"There are no definitive histories," writesElijah Wald, in this provocative reassessment ofAmerican popular music, "because the past keeps looking different as the present changes."Earlier musical styles sound different to us today because we hear them through the musical filter of other styles that came after them, all the way through funk & hiphop. As its blasphemous title suggests,How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Rollrejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz & rock history. Rather than concentrating on those traditionally favored styles, the book traces the evolution of popular music through developing tastes, trends & technologies—including the role of records, radio, jukeboxes & television—to give a fuller, more balanced account of the broad variety of music that captivated listeners over the course of the twentieth century.Wald revisits original sources—recordings, period articles, memoirs, & interviews—to highlight how music was actually heard & experienced over the years. And in a refreshing departure from more typical histories, he focuses on the world of working musicians & ordinary listeners rather than stars & specialists. He looks for example at the evolution of jazz as dance music, & rock 'n' roll through the eyes of the screaming, twisting teenage girls who made up the bulk of its early audience. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, & the Beatles are all here, but Wald also discusses less familiar names like Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Mitch Miller, Jo Stafford, Frankie Avalon, & the Shirelles, who in some cases were far more popular than those bright stars we all know today, & who more accurately represent the mainstream of their times.Written with verve & style,How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Rollshakes up our staid notions of music history and helps us hearAmerican popular musicwith new ears.