Rock'n'Roll Era (Time-Life Music)

The Rock'n'Roll Era was a 53-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early 1990s, spotlighting songs from the early years of the rock and roll era, primarily the pre-Beatles era of 1954-1964. The first major and successful rock music-intensive subscription music series released by Time-Life, songs on the series included music heard on mainstream contemporary hit radio stations of the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s.

The volumes in "The Rock'n'Roll Era" series covered a specific time period, including single years in some volumes and parts of a given decade in others. Each volume was issued on a 2-LP vinyl record set, compact disc or cassette. Individual volumes generally contained anywhere from 21 to 25 tracks each (22 tracks being typical, and the 40-track 2-disc "Dick Clark's Rock 'n' Roll Christmas" being the only exception), and represented the highlighted time period's most popular and noteworthy tracks. Also included was a booklet, containing liner notes written by some of the most respected historians of the genre, photographs of the artists, and information on the songs (writers, performers and peak position on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart (or other charts as appropriate)).

Time-Life, which had been offering books as part of its subscription media offerings since 1961, began offering music the next year. Virtually all of the series issued for the first 20 years catered to adults with high-culture and/or conservative music tastes: classical, jazz, swing and orchestral music; and the music of operas and Broadway theatre. Whenever popular music was offered in a subscription series, the music was usually either from big band-era and/or pre-1955 adult standard-era performers, including Guy Lombardo, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Patti Page. Although two country music-intensive series were also issued during the early- and mid-1980s, nothing resembling rock music had been offered until "The Rock'n'Roll Era."

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