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"Zak, Albin"
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I don’t sound like nobody
The 1950s marked a radical transformation in American popular music as the nation drifted away from its love affair with big band swing to embrace the unschooled and unruly new sounds of rock 'n' roll. The sudden flood of records from the margins of the music industry left impressions on the pop soundscape that would eventually reshape long-established listening habits and expectations, as well as conventions of songwriting, performance, and recording. When Elvis Presley claimed, \"I don't sound like nobody,\" a year before he made his first commercial record, he unwittingly articulated the era's musical Zeitgeist. The central story line of I Don't Sound Like Nobody is change itself. The book's characters include not just performers but engineers, producers, songwriters, label owners, radio personalities, and fans—all of them key players in the decade's musical transformation. Written in engaging, accessible prose, Albin Zak's I Don't Sound Like Nobody approaches musical and historical issues of the 1950s through the lens of recordings and fashions a compelling story of the birth of a new musical language. The book belongs on the shelf of every modern music aficionado and every scholar of rock 'n' roll.
eBook
The Poetics of Rock
After a hundred years of recording, the process of making records is still mysterious to most people who listen to them. Records hold a fundamental place in the dynamics of modern musical life, but what do they represent? Are they documents? Snapshots? Artworks? Fetishes? Commodities? Conveniences?The Poetics of Rockis a fascinating exploration of recording consciousness and compositional process from the perspective of those who make records. In it, Albin Zak examines the crucial roles played by recording technologies in the construction of rock music and shows how songwriters, musicians, engineers, and producers contribute to the creative project, and how they all leave their mark on the finished work. Zak shapes an image of the compositional milieu by exploring its elements and discussing the issues and concerns faced by artists. Using their testimony to illuminate the nature of record making and of records themselves, he shows that the art of making rock records is a collaborative compositional process that includes many skills and sensibilities not traditionally associated with musical composition. Zak connects all the topics--whether technical, conceptual, aesthetic, or historical--with specific artists and recordings and illustrates them with citations from artists and with musical examples. In lively and engaging prose,The Poetics of Rockbrilliantly illustrates how the musical energy from a moment of human expression translates into a musical work wrought in sound.
eBook
Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation \All along the Watchtower\
A comparison of recordings of Bob Dylan's \"All along the Watchtower\" by Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix offers a vivid case study of what Samuel Floyd characterizes as \"the complementary oppositions of African- and European-derived musical processes and events.\" The song itself draws together elements of ballad and blues traditions; and the two recordings treat this synthesis in very different ways even as they share the common ground of late 1960s rock. Dylan's is a spare, acoustic folk-rock rendition, while Hendrix's is an opulent electric spectacle whose sonic and syntactic conception unpacks the latent drama only suggested by the original. In the process, Hendrix offers an alternative answer to the song's existential dilemma implied in its lyrics and emphasized in its musical setting. This paper examines the elements and the workings of the dialogic interaction represented first of all in Dylan's song, and then in the transformation it undergoes in Hendrix's version.
Journal Article
\Edition-ing\ Rock
Zak discusses the problem of trying to apply musicological ideas to rock music images since there are no generalizations in rock music notation. Whether these notational symbols originate with a composer or are transcribed from a performance, if scholars are to accept them as a reasonably accurate way of conveying both the music's syntactic elements and its spirit, then they must satisfy one as an iconic representation.
Journal Article
Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: juxtaposition and transformation \All along the Watchtower\
A comparison of recordings of Bob Dylan's \"All along the Watchtower\" by Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix offers a vivid case study of what Samuel Floyd characterizes as \"the complementary oppositions of African- and European-derived musical processes and events.\" The song itself draws together elements of ballad and blues traditions; and the two recordings treat this synthesis in very different ways even as they share the common ground of late 1960s rock. Dylan's is a spare, acoustic folk-rock rendition, while Hendrix's is an opulent electric spectacle whose sonic and syntactic conception unpacks the latent drama only suggested by the original. In the process, Hendrix offers an alternative answer to the song's existential dilemma implied in its lyrics and emphasized in its musical setting. This paper examines the elements and the workings of the dialogic interaction represented first of all in Dylan's song, and then in the transformation it undergoes in Hendrix's version. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Journal Article
Shifting Currents in the Mainstream
By 1955, it was clear that a new musical trend centered in the social worlds of teenagers had taken solid shape. The signs were many. Through radio and jukebox exposure, the market for rhythm and blues records had grown substantially, surprising many industry veterans. Black voices, unvarnished for mainstream tastes and disseminated for the most part by small regional labels, were moving beyond their intended markets, filtering into the broader culture through their popular appeal in the vastly numerous audience of white teenagers. A young country singer with the curious name Elvis Presley was electrifying young southern audiences with a
Book Chapter
Hustlers and Amateurs
Wayne “Buddy” Knox was twenty-three years old when he recorded “Party Doll” in 1956. He later told an interviewer that he had written the song years earlier when he was “just a kid,” maybe fifteen, entertaining himself on his parents’ farm near Happy, Texas, after chores were done.¹ He traveled to Clovis, New Mexico, just over the state line, in search of a recording studio he had learned of from a fellow West Texan musician, Roy Orbison. Established for company business by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1907, Clovis was an unlikely location for a studio, but
Book Chapter