50's Rock and Roll |
| New musical styles in popular music are usually developed in a social
situation where several already existing (extant) styles 'rub shoulders';
meaning that they are being performed at the same venues within a given
population at the same time. All you need to do to test this statement
is to 'channel surf' the radio in your car. Professional popular musicians,
many who play(ed) primarily by ear, will often appropriate and absorb
the particular characteristics of another style to use in their own individual
style. The synthesis of many musical traditions may be found in early
rock and roll.
The concurrent styles of the Post War Era, Urban and Rural Blues, Gospel, and Jump-Band Jazz (a dance motivated jazz style) led to something called Rhythm and Blues, all of which grew out of the Black American musical tradition. RNB might be described as 'electrified blues' often richer rhythmically and harmonically than straight blues. The amplification of the instruments (guitars particularly) evolved primarily as a means of being heard over the general noise in bars and clubs. This music from Black America began coming into contact with the 'white folks' styles of Folk and Country and it was a two-way street as many Black Americans listened to white country music as well. It is probably from these interactions that the music we know as Rock and Roll in the mid 1950's was born. WLAC Radio in Nashville, whose powerful broadcast signal reached all the United States and much of Canada, helped to get the ball rolling when they began to schedule RNB into their nightly programs. Their audience was largely white and American teenagers loved the raw, rhythmic drive of this music. Young black musicians such as Fats Domino and Chuck Berry managed successful cross-over careers with audiences because they 'Whitened up' their music with unthreatening lyrics and simple melodies. At the same time, white musicians such as Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis began to 'Blacken' their music by using characteristics of the music they had grown up with, RNB and Boogie Woogie Piano in combination with various elements of white Folk, Rockabilly and Country. It is the opinion of some that Elvis is overrated musically and even historically - and that it was his contemporaries, like Little Richard and Chuck Berry who provided the greatest artistic impetus for the new style. Elvis was, however, the first great, charismatic cross-over artist who managed to sell America on the new bi-racial music. With his poor white southern roots, gospel background, velvet baritone voice, and 'pin-up' good looks, Elvis's credentials as an American boy made good were impeccable. Elvis was an interpreter - he wrote no songs (that I am aware of) rather taking other singers' songs and covering them, making them his own. His genuine photogenic qualities and energy/sexuality (in live performance) drove the songs into the teeny bopper mainstream radio angering their parents yet calming them at the same time by his occasional ballad, gospel tune and the 'gee', 'gosh', 'shucks' and 'thankya very much' politeness he invariably displayed to his fans (to whom he was always devoted) and to the press. After the sale of his contract to RCA for a mere $35,000, his best work was already in the can. His formulaic movies that 'The Colonel' (his manager) limited him to destroyed the possibility of what might have been a screen personality that prefigured James Dean. His movies consist of a guy, a girl, a song, another guy, a fist fight, another song, and a happy ending with the original guy (Elvis, naturally) getting the girl. A very short list of important early Rock and Roll artists would include: Fats Domino, Little Richard (Penneman), , Chuck Berry*, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and The Everley Brothers (Don & Phil). TIME LINE 1949 - RCA with Fats Domino introduces the first 45 rpm record. |