Unit 8 – Rock and Roll

Unit 8 – Rock and Roll

(ca. 1954-1964)

The center of popular music shifted significantly around the middle of the 1950s. Several related styles of popular music came to be lumped under a new heading -- rock 'n' roll -- and quickly displaced Tin Pan Alley, jazz, and Broadway styles of music from  the center of American culture.

Much of the music that came to be known as rock 'n' roll was basically a continuation of the black rhythm and blues music of the type we discussed in Unit 7, exemplified by Louis Jordan and Big Mama Thornton. As this music became more popular, it was rebranded from rhythm and blues to rock 'n' roll in order to facilitate its marketing to a wider (that is, whiter) audience. Other examples of rock 'n' roll came from country roots, but with heavy rhythm and blues influence. This music is generally called rockabilly, and is mostly associated with white rock 'n' roll musicians who incorporated black influence. In simple terms, it has often been said that rock 'n' roll resulted from a combination of country music and the blues. This is true if we understand rock 'n' roll to be the next step in an ongoing process of country/blues interaction that also produced or incorporated Western swing, jump bands, boogie woogie, rhythm and blues, honky-tonk, and even Carribean rhythms--all of which may be identified as sources of rock 'n' roll.

Cleveland radio disc jockey Alan Freed is given a good deal of credit for popularizing rock 'n' roll. He found that a growing number of young white people were interested in the rhtyhm and blues and similar style songs he was playing on the air. He began referring to the music as rock 'n' roll, a term he has been credited with inventing, but the words rock and roll had already appeared in numerous rhythm and blues songs, so he may not have been the first to use the term.

In some cases, the new music promoted as rock 'n' roll was by musicians who combined rhythm and blues with country to create new styles (Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, for example). In others, record companies simply repackaged rhythm and blues music as rock 'n' roll to reach a teen audience beyond the black community (Fats Domino is an example of the latter; he said he always played rhythm and blues, but at some point, "they" just started calling it rock 'n' roll).

In the mid-to-late 1950s, a number of rock 'n' roll musicians seemed to burst suddenly onto the scene with hit records that defined the early phase of the genre. These recordings were usually released by small, independent labels. For convenience, we may divide the early rock 'n' roll hitmakers roughly into two types: black musicians who came out of rhythm and blues, gospel and other styles associated with black popular music; and white musicians who came out of country or rockabilly, the fusion of country with rhythm and blues.



Rock 'n' Roll on the Rhythm and Blues Side

Rock 'n' roll musicians who got their start in established genres of black popular music include Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino.


Chuck Berry began by playing in clubs around his native St. Louis. At first he was known for his blues-based performances, but he was also interested in country music, so he began adding country songs to his performing repertoire. Audiences in the clubs where he played soon embraced both styles, and as a result, Berry began to attract significant numbers of both black and white audiences to his performances.

Berry's breakout hit single, Maybellene  (1955) is considered to be one of those seminal records that announced the arrival of rock 'n' roll. It demonstrates the fusion of rhythm and blues elements with country music in rock 'n' roll. The music and lyrics are based on the 12-bar blues, inherited from the classic and country blues and retained in rhythm and blues. The words follow an AAB structure (Maybellene, why don't you be true? / Oh, Maybellene, why don't you be true? / You done started back doing the things you used to do) while the chord changes on the chorus are those of the 12-bar formula. The bass line and simple quadruple meter, however, are more typical of country music. Most typical of all, the strong backbeat, produced by emphatic percussive accents on beats 2 and 4 of each measure in alternation with the steady bass on beats 1 and 2, is a defining feature of rock 'n' roll and much of rock music to the present day. (The story goes that Berry based Maybellene on the country song Ida Red as performed by the Western swing band, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. He converted it into a 12-bar blues and wrote his own lyrics, resulting in a song that bears no obvious relationship to the original.)


Chuck Berry, Maybellene (1955)

Little Richard began by performing gospel music in church where he grew up in Alabama. The ecstatic vocal techiques are in evidence in his performance of rock 'n' roll songs like Tutti Frutti. Richard was known for his energetic and flamboyant performances.

Little Richard, Tutti Frutti

Fats Domino was from New Orleans, and his music possesses an easy, laid-back quality that is as close to pure rhythm and blues as any of the rock 'n' roll styles.

Fats Domino, Ain't That a Shame

Rock 'n' Roll on the Country Side

Many of the white rock 'n' roll musicians had some perceived connection to country music, and their work is often associated with rockabilly, a rock 'n' roll style that leans a little more to the country side while incorporating elements of rhtyhm and blues in both music and style of physical performance and dress. Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and Bill Haley belong more or less precisely to this group.

