After the Ball : Pop Music from Rag to Rock

First published in 1972, Ian Whitcomb''s After the Ball is an exuberant account of the origins and explosion of popular music, informed by the author''s store of experience in the field as a pop sensation of The Sixties.

''Brash, learned, funny and perspicacious.... The author of this free-wheeling, diverting history was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, when he created a rock hit ''You Turn Me On,'' and experienced a brief, bewildering season as a touring rock celebrity. This book... is his effort to explain that experience to himself, and, well-educated man that he is, he goes all the way back to the first pop bestseller (in sheet music, of course), ''After The Ball,'' and all the way forward to the 1960s.'' New Yorker

''One of the best books on popular music to come along in the last few years.... Whitcomb''s own involvement with music constantly surfaces to make the book both revealing and highly enjoyable.'' Seattle Times