Charles Hamm

This article is about the American musicologist. For the American Air Force officer, seeCharles R. Hamm.

Charles Edward Hamm
Born	(1925-04-21)April 21, 1925 Charlottesville, Virginia
Died	October 16, 2011(2011-10-16)(aged 86) Lebanon, New Hampshire
Education	University of Virginia
Occupation	Musicologist

Charles Edward Hamm(April 21, 1925 – October 16, 2011) was an Americanmusicologist,writer,composer,and music educator. He is credited with being the first music historian to seriously study and write about Americanpopular music.He also was one of the founders of theInternational Association for the Study of Popular Music(IASPM).

Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, Hamm graduated from theUniversity of Virginiain 1947 where he was a member of theVirginia Glee Club.Zachary Woolfewrote inThe New York Timesthat "Mr. Hamm was one of the first scholars to study the history of American popular music with musicological rigor and sensitivity to complex racial and ethnic dynamics, and both oral and written traditions. He traced pop’s history not just to its full recent flowering in the 1950s or to the 19th century andStephen Foster,but also to the colonial-era compositions that created the context for all that followed. "

In 2002 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by theSociety for American Music.

He died ofpneumonia,leaving 3 sons.

Works

• Yesterdays: Popular Song in America(1979)
• Music in the New World(1983)
• Putting Popular Music in its Place(1995)
• Irving Berlin: Songs From the Melting Pot(1997)
• Graceland Revisited

External links

• Root, Melanie (May 2010)."Charles Hamm Recordings".University of Pittsburgh.Collection guide to Charles Hamm Recordings, University of Pittsburgh
• The Charles E. Hamm Collection,Center for Black Music Research Collection, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.