CRAWDADDY!
Crawdaddy was an American rock music magazine launched in 1966. It was created by Paul Williams, a Swarthmore College student at the time, in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music. The magazine was named after the Crawdaddy Club in London and published occasionally during its early years with an exclamation point, as Crawdaddy!. According to The New York Times, Crawdaddy was “the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously”; while the magazine’s rival Rolling Stone acknowledged it as “the first serious publication devoted to rock & roll news and criticism”. Preceding both Rolling Stone and Creem, Crawdaddy was the training ground for many rock writers just finding the language to describe rock and roll, which was only then beginning to be written about as studiously as folk music and jazz. (More from Wikipedia)
But I was surprised when so many “Crawdaddy” entities came up in the initial Google searches for this post on the Crawdaddys. A rock music magazine called Crawdaddy! was founded by the important music historian Paul Williams in 1966 (and a different man from the songwriter Paul Williams who is also a sometime actor). About this publication, Wikipedia says: “Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism. Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as ‘the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously’.”
(January 2015/2)
