Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneers

A consultant to the U.K.’s Ace Records, Broven (Rhythm and Blues in New Orleans ) has followed rock and R&B closely for more than half a century. Covering the convoluted history of the recording industry from the 1940s to the 1960s, he combines in-depth archival research with fascinating anecdotes about chart-toppers, shady characters and label owners (“the ultimate risk takers”). To survey the situations that turned Tin Pan Alley topsy-turvy and spawned the post-WWII rise of the low-budget indie labels, Broven begins with the symbiotic relationship of jukebox distributors, DJs and record retailers. He conducted 100 interviews, including with key industry figures: Marshall Chess (Chess Records), Sam Phillips (Sun), Jerry Wexler (Atlantic) and George Avakian (Columbia). Yet he does not ignore lesser-known players such as Mimi Trepel, the “unseen heroine of rock ’n’ roll,” who witnessed the “social upheavals in music” as she went from Brooklyn radio to head of foreign distribution for London Records. The impact of conniving entrepreneurs on the musicians and the layering of rich details and digressive detours as Broven traces the transition from R&B to rock make this equal to Roger D. Kinkle’s massive, four-volume Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz . (Feb.)