Duke University Press Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Refiguring American Music)

African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll-from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise. In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s. Mahon details the musical contributions and cultural impact of Big Mama Thornton, LaVern Baker, Betty Davis, Tina Turner, Merry Clayton, Labelle, the Shirelles, and others, demonstrating how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected their careers. By uncovering this hidden history of black women in rock and roll, Mahon reveals a powerful sonic legacy that continues to reverberate into the twenty-first century. Review "Mahon's use of contemporaneous accounts, interviews, and illustrations contributes immensely to 'setting the record straight' regarding the impact, role, and significance of a group of historic figures often subverted by a male-dominated record industry and largely overlooked in the standard literature on the evolution of rock 'n' roll. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers."--D. V. Moskowitz "Choice" (2/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)"This monograph is not only a welcome addition to works on genre, gender, and race but contributes a unique insight into Black-middle-class respectability politics in twentieth-century America. Black Diamond Queens is a great jumping-off point for contemporary Black feminist theorists, musicologically trained or not. Mahon has gifted scholars with a mantle, leaving room for others to take it up and continue the work of re-storing music history through the investigation of race, gender, and genre."--Larissa A. Irizarry "Notes" (12/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)"[H]ighly recommended for anyone who is interested in deepening their knowledge of the legacies and profoundness of Black women in music.'--Jordannah Elizabeth "Amsterdam News" (3/25/2021 12:00:00 AM)"Black Diamond Queens does what the best music books do: It urges us to play this music again -- or for the first time -- and to listen to it. Mahon's brilliant book repays careful reading and challenges us to think anew about the history of rock and roll and the ways we might have traditionally understood it."--Henry Carrigan "No Depression" (2/25/2021 12:00:00 AM)"As I read each page of Black Diamond Queens, learning about the Black women who contributed to not only the sound but the ethos of rock and roll, I felt like I was also learning about myself. In the end, the stories felt less like a permission slip to feel at home in a genre I most resonate with, but a reminder that, like these women, I should never feel the need to ask for permission at all."--Erica Campbell "UPROXX" (2/16/2021 12:00:00 AM)"A rare gem. . . . this meticulously researched book is a key entry in the ongoing record-correction of 20th-century popular music history, one that recenters women, and most crucially, women of color. . . . The collective telling of their complex stories, within an intersectional feminist framework, is the kind of illuminating scholarship that rock really needs."--Jillian Mapes "Pitchfork" (12/16/2020 12:00:00 AM)"If you are curious about music and its development across genres or would like more examples of Black women's exquisite impact on every aspect of life, Black Diamond Queens is for you. You won't find many of these queens on the walls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or in canonical texts discussing the origins of rock and roll. Still, crucially and inspiringly, you might see yourself in this group of Black women whose manicured fingers are all over rock and roll. At the very least, you will be exposed to some incredi