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Pop Music's
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 Peter Winkler

Middle Years Our lives are saturated with rock

music; its characteristic rhythms,
harmonies, and instrumental tex-
tures permeate all phases of com-
mercial music, from Muzak and
television commercials to live con-
cert performances and musical the-
ater. Rock is a protean style; it is

The author is associate professor of music at

the State Universityof New York at Stony
Brook. Illustration by Earl Carlton Grifis

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eclectic, and it readily absorbs ele-
ments from other music styles into
its own idiom. Inevitably, one be-
gins to question how the world
sounded before rock. What was
American popular music like before
the emergence of sixties rock? In
what earlier styles can the sources
of rock be found?
The answers to such questions
are not simple. The unprepared lis-
tener hearing a random assortment
of popular recordings produced in
the forties and fifties easily can be-
come confused because there were
so many different kinds of music,
and they seem to have had so little
impact upon one another. A domi-
nant style analogous to post-fifties
rock is impossible to detect. In fact,
the years following World War II
saw the emergence of a number of
popular styles-bebop, rhythm and
blues, country-western, urban folk
music, and early rock and roll, each
appealing to its own specialized
audience.
There have been periods in the
history of popular music when a
single style dominated the entire
field by appealing to a broad au-
dience and serving many different
functions. The rock era that be-
gan in the sixties is one such pe-
riod; another was the swing era,
which lasted from approximately
1935 to 1945. Swing music was
a synthesis of elements that had
existed in music since the early
twenties, but in the postwar years
its economic base deteriorated and
swing bands rapidly disappeared.
The public began to turn to styles
that previously had appealed only
to a small minority. Out of these
styles eventually developed a new
synthesis that led to rock.
In popular music, styles are con-
stantly mixing and evolving, and sty-
listic "purity"cannot be empirically
defined. Often, new styles are hy-
brids of two or more older styles,
and definitions of purity depend
upon one's loyalties and values. Yet
value judgments are by no means
irrelevant to understanding. Our in-
stincts tell us that some kinds of
music are more authentic than oth-
ers. When a style is well integrated,
the elements mesh together and
they create a new synthesis that has
a character of its own. Often the
style with the most substance is the
most radically different from other
styles, and it tends to be the kind of
28 mej/december '79
music that historians identify as the
pure form, but that mass audiences
have the most difficultyaccepting.
Swing
The standard pop song style
reached its maturityin the thirties
and forties. Its form was AABAwith a
thirty-two-measurechorus and har-
monies that were based on progres-
sions of seventh chords with frequent
chromaticvoice leading and root mo-
tion through the circle of fifths. Com-
posers such as Irving Berlin, Je-
rome Kern, Cole Porter, and Rich-
ard Rodgers created songs of great
elegance and refinement within these
constraints. Especially in the works
of George Gershwin, Harold Arlen,
and Hoagy Carmichael,the conven-
tions of this style were skillfully
blended with the melodic, harmonic,
and rhythmic idioms of jazz and the
blues. The pop standard was the
foundation of a whole range of
commercial music activity;it func-
tioned as song, as dance music, as
background music in films, and as a
framework for jazz improvisation.
Swing was a synthesis of popular
song and jazz. In the late twenties
black bandleaders such as Fletcher
Henderson, Don Redman, and Duke
Ellington notated many of the rhyth-
mic and melodic effects of jazz
improvisation and scored them for
entire sections of saxophones or
brasses. They could swing even the
stodgiest Tin Pan Alley melody by
syncopating it against the driving 4
beat of the rhythm section. Big-band
arranging was reconciled with the
basic qualities of the blues through
the use of the riff, a fragment of
blues melody repeated as an ostinato
against changing harmonies.
When the Benny Goodman bands'
precision-drilled performances pop-
ularized swing in the thirties, an
authentic jazz style reached a larger
audience than ever before. But swing
had to pay a price for commercial suc-
cess-it lost its spontaneity. The con-
ventions of most big-band arrange-
ments left only brief spaces for
improvised solos, and the ex-
pressive range of those solos was
necessarily limited. It was thus left
to small groups, often adjuncts of
big bands like Goodman's, to keep
the tradition of virtuoso improvisa-
tion alive. Not all the big bands
were jazz-oriented, of course. The
pop-oriented dance bands of Sam-
my Kaye, Guy Lombardo, and
Glenn Miller also enjoyed
enormous success. But all bands
used a standard instrumentation:a
rhythm section of piano, guitar,
bass, and drums with a wind sec-
tion, usually consisting of four saxo-
phones, three trumpets, and two
trombones. The daily existence of
all bands was also similar: the musi-
cians had to sustain constant cross-
country touring. Although record-
ings and radio broadcasts were im-
portant as sources of publicity, they
did not alone provide big band
musicians with anything more than a
supplemental source of income.
