Music and Sound in Film

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Abel, Richard, and Rick Altman.  The Sounds of Early Cinema.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Altman, Rick.  Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Bandy, Mary Lea, ed.  The Dawn of Sound.  New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989.

Barrios, Richard.  A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Berliner, Todd, and Philip Furia. “The Sounds of Silence: Songs in Hollywood Films since the 1960s.” Style 36, no. 1 (2002): 19–35.

Bullins, Jeffrey.  Sound in the American Horror Film.  Jefferson: McFarland, 2024.

Cameron, Evan William, ed.  Sound and the Cinema: The Coming of Sound to American Film.  Pleasantville, NY: Redgrave, 1980.

Eyman, Scott.  The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Faulkner, Robert R.  Hollywood Studio Musicians: Their Work and Careers in the Recording Industry.  Chicago: Aldine and Atherton, 1971.

Flinn, Carol. “The Most Romantic Art of All: Music in the Classical Hollywood Cinema.” Cinema Journal 29, no. 4 (1990): 35–50.

Gabbard, Krin. Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Gomery, Douglas.  The Coming of Sound to American Cinema: A History of the Transformation of an Industry.  Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.

Hong, Seung Min. “Contrapuntal Aurality: Exceptional Sound in Hollywood Monster Horror Films during the Early Sound Era.” Journal of Popular Film & Television 47, no. 4 (2019): 215–226. 

Kraft, James P. “Musicians in Hollywood: Work and Technological Change in Entertainment Industries, 1926-1940.” Technology and Culture 35:2 (April 1994): 289-314.

Lastra, James.  Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Maurice, Alice. “Cinema at Its Source: Synchronizing Race and Sound in the Early Talkies.” Camera Obscura 17, no. 1 (2002): 1-71.

Meckna, Michael. “Louis Armstrong in the Movies, 1931–1969.”  Popular Music and Society 29 (July 2006): 359–73.

Slowik, Michael. “Experiments in Early Sound Film Music: Strategies and Rerecording, 1928–1930.” American Music 31, no. 4 (2013): 450-474.

Slowik, Michael. “Diegetic Withdrawal and Other Worlds: Film Music Strategies before King Kong, 1927–1933.” Cinema Journal 53, no. 1 (2013): 1-25.

Slowik, Michael. “Dislocation and Nostalgia: Jazz and Classical Music in Hollywood Postwar Readjustment Films, 1946–1949.” Music and the Moving Image 11, no. 2 (2018): 3–22.

Slowik, Michael. “Revealing Reality: Fan Magazine Rhetoric, Sound Technology, and Stardom in the Early Sound Era.” Journal of Film and Video 70, no. 2 (2018): 30-45.

Smith, Jeff.  The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Snelson, Tim. “They’ll Be Dancing in the Aisles: Youth Audiences, Cinema Exhibition, and the Mid-1930s Swing Boom.”  Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 37:3 (2017): 455-474.

Spring, Katherine. “”To Sustain Illusion is All That is Necessary”: The Authenticity of Song Performance in Early American Sound Cinema.” Film History: An International Journal 23, no. 3 (2011): 285-299.

Spring, Katherine.  Saying It with Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema.  New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Stadel, Luke. “Natural Sound in the Early Talkie Western.” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 5, no. 2 (2011): 113-136.

Stanfield, Peter.  Body and Soul: Jazz and Blues in American Film, 1927-63.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Wilsbacher, Greg. “Alternate Tracks: Photophone and the Film Industry’s Conversion to Sound.” Film History 35, no. 1 (2023): 61-103.

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