Emerging in the 1950s with its roots firmly established in rhythm and blues, early rock ‘n’ roll was inclusive in terms of not only its artists, but also its audiences. While there is general consensus about the origins of rock ‘n’ roll, its evolution as a music genre – no longer, rock ‘n’ roll, but rock music primarily performed by white musicians and generally consumed by white audiences – is a contentious issue. In Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, Jack Hamilton offers readers a riveting examination of this evolution, revealing how shifting notions about race and authenticity have contributed to an understanding of rock and race that overwhelmingly ignores the reality of the genre's interracial history. Along the way, he engages with artists such as Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones to tell critical stories about music and music making. According to Hamilton, the artists he features in his work ‘provoked a crisis in ideas about musical and racial authenticity’ (p. 25), and he goes on to illustrate how ‘white authenticity’ ultimately emerged as the response to this ‘crisis’ – a response that was also significantly shaped by the emerging genre of rock criticism.

In the ‘Introduction’, Hamilton uses Margo Jefferson's 1973 article in Harper's magazine, ‘Ripping off Black Music’, as his point of departure. Hamilton quotes a passage in which Jefferson recalls a dream she had when Jimi Hendrix died; in the dream, she saw the death of Hendrix as a plot ‘to eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites’ (p. 2). Hamilton goes on to illustrate how Jefferson's fears had already been realised when she wrote the article:

Thus Hamilton uses Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix as bookends for a narrative about how rock ‘n’ roll music had effectively ‘become white’ by the time Jimi Hendrix died, how it happened, why it happened and what it means. To do so, Hamilton tells what he refers to as two stories – one about audience and discourse, the other about the music. Thereby he uses the concept of ‘racial imagination’ developed by Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman, which ‘accepts a notion of race as profoundly extra-visual, but avoids ideas of fixed racial essence and suggestions of race as a purely psychological construction’ (p. 7), and he purposely uses ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ rather than ‘rock’ to bridge the implied distinction between the two terms.

In Chapter 1, ‘Darkness at the Break of Noon: Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, and the Birth of Sixties Music’, Hamilton addresses two of the most important artists of the 1960s – one a ‘soul’ legend, the other a ‘rock’ legend – and how they are in fact connected. He argues that the ‘separation of the genres they stand in for … has been enacted around a powerful and perilously vague concept: authenticity’ (p. 32). The chapter aims to present readers with an alternative understanding of their music that is concerned less with race than with the times in which their music was created and with the music itself.

The title of Chapter 2, ‘The White Atlantic: Cultural Origins of the “British Invasion”’, is ‘an ironic homage’ to the work of Paul Gilroy. Here, Hamilton focuses on British youth culture – teddy boys, ‘trad’ jazz, skiffle and British blues – to unpack the myth of the British Invasion. Among other things, he criticises the myth for ‘the denial of porosity implicit in its central metaphor’ (p. 94). He determines that ‘the British Invasion was really a sustained flash of unprecedented visibility for an ongoing transatlantic musical exchange that stretched back far longer than the onset of Beatlemania’ (p. 95). In the following chapter, ‘“Friends Across the Sea”: Motown, the Beatles, and Sites and Sounds of Crossover’, Hamilton goes deeper into the phenomenon of Beatlemania, which swept through the USA after the Beatles arrived there in 1964. The chapter's title takes its name from a telegram sent to the Beatles and signed by Motown artists Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, congratulating them on their success in the USA. In his examination of the relationship between the Beatles and Motown, Hamilton includes a fascinating section on James Jamerson, a Motown session musician, and his impact on the Beatles.

In Chapter 4, ‘“Being Good Isn't always Easy”: Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul’, Hamilton turns his attention to the ‘policing of “soul” as a musical boundary’ (p. 210). One of the chapter's strongest sections is his analysis of ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ as recorded by Dusty Springfield and later Aretha Franklin:

Hamilton asserts that the increasingly stringent definitions of ‘black’ and ‘white’ music meant that ‘instead of becoming something people did, music became something people were’ (p. 212).

Chapter 5, ‘House Burning Down: Race, Writing, and Jimi Hendrix's War’ not only examines the emergence of one of the most complex figures in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, but does so in the context of rock criticism's rising importance. Thus, Hamilton makes clear that Jimi Hendrix's explosion onto the music scene coincided with a growing platform that was increasingly used to define music and its audiences:

Hamilton makes clear that Hendrix's legacy – that of ‘lone black hero in the “classic rock” pantheon’ – is at odds with the discourse that surrounded him during his brief career. Too black for whites, not black enough for blacks, Hendrix's aim to defy categorisation and simply make music led to accusations of inauthenticity, with descriptions ranging from ‘Uncle Tom’ to ‘psychedelic superspade’. The chapter closes with a consideration of Carlos Santana, whose music offered a ‘gateway to an untapped vein of exotic authenticity’ (p. 244).

The book's final chapter, ‘Just around Midnight: The Rolling Stones and the End of the Sixties’, explores the music of one of the most iconic and controversial bands of all time. In this chapter, Hamilton looks at the Rolling Stones and race, by considering their music and collaborations, as well as their coverage in the music press. In one of the chapter's most interesting passages, Hamilton quotes from early reviews of the band in the African American press, which he refers to as an ‘underexplored and perhaps unexpected aspect of their early career’ (p. 254). These positive reviews are juxtaposed with negative ones from the white press. Hamilton maintains that this dismissive reception was linked to what was seen as the band being ‘obsessed with black American music and culture to degrees most American youths were not, and this in turn was met by moral conservatism and xenophobia’ (p. 257). This changed as the band increasingly performed their own music rather than blues covers, although their image was dogged by accusations of violence – made worse by the concert at Altamont, among other incidents. The chapter closes with a look at ‘Brown Sugar’, from whose lyrics the book takes its title. Arguably one of the most controversial songs ever written, Hamilton contends that the song can also be seen as a challenge to racial and musical imagination:

Just Around Midnight is a seminal text for readers who want to know more about a critical juncture in the history of rock ‘n’ roll – i.e. its whitening. Hamilton uses key artists, songs, events and an examination of rock criticism to chart a history of the entrenchment of racial ideologies in the performance and consumption of rock ‘n’ roll. In the process, the role of audiences doesn't get as much attention as perhaps is warranted. Nevertheless, it is a compelling and well-researched book, which left this reader wondering what might have been had many artists of the era simply been left free to make music and not been hemmed in by notions of race and authenticity.