Not long ago, Greenbelt, Md., writer Mark Opsasnick decided to listen to his entire CD collection in alphabetical order, from beginning to end. He’s currently in the Bs, almost done with the Beatles. (“Only ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Let It Be’ left to go,” he told me.)
He assembles his books — they’ve covered such topics as Jim Morrison’s Northern Virginia roots, the birth of local rock and roll, and the real story behind “The Exorcist” — by poring through old newspapers and interviewing aging eyewitnesses.
For a long time, Mark’s magnum musical opus was “Capitol Rock,” published in 1997 and revised in 2002. After the second edition of “Capitol Rock” came out 17 years ago, Mark told The Washington Post nightlife columnist Eric Brace , “There’s nothing left for me to accomplish by writing more on the local scene. I did the best I could, and it will have to stand.”
Well, Mark, how do you explain “Rock the Potomac: Popular Music and Early-Era Rock and Roll in the Washington, D.C., Area,” your newly published, 812-page, three-pound paperback?
“That changed,” he admitted, “Here’s what happened. . . .”
Mark explained he was at the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library when he opened a drawer full of boxed microfilm. He couldn’t see any markings on the boxes so, curious, he fed a roll into a reader.
“Up comes the Maryland Gazette newspaper from the 1700s,” he said. “The first page I opened to — boom — there’s an ad for an orchestral concert in October 1752 at the Assembly Room in Upper Marlborough.” (That’s how the Prince George’s town was spelled then.)
Said Mark: “It was an epiphany. I said, ‘I’m not done.’ ”
Mark had focused on rock-and-roll in earlier books, but what came before rock-and-roll? He scoured old newspapers, starting with the Maryland Gazette and the National Intelligencer, the leading District paper of the early 19th century. And thus the early chapters of “Rock the Potomac” don’t have any rock. They touch on the classical music and opera that Colonial audiences enjoyed.
From there, it’s a spin through vaudeville, big band, “hillbilly,” “Negro” (as it was called then) and other sounds that percolated in and around the capital. In his research, Mark noticed the evolution in how and where music was presented.
“In the early 1900s, popular music was a function of the theaters,” he said. “If you wanted to hear live music, you had dinner, then went to a theater. What I discovered is that in the 1920s, restaurant owners started booking live music in their venues. They didn’t want people leaving the restaurant and going to a theater.”
That was the birth of the nightclub. And it’s the nightclub owners who Mark feels often get forgotten. The D.C. area has nurtured great musicians — John Philip Sousa, Duke Ellington, Shirley Horn, Link Wray, Ron Bushy (the Iron Butterfly drummer and Navy brat was born in Washington and later attended high school in Alexandria, Va.) — but where would they have been without places to play?
“The owners really advanced the scene,” Mark said. “They employed the musicians. It was an amazing array of nightclubs. They took amazing chances with changing types of music.”
That was especially true in Georgetown, where from the 1950s to the 1970s, it seemed the sound of music spilled from every other doorway.
“Georgetown was a different world then,” Mark said. “Go now, and there’s no live music left, except for Blues Alley and Gypsy Sally’s.”
I met Mark for lunch at Greenbelt’s New Deal Cafe. Afterward, he showed me a nearby building whose basement once housed the Drop Inn, a teen club, the sort of venue where many performers cut their chops. It’s a reminder that though the scene has changed, a lot of the brick and mortar is still around.
“Rock the Potomac” can be a bit daunting for a reader. The thumbnail profiles of local musicians and bands that comprise the last 300 pages are easy enough to navigate. They’re arranged alphabetically by first name, from Abaad Behram (of Razz and the Reactions) to Wolf Crescenze (bass player in Sassafras Tea out of Fort Washington, Md.). But it can be hard to navigate the earlier chapters, such is the profusion of names and dates. And there’s no index.
I asked Mark whether he could crowdfund an index for “Rock the Potomac.”
“People want indexes,” he allowed, then added: “I hate indexes.” An index, he said, would have added another 300 pages and made it difficult to publish the book in one volume.
As it is, Mark said, “It’s the size of a cinder block.”
Still, like a cinder block, it provides a good foundation for whatever you might want to build on top of it.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.