These books have given me good information about antebellum pop music and American musical history. In recommending them I ask the reader to read my introduction to the Bibliography On Minstrelsy in this web site. There I express my opinion about the inability of academic thought to fathom antebellum pop music.

Abel, E. Lawrence. Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861-1865. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1999.
Lawrence Abel writes on Amazon.com: “I wrote this book to show how Confederate music during the war reveals the social history of the South during the war. The book...uses the lyrics and covers from various pieces of sheet music to illustrate what Southerners believed they were fighting for and the feelings they had about their families, homes and their fate....It also traces the history of some of the better known Southern songs such as ‘Dixie’ and the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ and describes the integral place of field music and brass bands in the war effort.”

Austin, William W. Susanna, Jeanie, and the Old Folks at Home: The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours. 2nd edition. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
The best study of the poetic sources and varied interpretations of Foster's song texts.

Bayles, Martha. Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music. New York: Free Press, 1994.
A survey and analysis of American popular music from its Afro-American roots through the rise of rock ’n‘ roll to the MTV era. Bayles examines the complex racial and sexual bloodknot of American culture, the transformation of pop music by technology, and the infection of modernism’s perverse anti-art.

Conway, Cecelia. African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study in Folk Traditions. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995.
A folklorist and scholar searches out the origin of Black banjo playing. Includes a good history of the banjo early banjoists and an argument for the idea that the banjo came to Appalachia through Black musicians and not through the minstrels, as some believe. A companion CD is available.

Dennison, Sam. Scandalize My Name: Black Imagery in American Popular Music. New York: Garland, 1982.
Emerson, Ken. Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
The first biography of Foster in over sixty years. Traces Foster's impact on twentieth century music and American popular culture. This is a very accessible source on the life of this important figure in American music.

Epstein, Dena J. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Gura, Philip F. and James F. Bollman. America's Instrument: The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Library Journal says: “Academic scholarship and collecting enthusiasm have combined to produce a responsible, entertaining overview of the banjo as an artifact of nineteenth century American culture, one that crossed racial, economic, and stylistic lines and had a real effect on later musical developments, especially ragtime.” This book contains excellent collection of photos of early banjos and banjoists.

Jackson, Richard. Stephen Foster Song Book. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1974.
Reproductions of the original sheet music for forty of Foster’s songs. This inexpensive and useful book includes the author’s notes on the songs.

Lhamon, W. T., Jr. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
The description from Amazon.com says: “Unearthing a wealth of long-buried plays and songs, rethinking materials often deemed too troubling or lowly to consider, and overturning cherished ideas about classics from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Benito Cereno to The Jazz Singer, W. T. Lhamon Jr. sets out a startlingly original history of blackface as a cultural ritual that, for all its racist elements, was ultimately liberating.”

Linn, Karen. That Half-Barbaric Twang : The Banjo in American Popular Culture. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
A history of the banjo from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Sacks, Howard L. and Judith Rose Sacks. Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
The New York Times Book Review says: “An intriguing and textured portrait of the life of a black family in the nineteenth-century North....Arguing that those who have searched of black influences on minstrelsy have exclusively and mistakenly focused on the South. The authors seek to demonstrate the closely intertwined traditions of black and white music above the Mason-Dixon line....Not only has blackface minstrelsy exerted ‘a pervasive impact on American music’...it has also served as both symbol and metaphoric expression of the complexities of American racial identity.” I found in this book a very helpful view of the musical life of a nineteenth century African American family. In addition it is a fascinating account of the possible source of Dan Emmett’s immortal song, ‘Dixie.’”

Saunders, Steven and Deane L. Root, ed. The Music of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
This winner of the American Library Association Choice Award is the definitive edition of Foster’s complete works, printed from copies of the original editions, with notes on sources.

Tosches, Nick. Where Dead Voices Gather. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001
Here is the dust cover description of this book: “A forgotten singer from the early days of jazz is at the center of this riveting narrative. For twenty years, Nick Tosches searched for facts about the life of Emmett Miller, a yodeling blackface performer whose songs prefigured jazz, country, blues, and much of the popular music of the twentieth century.”

Webb, Robert Lloyd, ed. Ring the Banjar: History of the Banjo, the Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Hal Leonard Publishing, 1997.
The catalog of a 1984 banjo exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although this book is not comprehensive, it includes a brief history of the banjo and excellent photographs of early players, ephemera, and banjos from the exhibition. The introduction is by the banjo collector Jim Bollman entitled "The Banjomakers of Boston.”