All Shook Up - Dung Tran

All Shook Up: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America. By Glenn C. Altschuler.
New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 240 pp. Notes, index, photos, and political cartoons. Cloth
$19.99.
By reading the title All Shook Up: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America, the readers
somehow can guess the contents of the book. Glenn C. Altschuler wrote this book with the
purposes to show how rock music came to the America. From that aim, the exhibits the changes
and effects of rock ‘n’ roll in changing in the American culture, society, families, race, and
sexuality. It caused a huge turmoil that needed to be solve in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Altschuler begins the book with a headline from a New York Times’ article in a 1957 in
order to give the readers first impression of rock ‘n’ roll. He chose the narrative style to structure
the book, and it works really well because it shows many different features of rock ‘n’ roll. He
also uses primary sources to make a story explanation and arguments for how this kind of music
affected and changed America. Talking about the organization, Altschuler starts the book with a
section on the influence of rock ‘n’ roll music on the American Culture from 1945 to 1955, then
he discusses how it related to race, sexuality, and generational conflict which all changed the
youth and their attitudes in the next three sections. After that, he talks about the wars between
rock ‘n’ roll and other types of music and about the lull and revival it went through in the next
two sections. To end the book, he shows the power of rock ‘n’ roll in an epilogue. Tom Lutz,
author of Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears and American Nervousness, 1903: An
Anecdotal History stated, “A remarkably thorough short history of the birth of rock and roll and
its cultural contexts. Glenn Altschuler manages to weave the stories of musicians and record
producers, cultural critics and legislators, psychologists and sociologists, businessmen and
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teenaged consumers into a lively, astute narrative of cultural change. The result is not just an
especially informative history of rock, but an important cultural history of the 'long' 1950s.”
In the first section, Altschuler brings the readers to the rock ‘n’ roll world, so they can
have some ideas about this contents. One psychiatrist expert provided opinion in the New York
Times about rock ‘n’ roll, and he called it as a “communicable disease” that was sweeping the
nation because the parents and community members could not understand why the American
young generation loved this music that much.
The next two sections talk about how rock ‘n’ roll related to race, sexuality, and society.
At the time when rock ‘n’ roll was introduced to the community, African Americans were trying
to gain civil rights. The author does a great job in bringing rock ‘n’ roll into the Civil Rights
Movement by giving many historical events happened throughout this time. There were some
artists brought sexuality within the lyrics of their songs while at this time period, the kids were
taught by their parents through religion not to have sex until after they got married. Some
popular magazines also showed the rules for dating. Therefore, the lyrics such as “There’ll be
fifteen minutes of kissin’/ Then you’ll holler, please don’t stop…by the Dominoes” (72) really
hurt the parents. The solution to clean up those sordid lyrics is that the parents as well as the
community members claimed the contributors, stores, and radio stations, and also banned on
producing, selling, and playing those records in order to damage the reputation and bring the
original to the society. The parents believed, “rock ‘n’ roll reinforced the most worrisome aspects
of youth culture: antagonism to adult authority and expectations; conformity to peer-group
norms; and an ephemeral, erratic emotional intensity” (99). The author shows reasons why rock
‘n’ roll can be an argument that teenagers opposed their parents, and they went through the
adulthood without music.

In the last two sections, Altschuler focusses on the wars between the music industries.
The teenager bought a large amount of rock ‘n’ roll records, and the money of selling those
records raised from $214 million to $613 million. The teenagers brought the radios everywhere,
so they can listen to their music which leads to the result that live musicians, comedians, and
actors on soap operas were replaced by those audios. They were the members of the American
Federation of Musicians, and they got angry because they could not appear on radios or
televisions. The disc jockeys also could not use their tapes or transcriptions without being
compensated. After the wars between rock ‘n’ roll and other kinds of music were done, many
radio stations started to switch to pop, polka, calypso, folk music, ballads, novelty songs, and
mellower melody music.
Altschuler concludes that the role of rock ‘n’ roll is powerful, “The music that changed
America in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, rock ‘n’ roll continues to solidify youth consciousness and
bring meaning and order to the lives of millions of people” (192).
To sum up, All Shook Up: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America includes a lot of
researches about this new style of music and its influences on the America especially on the
youth during the sixties. This book is one of the first significant services of placing rock ‘n’ roll
within the cultural and political features. Through All Shook Up, the author, Glenn C. Altschuler
can show his intelligence and narrative discipline because the book is not only about the history
of rock ‘n’ roll, it tells a story of emergence and its impact on the Americans. This book is
readable and is a good choice for those who is interested in rock ‘n’ roll- how it came to the
America, the turmoil it created, and the influences of it on the residents up to now. According to
Thomas Doherty in Brandeis University, “A soulful, scholarly, and thoroughly fascinating
examination of the transforming power of rock and roll in American culture. Brandishing the

chops of a loving fan and a scrupulous historian, Altschuler nimbly tracks the rock-propelled
revolutions in manners and morality that first rumbled forth from the 1950s, a decade that seems
ever more the epoch of Elvis not Eisenhower. His is a finely tuned, perfectly pitched
appreciation of the rhythms of a music that became not only a soundtrack but a heartbeat to
American life.”

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All Shook Up: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America. By Glenn C. Altschuler.

author of Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears and American Nervousness, 1903: An

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young generation loved this music that much.

of youth culture: antagonism to adult authority and expectations; conformity to peer-group

adulthood without music.

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mellower melody music.

bring meaning and order to the lives of millions of people” (192).

Thomas Doherty in Brandeis University, “A soulful, scholarly, and thoroughly fascinating

HIST 1302 DUNG TRAN 3

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