Jean Aberbach and his brother, Julian, mightseem unlikely midwives in the popularization of country music, the birth pangsof rock’n’roll and the spread of R&B. Cultivated and well educated VienneseJews, the Aberbachs were drawn to the hustle of the music business long beforethe rise of Nazism forced them to abandon Europe for the New World. Alert toevery opportunity and searching for diamonds in the rough, they saw potentialwhere their competitors heard only noise. As a result, they made a fortune fromthe hit parade and were important backstage figures in the careers of EddyArnold, Elvis Presley, Phi Spector and many others.
Biszick-Lockwood chronicles a story necessaryfor anyone who wants to fully understand the development of popular music inthe 20th century, including the origins of practices that would cometo sound corrupt, especially in the ears of self-righteous Baby Boom rockcritics. However, it’s a bit distracting when her grasp of the historysurrounding the Aberbachs and their firm, Hill and Range, becomes shaky. “By1915 the growing new radio and film industries began to challenge Broadway’smonopoly on music promotion,” she writes. Maybe she meant 1925. Commercialradio didn’t exist in 1915 and movies were still silent.
The author relies on the lively reminiscences ofJean Aberbach, and one can’t entirely suppress the thought that reality gainedrichness over the years as he repeated his favorite stories, which came toresemble scenes from the Hollywoodof his era. But who knows? Maybe the Aberbach brothers really did keep an angryhotel employee spinning inside a revolving door as they made their getawaywithout paying the bill. Although it sounds like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope,funny things must have happened on their road to a pot of gold.
