Allison McCracken. Real Men Don’t Sing

Allison McCracken documents the rise and decline of a style of singing—crooning—that came into its own with the modernizing influence of the microphone. Its antecedent came out of minstrelsy and vaudeville, but the emphasis in these crooner’s songs lay in their paeans to mother, or mammy songs. With the advent of radio and improved sound technology, modern versions of this intimate style of singing dominated the airwaves and became America’s first vocal music sensation. Although the likes of Gene Austin, Nick Lucas, or Russ Columbo no longer hold a place in our pantheon of America’s singers, they paved the way for the stars Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby who defined the new sound and who also serve as McCracken’s foil concerning the impact and meaning of the music. Their stories lay the foundation for her examination of the “imposition ... of masculine norms for voices on a mass scale in American society” (4).

Acoustics · Art · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Singing · Style (visual arts) · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies