Rap music continued to diversify as
well as increase in mainstream popularity. Rap enjoyed more mainstream popularity than ever
in the early 1990s, with rappers like M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice enjoying great commercial success. However, the authenticity of these rappers was questioned, especially in light of other trends within 1990s rap, especially gangsta.
Regional varieties of rap became more prominent,
with southern California becoming a center of influence to rival New York. Gangsta
rap seemed to replace the social messaging of Public Enemy with a style and outlook that dealt with more explicit and pessimistic representations of urban street life. N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude), released the album Straight Outta Compton in the late 1980s. It was the beginning of the gangsta trend that continued through the 1990s. The violence depicted in this music was not merely fictional and bubbled over into real life. Rivalries between East Coast and West Coast rappers resulted in the
deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.
West Coast rapper Snoop Doggy Dog's "Who Am I" from the album Doggystyle may serve as an example of the 1990s rap.
Snoop Doggy Dog, Who Am I (What's My Name)
Some women rapperslike Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill challenged the sexism and swagger of male rap artists Queen Latifah, U.N.I.T.Y.
Dance Music
ElectronicDance
Music, descended from disco and cultivated in urban clubs since the 1980s,
hit its stride in the 1990s and began to influence other popular music. Among the early styles to develop were Detroit techno and Chicago house, with a dizzying number of subgenres (trance, industrial, tribal, etc.) developing by the 1990s.
Alternative Rock
Alternative rock which developed in the 1980s as an alternative to
mainstream pop musicand its commercialism, became sufficiently popular in the 1990s as to go mainstream. Also called indie rock or underground rock, this music was made by musicians who often took a great deal of importance out of the belief thay the were opposing or evading the commercail music establishment. The popular success of alternative bands in the 1990s was a dilemma for both artists and audiences. The musicians' newfound success proved a complicated identity crisis for some, while others embraced it easily. The style and attitudes of this music was usually influenced by and carrying on the attitudes of
punk. Some alternative rock bands are Sonic Youth, the Dead Kennedys, R.E.M, and Nirvana.
Regional alternative music scenes emerged. One of the most
important was Seattle, where the Grunge sound
was cultivated, combining influences of punk and heavy metal. Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit exemplifies the style in a song that achieved great commercial success. The use of distorted electric guitar sounds, gutteral vocals, and unintelligible lyrics are typical of the style. So is the dissaffected attitude associated with Generation X. Nirvana lead Kurt Cobain famously committed suicide while battling a drug addiction at the age of 27 and at the height of the band's success, securing his status as an icon of a generation and 1990s rock.
Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit
The
emergence of alternative music also opened a space for a new kind of female
singer, who often expressed an alternative or feminist perspective. Ani DiFranco's "Not a Pretty Girl" combines folk and rock elements in an emphatic assertion of feminine self-determination.
Ani DiFranco, Not a Pretty Girl
After the '90s
It is difficult to asses the lasting trends of more recent times, but some brief observations my be made concerning popular music in the last twelve years. By the beginning of the 2000s, there was a resurgence of pure pop music with the rise of boy bands like 'N Sync and solo singers like Britney Spears. Much pop was influenced by dance music as seen in the work of people like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. R&B singers like Alicia Keyes have come to the fore, and there has been a rich interaction and synthesis of R&B, hip hop and electronic dance music in the work of artists like Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z and Kanye West. Country music exerts as much influence as ever, with country-pop stars like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift forming an integral part of the pop music landscape.
Unit 12 -- The American Musical from the Rock Era to the Present
The creators
of Broadway musicals were slow to catch up with the changing styles of music
after the advent of rock. The most popular musicals of the 1960s (such as Hello, Dolly! And Fiddler on the Roof) continued to follow the style of the “golden
era” musical.
The Rock Musical
The first successful musical to use rock styles
was Hair(1968), a show that explored
the counterculture, the Vietnam War, and other issues of the times. (The following clip is from the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair. It gives a good sense of the style and spirit of the original production from 1968, including the interactions with the audience. The annual Tony Awards show is the best record we have of many of the most important Broadway performances of the last several decades.)
The success of Hair was followed by other musicals in a rock or pop style in the
1970s, including Jesus Christ Superstar, and
Godspell. The rock musical has continued to be an
influential genre to the present day. Some of the most popular include The Who’s Tommy, Rent, and Spring Awakening.
The Concept Musical
By the 1970s, some writers and composers were
abandoning the traditional plots of the golden era musical for shows that were
more episodic or concept oriented. These shows would be organized around a
theme or might play with the sequence of time. For example, A Chorus Line (1975) dealt with the
real-life stories of professional Broadway dancers
Also in the
1970s, there was a series of successful black musicals—shows with casts and
creative teams that were mostly or entirely African American. The most enduring
of these shows is The Wiz (1975), a
black retelling of The Wizard of Oz.
The Megamusical
In the
1980s, Broadway experienced its own British
Invasion. Lavish, spectacular musicals originally produced in London took
Broadway by storm. Shows in this style have come to be called megamusicals because of their largeness
of scale and total integration of spectacle and technology. Andrew
Lloyd Webber was the composer associated with many of these shows, which included Cats and Phantom of the Opera.Les
Miserables is another of the most successful megamusicals.
The opening number of cats is a good example of the use of spectacle, synthesized pop music, and corporate branding that are typical of the megamusicals. The overture playes under images of the cat's-eye logo used to promote the show. The opening number begins around 3:25 in this video.
The
“Disneyfication” of Broadway in the 1990s continued a trend of large-scale
shows like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, produced by Disney and other large corporations with savvy marketing strategies.
Alternatives to the Megamusical and Other Recent Trends
Composer-lyricist
Stephen Sondheim is perhaps the most
respected figure in musical theater of the past several decades. Known for
their wit, sophistication, and skeptical outlook, his shows have often been
seen as an important alternative to splashier pop-style genres like the
megamusical. His best known works (besides West Side Story and Gypsy, earlier shows for which he only wrote the lyrics) include Company, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Sunday in the Park With George. Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd-Webber are often seen as taking opposing approaches to the musical. Sondheim shows are thoughtful and "artistic," gaining a loyal audience that might be small at first but which grows over time. Lloyd-Webber shows are slick and populist, going for the immediate appeal to an audience's emotions and desire to hear soaring melodies.
Sondheim's Into the Woods melds together the stories and characters of several well-known fairy tales in a revisionist way to raise questions about the notion of "happy ever after." The clever lyrics and lean musical texture are typical of Sondheim's work. Here is the performance from the Tony Awards show.
Since the
turn of the millennium, there has been a resurgence of the American style of
musical and of the popularity of musicals in general. Musical comedies like The Producers, Hairspray and Avenue
Q have recently rivaled megamusicals and pop/rock musicals for popularity, and Wicked, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the witch that combines elements of the megamusical and musical comedy with a pop-style score has enjoyed phenomenal success. Disney’s High
School Musical films and television programs like Glee and Smash have
brought popular attention to Broadway songs and performers. Broadway stars (like Wicked's Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth) make regular appearances on Glee, creating cross-promotion between television and Broadway.
The 1980s brought about new styles of pop music as well as the rise of rap as a popular genre. Digital and other technologies continued to influence music. Music videos, broadcast on MTV, were important promotional tools and artistic statements that became linked to popular songs. As the music industry continued to consolidate in the hands of an ever smaller number of trans-national corporations, it became more diffucult for musicians to break into national success at the mid-level. As a result a small number of superstars of pop music dominated the mainstream. An independent, underground emerged to counter this, and would emerge in the 1990s as alternative rock.
Country Music continued to grow in
popularity, becoming the best-selling music genre in the U.S., and continuing to incorporate pop and rock influences. Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and Reba
McEntire are among the big names in country music in the 1980s.
Many singers
who had started in soul and funk in the 1970s turned to a “post-soul” adult contemporary format in the 1980s. Songs like Lionel Richie's "Endless Love" exemplify this tren.
1980s Pop
Pop musicin the 1980s forged new
styles out of existing genres (including hard rock, heavy metal, new wave, and
rap) while a handful of megasuccessful pop stars dominated the commercial music
industry. Synth-pop descripes the sound of pop songs exploited synthesizer sounds as an alternative to the guitar as the basis of much rock music.
Here are a handful of the pop stars who forged new styles and trends in dance, music and fashion by pulling together a variety of influences.
