its subgenres. Reference sources on rock are classified in ML 102.R6 (encyclopedias), ML 128.R6 (bibliographies), and ML 156.4.R6 (discographies). Other books can be found in biographies (especially ML 420 and ML 421) and in types and styles of popular music (ML 3524). Books are sorted by their call numbers for ease of browsing. Hover over the info icon to see a description.
Also run the subject search, "African American rock musicians."
Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius by
Becoming Jimi Hendrix traces "Jimmy's" early musical roots, from a harrowing, hand-to-mouth upbringing in a poverty-stricken, broken Seattle home to his early discovery of the blues to his stint as a reluctant recruit of the 101st Airborne who was magnetically drawn to the rhythm and blues scene in Nashville. As a sideman, Hendrix played with the likes of Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner, the Isley Brothers, and Sam & Dave--but none knew what to make of his spotlight-stealing rock guitar experimentation, the likes of which had never been heard before. From 1962 to 1966, on the rough and tumble club circuit, Hendrix learned to please a crowd, deal with racism, and navigate shady music industry characters, all while evolving his own astonishing style. Finally, in New York's Greenwich Village, two key women helped him survive, and his discovery in a tiny basement club in 1966 led to Hendrix instantly being heralded as a major act in Europe before he returned to America, appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and entered the pantheon of rock's greatest musicians. Becoming Jimi Hendrix is based on over one hundred interviews with those who knew Hendrix best during his lean years, more than half of whom have never spoken about him on the record. Utilizing court transcripts, FBI files, private letters, unpublished photos, and U.S. Army documents, this is the story of a young musician who overcame enormous odds, a past that drove him to outbursts of violence, and terrible professional and personal decisions that complicated his life before his untimely demise.
Call Number: ML410.H476 R62 2010Publication Date: 2010
Chuck Berry: An American Life by
The definitive biography of Chuck Berry, legendary performer and inventor of rock and roll. Best known as the groundbreaking artist behind classics like "Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene," "You Never Can Tell" and "Roll Over Beethoven," Chuck Berry was a man of wild contradictions, whose motives and motivations were often shrouded in mystery. After all, how did a teenage delinquent come to write so many songs that transformed American culture? And, once he achieved fame and recognition, why did he put his career in danger with a lifetime's worth of reckless personal behavior? Throughout his life, Berry refused to shed light on either the mastery or the missteps, leaving the complexity that encapsulated his life and underscored his music largely unexplored--until now. In Chuck Berry, biographer RJ Smith crafts a comprehensive portrait of one of the great American entertainers, guitarists, and lyricists of the 20th century, bringing Chuck Berry to life in vivid detail. Based on interviews, archival research, legal documents, and a deep understanding of Berry's St. Louis (his birthplace, and the place where he died in March 2017), Smith sheds new light on a man few have ever really understood. By placing his life within the context of the American culture he made and eventually withdrew from, we understand how Berry became such a groundbreaking figure in music, erasing racial boundaries, crafting subtle political commentary, and paying a great price for his success. While celebrating his accomplishments, the book also does not shy away from troubling aspects of his public and private life, asking profound questions about how and why we separate the art from the artist. Berry declined to call himself an artist, shrugging that he was good at what he did. But the man's achievement was the rarest kind, the kind that had social and political resonance, the kind that made America want to get up and dance. At long last, Chuck Berry brings the man and the music together.
Call Number: ML420.B365 S65 2022Publication Date: 2022
Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'N' Roll by
Rock 'n' roll defined the last half of the twentieth century, and while many think of Elvis Presley as the genre's driving force, the truth is that Fats Domino, whose records have sold more than 100 million copies, was the first to put it on the map with such hits as "Ain't That a Shame" and "Blueberry Hill." In Blue Monday, acclaimed R&B scholar Rick Coleman draws on a multitude of new interviews with Fats Domino and many other early musical legends (among them Lloyd Price, the Clovers, Charles Brown, and members of Buddy Holly's group, the Crickets) to create a definitive biography of not just an extraordinary man but also a unique time and place: New Orleans at the birth of rock 'n' roll. Coleman's groundbreaking research makes for an immense cultural biography, the first to thoroughly explore the Black roots of rock 'n' roll and its impact on civil rights in America. A true music lovers' biography, Blue Monday, includes new revelations about the politics behind the music labels of the 1930s and 1940s, and provides a searing indictment of the great white myths of rock 'n' roll. Coleman also brings the African-American culture of New Orleans to life, and his narrative is passionate, compassionate, and authoritative. Blue Monday is the first biography to convey the full scope of Fats Domino's impact on the popular music of the twentieth century.
