John Rumble, a music historian vanderbilt R.J.P

John Rumble, a historian with the Country Music Hall of Fame, spoke with our class on January 15 about the history of American popular music from the late nineteenth century until 1960. Using the production of culture view of the media and popular arts, he explained the growth and evolution of the music industry over the 80+ years in which it was formed and cultivated as a dominant part of American culture and commerce. <Tab/&…

…the emergence of Top 40 radio, where songs are brought in and dropped slowly. This is important, as the state of radio today is much the same. Songs are brought in and dropped very slowly and there is little diversity in the market; many radio stations across the country all sound the same. Thus, as technology and media has changed, the hitmaking machine throughout this period in music history has employed many of the same methods.