·Michael
Jackson's album Thriller (1982)
crossed genres, commercially and artistically innovated with music videos, and
broke racial barriers. It was his second collaboration with his producer Quincy Jones that reinvented Jackson as a modern pop star after his earlier Motown-style work with the Jackson Five and his early solo work. Thriller produced a number of hits, one of which was the song "Beat It." The "Beat It" video exemplifies both Jackson's style and a number of trends of the 1980s. The video is well-conceived, telling a story with artistry and integrity in the process of promoting the song. Jackson's videos of this era are described as short films. The guitar solo was provided by Eddie Van Halen, the heavy metal guitarist, in an example of the fusion of genres out of which Jackson and others created a new pop sound in the 1980s. In the 1970s, white rock and black soul/R&B had been considered rather distinct genres, so this collaboration was more striking at the time than it seems today. "Beat It" was actually a rather important instance of crossing genres that had been largely racially segregated. Jackson also became the first black artist to have his work on MTV (due to its "rock-only" format, MTV long resisted playing music by black artists because it was not considered rock). The mass choreography at the end, when Jackson convinces the street gangs to dance instead of fight is exemplary of his work. Jackson's styles and dance moves were also influential in popular music and culture. He became known as the King of Pop.
Michael Jackson, Beat It
Along with Michael Jacskson, Madonna and Prince, represented pop stars who were canny at creating their public images and reinvinting them over time in order to stay fresh, start new trends, and keep people guessing. Madonna was well known for proviking controversy, and like to play with cultural perceptions about women, often confounding people's assumptions and expectations about what gender and sexuality. Her early work shows influence of synth-pop ("Like a Virgin") while later in the 1980s she drew on a variety of sources including gospel ("Like a Prayer") and gay subculture ("Vogue").
Madonna, Like a Virgin
Bruce Springsteen expressed working class concerns with roots-based rock.
Paul Simon’s Graceland engaged with world music as well as American roots in collaboration with the African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Rap
Rap became a popular and commercially
successful enterprise while continuing to be the musical expression of urban hip hop culture, which also includes graffiti and breakdancing. Rap began as music played by DJs at block parties and clubs in Black and Puerto Rican communities the Bronx of New York City in the 1970s. They used many of the same techniques as disco DJs, and much of the music they played was disco and funk. Rap DJs became adept at isolating the dance breaks in popular songs and using turntables and other technology to loop those sections of the song, so that dancing at party could go on continuously. MC's spoke, rhythmic patter over the music to help keep things going. The rhymed, rhythmic raps that MC's developed had their precedents in a number of sources, including a similar practice in reggae, African-American poetic traditions (in which one puts down and insults an opponent in verse), the spoken vocals of James Brown, and even the preaching styles of black church services. Like funk, rap is reminiscent of West African music in the way it lays down a percussive beat as its foundation and then layer a vocal on top.
In the 1980s, Run-D.M.C.brought rap to the popular mainstream, where it became popular with white
youth. Public
Enemy continued a tradition of social consciousness in rap with songs like "Fight the Power," which demands social justice during a time in which government policies and demographic trends had left urban black communities and their youth impoverished, underserved and lacking in opportunities. Rap, graffiti and other aspects of hip hop culture, provided a means to speak truth to power using the only things at hand--the sounds images in one's environment. Sounds sampled from existing recordings could be combined in new ways to make a new statement or commentary. "Fight the Power" is an especially heavily-sampled rap song.
Many of the trends begun in the 1960s continued in the 1970s while new styles also emerged as existing genres diversified and differing genres interacted. Technology played a role in the increased use of practices like overdubbing and eventually led to whole new genres like disco and rap, in which technology itself became integral to the process of composition and performance. Rock had come of age by the 1970s, and there was a mix of both nostalgia for earlier rock and progress toward new styles. Alternatively, adult genres of music such as easy listening, adult contemporary and soft rock emerged out of the perception that hard rock was geared toward young people. The music industry became increasingly centralized in the hands of a shrinking number of large companies, a trend that would continue in the 1980s. A tension between the commercial mainstream and alternative voices on the fringes, which had always existed, intensified in the 1970s with genres like punk rock, heavy metal, rap, and outlaw contry music staking out alternative positions and perspectives.
Country Music showed tensions between
traditional and pop influences, conservatism and progressivism. The traditional style of singers like Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn, was at odds with a more pop-influenced sound, often performed by singers who came from a pop background outside of country but chose to adopt a country style or image. John Denver is an example of a pop-oriented country singer who was not accepted by much of the traditional country music establishment.
At the same time, there were differences and even apparent ideological differences among the traditionalists. While Merle Haggard sang of conservative values (whether sincerely or ironically nobody seems to know for sure) in Okie from Muskogee, Loretta Lynn took bold stances on issues of feminism and women's equality in songs like The Pill. Yet another group of country musicians that included Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings cultivated an image of outlaws, articulating yet another alternative position to the center of country music. On the whole, the particular blend of traditional and modern elements in country music of the 1970s resulted in a sound that has dominated mainstream country music ever since.
Merle Haggard, Okie From Muskogee
Loretta Lynn, The Pill
Rock became ever more diversified in the 1970s.
