Popular Music, Popular Myth and Cultural Heritage in Cleveland

Brett Lashua is Reader in Leisure and Culture at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He previously held academic posts at the University of Liverpool's Institute for Popular Music, and with Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences. He earned his PhD from the University of Alberta, where he collaboratively designed and delivered Edmonton's The Beat of Boyle Street community youth music program. He received his Undergraduate Degree in History, and a Master's Degree in Youth Recreation, both from Kent State University. Before his academic career, Brett was the drummer with a number bands performing in the northeast Ohio area.

• Introduction: "Hello Cleveland?" Chapter 1. Popular Music and Place Chapter 2. Locating the Research, Locating the Researcher, and Getting (Lost) in the Archives Chapter 3. In the Moondog's House: Alan Freed, Leo Mintz and the "Invention" of Rock 'n' Roll Chapter 4. Progressive Radio and Cleveland: Place and the making of the "capital of Rock 'n' Roll"  Chapter 5. The Battle for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Chapter 6. Popular Music, Popular Memory, Myth and Cultural Heritage Conclusion: Cleveland Rocks?

The author draws on research conducted at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame archives, along with his experiences as a musician in Northern Ohio, to examine Cleveland's popular music heritage as a case study of popular music and place, cultural heritage, myth, and popular memory. He discusses the literature on popular music and place; the context of Cleveland, his experiences and research, and the Cleveland music scene; the career of "The Moondog" DJ Alan Freed and the early 1950s in Cleveland, including the Moondog Coronation Ball, the story of Record Rendezvous and Leo Mintz, the supposed "first" rock 'n' roll concert, and the myth of the "invention" of the term rock 'n' roll in Cleveland; progressive radio in Cleveland from the 1950s through the mid-1980s; the battle for the location of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and the re-imagining and Cleveland through popular memory and the remaking of its cultural heritage in relation to rock 'n' roll.