Search results for ""author frank hoffmann""

This book makes available the wealth of data contained in Cash Box's black contemporary album (78 rpm sets and 33 1/3 rpm stereo and monaural lp records) charts over a 22-year period. The information, previously available only through a search of the weekly charts themselves, has been completely integrated and accessed via artist and song title entries. The compilation contains many features not currently availaable in any other reference tool of its type, most notable the week-by-week listing of song chart positions.

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Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Rudy Vallee—these cultural icons whose fame spanned all the important mass media, also played a vital role in the origin and development of the crooning tradition. Crooning represented one of the most important musical styles of the twentieth century, intermingling with jazz and fronting the big band craze of the thirties and forties. Crooners spurred the rise of radio as home staple and the Golden Age of film musicals. When commercial television became a viable commodity, crooners anchored perhaps the first TV programming innovation, the variety show. It took the cataclysmic aesthetic and cultural changes ushered in by rock 'n' roll in the 1950s to finally bring crooners down from their pedestal. The Rise of the Crooners examines the historical trends and events that led to the emergence of the crooning style. Ian Whitcomb, a successful popular music vocalist himself for almost 40 years, provides a personal perspective on this phenomenon. The lives and careers of six pioneers of the style—Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo, Gene Austin, Rudy Vallee, Johnny Marvin, and Nick Lucas—are covered at length. With the exception of one entry devoted to Crosby—possibly the greatest entertainer of the past century—these biographies (appended by lengthy bibliographies and discographies) are more thorough and up-to-date than any treatment in print about these seminal artists.

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As religious fervor grows, Dr. Fishwick, a recipient of the Ray and Pat Browne Award for Lifetime Achievement from The American Culture Association, takes a sweeping look at religion in the United States--the country with the highest church attendance in the Western world. Popular religion can take many shapes and forms. It can wax and wane, but it cannot be eliminated or ignored. That is what prompted him to write Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture.He ponders how religion affects American life and popular culture, and why religion has become a major force in contemporary politics. How has the Electronic Revolution furthered the religious right? What does popular religion tell us about popular culture? And about our faith?He identifies and explores five great religious revivals or “Great Awakenings:” the Atlantic Seaboard Awakening the Urban Awakening the Modernist Awakening the Celebrity Preacher Awakening the Electronic AwakeningFishwick explores the current events preceding and during each awakening, its leaders, followers, and critics. Great Awakenings gives a new understanding of the American religious past and leaves us with an anticipation for the next great awakening.

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