Many rock musicians viewed themselves as artists; there was a tension between this
orientation and pop/rock for entertainment or dancing. Here are just a few of the many styles and genres that were important in the 1970s with some of the musicians or bands associated with them.
The mainstream of popular rock included artists as diverse asElton John ("Crocodile Rock") and the
Eagles ("Hotel California")
Art rock
was closeley linked to the idea of a concept album and the idea that a song or album was an artistic expression and unity – Pink Floyd
Glam
rock made use of flamboyant costumes, theatrical performances, and often a bit of ambiguity about a performer/character's gender or sexuality – David Bowie
Heavy
Metal used distorted, amplified guitar solos, gutteral singing (screaming), and masses of loud sound – Led Zeppelin, Van Halen
Punk was hard-edged anti-establisment rock opposed to the popular mainstream
-- Ramones
New Wave emerged from a similar scene and attitude to punk rock, but was mare pop-oriented and often cultivated a collegiate, ironic, or nerd-chic image --Talking Heads
Soul, Funk, Disco and more On the soul side of things, black popular music also continued to develop and diversify, culminating in the takeover of mainstream pop by disco at the end of the decade. The popularity of Motown with its glossy packaging of pop-soul continued, with solo acts becoming more prominent. Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Jackson Five (which would produce Michael Jackson) were all Motown singers. Funk, with its syncopated, layered, interlocking instrumental rhythms, developed largely out the groundwork laid by James Brown and was brought to the height of its influence by George Clinton and Sly and the Family Stone. Reggae, a Carribbean style associated with Rastafarianism, became popular through the work of Bob Marley and others. It exerted important influences on other genres, including punk and rap, by the end of the decade.
However, the music from the black family of genres that achieved the most phenomenal popularity in the 1970s was disco. Disco was recorded dance music that was played by DJs in dance clubs. At first it was the music primarily of black, Latin and gay clubs in New York and other cities. It featured a strong dance beat, with a bass drum thump on every beat of the measure (this beat is called "four to the floor" and is in conrast to rock, which has bass on beats one and three, with a higher pitched backbeat on beats two and four, as described in our discussion of Chuck Berry's Maybellene), often rich orchestral instrumentation with strings and brass, syncopated rhythmic layers from funk, and expressive vocals from soul.
As disco grew in popularity and entered the mainstream, it became an important alternative to rock, which at the time was in some degree focused on art and a certain kind of white-male-centered seriousness. The steady beat and simple, repetitive lyrics of disco provided an outlet for those who simply wanted dance and have an uninhibited good time. The height of the disco craze coincided with the realeas of the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977, with songs by the Bee Gees. The sound of disco became so pervasive in popular music by the end of the 1970s that it eventually provoked a backlash, especially from those who preferred hard rock. (Not to put to fine a point on it, but it should be mentioned that the black, gay and feminist associations with disco require us to ask whether some of the backlash was motivated by racism, homophobia and/or sexism.)
Donna Summer was the Queen of Disco.
Donna Summer, Hot Stuff
A funkier example of disco is Chic's Good Times. Chic, Good Times
The beginnings of rap
Rap music also had its beginnings in the 1970s, and it used many of the same technological practices as disco. We will save our first discussion of rap for the next unit.
Art Music
Composers of
art music reacted against the
experimentalism of the previous generation
·Minimalist
composers like Philip Glassstripped
music down to its most basic elements
Unit 9 – Rock, Soul
and Popular Music in the 1960s
(1964-1969)
If there
were some who hoped rock ‘n’ roll was a passing fad and others who complained
that it had become diluted and trivialized by the commercial music industry,
the course of the 1960s showed that it was here to stay. As the next generation
of musicians came of age, they began to call the music simply rock, to distinguish it from the earlier
style. Rock music became increasingly diverse and sophisticated over the decade
and would continue to do so into the 1970s. A parallel process of development
occurred in black popular music, which transitioned from rhythm and blues to
soul, while country music continued to be popular as well.
Some of the
important developments of the early 1960s included the growing role of the
record producer as both artistic partner to the musicians and visionary
entrepreneur, as mentioned briefly in the previous unit. Phil Spector started
out as a songwriter, but really found success as a producer. He was known for
creating his famous “wall of sound,” in which the use of rich instrumentation
and a good deal of reverb contributed to a saturated texture in recordings like
the Ronettes’ Be My Baby, which is
also a good example of girl group pop from the era.
