Forgotten Pioneers and Amazing Rise of Beach Music launches our Dancing on the Edge Series -- with the aim of showing the authentic, documented evolution of Beach Music, Shag, and similar 'free-style' dance and music cultures. $25.00 per copy incl S&H
A central and important theme of Forgotten Pioneers...is the long lost fact that Beach Music culture was guided by young ladies in girls high schools and colleges. Inside these pages you'll witness 'first hand' the newspaper articles and photo captions which show that Beach Music emerged in the Southeast 20 years earlier than ordinarily assumed.
Hook has provided some unique appendices, including
1) The Textual Emergence of Shag -- year by year, school by school, via newspapers, magazines, and yearbooks
2) The Pictorial Emergence of Shag (clearly depicted, but not acknowledged in the text)
3) Beach Music Combos on Campuses -- beginning with the first and foremost 'Beach Music' group, 10 years before the first Beach Bands of the 'modern' era (i.e. 50s and 60s)
4) A ten-page appendix of the Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of our most notable Beaches, Resorts, and Pavilions from 1853 forward
5) A chronology of the great and not-so-great Booking Agents and Promoters who were some of the main drivers of the up-and-coming Beach Bands
6) A partial appendix of the Juke Box Operators who inadvertently promoted Beach Music
7) An appendix of the first R&B and 'Beach Music' DJs
8) Appendices of the simultaneous changes in language and emergence of Beach Music and Shag.