{"id":26160,"date":"2023-10-18T05:30:02","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T09:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=26160"},"modified":"2023-10-06T07:31:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T11:31:08","slug":"book-review-oh-didnt-they-ramble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/18\/book-review-oh-didnt-they-ramble\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Oh, Didn&#8217;t They Ramble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-26161\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ramble350.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"529\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ramble350.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ramble350-198x300.jpg 198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>It\u2019s almost always fascinating and illuminating to learn the back story behind successful ventures. And on a creative and artistic level, there are few endeavors as successful as Rounder Records. Today the roots music label launched more than 50 years ago is a division of Concord Records, but when its trio of founders \u2013 Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy and Bill Nowlin \u2013 started it, Rounder was a scruffy upstart. And veteran music journalist David Menconi (author of the superb 2020 chronicle of North Carolina music, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/18\/book-review-david-menconi-step-it-up-and-go\/\"><i>Step It Up and Go<\/i><\/a>, as well as other highly regarded titles) is the perfect person to tell the story.<\/p>\n<p>The Massachusetts trio wasn\u2019t a likely one to embark upon such an adventure. They were young, wholly without business experience, and avowed anarchists. None of those qualities would seem to augur well in the world of the music business, especially when the biz was at its peak. But succeed they did, by dint of hard work and unbridled passion for the music. Much of what they did shouldn\u2019t have worked, but it <i>did<\/i> work. After a slow start, Rounder quickly grew into great importance, shining a light on corners of the music landscape that hadn\u2019t previously gotten a lot of love (at least not in a commercial sense).<\/p>\n<p>Menconi\u2019s writing style moves the story along, never burdening the reader with too much \u201cinside baseball\u201d arcana. Instead he focuses on the personalities and their travails and achievements. When he digs into some of Rounder\u2019s more unusual moves (like signing <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/14\/let-george-thorogood-tell-you-something-my-friend-part-one\/\">George Thorogood<\/a> to the label), he presents the facts in a way that fits seamlessly into the larger narrative. At a comparatively slim 224 pages, Oh, Didn\u2019t they Ramble is a tidy and enlightening tale of one of music\u2019s most significant independent labels.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be interviewing David Menconi in an October 20 livestream discussion hosted by Malaprop\u2019s Bookstore; details on that are <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/17\/preview-a-conversation-with-david-menconi\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s almost always fascinating and illuminating to learn the back story behind successful ventures. And on a creative and artistic level, there are few endeavors as successful as Rounder Records. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,49,65],"tags":[4376,5250],"class_list":["post-26160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-book","category-new-release","category-review","tag-david-menconi","tag-rounder-records","cat-6-id","cat-10-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26170,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26160\/revisions\/26170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}