I'm using this thread to share some information about a scholar who I knew for many years yet somehow never sussed his music background. History professor Jerry Rodnitzky from the University of Texas at Arlington had quite the musical chops: this obituary published by Taylor & Francis Online (a large publishing house of scholarly material) gives a summary of his activity and publications. (I knew him through work he did in the photo archives of the library where I worked, the music wouldn't have been in our collection.) Jerry Rodnitzky, 1936-2020

We mourn the death of Jerome Leon Rodnitzky, a founding member of the Popular Music and Society Editorial Board. Jerry was born 1 August 1936 in Chicago and died 25 April 2020 in Arlington, Texas, following a brief illness.

Jerry was a cultural historian and a noted expert on the 1960s counterculture, protest songs, and feminism in American culture. He was an early participant in the Popular Culture Association, which was the milieu in which Popular Music and Society began. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he received several awards for his teaching.

Jerry published numerous academic books and articles. His books include Minstrels of the Dawn: The Folk-Protest Singer as Cultural Hero (1976); Jazz-Age Boomtown (coauthor Shirley R. Rodnitzky) (1997); Feminist Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of a Feminist Counterculture (1999); Lights, Camera, History: Portraying the Past in Film (coedited with Richard Francaviglia) (2007); and Sing It the Way It Was: Using Folk and Popular Music to Teach and Understand American History (2013). Jerry was an Advisory Editor of the Journal of Texas Music History and at the time of his death was still reviewing article manuscripts for Popular Music and Society and serving as a member of the journal’s Editorial Board. He published six articles in Popular Music and Society: “The Decline of Contemporary Protest Music” (1971); “The Mythology of Woody Guthrie” (1973); “Songs of Sisterhood: The Music of Women’s Liberation” (1975); “Also Born in the USA: Bob Dylan’s Outlaw Heroes and the Real Bob Dylan” (1988); “A Rocky Road to Respect: Trends in Academic Writing on Popular Music and Popular Music and Society” (1997); and “The Sixties Between the Microgrooves: Using Folk and Protest Music to Understand American History, 1963–1973” (1999).

Jerry will be sorely missed. He was a steady presence throughout the history of Popular Music and Society and a strong advocate for the journal.

My learning of his work came about when a Facebook friend posted a photo of the cover of Sing It the Way It Was: Using Folk and Popular Music to Teach and Understand American History (Bookfinder.com results). This book might appeal to those who are interested in modern singer-songwriters.

I won't try to reproduce his CV here, but anyone looking for this kind of material can search various databases. A starting point is the university OpenAccess Research Commons. The results pool materials from various sources so anything behind a paywall might require logon, in which case you should look up the article at your own library and ask them to get a copy.