Hamm, Charles, 1987 November 3

Charles Edward Hamm (April 21, 1925 – October 16, 2011) was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hamm graduated from the University of Virginia in 1947 where he was a member of the Virginia Glee Club. Earning a PhD in musicology from Princeton University in 1960, Hamm went on to teach at Princeton University, The Cinncinati Conservatory of Music, Tulane University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Dartmouth College. Although having early publications in European Renaissance music, opera, and ballet, Hamm is most well-known for his work on 20th century music, American music, and popular music. Hamm published three books within the later referenced areas of study, Contemporary Music and Music Cultures (1975), Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (1979), and Music in the New World (1983). Hamms publications legitimized these topics within the musicological and ethnomusicological worlds in the 1980s and 1990s, and long served as textbooks for American Music courses.

In addition, Hamm edited the early songs of Irving Berlin and discovered and worked on a previously unknown edition of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Hamm traveled to South African and China to study how their respective folk musics influenced American song. Hamm went on to found the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and was the president of the American Musicological Society from 1972-1974.

In 2002 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for American Music. Charles Hamm died October 16, 2011.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamm]