Similar hats on similar heads: uniformity and alienation at the Rat Pack’s Summit Conference of Cool

Calvert, Dave (2015) Similar hats on similar heads: uniformity and alienation at the Rat Pack’s Summit Conference of Cool. Popular Music, 34 (1). pp. 1-21. ISSN 0261-1430

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Abstract

This article considers the nightclub shows of the Rat Pack, focussing particularly on the Summit performances at the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas, in 1960. Featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, these shows encompassed musical, comic and dance routines, drawing on the experiences each member had in live vaudeville performance. The discussion outlines these individual histories, and draws attention to a shared fascination with impersonation, which forms an explicit and implicit part of the act, as the performers’ stage personas are already emulatory. In addition to the influence of vaudeville, the construction of the Rat Pack also draws on the structures of blackface minstrelsy, with the interactions of the five members being patterned on a fluid variant of the interlocutor-endmen relationships. The interweaving of these influences and performance styles underpins a dominant concern of the troupe, as the comic material frequently negotiates the racial, national and religious identities of the individual performers. In particular, this deals with their shared status of having immigrant ancestry, a status which I term as being ‘hyphenated-American’, suspended between historical, public and aspirational identities.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	E History America > E11 America (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Schools:	School of Music, Humanities and Media School of Music, Humanities and Media > Drama Research Group
Related URLs:	Author
Depositing User:	David Calvert
Date Deposited:	30 Oct 2014 16:22
Last Modified:	29 Mar 2018 08:15
URI:	http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/22182

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