Recent years have seen a growing interest in labour processes within the music industries. Examples of this include the work of David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker (Reference Hesmondhalgh and Baker2011), Matt Stahl (Reference Stahl2012), a recent edition of the Canadian journal Musicultures (2014) and a project at the University of Glasgow examining the history of the British Musicians Union (www.muhistory.com) with which I am involved. In addition, this has to contend with previous works on the American Federation of Musicians (AFM: for example, Leiter Reference Leiter1953; Seltzer, Reference Seltzer1989; Kraft Reference Kraft1996). This book thus enters something of a busy field (of production).

Under such circumstances it is imperative that an author brings something to the party in the shape of new forms of analysis or focus for what may be becoming somewhat familiar material. Thankfully Roberts does this through an emphasis on class and its relationship to rock'n'roll in the United States. He argues that the reaction of the AFM to the music can be read as a precursor to the culture wars of the 1960s which prefigured a crisis in the traditional labour movement ‘due in part to an inability to connect with the counterculture and create a viable Left politics in the decades that followed’ (p. 1).

Roberts begins by explaining the class prism through which the book is designed and the relative neglect of such an approach within existing scholarship (see also Wiseman-Trowse Reference Wiseman-Trowse2008) He also wishes to examine the role of union leaderships in the decline of the American labour movement, although the extent to which this is achieved is not clear. Roberts' themes are examined via four chapters which deal with the AFM's response to radio and records, the origins of rock'n'roll, the union's reaction to bebop and to the ‘British Invasion’. These are topped and tailed with an Introduction and Epilogue.

The AFM's failure to interact with and represent a generation of rock'n'roll musicians is clearly illustrated in the Introduction. Blame for this is laid squarely at the doors of the leadership of what was a craft union whose membership was based on the possession of a certain skill set. A mixture of cultural elitism – why recruit musicians who cannot read music and who play an inferior form of music? – and a disdain for a medium based on records rather than live performance is seen to lie behind the AFM's failures (p. 5). Overall, suggests Roberts,

What follows can be seen as an attempt to provide the evidence to support this argument. Chapter 1 outlines the AFM's reaction to two key developments in popular music history – the advent of recording and the development of radio. Here Roberts retells the story of the AFM recording strikes of 1942–4 and 1948. Under the leadership of James C. Pettrillo, the first strike succeeded in persuading the recording companies to mitigate the jobs lost to live work through the advent of recording via the establishment of a Recording and Transcription Fund which ‘raised money from the sale of recordings to underwrite free concerts for public consumption’ (p. 42). The 1948 strike was called to protect the fund, which survives to this day. Roberts notes that the AFM's success here shows the tantalising possibility of technology being used to create work for musicians rather than to destroy it. It was also to prove a model for the UK's Musicians Union (MU) in its dealings with record companies.

The following chapter looks at the origins of rock'n'roll through the work of Louis Jordan, arguing that ‘the increasing power exercised by American workers during the 1940s was the basis for keeping the culture of rhythm and blues aloft during the 1940s and 1950s' (p. 58). Thus both Jordan and rock'n'roll are located within broader changes in the labour market. There are also accounts of Chuck Berry and Wanda Jackson, with the latter a particularly welcome inclusion. However, the AFM (which is alluded to in the book's title) is largely absent here and there is a consequent sense of a loss of focus.

The third chapter begins with a discussion of bebop, noting that the aesthetic elitism sometimes found among its practitioners was echoed by some AFM officials through the prism of musical skill which was used to denigrate rock'n'roll. An inability to read music was an anathema to many AFM officials who were steeped in the culture of a craft-based union. Brian Wilson is cited as an example of a musician denied membership of the AFM after failing a music-reading test (p. 141). Class and race became mixed up in aesthetic critiques and Roberts outlines these as the key concerns among a number of reasons why the music became controversial (pp. 146–7).

If domestic rock'n'roll caused some consternation, then the arrival of an imported version in the form of the Beatles and the wider ‘British Invasion’ caused still more. This is the subject of the final chapter. Readers of this journal will be familiar with this, as much of the material here was included in an earlier edition of the journal (Roberts Reference Roberts2010). Reactions from teenagers concerned that the AFM might try to prevent the band from touring are nicely captured. However, it is a little disconcerting to be told that an 1964 agreement between the AFM and MU about transatlantic exchanges of musicians referred to rock'n'roll bands as ‘uncultured’ (p. 168), and then to read in an endnote that the author has not been able to locate a list of these musicians and that ‘It seems that the unions had an unspoken agreement on who counted as cultured’ (p. 228). Similarly, a claim that the Beatles were forced to join the AFM on their second tour is unsourced.

The Epilogue laments the loss of union power in a post-Fordist world where record production is dominated by four (now three) major labels. Roberts has no doubt that this has been to the detriment of musicians. He rightly concludes that a period in which the power of technology was harnessed for the benefit of those workers in danger of being replaced by it has much to teach cultural historians.

Overall, this book is something of a mixed bag. The concentration on class is refreshing and offers genuine insight. However, parts of the book rehash familiar material and seem to lose focus. Nevertheless this is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on musical labour and I look forward to seeing more from Roberts and others.