The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one
critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if
it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it
signify?
As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n
roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot
about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that
saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler
shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide
fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family,
sexuality, and race. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with
the Civil Rights movement and brought "race music" into many white
homes for the first time. Elvis freely credited blacks with
originating the music he sang and some of the great early rockers
were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck
Berry. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the
reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked
deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray
flannel suits. And it delighted in the separate world of the
teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping
teenagers differentiate themselves from others. Altschuler includes
vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n rollers, including
Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee
Lewis, and Buddy Holly--plus their white-bread doppelgangers such
as Pat Boone.
Rock 'n roll seemed to be everywhere during the decade,
exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to those Americans intent
on wishing away all forms of dissent and conflict. As vibrant as
the music itself, All Shook Up reveals how rock 'n roll challenged
and changed American culture and laid the foundation for the social
upheaval of the sixties.
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