| Summary: | Thomas Edison's inventions, so successful commercially, altered the lives of all Americans in the twentieth century. Among those persons most directly affected were artists in the entertainment industry. In this groundbreaking study of musicians and the businesses of recording, broadcasting, and film, James P. Kraft shows how musicians adapted - or tried to adapt - to momentous change and the emerging nexus of corporate power, labor-union muscle, and government regulation that came to define the field.
Kraft begins in the late nineteenth century, before high-fidelity records, network radio, and sound motion pictures ended a "golden age," in which demand for skilled instrumentalists often exceeded supply. He examines conflicts that occurred across America - in New York recording studios, on Hollywood sound stages, and in nightclubs and movie theaters - as new invention and entrepreneurship intersected with the interests of artists. He describes how instrumentalists suddenly discovered - just as nineteenth-century artisans had before them - that they were competing not only against their local counterparts but also against nationally oriented "entertainment factories" whose highly skilled workers compromised the appeal of local performers.
Combining ideas and techniques from business, labor, and social history, Kraft offers an illuminating case study in the impact of technology on industry and society. He stresses that capital and capitalism were as important in the entertainment industry as they were in steel manufacturing or coal mining. At the same time, he explains that the technological changes faced by musicians were not some anonymous force but were socially constructed. Finally, since the history of musicians represents part of cultural history, Kraft suggests that changes in the lives of musicians reflected and related to cultural changes as well as to organizational and technological ones.
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