Choice Review

Jensen (communication, Univ. of Tulsa) is most concerned with the development of commercial country music from the 1950s into the 1960s. She particularly analyzes the seeming conflict between the search for authenticity and the goal of financial success in the recording industry, somewhat extending the more sophisticated analysis in Richard Peterson's Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (CH, Jun'98), which ends in the early 1950s. Jensen is more concerned with theoretical explorations and the popular-music industry than with detailed discussions of country music, except for a chapter on the career of Patsy Cline. "By analyzing the 1950s and 1960s in country music, we see how notions of authenticity and commercialization offer ways to define and defend certain styles and sounds as more worthy than others," Jensen concludes, "and ultimately ways to legitimate the genre as a whole." The author does not explore the songs themselves, bypassing Cecelia Tichi's fruitful approach in High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music (CH, Dec'94). The photographs, detailed notes, and list of references add to the book's usefulness. Recommended for libraries supporting studies in country and popular music at the upper-division undergraduate level and above. R. D. Cohen; Indiana University Northwest