This homogeneity of popular mu-
sic in the early forties was reinforced
by the structure of the popular music
industry. Since the Depression had
wiped out most of the small in-
dependent recording companies
that flourished in the twenties,
nearly all the big bands were re-
corded by one of the three major
labels of the time: Victor, Columbia,
and Decca. Of these, Victor and
Columbia had corporate ties with
leading radio networks. Many of the
major music publishing companies
were owned by Hollywood film stu-
dios. The American Society of Com-
posers, Authors and Publishers (AS-
CAP)was the only music licensing
organization, and it favored estab-
lished songwriters. Power in the
music industry thus was concen-
trated in a few large, centralized
institutions.
World War II disrupted the
smooth operation of the industry;
gas rationing and wartime cabaret
taxes curtailed touring, and shellac
shortages limited recording activi-
ties. Many musicians joined the
armed forces. But even more dis-
ruptive to the industry than the war
were internal disputes brought
about by technological advances.
Radio had been important to the
rise of the swing bands, and radios,
home phonographs, and juke boxes
increasingly replaced live musi-
cians. Goodman's initial popularity
was due to live network broadcasts
from ballrooms. By 1940 many
bands were being broadcast live
every night, but as a result of a
1940 court ruling permitting radio
stations to play recordings regard-
less of the wishes of the artist or
record manufacturer,programming
by disc jockeys virtually replaced
live broadcasts.
In 1940 the radio stations, dis-
satisfied with ASCAP'sdemands for
royalty payments, formed their own
music-licensing organization, Broad-
cast Music, Inc. (BMI). They banned
all ASCAP-licensedtunes from the
air and prohibited any improvised
solos, for fear that a reference to an
ASCAPtune might creep in. Be-
cause ASCAPheld a monopoly on
the older, more established songs,
BMI concentrated on the works of
younger songwriters, including
those outside the traditional orbit
of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.
In 1942 the musicians union,
concerned over the rising popular-
ity of recorded music on juke
boxes and radio, called a strike on
the major recording companies. For
nearly a year, no new instrumental
recordings were made, but vocalists
were not affected by the ban. By the
time Victor and Columbia agreed to
the union's demands in 1944, the
public had developed new tastes.
The swing era collapsed abruptly af-
ter the war, and by December 1946
most of the major bands had been
dissolved.
All of these interferences loos-
ened the large corporations' control
over popular music and encour-
aged the rise of small, independent
entrepreneurs who recorded and
promoted nonstandard music styles.
The antecedents of these styles had
been recorded since the twenties
on race and hillbilly labels, but they
enjoyed unprecedented success in
the postwar years and began to ex-
pand from their regionally and cul-
turally restricted bases to reach a
wider, accepting audience.
Bebop
In a sense, jazz always has been
the music of a minority. Jazz histo-
rians agree that "pure" jazz record-
ed in the twenties was intended to
be sold primarily to blacks and that
the synthesis of jazz and pop in the
swing era was never entirely com-
fortable. The skill of improvising
within the framework of a jazz style
had developed to a high art
through intricate rhythmic and me-
lodic solos, but it did not lend itself
easily to the requirements of com-
mercial entertainment.
In the early forties an emergent
group of young jazz musicians felt
hampered by the restrictions of
swing arrangements and style. Dizzy
Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie
Parker,and other musicians congre-
Prestige Recordsgated after hours in intensive, com-
petitive jam sessions in small Har-
lem clubs to explore and extend
the jazz language. In this hermetic
environment, out of the hearing of
the general public, the bebop style
was born.
When bebop began to be pub-
licly performed and recorded circa
1944, fans of traditional jazz, as well
as many older jazz musicians, were
outraged by its complex, asymmet-
rical phrases, its dissonant harmo-
nies, and its relentless, frantic
Duke Ellington pulse. But although bebop sounded
radically new, it was basically an in-
tensification of existing jazz tech-
niques. The chromatic functional
,W|^ ~ harmony of standard pop tunes was
elaborated horizontally by inserting
additional passing tones and sec-
^^^_^~ ondary-dominant progressions and
ti^^ _ vertically by the presence of more
ASS^~ dissonant chords involving the
*"/_^ ^ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth
chord tones. Improvisers centered
~ _^f ~ their melodies around these higher
intervals of a chord.
Whereas swing involved a total
ensemble playing close harmonies,
bebop rigorously excluded any ele-
Benny Goodman ments that might distract from the
soloists' inventions. Bebop bands
Prestige Records consisted only of a rhythm section
and one or two trumpet or saxo-
phone soloists. Arrangements were
reduced to a terse rendition of the
"head," a newly composed melody
based on the progressions of a stan-
dard popular tune or a blues, often
played in unison by the soloists at
the beginning and end of each
tune. The emotional moods of be-
bop ranged from fierce aggression
to giddy ebullience to deadpan
technical display.
By 1950 bebop virtually had
ceased to exist as the only modern
Charlie Parker
jazz style. Although it had begun as
Prestige Records a rebellion against the jazz main-
stream, it became the foundation
for a variety of new styles that
_emerged
^^^^^ in the fifties ("progres-
sive," "cool," "hard bop," and "free
jazz"). Many jazz musicians in
the fifties attempted a unification
between jazz and twentieth-century
concert music by turning to Eu-
ropean avant-gardecomposers for
new harmonic techniques and
aesthetic models. The bebop me-
lodic style also was applied to more
basic gospel and blues elements.
With the impact of bebop, jazz
Thelonious Monk moved away from its social position
mej/december '79 29
as entertainment and acquired the
status of serious art. Scholarly stud-
ies tracing the pedigree of the mu-
sic began to appear more frequent-
ly in books, newspaper and
magazine columns of jazz criticism
were published, and it became
available to the public through
long-playing recordings and concert
hall programs. Jazz was winning re-
spect as a serious, indigenous,
American art.

Rhythm and blues

While bebop intensified the me-
lodic and harmonic complexities of
swing, rhythm and blues in the fif-
ties eliminated them and returned
to the basic harmonies and form of
traditional blues. Since its begin-
ning, jazz has been closely related
to the blues, but both also have de-
veloped as distinct music traditions. ci
Jazz is an evolving tradition; succes-
sive generations of improvisers
have developed patterns of varying c
(0

rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic E

a)
complexity. The blues tradition is
more conservative. Though blues
styles change over the years, they
do not evolve; each style works
within a limited repertory of stereo-
typed patterns.
Paradoxically,the derivation of
both rhythm and blues and bebop
can be traced to the music of the
Southwestern jazz bands of the
twenties and thirties, particularly
Count Basie's. On the one hand,
these regional bands systematically
simplified and streamlined their
material. The forms were stereo-
typed into either a blues or a thirty-
two-measure chorus with predict-
able changes. The arrangements, of-
ten just a succession of riffs, were
spare and economical. All these
characteristics carried over into
rhythm and blues. On the other
hand, Basie's arrangements allowed
his soloists, particularlytenor saxo-
phonist Lester Young, ample oppor-
tunity to perform complex solos.
Charlie Parkerwas an innovative
bebop soloist who cut his teeth in a
Kansas City band. Parker'salto saxo-
phone solos made frequent refer-
ence to the blues; some of his most
poignant moments occur when one
of his ornate lines incorporates a
simple blues figure.
With the postwar collapse of the
big bands, rhythm and blues, like
bebop, was performed by small
combos and recorded on indepen-
The Drifters
dent record labels. In 1945 Parker
recorded his bebop classic, "Now's
the Time," for the Savoy label. Four
years later Savoy released a rework-
ing of the Parkerriff renamed "The
Hucklebuck," performed by bari-
tone saxophonist Paul Williams; it
became the best-selling rhythm and
blues recording of 1949. But
though the basic material and the
recording company were the same,
the two styles were completely dif-
ferent. The later recording was loud
and raucous, it lacked nuance, and
it was built on simple riffs and the
insistent reiteration of a single note.
Rhythm and blues was commer-
cial music, and its practitioners
considered themselves entertainers,
not serious artists.Louis Jordan,
one of the earliest and most in-
fluential rhythm and blues stars,
remarked that jazz musicians "play
mostly for themselves. ... I want to
play for the people."' As a singer,
saxophonist, bandleader, and come-
dian, Jordan appealed to both black
and white audiences with his hu-
mor and his deft use of jive catch-
'Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Gold-
en Years of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Macmil-
lan, 1978), p. 62.
phrases in songs like "Saturday-
Night Fish Fry"(1940) and "There
Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chick-
ens" (1946). The instrumentation of
Jordan's band-one or two saxes,
one trumpet, and a rhythm section
playing a characteristicshuffle
beat-set the style for hundreds of
other "jump"combos.
