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(More customer reviews)James Kraft, a historian at the University of Hawaii/Manoa, tackles a huge but underexplored topic: the impact of the major technological innovations of the early twentieth century on the livelihood of the performing musicians. For those interested in the lives of musical stars, whether in the classical or popular fields, this book will be disappointing. Kraft regards music-making as very much a business: this is a history of the struggles of organized labor, in the form of the American Federation of Musicians, to maintain job security and incomes for their rank-and-file members in the face of two revolutions that changed the business of supplying music to the masses forever. The first was the advent of sound movies, which in a very few years wiped out the livelihoods of thousands upon thousands of musicians who had performed live music for showings of silent films in moviehouses across the nation. The second was radio, which quickly proved a boon for the sound recording industry, further eroding the need for live performers.
STAGE TO STUDIO is an absorbing and carefully researched chronicle. As a performing musician I emerged from reading it more aware of just why it is that it is so difficult to make a living as a musician now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and grateful to Petrillo and other major players in the AFM who, against all odds, struggled to preserve work and benefits for the beleaguered members of their union.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890-1950 (Studies in Industry and Society)
Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, technology transformed the entertainment industry as much as it did such heavy industries as coal and steel. Among those most directly affected were musicians, who had to adapt to successive inventions and refinements in audio technology -- from wax cylinders and gramophones to radio and sound films. In this groundbreaking study, James P. Kraft explores the intersection of sound technology, corporate power, and artistic labor during this disruptive period.Kraft begins in the late nineteenth century's "golden age" of musicians, when demand for skilled instrumentalists often exceeded supply, analyzing the conflicts in concert halls, nightclubs, recording studios, radio stations, and Hollywood studios as musicians began to compete not only against their local counterparts but also against highly skilled workers in national "entertainment factories." Kraft offers an illuminating case study in the impact of technology on industry and society -- and a provocative chapter in the cultural history of America.
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