On NPR’s Fresh Air, Ed Ward — the program’s official rock-and-roll historian — is a talking time machine. In the last few months, the 68-year-old has taken to the airwaves to provide a slices of oral history which cut open the origins and influences of bands like The Chills, The Beach Boys and one-hit wonder Jody Reynolds. Ward even recently spent seven minutes taking a dive into the 70s and 80s Düsseldorf music scene where he argues that bands like Neu! helped birth a new era of German pop. His truly curiosities know no bounds. The nuances, details and idiosyncrasies he’s able to condense into seven, eight and nine minute audio segments is a little baffling. The sonic journal entries are testaments to a music addiction that’s spawned a now 40-year-old career where Ward’s byline has appeared on the pages of publications like Rolling Stone, Creem and Crawdaddy! to name a few.
Q&A: AN INTERVIEW WITH NPR'S ED WARD
All of Ward’s Fresh Air pieces are delivered in his slightly weathered, authoritarian yet conversational, tone. They are certainly a meal on their own, but they always leave Ward’s 14 million listeners wanting more. Now they can have a nice, hearty helping whenever they like.
The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1923-1960 is not a simple deep dig. It is a figurative excavation of the long and storied history behind the beginnings of music’s most celebrated genre. Ward is the co-author of Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, a book he wrote with Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker and the late New York Times music writer Geoffrey Stokes, but but flexes his reputation as the lone “dean of rock journalism” in this 380-page solo project complete with a trim bibliography and in-depth index.
The premise is very simple. Tackle roughly four decades of rock & roll by exploring the genre’s roots in blues, country and pop. Ward leaves nary a corner unexplored. At one point, he takes the long road in detailing how rural music influenced urban sounds as America (and the world at large) began to craft a musical statement that would change the course of history. There are more personalities, music venues and geographical references in the book than one person should be able to commit to memory. Chuck Berry, Tommy Stevens and Calypso Joe appear on one page alone alongside references to the Crank Club, New Orleans radio station WDSU and St. Louis’ Cosmopolitan Club.
Admittedly, attempting to read the book at anything faster than a leisurely clip will lead to fatigue, but that’s not how it was meant to be digested. Ward’s NPR segments are interlaced with sound, but pages of The History of Rock & Roll Volume 1 obviously don’t come with a play button. Ward knows this, and despite his roots in an Internet-less newsroom, he knows the power of a jukebox. In the preface, Ward encourages readers to take pauses, stream songs and dive in. With a book this informational, there’s no doubt that music nerds will enjoy the nice, long swim.
Read CL's recent Q&A with Ward here and listen to that Beach Boys story below.
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2016.