Blues entertainers were located
in urban black communities all
across the country. Unlike bebop,
which developed in New York City
and spread outward, rhythm and
blues was a grass-roots movement
that began in numerous regional
centers. The development of tape
recording made it possible for
small businesses to produce record-
ings cheaply, and independent com-
panies sprang up in Los Angeles,
Houston, Chicago, and Cincinnati,
as well as New York City. These
companies recorded a variety of
styles, and there is no one "pure"
rhythm and blues style. For ex-
ample, the Chicago blues, recorded
for Chess Records by Muddy Wa-
ters, Howlin' Wolf, and others, was
rooted in genuine folk blues, and
the intense and impassioned bot-
tleneck guitar style of the Mississip-

30 mej/december '79
pi Delta was given additional force
through amplification. At the other
extreme were the recordings pro-
duced in New York City by Atlantic
Records, featuring Big Joe Turner,
LaVern Baker, the Drifters, and oth-
ers, which used studio musicians
and professional arrangers to pro-
duce a carefully crafted commercial
product.
Black vocal groups
Music historians often chronicle
the progress of a style by following
its evolution from simple begin-
nings to a sophisticated and com-
plex maturity.Cases do exist, how-
ever, for which the opposite is a
more appropriate model; a style can
regress from complexity to sim-
plicity. This pattern is especially evi-
dent in the evolution of black male
vocal groups in the fifties. Groups
like the Orioles subjected a va-
riety of popular standards to a syr-
upy falsetto lead against a softly
hummed chordal background. This
smooth, self-consciously pretty
sound also took cruder, livelier
forms, partly as a result of the influ-
ence of gospel quartets. The contin-
uous background harmony was re-
placed by vocal riffs, which often
were articulated with nonsense syl-
lables related to the scat syllables
of bebop vocalists. Rough vocal
timbres began to be favored and
intonation became less exact. The
songs were sung with an ostinato
repetition of the progression I-vi-
ii-V-a style that could be thought
of as a distillation of pop harmony.
A classic example is "Sincerely"by
the Moonglows (1955).
When amateur, street-corner
groups began to record, their music
became, despite its crudeness (or
perhaps because of it), as popular
with young audiences as the re-
cordings of the more professional
groups. The musical simplicity of
the fifties vocal groups was not a
return to an earlier style because
nothing like it had previously exist-
ed. From this radically reduced har-
monic and melodic vocabulary, the
sixties soul style was to evolve-
simple, often pentatonic riff melo-
dies set against a static harmonic
background and based on ostinato
patterns and cyclical repetition. But
before soul music could be de-
fined, the fifties' black vocal groups
had to strip the old pop style
to its bare skeleton.
Country-western and gospel
Throughout the forties and fifties,
music written and performed in
country and blues styles frequently
crossed over into the pop main-
stream market and gained increas-
ing economic importance. In recog-
nition of this movement, Billboard,
the recording industry's leading
trade magazine, established a cate-
gory for "Westernand Race" rec-
ords in 1942, but it was retitled
"AmericanFolk Records" later in
the year. By 1949 two separate
charts-"Rhythm & Blues" and
"Country& Western" (abbreviated
"R & B" and "C & W")-were es-
tablished to replace the "race"and
"hillbilly"designations.
Despite their marked stylistic dif-
ferences, the development of
rhythm and blues and country-west-
ern have taken strikingly parallel
courses. As commercial styles, both
began in the twenties, when
traveling producers began record-
ing Southern folk musicians. The
recordings were released on race
(black) or hillbilly (white) labels
and were marketed primarily for a
rural, Southern audience. By the
late thirties and early forties, work-
ing-class audiences had moved into
urban centers, and this music's
original folk characteristics became
polished and commercialized.
Bands of both types increased in
size, volume, and instrumentation,
introducing amplified instruments,
the string bass, and drums. Per-
Ifank Williams
formers became more professional,
and their repertoires relied less on
traditional material and more on
the original creations of songwriters
who specialized in the genre. Both
rhythm and blues and country-west-
ern were transmitted not only
through recordings, but also
through radio broadcasts. Southern
radio stations broadcast live country
music from programs like "Grand
Ole Opry," but as live music broad-
casting began to decline, disc jock-
ey programs became crucially im-
portant to the success of both
genres in the fifties.
