Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 2 (Summer 1998)
Reviews of Books
Edited by Sherrill V. Martin, University of North Carolina at Wilmington
Kentucky Country: Folk and Country Music of Kentucky
By Charles K. Wolfe. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. ISBN 0-8131-0879-9. Pp. ix,
214. $16.95.
Kentucky Country was originally published in 1982. This reprint makes it available in
paperback for the first time, with a new afterword added by the author. In this chronological
survey of country musicians associated with the state of Kentucky, both the well-known--Merle Travis,
Red Foley, Bill Monroe, Jean Ritchie, and Loretta Lynn--and the not-so-well-known--Cousin Emmy, Jilson
Setters, Arnold Schultz--rub shoulders with behind-the-scenes figures such as Jean Thomas and
John Lair, early promoters of folk and country music in Kentucky. In addition to providing a wealth
of biographical and institutional data, Wolfe seeks to situate the artists within a Kentucky tradition
that illuminates underappreciated connections between them. The disproportionate number (in relation
to the size of the population) of famous musicians from Kentucky may surprise readers, but what I
found interesting were several tensions running through the book: first, the difficulty in articulating
a local tradition against the regional styles shared by musicians from the area surrounding
Kentucky, and then the larger sense of a national (and by now, even transnational) "country" music. Related to
this tension is the difficulty involved in establishing a "tradition," as that notoriously unstable
term fluctuates throughout the book in opposition to forces identified variously as "commercial," "popular,"
and "homogenizing." What is fascinating is how individual artists negotiated these tensions. Buell
Kazee, who epitomized the raw Kentucky mountain sound to young folk enthusiasts in the 1960s,
was college educated, had formal voice lessons, and subsequently adopted his "authentic" sound at
the behest of record company executives in the late 1920s. Another of these musicians was Blind Bill Day,
who in 1926 changed his name to Jilson Setters at the urging of his manager, Jean Thomas. Later,
after regaining his eyesight, he recorded successfully in New York with studio musician and pop
songwriter, Carson J. Robison, while being promoted as the "modern survival of the ancient
minstrel" (68). In contrast to this intermingling of tradition and commerce, Jean Ritchie, who
began performing in the 1940s, adopted a conservationist stance in explicit opposition to "slick
city music," graduated with honors from the University of Kentucky, worked as a social worker
on the lower east side of Manhattan, and won a Fulbright scholarship to research the
"roots of her family songs" (152). In the final chapter from the original edition, Kentucky
Music, American Country, Wolfe thematizes the tensions between the local and the national,
the "traditional" and the commercial, that run through the book's most valuable aspects: it pays
"homage to some of the artists who are by necessity slighted or overlooked by more general
studies" (175).
--David Brackett
SUNY-Binghamton University
Psalmody and Secular Songs
By Timothy Swan. Edited by Nym Cooke. Volume 5 of Music of the United States of America.
Madison: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 1997. ISBN
0-89579-383-0, ISBN 0147-0078 (alk. paper). Pp. Xlix, 4 plates, 362.
When I was studying American music in the early 1960s with Gilbert Chase at Tulane University,
very little early American music was available in modern editions. Within a few years, the Gleason
and Marocco Anthology of American Music (1964) appeared, but not in my farthest imagination
could I picture the appearance of collected editons of the music of the early singing school composers
of the Northeast. This tradition of early America was not generally held in high esteem. After a
noteworthy beginning with an AMS-sponsored bicentennial project, The Collected Works of William
Billings (1977-1990), two publishers are now making much of this early American music available.
Garland, under the general editorship of Karl Kroeger, is publishing the collected or selected
works of twenty-three of these pioneer American composers in fifteen volumes. A-R Editions,
under the sponsorship of the AMS, has so far published Daniel Read: Collected Works (1995),
edited by Karl Kroeger, and the present volume of Timothy Swan's Music, in its Music of the
United States of America (MUSA) series. It is indeed gatifying to see this music of the early
Northeast singing-school tradition made available in attractive modern editions -- a clear indication
as to how far the study of early Americn music has come in the past three decades.
This volume under review is a complete edition of the works of the Connecticut and Massachusetts
hatmaker/composer Timothy Swan, including both manuscript and published works. Editor Nym Cooke,
whose dissertation on American psalmodists of this period was written under the expert guidance of
Richard Crawford at the University of Michigan, is well qualified for this task. Cooke has included
manuscript and print versions, and both variants and sketches, which provide glimpses of Swan's musical
mind at work. As pointed out by Cooke, Swan made changes in many pieces right up to their
publication.
Among the more than 250 American composers of this period, Cooke gives high marks to Swan: "[He]
stands out as a gifted melodist and a true original" (xiii). Unusual among early singing-school
composers, Swan composed not only psalmody but also secular songs, seventeen of which are included
in this edition.
