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Real Men Don't Sing: Crooning in American Culture

2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jahist/jaw269

1945-2314

Music History and Culture

Crooners have been around for most of nine decades. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken introduces readers to the singers of the 1920s who, because of mechanical voice amplification, could abandon the full-throated performance style of the operatic and vaudeville stages and adopt a softer style of singing that emphasized emotion over volume and vocal precision. Rudy Vallée, the epitome of these early crooners, took the listening public by storm in the late 1920s but by the early 1930s was the target of attacks by critics who feared the negative effect he might have on listeners. McCracken's argument is that such concern led to the policing of the male singing voice and the crafting of a masculine ideal that was white, patriarchal, and heterosexual. The title of this book is misleading. It is neither about the legitimacy of men singing nor about crooners in America. A comprehensive study of crooners certainly would have to include Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, and Johnny Mathis, but they are mentioned only in passing or are missing altogether. A more accurate description of this study is as an analysis of young male crooners with “gender queer male voices” and the emergence of cultural opposition to them (p. 26).