Despite the parallels in their de-
velopment, the stylistic distinctions
between rhythm and blues and
country-western should not be un-
deremphasized. Country singers
Roy Acuff and Hank Williams sang
in nasal, tightly constricted voices
that suggested either an impassive or
self-pitying emotional tone, laced
with sobs. Rhythmand blues singers
adopted a wide variety of vocal
styles, ranging from the blues
shouts of Joe Turner to the falsetto
gospel cries of Clyde McPhatter,but
their singing was always open-
throated and uninhibited.
Stringed instruments, particularly
the guitar, remained fundamental
instruments for both styles. After
World War II, rhythm and blues
adopted jazz instruments, but
country-western musicians contin-
ued to use acoustic stringed in-
struments. The typical country band
of the forties and fifties included
guitar, violin, pedal steel guitar,
bass, and drums. When amplified
instruments became available, blues
and country musicians quickly
adopted them for their own uses.
The electric guitar had been adapt-
ed to jazz as early as 1939 through
the skill of Charlie Christian,whose
long, scalar lines anticipated the im-
provisations of bebop horn players.
Aaron "T-Bone"Walker was the first
bluesman of importance to adopt
the electric guitar; he originated a
flowing, linear, single-note style that
was definitely influenced by Chris-
tian, but his use of bent notes,
blues motifs, and bright metallic
timbre marked him as a blues mu-
sician. B. B. King, whose style has
had an enormous effect on lead
guitarists of the rock era, distilled
Walker's approach into a passionate
style in which high blue notes, sus-
tained through vibrato and ampli-
mej/december '79 31
fled feedback, were contrasted with
outbursts of rapid figuration. Other
blues guitarists such as Muddy Wa-
ters and John Lee Hooker simply
adapted electric instruments to the
older country blues guitar style.
Country-westernmusicians also
used the electric guitar, but for
a lead instrument they gener-
ally preferred the pedal steel
guitar, on which they could play ei-
ther single lines or chords with a
sustained tone and a continuous,
whining portamento between
pitches.
Both rhythm and blues and coun-
try-western affirmed a return to ba-
sic triadic harmony in their music,
but no single, stereotyped form
analogous to the blues emerged in
country music. Instead the tunes
were built on a variety of suc-
cessions of tonic, subdominant, and
dominant chords. Rhythmand blues
lyrics often articulated the melody,
whereas in country-western music
the simple diatonic melodies were
always subservient to the literal
sense of the lyrics. The lyrics
in country music described atti-
tudes of guilt or despair, whereas
the blues dealt with more hedo-
nistic, ironic images. Both styles
grasped the realities of working-
class life-sex, alcohol, poverty, and
alienation-considerably more di-
rectly than the romantic, escapist
lyrics of mainstream pop.
Fifties country performers such
as Roy Acuff,Bill Monroe, and Hank
Williams also included hymns and
gospel songs as a regular part of
their repertory. But black audiences
and performers continued to hold
rigid distinctions between sacred
and secular music-hymns were
not sung in bars and blues were
not sung in church. And although
white singers delivered gospel in
the same deadpan style that they
used for secular material, black gos-
pel singers maintained an entirely
individual style that was far re-
moved from the blues. Highly theat-
rical, emotionally extravagant,and
full of elaborate melismas, black
gospel singing released its au-
diences from the oppressive reality
of everyday living by transporting
shouting, stomping congregations
to a state of spiritual ecstasy.
Despite these rigid cultural sanc-
tions, aspects of the black gospel
style began to spread into secular
music in the fifties. Clyde McPhat-
ter, lead singer for the Drifters,
sang in a falsetto, gospel-inspired
32 mej/december '79
style that was much imitated by oth-
er pop singers into the sixties. Sam
Cooke, the brilliant lead vocalist for
the Soul Stirrers, achieved consid-
erable commercial success with his
bittersweet voice and expressive
melismas. When James Brown
moaned, shrieked, fell to his knees,
or jumped from the stage into the
audience, he was emulating a theat-
rical aspect of gospel expression.
