Rockin' in the Ivory Tower: Rock Music on Campus in the Sixties

by James M. Carter

Overview

Histories of American rock music and the 1960s counterculture typically focus on the same few places: Woodstock, Monterey, Altamont. Yet there was also a very active college circuit that brought edgy acts like the Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground to different metropolitan regions and smaller towns all over the country. These campus concerts were often programmed, promoted, and reviewed by students themselves, and their diverse tastes challenged narrow definitions of rock music.  

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower takes a close look at two smaller universities, Drew in New Jersey and Stony Brook on Long Island, to see how the culture of rock music played an integral role in student life in the late 1960s. Analyzing campus archives and college newspapers, historian James Carter traces connections between rock fandom and the civil rights protests, free speech activism, radical ideas, lifestyle transformations, and anti-war movements that revolutionized universities in the 1960s. Furthermore, he finds that these progressive students refused to segregate genres like folk, R&B, hard rock, and pop. Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower gives readers a front-row seat to a dynamic time for the music industry, countercultural politics, and youth culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978829381
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	06/16/2023
Series:	CERES: Rutgers Studies in History
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

JAMES M. CARTER is an associate professor of history at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, where his specializations include U.S. foreign policy and the rise of the counterculture. His book Inventing Vietnam is an analysis of the failed nation-building effort undertaken by the United States in Vietnam and how that failure led to the war.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction 

1 Postwar America, the Revolution in Higher Education,
and Popular Music

2 “The Sound of the Sixties”: Popular Music and 
College Campuses

3 “I Blundered My Way Through”: The College Impresario,
Fall 1965-Fall 1967

4 “They’re Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower”: Fall 1967-Fall 1968

5 The “Americanization of Rock”: Spring 1969-Fall 1970

Conclusion

Appendix A: Bands/Artists at Drew University,
1967-1971
Appendix B: Bands/Artists at Stony Brook University,
1967-1971
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower offers a welcome entry into a field of study that is only just beginning to flower.”

author of Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans - Kenneth Womack

The research and writing are exciting; Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower fills an important gap in the historiography of rock music and the sixties.”

author of Making the Scene in the Garden State: Popular Music in New Jersey from Edison to Springste - Dewar MacLeod