May 2023 MBR The Music Shelf

The Music Shelf

Keep It Old-Time
Howard Wight Marshall
University of Missouri Press
113 Heinkel Bldg., 201 S. 7th Street, Columbia, MO 65211
https://upress.missouri.edu
9780826222695, $39.95, HC, 504pp

https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Old-Time-Missouri-Revival-Present/dp/0826222692

Synopsis: Together with "Play Me Something Quick and Devilish" (2013) and "Fiddler's Dream" (2017), "Keep It Old-Time: Fiddle Music in Missouri from the 1960s Folk Music Revival to the Present" by Professor Howard Wight Marshall is the third volume on Missouri fiddling and represents a lifelong fascination with the world of music.

As in the previous two volumes, Professor Marshall seeks out the people, stories, and communities that make informal, traditional music for their own enjoyment, particularly folk-singing, bluegrass, old-time fiddling, and jazz.

While "Play Me Something Quick and Devilish" addressed what we know of fiddle and dance music from the early French settlements in the mid-1700s colonial period into the World War I era and the Jazz Age, "Fiddler's Dream" recounted the 1920s and moved through the Great Depression and World War II years and stopped in the 1960s. Keep It Old-Time picks up the saga in the complicated 1960s and winds down in the early twenty-first century.

Along the way, Professor Marshall presents historical and documentary discussions of music interwoven with ample quotes from musicians and, at certain points, his own personal reflections and experiences in the music scene. Some of the topics featured in this volume are the folk music revival of the 1960s, the emergence of folk and bluegrass festivals, the continuation of fiddle contests, the evolving education of musicians, and many profiles of musicians, famous both locally and nationally.

Of special note is the inclusion of oral history, archival photographs, and transcriptions of selected fiddle tunes complementing the text -- as does the companion CD of selected songs.

Critique: A seminal work of exhaustive, detailed, and documents scholarship that includes fifty-eight pages of Notes, a twenty-six page Selected Bibliography, a fourteen page Selected Discography, and a twenty-page Index, "Keep It Old-Time: Fiddle Music in Missouri from the 1960s Folk Music Revival to the Present" is exceptionally well organized and presented, making it an essential acquisition for personal, professional, community, and academic library American Music History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Howard Wight Marshall is Professor Emeritus and former chairman of Art History and Archaeology, and former director of the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia. After working as a museum curator in Indiana and at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, Marshall returned to Columbia to establish the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center. While at Mizzou, he also taught material culture, vernacular architecture, and historic preservation in the Department of Art History and Archaeology. He has written several books on art and music, including Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri and Fiddler's Dream: Old-Time, Swing, and Bluegrass Fiddling in Twentieth-Century Missouri, which won the Missouri Conference on History's Best Book Award for 2018. Also in 2018, Marshall won the Missouri Humanities Council's 2018 Distinguished Literary Award.

The Inner Ear of Don Zientara
Antonia Tricarico, editor
Akashic Books
232 Third Street, #A115, Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.akashicbooks.com
9781636140926, $35.00, HC, 164pp

https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Ear-Don-Zientara-Innovative/dp/1636140920

Synopsis: In the late 1970s, Don Zientara (a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War) founded Inner Ear Studio in the basement of his home in Arlington, VA, using the electronics training he received from the army. Inner Ear remained in Don's basement until its 1990 relocation to a larger space on South Oakland Street. Along the way, Inner Ear became best known for recording iconic DC punk musicians including Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Bikini Kill, Rites of Spring, Mary Timony, and Fugazi.

Compiled and edited by Antonia Tricarico, "The Inner Ear of Don Zientara: A Half Century of Recording in One of America's Most Innovative Studios, through the Voices of Musicians" is an oral history of not just Inner Ear's recordings, but the role that Don played in creating one of the most welcoming and nurturing recording studios the world over.

Alongside 250 photographs, the impressive volume includes testimonials from members of Fugazi, Scream, Fire Party, Shudder to Think, Jawbox, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Dismemberment Plan, as well as musicians like Kathleen Hanna, Henry Rollins, among other notables.

In addition to DC punk bands, Don also recorded many other styles and genres, including Celtic folk tunes, harp music, Russian balalaika groups, political advertisers, and choral singers. The studio was also featured on Dave Grohl's Sonic Highways television mini-series. The Inner Ear of Don Zientara pays tribute to this iconic studio, celebrating the man at the heart of this remarkable space.

Critique: A unique and very special compendium of photos and commentaries, "The Inner Ear of Don Zientara: A Half Century of Recording in One of America's Most Innovative Studios, through the Voices of Musicians" is a coffee-table style (11.2 x 0.8 x 10.1 inches, 2.75 pounds) volume that will be a highly valued and enduringly appreciated contribution to personal, professional, community, and academic library American Music History and American Photography collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of anyone with an interest in music recording in general, and Punk Music History in particular, that "The Inner Ear of Don Zientara" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $26.49).

Editorial Note: Antonia Tricarico (http://www.antoniatricarico.com) has been taking photos since 1997. She worked as a photo archivist for Lucian Perkins (a Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer) and has collaborated with Tolotta Records, Dischord Records, Kill Rock Stars, and Youth Action Research Group. Her work can be found in private collections, in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, and in the permanent punk and go-go music exhibit and archive of the Special Collections Division of the District of Columbia, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Her photos have appeared in Photo Review, Guitar World, Kerrang!, Razorcake, and Fretboard Journal. She is the creator of two books, both published by Akashic Books: Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essay from Washington, DC, and Beyond, 1997-2017.

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