Soul music of the sixties and seven-
ties owes more to gospel than to
the blues in its vocal techniques, its
lavish, dramatic arrangements, and
the emotional, optimistic nature of
its lyrics. B. B. King
The rise of nostalgia
In the postwar years the older
popular music establishment en-
joyed unprecedented commercial
success, but there was a note of un-
certainty in the activities of the cor-
porate giants. The conventions of
the popular standard were no long-
er the mainstay of the music indus-
try; a certain weariness crept into
the style during World War II. The
lush, sensuous sound of the Glenn
Miller band and the crooning of
young Frank Sinatrabacked by
Tommy Dorsey's band projected a Carl Perkins
dreamy, romantic haze that was
perhaps a necessary buffer to the MCA Records
harsh realities of the Depression
and wartime life. But this bland, es-
capist mood continued even after
the war ended.
Mainstreampop also began to
suffer from assembly-line recording
production processes. Musical con-
siderations such as choices of rep-
ertory or arrangements fell into the
hands of the producers of record-
ing sessions, who necessarily were
guided more by business consid-
erations than by taste and knowl-
edge. With the advent of tape and
high-fidelity equipment, studio tech- Buddy Holly
nology assumed a new role in re-
cording production. A recording Sun Records
was no longer merely a transcrip-
tion of a live performance-it be-
came a musical artifactin its own
right with the help of effects such
as echo and overdubbing. The re-
cording was the song.
Faced with the bewildering com-
plexity of postwar life, increased
geographical and social mobility,
and the resulting detachment of the
nuclear family from its community
roots, the mass public warmed to
simpler music in the forties and fif-
ties. Perhaps audiences were seek-
ing to recapture the feelings of ru- Jerry Lee Lewis
ral community in music that evoked
a romanticized image of the past.
This nostalgia was manifested in
mainstream pop music in a number
of ways. Pseudocountry, pseudo-
blues, and pseudofolk songs were
common. "Cover"(rerecorded) ver-
sions of country hits by pop singers
were enormously successful in the
late forties and early fifties. Bing
Crosby released "Pistol-Packin'
Mama"in 1944 and the top tune in
1950 was "The Tennessee Waltz,"a
country song covered by pop vocal-
ist Patti Page. Sinatrawas only one
of several popular singers who cov-
ered "The Hucklebuck,"and covers
of rhythm and blues hits were com-
mon in pop music through the
early days of rock and roll. Once
cover songs acquired commercial
success, recordings by authentic
country-western and rhythm and
blues musicians began crossing
over into the pop charts. Black sing-
ers such as Nat "King"Cole and
Johnny Mathisbecame popular with
mass audiences because their style
was similar to that of white croon-
ers and in a sense was less "black"
than the effusive emotionalism of
Johnny Ray,a young white vocalist
who consciously adopted rhythm
and blues vocal techniques. Another
purveyor of comfortable homoge-
neity was Mitch Miller, who enjoyed
great success with his singalong
records and television shows, which
attempted to rekindle the spirit of a
community sing by inviting the un-
seen audience to join in singing
with the bland background his
chorus provided.
Bluegrass in this period re-
mained a conservative genre within
country music. Its musicians played
the instruments and tunes of the
old Appalachianfolk tradition, re-
jecting amplified instruments and
the worldly lyrics of modern coun-
try-western music. Bluegrass even-
tually found an educated, socially
conscious, and often politically radi-
cal audience in the sixties who also
displayed an interest in other semi-
traditional styles, such as the con-
temporary urban folk style. This
style originated in the forties in the
work of folk-song scholars who
viewed the pop music industry as
the epitome of capitalistic corrup-
tion, and who sought to introduce
to the working class America's "au-
thentic" music heritage. Although
the mass audiences held to their
preference for commercial country-
western, rhythm and blues, or even
mainstream pop over folk-style re-
creations of their rural sources, the
folk revival did bring to its college-
educated, middle-class following an
awareness of rapidly dying rural
styles. The Weavers' version of
Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" be-
came a pop hit in 1951, and it set
the stage for the slick, pseudofolk
performances of Harry Belafonte,
the Kingston Trio, and others. But
the less commercial folk singers
such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guth-
rie, and Leadbelly accompanied
themselves on guitar or banjo, sang
with untrained voices, and attempt-
ed to blur the distinction between
performer and audience by encour-
aging everyone to sing.
Rock and roll
Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed
popularized the term "rock and
roll" in 1952 when he began play-
ing rhythm and blues recordings to
a young, mostly white teenage au-
dience. The rise of the youth market
in the fifties affected many areas
of the entertainment industry, but
none more than music, which
quickly became an essential part
of a new subculture. The develop-
ment of lightweight 45-rpm record-
ings and transistor radios enabled
teenagers to carry their music with
them, and they played it constantly.
