Critics who chide pop musicians for utilising such modern conceits as Auto-Tune and digital sampling, and who invoke the golden years of analogue recording as an era when record making was a more pure and natural process need only peruse I Don't Sound Like Nobody to realise that such technological and stylistic inclusivity is nothing new and constitutes the foundation of rock and roll. The author covers familiar territory in his discussion of swing's eclipse by rock, which he views as a transition from sophistication to crudity, but along the way he spotlights figures who have been overshadowed by marquee names like Elvis Presley (who famously uttered the book's title phrase) and Chuck Berry. Zak explores the process of record making through the careers of personnel from all ranks of the business, and he argues that the ‘key catalyst’ (p. 2) for this shift in the musical landscape was sound recordings, which ‘blurred the historical distinction between writing and performing’ (p. 4) and forced an ontological revaluation of popular song.
An Introduction outlines the book's seven chapters and explains Zak's desire to investigate the heroes of his own classic rock idols and answer some nagging questions about the cultural conditions that shaped popular music in the 1950s. Chapter 1, ‘Records on the Radio’, explores advents in technology after WWII, when broadcasting restrictions eased and local radio stations boosted their signal strengths, thus creating ‘a maverick's paradise and a marketing free-for-all’ (p. 10). Recording found an early advocate in Bing Crosby, who ironically endorsed the medium just as he and other crooners fell out of fashion. Along with the expansion of radio programming came new taste-makers who would personify the industry: disc jockeys. Martin Block and his successor Alan Freed were among the most celebrated personalities and they enjoyed prominence as ‘entertainers and power brokers [who] both sold their sponsors’ products and enthusiastically hyped the music they played’ (p. 32). Deejays may have influenced what aired on the radio, Zak repeatedly reminds us, but teenagers held the real buying power and their whimsical tastes made market prediction nearly impossible. The most successful pop producers indiscriminately borrowed any available style (R&B, Country and Western, blues, jazz) or studio effect in order to craft soundscapes of unabashed artifice. No sonic concoction was too far-fetched to dismiss, as producers and artists regarded records as ‘confections, with songs and performances dressed in lavish and idiosyncratic garb’ (p. 64). Zak describes how the incipient strains of rock music emerged, not from major studios outfitted with leading-edge technology, but from venture start-up studios where entrepreneurs unconcerned with union regulations and hourly billing encouraged bold experimentation. Independent label owners often enjoyed membership within the culture they promoted and recorded, which gave them an advantage in terms of scouting and securing undiscovered talent. Listeners even revered the rough-hewn production quality of independent discs as a ‘sign of unaffected sincerity and originality’ (p. 92).
Chapter 2 features portraits of hit-makers like Frankie Laine (‘Mule Train’) and Johnnie Ray (‘Cry’) who achieved stardom from a single release. Overnight successes owed much to studio wizards like Mitch Miller of Columbia Records and Gordon Jenkins of Commodore, who crafted deft arrangements and accentuated the dramatic potential of a singer's voice. Another visionary who pioneered the use of echo and overdubbing was guitarist Les Paul, whose 1951 duet with Mary Ford on ‘How High the Moon’ layered two dozen tracks in a dazzling testament to the potential of recording technology. Chapter 3, ‘Hustlers and Amateurs’, features a colourful cast of characters who built makeshift studios and established independent labels in order to join the ‘industry's relentless novelty hunt’ (p. 77). A single hit could bring instant success, since ‘All that was needed was a recorded master, some cash, and … a fair amount of luck’ (p. 80). Chapter 4 explores the phenomenon of ‘Crossing Over’, when hits climbed the charts in multiple genres as a telling reflection of the porous boundaries between contemporary styles. One practice that contributed to this cross-pollination was the cover song, whereby acts remade a hit record and even mimicked interpretational nuances of the original in order to capitalise on its commercial success. Surprisingly, the tendency for white artists to popularise songs originally released by African Americans receives little discussion, despite Zak's exegesis of the Chords’ recording of ‘Sh-Boom’ and its subsequent cover by a Canadian group, The Crew Cuts. Throughout the book, Zak remains focused on the sonic subtleties that distinguish various releases and, to his credit, these analyses are among the book's best passages.
The legal repercussions of cover songs are expounded in Chapter 5, ‘Surface Noise’, which details a court battle between Decca and Supreme over Paula Watson's and Evelyn Knight's recordings of ‘A Little Bird Told Me’. Judges evaluated the extent to which cover songs appropriated artists’ intellectual property, but ultimately decreed that ‘a musical work's enduring identity lay in the web of musical relationships represented in a composition's written score’ (p. 21). Along with these legal growing pains came critical debates over how to categorise rock music, but Zak suggests that rock and roll was more a conceptual approach to record making than a discrete style: ‘It was part crossover, part appropriation, part revision, part accident, and part market dynamics’ (p. 175). The last few chapters offer a revisionist account of the familiar narrative that marks the terminus of rock's initial phase in 1959, when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper perished in a plane crash. Counter to the opinions of earlier historiographers who, according to Zak, advanced an aesthetic narrative that was inexorably bound to their emotional attachment to the music, cranking out hits still mattered and rock simply became further assimilated into the pop universe.
Overall, the book enriches an understanding of the rampant hybridity of American popular song at mid-century, and indeed the American Musicological Society recently awarded Professor Zak the Music in American Culture Award for this project. Despite some repetition of ideas and the occasional glossing over of topics that might warrant greater consideration (payola, for example, is mentioned only briefly), the book's lack of technical terminology will appeal to a non-specialist readership. Popular music scholars will also appreciate its solid research, comprehensive bibliography, and discography of over 500 records.
