This book traces vocal group music from Minstrelsy in the mid-19th century to the dawn of rock and roll in the early 1950s. It explores the history of vocal group music, including how the music changed and what factors influenced those changes. There is information on more than 1,500 vocal groups, a discography of over 15,000 recordings, 150-plus photographs, and other visuals, as well as sections on technology, sheet music and postcards.

The remarkable and poignant story of the Comedian Harmonists, an early 1930s German singing group that was forced to disband because three of its members were Jewish. The banning of the group, which enjoyed a level of success in Europe similar to the Beatles in the 1960s, was part of the Nazis' attempt to erase all traces of Jewish life and culture from German society - an early aspect of the Holocaust.