The delivery of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic known as it "musical riots placed to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated a lot sound and fury, what, if whatever, did it signify?

As Glenn Altschuler unearths in All Shook Up, the increase of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in truth can let us know much concerning the values of the U.S. within the Fifties, a decade that observed an exceptional fight for the keep an eye on of pop culture. Altschuler exhibits, specifically, how rock's "switchblade beat" unfolded vast fissures in American society alongside the fault-lines of relations, sexuality, and race. for example, the delivery of rock coincided with the Civil Rights move and taken "race song" into many white houses for the 1st time. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the song he sang and a few of the good early rockers have been African American, so much particularly, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. additionally, rock celebrated romance and intercourse, rattled the reticent via pushing sexuality into the general public enviornment, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with paintings of guys in grey flannel matches. And it extremely joyful within the separate global of the teen and deepened the divide among the generations, assisting little ones differentiate themselves from others. Altschuler contains bright biographical sketches of the good rock 'n rollers, together with Elvis Presley, fat Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and blood brother Holly--plus their white-bread doppelgangers akin to Pat Boone.

Rock 'n roll appeared to be in all places in the course of the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to these american citizens motive on wishing away all different types of dissent and clash. As bright because the song itself, All Shook Up unearths how rock 'n roll challenged and adjusted American tradition and laid the basis for the social upheaval of the sixties.