Identity sequences and the early adoption pattern of a jazz canon, 1920–1929

We explore how the long-run success of cultural products is affected by the identities of the product's originators and early adopters. Using U.S. jazz recordings from 1920 to 1929, we found that songs were more likely to be later covered from 1944 to 2004 if they followed a pattern of having black originators and white early adopters. Moreover, we provide evidence that this pattern is independent of a song's commercial success, resources available to a song's originators, and group-level indicators such as size and experience. We conclude that late adopters (musicians after World War II (WWII)) were attracted to songs that followed a narrative of both “lowbrow” origins and early adoption by those considered “highbrow” with respect to jazz. The findings also support a new means for considering the role of identities as the building blocks of genres, in particular, and categories more generally.

[1]  T. Dowd,et al.  What Is Sociological about Music , 2010 .

[2]  Young-Kyu Kim,et al.  Why Pseudonyms? Deception as Identity Preservation Among Jazz Record Companies, 1920–1929 , 2009, Organ. Sci..

[3]  Michael T. Hannan,et al.  Multiple Category Memberships in Markets: An Integrative Theory and Two Empirical Tests , 2009 .

[4]  Jennifer C. Lena,et al.  Classification as Culture: Types and Trajectories of Music Genres , 2008 .

[5]  Wei Zhao.  Social Categories, Classification Systems, and Determinants of Wine Price in the California and French Wine Industries , 2008 .

[6]  G. Cattani,et al.  The Structure of Consensus: Network Ties, Legitimation, and Exit Rates of U.S. Feature Film Producer Organizations , 2008 .

[7]  Stanislav D. Dobrev.  Competing in the looking‐glass market: imitation, resources, and crowding , 2007 .

[8]  David M. Waguespack,et al.  Penguins, Camels, and Other Birds of a Feather: Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[9]  Glenn R. Carroll,et al.  Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Codes, and Ecologies , 2007 .

[10]  Greta Hsu.  Jacks of All Trades and Masters of None: Audiences' Reactions to Spanning Genres in Feature Film Production , 2006 .

[11]  Matthew J. Salganik,et al.  Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market , 2006, Science.

[12]  John Gennari.  Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics , 2006 .

[13]  Michael T. Hannan,et al.  Special Issue: Frontiers of Organization Science, Part 2 of 2: Identities, Genres, and Organizational Forms , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[14]  Greta Hsu.  EVALUATIVE SCHEMAS AND THE ATTENTION OF CRITICS IN THE U.S. FILM INDUSTRY. , 2005 .

[15]  R. Peterson,et al.  In Search of Authenticity , 2005 .

[16]  Joshua Berrett.  Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz , 2004 .

[17]  David A. Owens,et al.  Incumbents, innovation, and competence: the emergence of recorded jazz, 1920 to 1929 , 2004 .

[18]  T. Leonard,et al.  "More Merciful and Not Less Effective": Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era , 2003 .

[19]  E. Rosenberg,et al.  Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris , 2003 .

[20]  Pablo M. Gleiser,et al.  Community Structure in Jazz , 2003, Adv. Complex Syst..

[21]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Crafting authenticity: The validation of identity in self-taught art , 2003 .

[22]  Ezra W. Zuckerman,et al.  Robust Identities or Nonentities? Typecasting in the Feature‐Film Labor Market1 , 2003, American Journal of Sociology.

[23]  H. Rao,et al.  Institutional Change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle Cuisine as an Identity Movement in French Gastronomy1 , 2003, American Journal of Sociology.

[24]  Paul D. Lopes,et al.  The Rise of a Jazz Art World , 2002 .

[25]  G. V. Thomas.  The Canonization of Jazz and Afro-American Literature , 2002 .

[26]  G. Carroll,et al.  Why the Microbrewery Movement? Organizational Dynamics of Resource Partitioning in the U.S. Brewing Industry1 , 2000, American Journal of Sociology.

[27]  W. Kenney.  Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 , 2001 .

[28]  W. Martin.  Review: Daniel Belgrad, The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America (Chicago, 1998) , 1999 .

[29]  R. Walser,et al.  Keeping time , 2005, Nature Structural &Molecular Biology.

[30]  D. Belgrad.  The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America , 1998 .

[31]  Frank Kofsky.  Black music, white business : illuminating the history and political economy of jazz , 1998 .

[32]  Scott Deveaux,et al.  The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History , 1998 .

[33]  Burton W. Peretti.  Jazz in American Culture , 1997 .

[34]  T. Gioia.  The History of Jazz , 1997 .

[35]  A. Abbott.  Sequence analysis: new methods for old ideas , 1995 .

[36]  B. Peretti,et al.  Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz , 1996 .

[37]  P. Berliner.  Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation , 1995 .

[38]  Michael W. Harris,et al.  Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930. , 1994 .

[39]  Allan Sutton.  Directory of American Disc Record Brands and Manufacturers, 1891-1943 , 1994 .

[40]  Burton W. Peretti,et al.  The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America , 1994 .

[41]  S. Bikhchandani,et al.  You have printed the following article : A Theory of Fads , Fashion , Custom , and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades , 2007 .

[42]  J. M. Bernstein,et al.  The culture industry : selected essays on mass culture , 1991 .

[43]  Lawrence W. Levine.  Jazz and American Culture , 1989 .

[44]  Gladys Engel Lang,et al.  Recognition and Renown: The Survival of Artistic Reputation , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[45]  Paul DiMaggio.  Classification in Art. , 1987 .

[46]  Paul DiMaggio,et al.  Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: the creation of an organizational base for high culture in America , 1982 .

[47]  E. Rosch,et al.  Cognition and Categorization , 1980 .

[48]  J. Heckman.  Sample selection bias as a specification error , 1979 .

[49]  Douglas L. Medin,et al.  Context theory of classification learning. , 1978 .

[50]  Leonard F. Guttridge,et al.  Jack Teagarden: The Story Of A Jazz Maverick , 1976 .

[51]  P. Hirsch.  Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems , 1972, American Journal of Sociology.

[52]  K. Back,et al.  The June bug; a study of hysterical contagion , 1968 .

[53]  J. Coleman,et al.  Medical Innovation: A Diffusion Study. , 1967 .

[54]  D. Danks,et al.  Medium-chain triglyceride diet: its use in treatment of liver disease. , 1966, British medical journal.

[55]  Neil Leonard,et al.  Jazz and the white Americans : the acceptance of a new art form , 1963 .

[56]  G. Reitlinger.  The Economics of Taste: the Rise and Fall of Picture Prices, 1760-1960 , 1963 .

[57]  Neil Leonard,et al.  Jazz and the White Americans: The Acceptance of a New Art Form , 1962 .

[58]  J. Slotkin.  Jazz and its Forerunners as an Example of Acculturation , 1943 .

[59]  Louis Harap.  THE CASE FOR HOT JAZZ , 1941 .

[60]  Paul Fritz Laubenstein,et al.  JAZZ—DEBIT AND CREDIT , 1929 .

[61]  Edwin J. Stringham.  “JAZZ ”mdash;AN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM , 1926 .

[62]  Stephen J. Shaw.  The Potentialities of Jazz Music , 1924 .

[63]  E. Durkheim.  FROM THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE , 1996, The New Economic Sociology.