Whether it was the uninhibited he-
donism of dance recordings or the
exaggerated sentimentality of vocal
groups, rock and roll offered teen-
agers a source of stimulation, a
badge of identification, and a
screen from the intrusions of the
adult world.
Producers of pop music sought
to exploit the rock and roll craze in
the same way that earlier music
styles had been capitalized on: by
having established pop musicians
record their own versions of cur-
rent hit records in the genre. At
first, these cover records usually
managed to surpass the popularity
of the black originals because most
white disc jockeys and station man-
agers tended to prefer them. But
because of the close connections
between rhythm and blues and
country-western, the most success-
ful white rock and roll came from
musicians with a background in
country music. Bill Haley was
the earliest exemplar of this
blend, but the first important
social and musical breakthrough
came in 1955 with the phenomenal
success of Elvis Presley. Although
his first recordings were based on
both the rhythm and blues and
country-western repertoire, his vo-
cal style was completely new. It was
obviously influenced by the blues,
but Elvis's voice was quite unlike
the genial naivete of Fats Domino,
the gospel cries of Little Richard,or
the wry, narrativestyle of Chuck
Berry, to mention the three leading
black rock and roll singers of the
early fifties. Presley's voice con-
tained a tremulous, breathless ex-
citement that hinted at barely con-
tained violence. Through his voice
and his stage presence, Presley be-
came one of the greatest teen idols.
He set the style for a succession of
"rockabilly"stars such as Buddy
Holly, Carl Perkins,Jerry Lee Lewis,
and the Everly Brothers. After hear-
ing and seeing Presley, teenagers
listened not only to other young
white singers, but to black rock and
roll performers as well.
It seemed, in the late fifties, that
the boundaries between main-
stream pop, rhythm and blues, and
country-western had broken down
completely. A remarkable number
of black musicians appealed to a
large, middle-class, white audience,
and, furthermore, white rock and
roll performers were popular with
black audiences. Rhythm and blues
seemed to disappear as a distinct
style, and black pop music did not
regain a separate identity until the
rise of soul music in the sixties.
Country-westernmaintained a stylis-
tic individuality from rock and roll,
but it became increasingly com-
mercialized. The "Nashville sound,"
pioneered by Chet Atkins, applied
all the trappings of early fifties pop
music to country music, including
strings, background choruses, and
echo effects.
The payola scandal of the late fif-
ties could be viewed as an attempt
by the establishment to crush the
rock and roll movement; personal
tastes of disc jockeys determined
much of what was played, so inves-
tigators assumed that the only ex-
planation for the popularity of rock
and roll had to be that disc jockeys
were being bribed to program it. If
rock and roll could not be de-
stroyed, it could at least be co-opt-
ed. It did not take the commercial
establishment long to learn the
trick of manufacturingsynthetic rock
and roll and grooming prefabricated
Continued on page 90
mej/december '79 33
POP MUSICfrompage 33
teen idols such as Fabian and
Frankie Avalon.
The heroic, fanatic, early days of
rock and roll were over by 1960.
With its synthesis of black and
white styles, rock and roll had seri-
ously challenged the mainstream
pop tradition but had failed to over-
throw it, and by the early sixties it
seemed to be on the verge of being
absorbed by it. Perhaps this imbal-
ance existed because, for all its
popularity, rock and roll still ap-
pealed to a minority: teenagers in
For107 yearswe've been serious
\ about people who make music.
In 1872 Boston University established the first professional music program within an
American university to train creative and talented students for careers in music. 107 years
later the Boston University School of Music is still doing what it does best.
*Performance *Music Education *History and Literature Theory and Composition
strings
*EmanuelBorok,violin
WalterEisenberg,violin
Madeline Foley,chamber music
GeraldGelbloom, violin
Mary CrowderHess, violin
'Max Hobart, violin
'BernardKadinoff,viola
Endel Kalam,chamber music
William Kroll,chamber music
Carol Lieberman,violin
'Eugene Lehner,chamber music
'Leslie Martin, string bass
George Neikrug, cello
*Mischa Nieland, cello
Leslie Parnas,cello
+Henry Portnoi, string bass
'William Rhein, string bass
+RogerShermont, violin
'Joseph Silverstein, violin
Roman Totenberg,violin
WalterTrampler,viola
*Max Winder,violin
*LawrenceWolfe,string bass
+Victor Yampolsky,violin
woodwinds
EdwardAvedisian, clarinet
'Pasquale Cardillo,clarinet
'Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute
Roderick Ferland,saxophone
*RalphGomberg, oboe
+JohnHolmes, oboe
+Phillip Kaplan,flute
'Craig Nordstrom, clarinet
Harvey Pittel, saxophone
*RichardPlaster,bassoon
'Matthew Ruggiero,bassoon
'Fenwick Smith, flute
*ShermanWalt, bassoon
'Harold Wright,clarinet
brass
'Ronald Barron,trombone
*Norman Bolter,trombone
Peter Chapman, trumpet
+JohnCoffey,tromboneltuba
Paul Gay,trombone
*GordonHallberg,tromboneltuba
Member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
+Formermember of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston University School of Music
Wilbur D. Fullbright, Director
offering degrees at the bachelor, master, and doctoral levels.
