Considering that its 10,000 entries span 3,296 pages in four hefty volumes, the newly published “Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music” may be the most ambitious attempt yet to chronicle, define and document its subject.
Surely there is no other reference work quite like it. For all its minor flaws, misperceptions and inevitable omissions, the new set represents a heroic attempt at a Herculean task: to embrace virtually anything and everything that might fall under the rubric “pop.”
It’s no simple job, since the elusive term “pop” referred to pre-swing tunes in the early 1920s, swing-band arrangements in the ’30s, dance-band hits in the ’40s, nascent rock ‘n’ roll in the mid-’50s and uncounted sounds ever since, including rap, metal, R&B and you-name-it.
Where other reference works are content to focus on jazz, hard rock, soul, rap, big band or Broadway, the “Guinness Encyclopedia” voraciously attempts to cover it all. Perhaps one would expect no less from the same publishers that produce the exhaustive “Guinness Book of World Records.”
For the folks who put together the new pop encyclopedia, however, the decision to include virtually all forms of pop-from 1900 to 1992-apparently was philosophical.
“Comparisons between `serious’ music and popular music are not new,” writes editor Colin Larkin in his impassioned introduction to the set. “For many years pop suffered from an inferiority complex based upon class. . . .
“The ultimate intention of this work is once and for all to place popular music shoulder to shoulder with classical and operatic music. It is a legitimate plea for acceptance and tolerance. Popular music is now not only worthy of serious documentation, it is worthy of the acceptance of serious documentation. . . . Like a bottle of fine claret, popular music now has age on its side.”
In other words, Larkin contends that in an age of perpetually overlapping musical influences (with American songwriter Paul Simon borrowing from South African musical traditions, rocker Sting dipping into jazz, etc.), the walls separating musical genres must come down.
And though he falls short of his monumental task, the results are formidable enough to make the “Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music” an important and unique addition to any reference shelf.
At its best, the “Guinness Encyclopedia” dares to consider presumably unrelated musical styles as belonging to the same musical family. Thus it becomes the first musical reference work to include lyricist Sammy Cahn, rapper Ice-T, ragtime genius Scott Joplin, jazz band arranger Billy May, British underground band the Deviants and country crooner Helen Cornelius in a single work.
Though the listings are, of course, alphabetical, the idea clearly is to suggest a continuum from the clever Tin Pan Alley tunes of the 1920s to the nihilistic rap of the ’90s.
More important, the encyclopedia, which was compiled by Larkin and penned with the help of dozens of contributors, ventures unconventional analyses of various artists’ work.
American pop culture may consider Doris Day, for instance, a lightweight crooner of the ’50s better known for her pillow-fight films with Rock Hudson, but the “Guinness Encyclopedia” ack-
nowledges her more important contribution: “One of popular music’s premier post-war vocalists and biggest names,” reads Day’s entry, which justly adds that her “pure vocal style effectively summed up an era of American music.”
And the encyclopedia boldly defies conventional wisdom, rightly pointing out Barry Manilow’s considerable “jazz credentials” and thereafter citing his collaborations with Gerry Mulligan and Sarah Vaughan.
“In many ways, we consider this a unique work,” says Edward Knappman, vice-president of New England Publishing Associates, which is distributing the British-made reference work in the United States.
“Colin has been collecting this information for decades, but with his distinct point of view. He believes that there’s a great deal of crossover not only among musicians but among audiences, and that many reference works don’t yet acknowledge this.
“So he put together a group of contributors who saw the larger picture and could put these artists in a perspective that they haven’t often been afforded.”
Still, there’s no getting around one sensitive area: The bulk of this encyclopedia concerns American popular music, yet most of the contributors, and Larkin himself, are British, as is the publisher.
“Well, we just felt that American music has had such an influence on popular music around the world that it has become a genuinely world-wide phenomenon,” says Knappman. “It’s not only America’s.”
Nor is the idea of foreign observers casting a careful, critical eye on American pop music so unusual.
One of the best of the recent jazz dictionaries, for instance, “Jazz: The Essential Companion” (Prentice Hall Press) was penned by Brits Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather and Brian Priestley.
And perhaps the greatest jazz film of them all, ” ‘Round Midnight,” was made by French director Bertrand Tavernier.
Nevertheless, certain peculiarly British, or at least foreign, attitudes do creep into the “Guinness Encyclopedia.” The fine British pianist Marian McPartland, for instance, is given fully a half-page of space, even though her somewhat self-effacing brand of pianism has had no discernible influence on the history of jazz pianism. Yet cornetist Jimmy McPartland, her American husband and founding leader of the fabled Austin High Gang, receives but a fraction of that space.
Along similar lines, Chicago tenor legend Von Freeman-one of the world’s pre-eminent be-bop soloists-receives less than half the space of his son, Chico Freeman, whose accomplishments have yet to approach his father’s. What’s worse, the Guinness Encyclopedia refers to Von Freeman’s brother as “Buzz,” though he’s actually known as “Bruz.”
And in describing Von’s sound, the encyclopedia asserts that “Freeman’s playing style combines the toughness of the Chicago blues scene with a plangent swing and fluent improvisation.” That may be the perspective from across the Atlantic, but in Chicago Freeman’s “tough” sound is considered deriving from a whole school of Chicago “tough tenors,” most notably Gene Ammons.
The across-the-sea vision problem also afflicts the encyclopedia’s remarkably dated assessment of Wynton Marsalis, whose comparatively brief entry asserts that the trumpeter “hints only lightly at the possibilities inherent in jazz.” Yet the entry fails to even mention Marsalis’ brilliant score for the film “Tune in Tomorrow,” his epic and evocative New Orleans trilogy “Soul Gestures in Southern Blue” or his fiendishly complex and profound “Blue Interlude.”
Further, one winces at the exclusion of such major figures as pianist Willie Pickens and gospel pioneer Pops Staples (who receives only a perfunctory mention in the Staple Singers entry).
Despite such lapses, however, the encyclopedia does offer a genuinely wide view of music in America, even if the details are sometimes lacking. Though it doesn’t match the depth of, say, “The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz” (Macmillan Press Limited, in two volumes), it’s certainly an important achievement, especially in light of the unusual origins of Guinness Publishing.
“Several decades ago, the Guinness Stout (spirits) company published a little book of trivia designed to settle barroom wagers where Stout was served,” says Knappman. “It was given free to the British pubs and, eventually, grew into the `Guinness Book of World Records,’ ” which now has spawned the pop encyclopedia.
Guinness hopes to sell approximately 10,000 copies of the encyclopedia around the world, notes Knappman. At $295 a set, “it’s not exactly designed to hit the best-seller list, but rather to reach the high school and university libraries, as well as the true music buffs.
“Last thing I heard,” adds Knappman, “(editor) Larkin was talking about a second edition of the encyclopedia in about five years, with the set stretching out to eight volumes.”
Considering the breadth of the subject at hand, that may be only the beginning.