Berry Gordy
founded Motown records in Detroit and pulled off a similar tactic with even
more success. Combining rhythm and blues, soul and other styles of black music
with large instrumental ensembles and backup singing, Motown music was meant to
appeal to the widest possible audience across racial lines. The Supremes,
featuring Diana Ross, were one of the most popular Motown groups.
Supremes, You Can't Hurry Love
Brian Wilson
was another accomplished producer, who created the Beach Boys’ unique sound
while also fronting the group in performance.
The British Invasion
In the view
of many, rock was reinvigorated in the mid-1960s by the British Invasion. British
rock bands like the Beatles and the Rolling stones, composed of young people
who had been inspired by American rhythm and blues and rock and roll, made a
deep impression on American music when they began touring in the United States.
The Beatles’ 1964 US tour had an inestimable effect in this regard.
The Beatles
and other rock bands in the 1960s took the basic forms of rock ‘n’ roll and
expanded upon them, introducing more complex forms and different chord changes,
along with more obvious influences of Tin Pan Alley, classical music and
non-Western music.
The Beatles, A Hard Day's Night
Country Music
Country music in the 1960s continued to cultivate the "Nashville sound," a blend of traditional contry with easy listening pop.
Patsy Cline, Crazy
Soul Music
Soul music developed out of gospel and largely supplanted rhythm and blues as the most popular form of black music in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the pioneers of soul music was Ray Charles, who combined secular (even sexual) lyrics with the gospel style of music that was common in black churches. This mixing of the sacred and secular was controversial in some corners, but it proved to be an important way forward for black popular music (especially at a time when rock was increasingly associated with white bands).
Ray Charles, What'd I Say?
Aretha Franklin was known as the Queen of Soul, and her work represents the apex of the genre in the 1960s. Perhaps her best-known recording is of the song Respect, which was originally written and recorded by Otis Redding. By putting herself in the position of the song's speaker, who demands certain kinds of "respect" from her lover, Franklin produced a hit that resonated with the feminist movement of the late 1960s and the 1970s. In addition, soul music generally, with its powerful vocals, became the soundtrack of black empowerment in the 1960s and 1970s, expressing the optimism many blacks felt in the wake of the civil rights movement. Franklin's Respect is easily read as an anthem of both of these movements.
Aretha Franklin, Respect
James Brown, known as the "Godfather of Soul" and the "hardest working man in show business" completes a trio of important soul musicians from the 1960s. His best known work strips the music down to one or two basic chords; blurs the lines between singing, speaking, and shouting; and involves a good deal of repetition of basic ideas in the lyrics along with "hits" on the horns and other instruments of the band that usually play melody, turning them virtually into percussion instruments in a rhythmically layered texture reminiscent of African polyrhythm. Elements of this sound became the basis of funk, of which Brown is considered a pioneer and which will be discussed again in the next unit on the 1970s. Brown was also known for his kenetic dance moves and showmanship. The music may sound simple, but it requires a great deal of precision from the band, and although Brown's performances look spontaneous, he actually approached his work with a great deal of discipline.
James Brown, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag
Rock in the Late 1960s
By the late 1960s, rock had diversified to the point at which certain subgenres, styles and association can be readily identified. Acid rock or psychedelic rock suggested a relationship between rock and drug use and the youth counterculture associated with social protest, opposition to the Vietnam War, and support for the civil rights movement. Much of what is memorable about popular music in the late 1960s relates to these trends.
Many rock musicians began to experiment musically, giving rise to art rock and other experimentalist genres. The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band shows the influence of psychedelia, art rock and other developments of the late 1960s. Unlike earlier albums, which were loose collections of songs, Sgt. Pepper's was intended as a unified artistic work, and it draws on diverse styles of music, including, rock, classical, folk and world music. "Within You Without You" makes use of the sitar, the instrument of North Indian classical music, which George Harrison had been learning from the internationally famous sitarist, Ravi Shankar.
The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, "Within You Without You"
Other prominent musicians of the late 1960s include Janis Joplin, who was important female voice in rock and laid a foundation for many women singer-songwriters to come; Jimi Hendrix, whose guitar techniques were profoundly infulential; and Bob Dylan, who updated the urban folk movement begun by people like Woody Guthrie and Pete Singer by combining the folk style with rock, and even eventually changing to electronic instruments--a move which shocked many in the folk music community! These musicians and others participated in various music festivals in the late 1960s that gave voice to a segment of the youth generation of the time. The convergence of music and 1960s counterculture reached full expression at the Woodstock Festival of 1969.
Janis Joplin, Ball and Chain, Monterey Pop Festival
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.
