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Stage to Studio

Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890-1950

James P. Kraft

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Award for Best Research in the Field of Record Labels or Manufacturers from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections

Winner of the Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize from the Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society, Hawaii Region

Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, technology transformed the entertainment industry as much as it did such heavy industries as coal and steel. Among those most directly affected were musicians, who had to adapt to successive inventions and refinements in audio technology—from wax cylinders and gramophones to radio and sound films. In this groundbreaking study...

Award for Best Research in the Field of Record Labels or Manufacturers from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections

Winner of the Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize from the Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society, Hawaii Region

Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, technology transformed the entertainment industry as much as it did such heavy industries as coal and steel. Among those most directly affected were musicians, who had to adapt to successive inventions and refinements in audio technology—from wax cylinders and gramophones to radio and sound films. In this groundbreaking study, James P. Kraft explores the intersection of sound technology, corporate power, and artistic labor during this disruptive period.

Kraft begins in the late nineteenth century's "golden age" of musicians, when demand for skilled instrumentalists often exceeded supply, analyzing the conflicts in concert halls, nightclubs, recording studios, radio stations, and Hollywood studios as musicians began to compete not only against their local counterparts but also against highly skilled workers in national "entertainment factories." Kraft offers an illuminating case study in the impact of technology on industry and society—and a provocative chapter in the cultural history of America.

Reviews

Reviews

Historians might not have answers to the questions of technology displacing and deskilling workers, but they can lay out the facts and be sympathetic to the victims. This Kraft has done. He writes clearly and without bias, [and] has an understanding of his subjects that comes from his own background as a musician.

In Stage to Studio, James Kraft presents a concise, well-researched, and well-written historical account of the actions and reactions of unionized musicians as they faced new technologies and changing conditions of labor in early twentieth-century America... an important contribution to the literature on organized workers in America.

Combining techniques from social history, labor history, and the history of technology, Kraft weaves together archival material, oral history data, and secondary sources to produce an accessible narrative and a rich analysis.

Kraft treats popular culture on the highest academic level and fills a void heretofore ignored by labor historians.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
248
ISBN
9780801877421
Illustration Description
26 b&w illus.
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Working Scales in Industrial America
Chapter 2. Boom and Bust in Early Movie Theaters
Chapter 3. Encountering Records and Radio
Chapter 4. Playing in Hollywood

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Working Scales in Industrial America
Chapter 2. Boom and Bust in Early Movie Theaters
Chapter 3. Encountering Records and Radio
Chapter 4. Playing in Hollywood Between the Wars
Chapter 5. Rising Militancy
Chapter 6. Recording Ban
Chapter 7. Balancing Success and Failure
Conclusion
Appendix. AFM Membership, 1896–1956
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Author Bio
James P. Kraft
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James P. Kraft, Ph.D.

James P. Kraft is a professor of US business, labor, and the American West at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. He is the author of Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890–1950 and Vegas at Odds: Labor Conflict in a Leisure Economy, 1960–1985, and Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America.