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Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline. Edited by Warren R. Hofstra. Music in American Life. (Urbana and other cities: University of Illinois Press, 2013. Pp. [xvi], 198. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-0-252-07930-6; cloth, $85.00, ISBN 978-0-252-03771-9.)
There are few voices in American music as iconic as Patsy Cline's, and her work with producer Owen Bradley defined the Nashville Sound just as that city centralized and rationalized the country genre in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Warren R. Hofstra's edited collection Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline gives that voice a rich historical context. "Insofar as this book is an examination of the world of Patsy Cline," Hofstra writes, "she is the agent through which we can view certain aspects of American life and culture from the post-World War II era to today" (p. 7). Most popular music studies start with a similar premise, but few live up to its promise as Sweet Dreams does.
Sweet Dreams centers on the urbanization of the post-World War II South and the rise of a consumerist middle class forged through a national media culture, two revolutions that upended traditional southern verities of race, class, and gender. Cline's biography reflects these developments. The...