Cooke provides a detailed account of what is known of Swan's life and a helpful introduction to his
music. He also gives and illuminating chronicle of Swan's best known piece, the tune CHINA (to Isaac
Watts' funeral text, "Why do we mourn departing freinds"). Swan failed as a publisher, losing money
on his only tunebook, New England Harmony (Northampton, MA, 1801). Yet, as Cooke observes,
"The popularity of Swan's music -- of his tunes BRISTOL, MONTAGUE, and RAINBOW in the eighteenth century,
of his CHINA and POLAND in the nineteenth--stands in sharp contrast to his apparent failure in the
publishing arena" (xxi). Each of Swan's three tunes popular in the eighteenth century -- BRISTOL, MONTAGUE,
and RAINBOW (all fuging tunes) -- appears in Richard Crawford's The Core Repertory of American
Psalmody (Madison: A-R Editions, 1984). It is also noteworthy that the widely used 1991 edition of
The Sacred Harp (Bremen, GA: Sacred Harp Publishing Company) includes four of these five popular
works of Swan: BRISTOL, CHINA, POLAND, and RAINBOW.
Cooke has provided us with a fine edition of the music of Timothy Swan that belongs in all libraries
supporting the study and performance of early American music.
--Harry Eskew
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
Luther Whiting Mason: International Music Educator
By Sondra Wieland Howe. Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 1997. ISBN 0-89990-080-1 (cloth).
Pp. xxvii, 170. $37.50.
This book is a published version of Dr. Howe's Ph.D. dissertation, "Luther Whiting Mason: Contributions
to Music Education in Nineteenth Century America and Japan," (University of Minnesota, 1988). She
refers to two previous research efforts devoted to Mason's accomplishments: an unpublished biography by
his compatriot Osbourne McConathy, based on personal contacts with Mason in the 1890s; and a 1960
Ed.D. dissertation completed at Florida State University by Kenneth Ray Hartley, "Study of the Life
and Works of Luther Whiting Mason." Her own research utilized the Mason collection given to the University
of Maryland in 1972, containing Mason's books, photographs, personal correspondence, musical instruments
and art works; and the 1983 M.M. thesis completed at the University of Maryland by Bonlyn Hall, who catalogued
the Mason-McConathy Collection at the Library of Congress. Dr. Howe's book is primarily a description of
Mason's various activities in the several cities in which he served as a music teacher following his
single year as a student at Delaware College in 1842-43, and a few years as a choir director in Baltimore.
A native of Turner, Maine, Mason's first public school experience was in Louisville (1852-55), followed by
teaching positions in Cincinnati (1856-64), Boston (1864-79), and Tokyo (1880-82). In addition
to his teaching duties, Mason was constantly involved in collecting songs, writing textbooks, and promoting
their publication. His rote-song teaching was marked by the unique use of charts and what were called "ladders,"
first introducted in his The Young Singer: A Collection of Juvenile Music, Vol. 1, in 1860.
Although not the inventor, Mason used "ladders" to explain scales, staffs, clefs, note values, intervals,
and dynamics. For example, "ladders" with numbers, solfege syllables and letters were used to describe
whole- and hald-steps. According to Dr. Howe, Luther Mason's philosophy of music education stemmed in great
part from the famous Manual of the Boston Academy of Music by Lowell Mason (no relation), in
which Lowell falsely claimed to have followed Pestalozzi's system of proceeding from the
simple to the complex in teaching young children the rudiments of music.
There are many references to Mason's success as a teacher and organizer. A children's concert in Boston, May
1869, was reviewed in Dwight's Journal fo Music: "A choir of 1,000 singers, under the direction of Luther
W. Mason . . . [proved] effectively that children at the age of five to seven can be taught to sing and
even read notes." In Japan he assisted the leading Japanese music educator, Isawa Shuji, in adapting
his methods (ladders, charts and textbooks) to the Japanese language. Dr. Howe writes: "Mason was
the 'live machine' Japan used to incorporate music education into the national school system." Mason left
Japan in July 1882, when his contract was not renewed, in spite of his expressed wishes to continue;
later, his work was accorded recognition when the University of Tokyo awarded him an honorary degree.
Mason made four trips to Europe, visiting Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden and England,
observing teaching methods and collecting songs and books about teaching music. The hundreds of
music books thus collected were important references for his textbooks published by the Ginn Company. Dr.
Howe lists thirteen published textbooks from the first, National Music Course (1870), to the
final, The New Third Music Reader (1886). (Were any of these books mere translations from German
books, as at least one of Lowell Mason's proved to be?) He also published four other textbooks in
collaboration with other educators in the 1890s. Althoug he long enjoyed almost a monopoly on the adoption of
his works by city school systems, a rival publication in 1883, The Normal Music Course by Tufts and Holt,
which stressed note-reading, gradually eroded his sales. Ignored was the fact that Mason also taught
pupils to be good sight-readers while they enjoyed their songs.
In the 1890s, he became interested in offering summer school music institutes and devoted much of his
time to teaching them in Turner and Buckfield, Maine, utilizing his books. Mason died on 14 July
at 1896 at Buckfield, a somewhat forgotten man on the national scene.
Dr. Howe's work serves primarily to chronicle Mason's writings and activities. This reviewer found
no statements by the author regarding her attempts to evaluate Mason's teaching methods as outlined in
his published works; she seems to have accepted the praises accorded him by important educators
on three continents as being well deserved. Obviously, he enjoyed much success, but Mason's skills
as an entrepreneur in promoting his publications may have surpassed his talents as a musician.