Call Number: ML420.D65 C65 2006Publication Date: 2006
Michael Jackson and the Quandary of a Black Identity by
In Michael Jackson and the Quandary of a Black Identity, Sherrow O. Pinder explores the ways in which the late singer's racial identification process problematizes conceptualizations of race and the presentation of Blackness that reduces Blacks to a bodily mark. Pinder is particularly interested in how Michael Jackson simultaneously performs his racial identity and posits it against strict binary racial definitions, neither Black nor white. While Jackson's self-fashioning deconstructs and challenges the corporeal notions of "natural bodies" and fixed identities, negative readings of the King of Pop fuel epithets such as "weird" or "freak," subjecting him to a form of antagonism that denies the Black body its self-determination. Thus, for Jackson, racial identification becomes a deeply ambivalent process, which leads to the fragmentation of his identity into plural identities. Pinder shows how Jackson as a racialized subject is discursively confined to a "third space," a liminal space of ambivalence.
Call Number: ML420.J175 P56 2021Publication Date: 2021
Prince: A Thief in the Temple by
From the basement studios of Minneapolis to the top of the Billboard charts and his bitter battle with Warner Bros., this honest and sometimes startling account of one of the world's premier musicians examines his missteps and celebrates his recent reemergence. Since the explosive success of Purple Rain (the album, the single, and the film) more than twenty years ago, Prince has scored Top Ten hits, won Grammys and an Oscar, and finally been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame. He's inspired protest and devotion, and provoked as many questions as he has commendations. BBC Radio's Brian Morton mines Prince's oeuvre, unmatched for breadth and excellence, to figure out just what Prince has created. Investigating his many feuds with old friends over songwriting credits and royalties owed, Morton also reveals the shrewd and sometimes cunning businessman within the man who has dared his listeners to think differently about sexuality, love, recording contracts, and assless chaps. Prince: A Thief in the Temple is a look behind the scenes and in the studio with the innovative, fearless, and iconic Prince.
Call Number: ML420.P974 M67 2007Publication Date: 2007
I, Tina by
From modest beginnings to becoming the rage of three generations, to bursting through in 1985 and sweeping the Grammy awards with her album Private Dancer, Tina Turner is a true rock survivor, and in this candid autobiography, Tina tells it the way it is. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.
Call Number: ML420.T95 A3 1986ISBN: 9780688059491Publication Date: 1986
Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by
Long before "women in rock" became a media catchphrase, Rosetta Tharpe proved in spectacular fashion that women could rock. Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915, she was gospel's first superstar and the preeminent crossover figure of its "golden age" (1945-1965). Everyone who saw her perform said she could "make that guitar talk." Shout, Sister, Shout! is the first biography of this trailblazing performer who influenced scores of popular musicians, from Elvis Presley and Little Richard to Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt. An African American guitar virtuoso, Tharpe defied categorization. Blues singer, gospel singer, folk artist, and rock-and-roller, she "went electric" in the late 1930s, amazing northern and southern, U.S. and international, and white and Black audiences with her charisma and skill. Ambitious and relentlessly public, Tharpe even staged her own wedding as a gospel concert in a stadium holding 20,000 people! Wald's eye-opening biography, which draws on the memories of over 150 people who knew or worked with Tharpe, introduces us to this intriguing and forgotten musical heavyweight, forever altering our understanding of both women in rock and U.S. popular music.
Call Number: ML420.T395 W35 2007Publication Date: 2007
Rock: The Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of Rock by
This thoroughly revised third edition of Allan Moore's ground-breaking book, now co-authored with Remy Martin, incorporates new material on rock music theory, style change and the hermeneutic method developed in Moore's Song Means (2012). An even larger array of musicians is now discussed, bringing the book right into the 21st century. Rock's 'primary text' - its sounds - is the focus of attention here. The authors argue for the development of a musicology particular to rock within the context of the background to the genres, the beat and rhythm and blues styles of the early 1960s, 'progressive' rock, punk rock, metal and subsequent styles. They also explore the fundamental issue of rock as a medium for self-expression, and the relationship of this to changing musical styles. Rock: The Primary Text remains innovative in its exploration of an aesthetics of rock.
Call Number: ML3534 .M66 2019Publication Date: 2019
Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock 'N' Roll by
When Mos Def, platinum-selling New York-based rapper, decided to make a foray into rock 'n roll he called his band "Jack Johnson." The name choice was a telling one: Johnson was the first Black world heavyweight boxing champion, a man who has been described as "fighting not only for his own dignity but also to knock white America off its haughty perch." The band Jack Johnson continues the tradition of setting the story straight by challenging the notion that rock is an exclusively white domain. Collecting the stories of Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Lee and Love, Prince, the punk band Bad Brains, and more obscure Black members of "white" bands, along with original interviews with Slash from Guns n' Roses, Little Richard, Lenny Kravitz, and others, it becomes clear that the true story of Blacks in rock has remained largely untold for far too long. This is essential reading for any rock fan, presenting the history of rock from an angle unseen until now.
Call Number: ML3534 .R54 2004Publication Date: 2004
Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll by
African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll--from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise. In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s. Mahon details the musical contributions and cultural impact of Big Mama Thornton, LaVern Baker, Betty Davis, Tina Turner, Merry Clayton, Labelle, the Shirelles, and others, demonstrating how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected their careers. By uncovering this hidden history of black women in rock and roll, Mahon reveals a powerful sonic legacy that continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century.
Call Number: ML3534.3 .M346 2020Publication Date: 2020
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.