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4 books match the query 'Cusic, Don'

cover of Baseball and Country Music

Baseball and Country Music

Don Cusic

University of Wisconsin Press, 2003

The histories of baseball and country music ran in parallel tracks through most of the twentieth century. America’s sport and America’s music moved from the fringes to the mainstream, gaining exposure and building heroes, first via radio broadcasts and then on the television screen. Both evolved with American society through wartime, the Civil Rights movement, and into the age of multimillion dollar superstars. Don Cusic offers an engaging and insightful analysis that addresses race, gender, class, ethnicity, business practices and marketing, performance, media, and the cult of celebrity.
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cover of Music In The Market

Music In The Market

Don Cusic

University of Wisconsin Press, 1996

Cusic examines the music business in the context of popular culture, the ways that popular music is disseminated in the American commercial market, the money flow, talent acquisition and development, artwork and promotion, and the strategies of multinational recording companies as they market music to consumers through media and retailers. He also discusses the marketing of specialty music—classical, gospel, jazz, bluegrass, rap, and folk, by small independent labels.
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cover of The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance

The Hayloft Gang

The Story of the National Barn Dance

Edited by Chad Berry

University of Illinois Press, 2007

The National Barn Dance was the nation's most popular country music radio show during the 1930s and 1940s. The pioneering radio program defined country and western entertainment until the Grand Ole Opry and rock 'n' roll supplanted it in the 1950s. Broadcast for more than three decades from Chicago on WLS's powerful 50,000-watt signal, the show reached listeners throughout the Midwest, the East Coast, and South, delivering popular entertainment to both rural and urban areas while celebrating the fading folk traditions of an increasingly urbanized America.

The Hayloft Gang draws on the colorful commentary of performers and former listeners to analyze the National Barn Dance, its audience, and its impact. Contributors trace the history of barn dance radio, explore the paradox of a foundational country music program broadcast from a major city, investigate notions of authenticity in the presentation of country music and entertainment, and delve into provocative issues raised by the barn dance phenomenon.

Contributors: Chad Berry, Michael T. Bertrand, Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Don Cusic, Wayne W. Daniel, Loyal Jones, Kristine M. McCusker, Stephen Parry, Susan Smulyan, Paul L. Tyler, and Michael Ann Williams.

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cover of The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music

The Sound of Light

A History of Gospel Music

Don Cusic

University of Wisconsin Press, 1990

Don Cusic presents gospel music as part of the history of contemporary Christianity. From the psalms of the early Puritans through the hymns of Isaac Watts and the social activism of the Wesleys, gospel music was established in eighteenth-century America. With the camp meetings songs of the Kentucky Revival and the spirituals and hymns that stemmed from the Civil War and beyond, gospel music grew through the nineteenth century and expanded through new technologies in the twentieth century.
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