McCracken Allison McCracken

Real Men Don't Sing (eBook, PDF)

Crooning in American Culture

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The crooner Rudy Vallee's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity. Although Vallee and other crooners reflected the gender fluidity of late-1920s popular culture, their challenge to the Depression era's more conservative masculine norms led cultural authorities to stigmatize them as gender and sexual deviants. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken outlines crooning's history from its origins in minstrelsy through its development as the microphone sound most associated with white recording artists, band singers, and radio stars. She charts early crooners' rise and fall between 1925 and 1934, contrasting Rudy Vallee with Bing Crosby to demonstrate how attempts to contain crooners created and dictated standards of white masculinity for male singers. Unlike Vallee, Crosby survived the crooner backlash by adapting his voice and persona to adhere to white middle-class masculine norms. The effects of these norms are felt to this day, as critics continue to question the masculinity of youthful, romantic white male singers. Crooners, McCracken shows, not only were the first pop stars: their short-lived yet massive popularity fundamentally changed American culture.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Seitenzahl: 448
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. September 2015
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780822375326
• Artikelnr.: 54676117

Autorenporträt

Allison McCracken

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. Putting Over a Song: Crooning, Performance, and Audience in the Acoustic
Era, 1880–1920  37
2. Crooning Goes Electric: Microphone Crooning and the Invention of the
Intimate Singing Aesthetic, 1921–1928  74
3. Falling in Love with a Voice: Rudy Vallée and His First Radio Fans,
1928  126
4. "The Mouth of the Machine": The Creation of the Crooning Idol, 1929  160
5. "A Supine Sinking into the Primeval Ooze": Crooning and Its Discontents,
1929–1933  208
6. "The Kind of Natural That Worked": The Crooner Redefined, 1932–1934 (and
Beyond)  264
Conclusion  311
Notes  333
Bibliography  375
Index  411