ock and pop music has been obsessed with its own past from the start: by 1959, a New York record store called Times Square was doing a roaring trade in what it called “oldies”, selling mid-50s doo-wop singles to teenagers already convinced the golden age of rock ’n’roll was over. That said, a kind of industrialised nostalgia took root in the early 90s, the era of the heritage is a necessary corrective. A blend of memoir and penetrating analysis, it deals in righting wrongs or highlighting oversights. These are usually born out of a lethal cocktail of racism and sexism, not least in the story of the Sweet Inspirations. Best known as Elvis Presley’s backing singers, Smith recasts them as pivotal gures in the development of pop, the thread that links Morrison to Whitney Houston and Paul Simon to Aretha Franklin.
