Charles Edward Hamm (April 21, 1925 – October 16, 2011) was an American musicologist, writer, composer, and music educator.
He also was one of the founders of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM).
[2] Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that "Mr. Hamm was one of the first scholars to study the history of American popular music with musicological rigor and sensitivity to complex racial and ethnic dynamics, and both oral and written traditions.
He traced pop’s history not just to its full recent flowering in the 1950s or to the 19th century and Stephen Foster, but also to the colonial-era compositions that created the context for all that followed."
He died of pneumonia, leaving 3 sons.