AMST 371.01

Songs of Protest, Songs of Praise

Roger Williams University

GHH 301

M, W, F, 9:00-9:50

Fall Semester 2015

Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.

Office:  GHH 215

Hours: T, TH 9:00 - 11:00

M, W, 1:00-2:00

mswanson@rwu.edu

(401) 254 3230

For Monday, November 23

For Wednesday, and Friday,  November 25 & 27

Read, in Dunaway and Beer

• Chapter  Six, Folk Boom, pp. 107-136
  

"In the United States in the 1950s, amid hula hoops, telephone-booth stuffing, and images of Marilyn Monroe, folk music rose again.  McCarthyism gradually came under check as the decade progressed.  Meanwhile emergent recording and distribution technology, including 45s and transistor radios, meant that ever-widening audiences had access to, and generated a demand for, commercially recorded folk music.  Small independent record companies multiplied to fill demand niches, as did local AM radio and TV stations.  Throughout the decade, music was breaking with cultural strictures, but it was also returning to its roots."

Have any of you seen one of these, or heard something played on it?  Above is a vintage 45 rpm record player. these small records could hold between 4.5 and  6 minutes of music per side, depending on the sound quality. Click on the image to see many more of the types of machine we played our songs on when I was in high school and into college.  There are other interesting things to prowl around on  PhonoJack!

And this is a transistor radio, first introduced in 1954.  It could fit easily in a shirt pocket, and soon there were ear buds for them--the precursor of the cell phones or whatever students have going all the time today.The click the image to learn more about it from the Smithsonian Magazine.

Alas, the Kingston Trio never made it to my college, though I was a huge fan.  I would have loved to hear them live.  This YouTube presentation is a pretty good substitute if you close your eyes and imagine the college audience.  You can hear them laughing in the background.  I think my favorite song is MTA   Evidently Massachusetts Institute of Technology things highly of it, as well.  Click on MTA to get the lyrics.  The Trio's website can be reached by clicking here.

Happy Thanksgiving

Click the image to reach the story of the magazine ande many resources