Dr. Howe does not provide any compelling basis for a contrary assessment.
--Hubert Henderson
University of Kentucky
There But For Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs
By Michael Schumacker. New York: Hyperion, 1996. ISBN 0-7868-6084-7. Pp. xii, 386. $15.95.
This is a thorough, honest, and depressing biography about a self-destructive musician who had talent enought
to have become a notable clarinetist, and even more talent for writing and singing sardonic topical
songs. It is as depressing as Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; but Gibbon's
masterpiece was the "Ancient History" of a distant, troubled country when he write it in the eighteenth
century. The Ochs biography plumbs in depths in our recent past. America in the 1960s and 70s, so
a treader is stripped of the complacency which time and distance can afford.
"Topical songs" deliberately comment on the political, social, and military events of their day. Usually
they have been ephemeral and written for effect, rather than for fame and fortune. Except in recent
years, they have had no necessary connection with what is called "folk song" -- for example, most
American Revolutionary War songs were written to theatrical music.
For some, the 1960s folk-song craze seemed to have risen from nowwhere, but its commercial viability
actually began on a small scale in the 1920s with recordings by Vernon Dalhart and Bradley Kincaid. In the 1940s,
Burl Ives parlayed a mellifluous voice and a little classical voice training to become a national
figure recorded by Decca and Columbia. With the Kingston Trio in the 1950s, folk music seemd to
rocket into public acceptance, but it never became more than a sub-genre of vocal "pop" music, then dominated
by Elvis and later the Beatles. So while the Trio recycled typed-up versions of some genuine folk songs,
a number of singers like Ochs, as intent on reforming as entertaining, composed new folk-like tunes
for the centuries-old tradition of topical song. Unfortunately, they sang mostly for the converted.
Schumacher is not concerned with the background of the folksong movement, but focuses on the attempts
of Ochs to create and trive on topical songs that might help end the war in Vietnam and improve
America. That story "is well researched and well told" as Scott Alarik (Boston Globe) wrote.
Even the jacket copy gets it right: "His story is ultimately the chronicle not only of a man
but of the singular times in which he lived." Ochs was good at writing topical songs, but
unrealistic in expecting that taelnt to build fortune and lasting fame. If he had succeede,d he
would have been the first to do so.
--Art F. Schrader
Southbridge, MA
Notes in Passing
Sherrill V. Martin, University of Carolina at Wilmington
The Frank Sinatra Reader
Edited by Steven Petkov and Leoanrd Mustazza. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN
0-19-509531-6. Pp. xx, 297. $27.50.
The Frank Sinatra Reader illumines the legend's impact on American popular and musical culture
in the twentieth century, rather than aspects of his personal life. This excellent anthology of
reviews, photographs, and memoirs is divided into four chronological areas: from the beginning
of Sinatra's career as a teen phenomenon through his rise and fall as a solo performer (1939-1948);
his return to the top as a mature recording artist with Capitol Records (1953-1961); his
powerful and influential reign in the 60s (1961-1973); and contemplations on Sinatra's past and future
effects on American popular music and culture. Included in the illustrious contributors to The
Frank Sinatra Reader are music critics Gene Lees, Henry Pleasants, Stephen Holden, Whitney Balliett,
Leonard Feather, and Robert Palmer; writers Gay Talese, Murry Kempton, Pete Hamill, Mikal Gilmore,
and William Kennedy; and fellow entertainers Rosalind Russell and Harry Connick, Jr.
The Frank Sinatra Reader also features 28 photographs of Sinatra, a biographical chronology,
album discography, filmography, and a selected bibliography.
Sinatra: The Man and His Music: The Recording Artistry of Francis Albert Sinatra--1939-1992
By Ed O'Brien and Scott P. Sayers, Jr. Austin, TX: TSD Press, Inc., 1992.* ISBN 0-934367-24-8. Pp. vii, 303.
$39.95 (cloth); $24.95 (pbk).
Sinatra: The Man and His Music has achieved wide acclaim since it was first published in
1992. This comprehensive volume contains recording dates, arrangers, conductors, and locations for all
Sinatra recording sessions, plus sources for locating each song; a complete chronological listing
of Sinatra's recordings, with cross-indexing; a complete listing of unissued Sinatra tracks;
recording information on all Sinatra V-Disc sessions; information for songs recorded for movies, plus a
complete listing of Sinatra song used on movie soundtracks; a history of Sinatra albums and singles
on the Billboard and Cashbox charts; numerous photographs of Sinatra in concert and the recording studio;
unused cover art for Sinatra projects; and Sintra Grammy nominations and awards.
Sinatra: The Man and His Music, a finalist for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections
Research Award, is a treasure trove of information for anyone interested in Sinatra in particular,
or American popular music and culture in general.
*Although this book was published in 1992, it was never reviewed in American Music or the Bulletin.
With the recent demise of Frank Sinatra, it seemed appropriate to bring it to the attention of
those who may not have been aware of its existence.
--Sherrill V. Martin
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
Updated 8/31/98