Classic American Popular Song at the End of the Twentieth Century

Did the classic popular song cease, or enter a terminal decline soon after 1950? Certainly not. In this book we identify an Indian Summer of songs, largely in the 1960s, by writers who had grown up listening to the work of the great figures from the first half-century and who wrote very much in that established style. We also report on a new generation, whom we see as Restocking the Songbook, in a period from the 1960s into the 1980s. Here too one recognizes the classic style, but detects the influence of alternative song styles, especially jazz and rock, and can discern a new sense of what "musical theater" was all about.