The Chitlin’ Circuit
Before rock and roll had a name, it had a circuit. From the late 1930s through the 1960s, a network of Black-owned and Black-operated clubs, theaters, ballrooms, and juke joints stretched across the Jim Crow South and into northern cities — venues where Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, Little Richard, and dozens of others built the sound that would become American popular music. White America didn't see it, which was partly the point.
The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll traces this hidden infrastructure and the people who ran it: the booking agents, club owners, promoters, and hustlers who kept the machinery turning, often under conditions of extortion, violence, and legal harassment. Lauterbach spent years in archives and on the road recovering a world that mainstream music history had written out of the story. What he found was not a footnote to rock and roll but its foundation — a parallel entertainment economy, sophisticated and ruthless, that operated entirely outside the white gaze and produced some of the most consequential music of the twentieth century.
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the Boston Globe.
A Valentine to a lost world.
Eddie Dean, Wall Street Journal
The genius prequel to an oft-told epic.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Lauterbach spins the tale with enormous vitality and it’s terribly fun to read. He masterfully explains the complex logistics of the entertainment industry, and studs the book with fascinating, little-known characters. . . . The reader will finish with an overwhelming urge to turn up the volume.
Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe
Awards
The Wall Street Journal Book of the Year (2011)
The Boston Globe Book of the Year (2011)
NPR Best Book of the Year (2011)
Booklist Editor’s Choice
Critical Acclaim
Lauterbach spins the tale with enormous vitality and it’s terribly fun to read. He masterfully explains the complex logistics of the entertainment industry, and studs the book with fascinating, little-known characters. . . . The reader will finish with an overwhelming urge to turn up the volume.
Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe
...crucial to our understanding of late-20th-century pop music and all the more impressive for its exhaustive research. Preston Lauterbach’s book—spirited, studious, surprising, occasionally hilarious—is absolutely persuasive on its subject.
Stephen M. Deusner, PasteMagazine.com
A well-researched valentine to a lost world of seedy con men, promoters and club owners, the power brokers and hustlers who made the ‘circuitry spark.’
Eddie Dean, Wall Street Journal
Mr. Lauterbach uncovers a story as sensational as any day-glo circuit-show poster...The era's hepcat lingo ('ork' for orchestra, 'ofay' for 'white') and hard-boiled, noir ambience give Mr. Lauterbach a tune he can carry....the book is at heart a well-researched valentine to a lost world of seedy con men, promoters and club owners, the power brokers and hustlers who made the 'circuitry spark.
Eddie Dean, Wall Street Journal
Opens new doors in pop-music scholarship as well as American (and African-American) cultural history.
Michaelangelo Matos, The A. V. Club
Highly recommended....relishes the criminal origins of the mostly southern black club scene from the early '30s to the late '60s....a coherent, musically savvy history of a performance culture that until now was known only piecemeal.
Robert Christgau, Barnes and Noble Review
This sprawling, fascinating history drops readers into a chaotic, dangerous, utterly vanished world.
John Repp, Cleveland Plain Dealer
In this terrific popular history, music journalist and first time author Lauterbach uncovers a secret world that involves not only music but also racketeering and bribery, bootlegging, and various scandals. Lauterbach focuses on how the chitlin' circuit developed from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, with a particular emphasis on how it nurtured early rock 'n' roll. A major achievement and an important contribution to American music history.
Booklist, starred review
[T]he genius prequel to an oft-told epic.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Starred Review. Lauterbach has written the definitive history of the musical back roads and back rooms of the southern United States.... a great read, well written and insightful. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the seedy history of American popular music.
Library Journal
Lauterbach's writing is as energetic as a Little Richard song (a performer who started on the chitlin' circuit and crossed over to national fame).... a rocking read and a deserving tribute to the people and places who were the foundations of rock and roll.
Publishers Weekly
Lauterbach’s tribute to [the chitlin' circuit] is welcome and overdue.
Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
Remarkable… Lauterbach has resurrected the names and careers of men and women—and, yes, some of the toughest of these people were women—who ran bars, booking agencies and clubs, where traveling musicians could come into a black community, play, make money and go to the next town… It’s a complex, multi-layered story… The Chitlin’ Circuit illuminates a period of American musical history that’s long needed it… Go[es] a long way toward illuminating the life black performers lived off-stage and the conditions they endured while they worked.
Ed Ward, NPR
This sprawling, fascinating history drops readers into a chaotic, dangerous, utterly vanished world. It turns out to be more vibrant than the standard rock 'n' roll mythology. The true dawn of rock lit a landscape in which timeless music got made thanks to every vice and virtue imaginable. Now that's America.
John Repp, Cleveland Plain Dealer
An intensely researched, engaging revelation… This captivating account slips the reader smack into the middle of rock’s own hothouse.
Barry Mazor
Lauterbach's tribute to the circuit is welcome and long overdue.
The Guardian
Densely researched yet marvellously vivid.
Independent on Sunday
Immensely informative, with a fresh and persuasive take on the origins of rock and roll. Lauterbach has a knowing yet unaffected style.
Lou Glandfield, Times Literary Supplement
A highly entertaining and enormously informative contribution to modern American history.
Songlines
Lauterbach's image-packed prose conveys vivid portraits of the African-American performers who worked this regional circuit, and of the previously unheralded entrepreneurs who brokered, bought, and promoted their acts. He's cooked up a mouthwatering account sure to satisfy anyone interested in rock history.
David Lander, Stereophiler
The best music book I've read in years.
Record Collector
Selected Media
NPR Fresh Air | Before Rock 'n' Roll, The Chitlin' Circuit Performed
NPR World Cafe | Preston Lauterbach on World Cafe
NPR Code Switch | The Origin (And Hot Stank) Of The 'Chitlin' Circuit'
The Wall Street Journal | The Music Highway America Tried to Ignore
All About Jazz | Preston Lauterbach: The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll