The History of Rock & Roll: Volume 1: 1920-1963
Written by Ed Ward
Narrated by David Colacci
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
In this first volume of a two-part series, Ward shares his endless depth of knowledge and through engrossing storytelling hops seamlessly from Memphis to Chicago, Detroit, England, New York, and everywhere in between. He covers the trajectories of the big name acts like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Ray Charles, while also filling in gaps of knowledge and celebrating forgotten heroes such as the Burnette brothers, the "5" Royales, and Marion Keisker, Sam Phillips's assistant, who played an integral part in launching Elvis's career.
Ed Ward
Ed Ward (1948-2021) was a renowned rock music critic for such publications as Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Creem, and The Austin American-Statesman. As NPR’s “Fresh Air” rock-and-roll historian for more than thirty years, Ward shared his musical knowledge of musicians and bands, both famous and obscure, to an audience of fourteen million listeners. One of the founders of Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) music and film festivals, Ward’s books include The History of Rock & Roll, Volume One: 1920-1963, The History of Rock & Roll Volume Two, 1964-1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock, and Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero. From 2018-2020, he offered in-depth commentary about his rock history books as co-host of the Let It Roll podcast.
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Reviews for The History of Rock & Roll
27 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a thorough history. I learned of all kinds of connections I was unaware of.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The detail is fascinating. The reader is very flat and boring. The recording has lots of glitches including jumps from one section to another and the app never starts where you stopped listening jumping back randomly.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As literature, this reads more like a list than a history, but I enjoyed it anyway. For some reason following the sequence of events was exciting, yes, exciting. But that's me. Anyway, the one thing that threw me, at the end of the book the story becomes much more detailed- yes the Beatles enter the story. Apparently that was THE event that completes the early history of Rock & Roll. Me, I am more into events preceding that big deal event. The book was great despite my misgiving.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Any attempt to create a comprehensive chronology around the emergence of a new art form is fraught with potential traps, and unfortunately Ward falls into a few of them. There really is no clear path that led to the development of rock, its one of multiple influences, coincidence, happy accident, geography, social change, and (unfortunately) racism. I consider this “a” history of rock rather than “the” definitive take that the title suggests. Ward clearly knows the deep details around who recorded what and where, but his insistence on cramming all these facts into the story gets in the way of the narrative. This is a book that will remain on the shelf as a useful reference, but not one I’d recommend to the casual reader.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent. Ward takes the jumbled story of the birth of rock and roll, from its roots in blues, rockabilly and country until the arrival of The Beatles on an unsuspecting America, and makes sense of it. If he's missed anyone, or anything, out I can't find it. Its always the sign of a good music history when it finds two pages for Arthur Alexander. Often very funny - particularly in his diatribes against The Chipmunks and their voicer, Ross Bagdasarian - and only occasionally repetitive, this is both comprehensive and exhaustive. And who knew that Walden Robert Cassotto would one day become Bobby Darin? In the late 50s, anything could happen