Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock ’n’ Roll, the Labor Question, and the Musicians’ Union, 1942–1968 by Michael James Roberts (review)

The labor of music has recently gained new prominence in academic circles, and Michael James Roberts’s Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock ’n’ Roll, The Labor Question, and the Musicians’ Union, 1942–1968 is a welcome addition to this discussion. Roberts examines archived records of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), as well as popular press discussions from the period covered, to situate rock ’n’ roll within the context of class and race struggles. The result is a compelling account of rock ’n’ roll as bound up in the turmoil of the time. Roberts pays particular attention to the impact of recorded sound on the AFM and its attempts to come to terms with rock ’n’ roll’s successful development of this medium. This book will add to any discussion on intersections between music, labor, and aesthetics, especially for students newly interested in rock ’n’ roll.

Roberts’s primary argument is that the AFM’s tendency toward elitist anti-rock and anti-recording attitudes undermined its strength at the bargaining table. Through a Marxist analysis of economics and cultural products, Roberts traces the conflicting pressures that created rock ’n’ roll and that contributed to its reception as a deviant musical genre. Crucially, Roberts attends to both the class pressures between whites and blacks and among black musicians themselves in his study. The result is a rich account of class struggle that adds nuance to the story of rock’s place in American history.

Roberts begins with a thorough rehashing of the AFM’s struggle to deal with the proliferation of recorded music in the 1930s. AFM President Joseph Weber responded to the loss of union jobs to recordings with an expensive publicity campaign designed to persuade the public that recordings were less desirable than live musicians. This campaign explicitly reinforced high/low divisions between classical music and various popular forms associated with race records, such as rhythm and blues and hillbilly music. In comparison, James Petrillo, head of the Chicago AFM, negotiated better pay for musicians and fought successfully against the use of recordings by threatening mass strikes. After other AFM locals adopted similar tactics, Weber decided to retire, and Petrillo became president of the AFM nationwide. Petrillo actively argued against high/low divisions and regarded all working musicians, regardless of genre, as potential AFM members. Petrillo went on to organize a general strike on recording sessions in 1941, which led to a multiyear showdown between the AFM and the major record labels. By 1944, all of the labels had given in to Petrillo’s demands. Roberts argues convincingly that Petrillo’s inclusive attitude toward musical genres was a major factor in his overall success.

Chapter 2 situates rhythm and blues (R&B) as part of the class conflicts of the 1940s and 1950s. Key figures including Louis Jordan, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and others, drew on rural blues, big-band swing, and honky tonk to give sound to the strayers of working-class life. Central to this was the devilment of performative gestures—bright suits, dancing, and comedic lyrics and movement—that became, later, part of rock ’n’ roll in general. Here, Roberts draws on Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin to establish jump blues and honky tonk as the “counter-logic of labor” (p. 52). As Roberts’s most compelling claim, this concept is meant to work against histories of rock that romanticize the “danger” associated with the genre. Placing rock in the context of World War II, labor conflict, and racial tensions allows Roberts to portray R&B and rock as sounding out the noisiness of working-class life (e.g., cars, factories, and bars).

Chapter 3 examines the interactions between bebop and rock musicians and the tangle of cultural meanings associated with these forms. Despite...