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Through an examination of World War II era Frank Sinatra fan communities in the United States,
The Business of Bobbysoxers considers celebrity following, fan behavior, and popular music culture as a window into the lives of wartime female youth.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1. Teenage Girls in Wartime American Culture
- 2. Teenage Social Organizations
- 3. Finding "the Voice:" Organized Fandom as Political Platform
- 4. Fans as Critics and Material Culture Makers
- 5. Postwar Changes: A New Sinatra and the Decline of the Bobbysoxers
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Katie Beisel Hollenbach is a musicologist and graduate curriculum specialist at the University of Washington. She holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on popular music, technological mediation, and reception, and has appeared in the Journal of Popular Music Studies and Music and the Moving Image.
Summary
Through an examination of World War II era Frank Sinatra fan communities in the United States, The Business of Bobbysoxers considers celebrity following, fan behavior, and popular music culture as a window into the lives of wartime female youth.
Additional text
Katie Beisel Hollenbach vividly demonstrates how much bobbysoxers responded directly to perceptions that mass adulation was uncivilized, irresponsible, and unladylike. 'Organized fandom' was no contradiction in terms for Sinatra's engaged and professional army of followers. His fan clubs not only displayed a strong sense of generational ownership; they showed a real ethos of civic duty in wartime America. The past of music fandom remains something of an undiscovered continent. Analyzing a key moment and phenomenon, Hollenbach's fascinating new book is a real landmark. A stellar study - we need more work as good as this.
