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DUST-TO-DIGITAL
The Birth of Rock and Roll
Edited with introduction by Jim Linderman. Conversation with Joe Bonomo.
In The Birth of Rock and Roll, Americana collector Jim Linderman has arranged a storyboard of sorts that dramatizes the spirit of rock and roll in its early days—when "a juke-joint with fifty patrons was a big show," as Linderman writes in his introduction. "A church with fifty congregants was a full house. The annual square dance at the town hall, a rent party, a fish-fry, the honky-tonk piano in the whore house, the union meeting … There was no real money in it. A performer was lucky to be fed, get drunk and get laid." The photographs have little to do with the conventional iconography of the birth of rock and roll: conspicuously absent are pictures of young white men in Memphis, poodle skirts, Alan Freed and Bill Haley's Brylcream. These photographs instead document and celebrate the pure but indefinable essence of rocking. Ordinary, anonymous men, women and children—some white, some black—are holding guitars and strumming while looking relaxed or frantic, but nearly always blissful. Some of the action takes place in rural fields, some in dance halls, some at civic events, some in living rooms and basements. Wherever there was an urge to make acoustic or electric music—whether to help at a rent party, busk in front of a crowd or testify in the name of Jesus—there was an uncredited photographer there to snap an image, and these are the photographs that comprise Linderman's fascinating narrative.
Featured image is reproduced from The Birth of Rock and Roll.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Los Angeles Times
Randall Roberts
The new work doesn't come with companion music, but it doesn't need it. Rather, Linderman guides the reader through a silent meditation on sounds that long ago ceased to exist, their only remaining echo courtesy of a chance encounter with the yay-sayer.
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Featured image is reproduced from The Birth of Rock and Roll, Americana collector Jim Linderman's compendium of vernacular photography purchased at paper and ephemera shows, antique shows, flea markets and eBay. In conversation with Joe Bonomo, Linderman comments, "Just as I would rather listen to a bootleg or a live performance, I would rather see a candid shot or an authentic image created without artifice. What is presented to us as product is today so manipulated and controlled, virtually all the reality has been airbrushed away. This applies to music, photographs... across the board. The real story is always found beneath the surface. It seems fewer and fewer take the time to look for the real story these days. Product need only be surface deep to sell. Amateur photographers may not have been rebels, as so many of the early musicians were, but they were documenting a life and time without pretense or an agenda." continue to blog
Published by Dust-to-Digital. Edited with introduction by Jim Linderman. Conversation with Joe Bonomo.
In The Birth of Rock and Roll, Americana collector Jim Linderman has arranged a storyboard of sorts that dramatizes the spirit of rock and roll in its early days—when "a juke-joint with fifty patrons was a big show," as Linderman writes in his introduction. "A church with fifty congregants was a full house. The annual square dance at the town hall, a rent party, a fish-fry, the honky-tonk piano in the whore house, the union meeting … There was no real money in it. A performer was lucky to be fed, get drunk and get laid." The photographs have little to do with the conventional iconography of the birth of rock and roll: conspicuously absent are pictures of young white men in Memphis, poodle skirts, Alan Freed and Bill Haley's Brylcream. These photographs instead document and celebrate the pure but indefinable essence of rocking. Ordinary, anonymous men, women and children—some white, some black—are holding guitars and strumming while looking relaxed or frantic, but nearly always blissful. Some of the action takes place in rural fields, some in dance halls, some at civic events, some in living rooms and basements. Wherever there was an urge to make acoustic or electric music—whether to help at a rent party, busk in front of a crowd or testify in the name of Jesus—there was an uncredited photographer there to snap an image, and these are the photographs that comprise Linderman's fascinating narrative.
