From the "eBay: is there anything it can't do?" Department

So a couple weeks ago I was re-reading Peter Guralnick's two-volume biography of Elvis (actually, I skimmed it and re-read the more interesting parts) and I thought I recognized the title of one of the books he cited a few times in the first volume: "The Rockin' 50s" by Arnold Shaw. I went on eBay and immediately recognized from the picture of the cover that I had checked that book out from the Defiance public library and read it when I was in grade school, or maybe high school. It's out of print, but I bought a copy on eBay from a lady in Pennsylvania (for $2.00! And shipping, of course), and now I'm starting to re-read that. The reason the book stuck in my mind was that, despite its title, it actually pays more attention to the existing pop music milieu into which rock n' roll music erupted than to rock itself. In fact, I don't recall any other book I've read that does a better job of describing the contrast between the music business and the music-buying (and -listening) habits of the public before and after the arrival of rock music (the author was himself in the business in the 50s, as a music publisher). The first couple of chapters I've re-read show that the book is as interesting as I remembered it. Good deal.

Speaking of the rockin' 50s, the recent ill health of Bo Diddley prompted me to look for videos of him on the internet for purposes of a blog post, since I'm a big Diddley fan. I had a vinyl double album of his greatest hits put out by Chess Records in a cheap cover that fell apart about 20 minutes after I bought it (the album cover I mean, not the album, which I played a gazillion times and which I think I still have). I replaced that with the CD The Chess Box, and then most recently replaced that with an album from iTunes that sounded like it was mixed better than The Box.