Sixty Years of California Song is the memoir of Margaret Blake Alverson, a singer and voice teacher who recounts six decades of musical life on the American West Coast. The book mixes autobiography with a record of the concerts, choirs, and musical society of early California.
Alverson tells of her own career as a vocalist and teacher and of the many musicians and events she witnessed, preserving a personal chronicle of the growth of musical culture in the region. Her reminiscences offer a ground-level view of music-making in nineteenth-century California. As a first-hand account, the book is a valuable and lively source for the early musical history of the American West.