Series Editors David Hackett Fischer James M. Grossvogel) Revivalism, Social Conscience, and Community in the Burned-Over District (with Jan Saltzgaber) Better Than Second Best: Love and Work in the Life of Helen Magill Race, Ethnicity, and Class in American Social Thought, 1865-1919 Andrew D. Blumin) Changing Channels: America in TV Guide (with David I. Altschuler Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (with Stuart M.

As vibrant as the music itself, All Shook Up reveals how rock 'n roll challenged and changed American culture and laid the foundation for the social upheaval of the sixtiesĪlso by Glenn C. Rock 'n roll seemed to be everywhere during the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to those Americans intent on wishing away all forms of dissent and conflict. Altschuler includes vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n rollers, including Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly-plus their white-bread doppelgangers such as Pat Boone. And it delighted in the separate world of the teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping teenagers differentiate themselves from others. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray flannel suits. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the music he sang and some of the great early rockers were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with the Civil Rights movement and brought 'race music' into many white homes for the first time. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's 'switchblade beat' opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race. The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy-one critic called it 'musical riots put to a switchblade beat'-but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify?Īs Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll-and the outraged reception to it-in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture.

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