Presley became known as the "king" of rock 'n' roll. His music actually represents a variety of styles from country to rhythm and blues to Tin Pan Alley to Southern white gospel. However, his ability to appeal across racial lines while singing what was essentially black music made him a phenomenon (helped no doubt by his own whiteness). His gyrating dance style and adoption of black fashion statements along with his performance of black music caused no small amount of controversy among the same conservative voices who objected in earlier times to the adoption of black music by white audiences and performers. Like ragtime and jazz before it, rock 'n' roll was protested for its overt sexuality, rebellious tendencies and flauting of the rules of racial segregation.

Hound Dog was originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton. Written for her by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller (professional songwriters who penned many well-known rock 'n' roll songs) the song heaps scorn on a good-for-nothing man. When Presley covered the song, a change of words was necessitated for a male singer, depriving it of its original meaning and bite. Nonetheless, it is an important example of rhythm-and-blues based rock 'n' roll by Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley, Hound Dog



Bill Haley and the Comets also started out as a country/rockabilly band. Rock Around the Clock is another of those defining rock 'n' roll records, one of many, along with Maybellene, that have been claimed as the "first" rock 'n' roll recording.

Bill Haley and the Comets, Rock Around the Clock

Originals and Covers

While some performers, like Chuck Berry, wrote some of their own songs, it was just as common for musicians to record covers of previously recorded songs. Many of these covers were honest artistic endeavors, with subsequent versions not meant to replace or exploit the originals. However, an unfortunate practice was for record labels to release covers by white artists of songs originated by black musicians. The white versions would often sell many more copies (to white consumers) while the black originators received no benefit. Pat Boone is an example of a white singer who made a career of covering songs by black musicians. Compare his version of Tutti Frutti to that of Little Richard, who wrote the song.

Pat Boone, Tutti Frutti

Doo-wop

Vocal groups, usually a quartet of men or women performed a popular style of singing known as doo-wop, named for some of the nonsense syllables they commonly used. Whereas rock ‘n’ roll grew out of the up-tempo style of rhythm and blues, doo-wop got its style from the slow rhythm and blues ballads. Sh-Boom by the Chords is a well-known example of doo-wop.

The music industry

The music industry played an important role in the promotion and distribution of rock ‘n’ roll in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The early rock ‘n’ roll pioneers discussed above recorded for small, independent labels, and the recordings often have a raw, unpolished sound that contributed to their appeal. As rock ‘n’ roll became increasingly popular, major labels and big music business began to get into the act. Elvis Presley, for example, signed with RCA after starting out on the small Sun label in Memphis.

As rock ‘n’ roll was increasingly taken over by the mainstream industry, it became more commercial, and to many, less of a vital and original phenomenon. Recruiters went into found young singers who were classically attractive to record relatively innocuous version of rock and roll for a middle class teen audience. These teen idols often did crossover work in television and movies—Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello all followed this formula.

The songs sung by rock ‘n’ roll singers, whatever their perceived level of authenticity, were increasingly written by professional songwriters based in New York City’s Brill Building. Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the composers of Hound Dog were among those whose names are associated with Brill Building pop, as these more pop-oriented songs are known. Record producers also began to assert themselves a savvy business people and artistic visionaries, whose contributions to the sound of a recording became equal in some cases to that of the musicians. Phil Spector and Berry Gordy are two such figures we will discuss in the next unit.

DJs and promoters were instrumental in introducing and disseminating new rock ‘n’ roll acts. Dick Clark was the host of American Bandstand, a television program based in Philadelphia that introduced many musicians, dance trends and new music to the American public. Some of the promoters’ tactics came under scrutiny. They would pay DJs under the table to play their records on the air frequently enough that their popularity (and record sells) would be assured. Many, like Alan Freed, had their careers ended by implication in the ensuing scandal, which became known as payola. Others, like Dick Clark, finessed their way through and continued to be influential.

The early 1960 saw a series of popular dance crazes. Stylized dances, like the twist, made famous by Chubby Checker, seemed to confirm (for some) that rock ‘n’ roll had become pure pop. These dances generated interest in the music while also providing the opportunity for many, mostly young and teenage, participants to express themselves through music and dance. These dances were last shocking to parents, than Elvis’s pelvic gyrations. Nonetheless, the physical act of dancing to rock ‘n’ roll was an important part of its appeal and a means for a generation of young people with unprecedented freedom and leisure lifestyle during the prosperity after World War II to express their generational identity. This association of rock (‘n’ roll) with a statement of generational assertion became even more intense in the mid to late 1960s as rock ‘n’ roll became rock.

Chubby Checker, The Twist