The Cowboy and the Dandy
Crossing Over from Romanticism to Rock and Roll
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What is rock and roll and where does it come from? In this study of music, literature and culture, Perry Meisel shows how rock and roll joins both Romanticism and the blues tradition by testing the boundaries they share: boundaries between freedom and irony, between country and city, between the iconic figures of cowboy (for example,John Wayne) and dandy (Oscar Wilde). In a series of juxtapositions, Meisel looks at rhythm and blues, Emerson and the cowboy, urban blues, the dandy and the psychedelia of the 1960s, Willa Cather, Miles Davis and Virginia Woolf. In the process, Meisel intends to show how "popular" and "high" culture are hardly fixed categories and in fact share deep roots each vainly affects to disdain.
This dazzling, adventurous book begins in Colorado with Oscar Wilde. Wilde, observing a casino sign reading, Please don't shoot the piano player; he is doing his best, reflects: "I was struck with this recognition of the fact that bad art merits the penalty of death, and I felt that in this remote city, where the aesthetic application of the revolver was clearly established...my apostolic task would be much simplified". Starting with the cowboy and the dandy -- visionary figures at opposite ends of the iconic spectrum -- Perry Meisel stages a history of American creativity where Western heroes and urban aesthetes are equal citizens of a Romantic culture, all vigorously enacting ideas of freedom, movement, and irony that are intriguingly similar to those at work in the jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues of African American culture. And rock and roll? Rock and roll is the link between Romantic and blues traditions. Meisel composes a portrait of American imagination spacious enough to accommodate Emerson, Muddy Waters, Davy Crockett, Toni Morrison, and hiphop; resourceful enough to resolve the unlikely meeting of Afro-America and Anglo-America; and bold enough to unveil a family connection between Elvis, Miles Davis, Virginia Woolf, and British psychedelic rock. Readers will find fascinating picture of the cultural collisions integral to American art and identity.
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