School for the Arts: Music, Theatre, Visual Arts *Gerald Gross, Dean ad interim
855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
90 mej/december
the fifties felt alienated from and sor, rock and roll, contemporary
persecuted by the older generation, rock inherited a basically diatonic
and rock and roll necessarily de- harmonic vocabulary and a depen-
fined itself in opposition to the so- dence on blues melody and form
cial and musical establishments. It that had characterized rhythm and
was not until the mid-sixties, when blues. The instrumentation and
a mood of rebellion and dis- playing techniques of both rhythm
satisfaction was dominant and the and blues and country-western, es-
Beatles were charming a varied au- pecially an emphasis on the electric
dience with their cheerful icono- guitar, remain fundamental to rock
clasm, that rock was able to suc- music. Rock singing styles have in-
cessfully challenge and permanently corporated many elements but most
penetrate the commercial pop notably the emotional exhibitionism
mainstream. and call-and-response interplay of
black gospel music. The marked
Summary historical and stylistic self-con-
Through its immediate predeces- sciousness of urban folk music is al-
so found in rock, with an expanded
range of subjects for lyrics that has
extended considerably beyond the
conventional limits of the love
song. Rock also inherited modern
studio production techniques,
which included step-by-step over-
dubbing.
It is a mistake to consider post-
war popular music styles as mere
brass {cont.) music history and literature forerunners to rock. Each had
'Charles Kavalovski,Frenchhorn
Charles A. Lewis, Jr.,trumpet
KarolBerger
JohnDaverio
unique qualities that could not
'David Ohanian, Frenchhorn JohnHasson translate into a generally accepted
MurrayLefkowitz
Samuel Pilafian, tuba
'Rolf Smedvig, trumpet JoelSheveloff
style. To judge them as imperfect
'Harry Shapiro,Frenchhorn theory and composition
foreshadowings of an ultimate mu-
+RogerVoisin, trumpet
*Charles Yancich, Frenchhorn
Theodore Antoniou sic synthesis in the sixties is to fail
David Del Tredici
percussion to hear them on their own terms. It
JohnGoodman
'Thomas Gauger Mark Kroll is equally incorrect to dismiss rock
'Charles Smith
JoyceMekeel
harp MarjorieMerryman
as a corruption or bastardizationof
Lucile Lawrence
Malloy Miller the former styles. Rock has an in-
guitar and lute Robert Sirota
Thomas E. Greene, guitar JohnThow tegrity of its own and deserves to
Robert Strizich, lute JanWissmiiller be appreciated for what it is: an ex-
piano
Luis Batlle music education pression of the age we live in. We
Lee Chrisman
MariaClodes
Anthony di Bonaventura Allen Lannom may, however, mourn the passing
LenoreEngdahl JackO. Lemons of the older styles and the ways of
Elizabeth Hagenah Mary Ann Norton life they so eloquently expressed.
Bela Boszormenyi-Nagy musical organizations
Phillip Oliver,staff accompanist Adelaide Bishop, opera
Harriet Shirvan WarrenWilson, opera
Edith Stearns Thomas Dunn, chorus Selected readings
FredrikWanger Endel Kalam, orchestra
organ JosephSilverstein, orchestra
George Faxon +Victor Yampolsky,orchestra General
JackFisher +RogerVoisin, repertoireorchestra Leonard, Neil.Jazz and the White
Max Miller Paul Gay,wind ensemble
harpsichord
Americans. Chicago: University of
boston symphony orchestra
Mark Kroll woodwind quintet in residence Chicago Press, 1962.
JosephPayne *Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute
voice Leonardprovidesa thoughtfulaccount
Eunice Alberts, contralto 'Ralph Gomberg, oboe
Germaine Arosa, diction
'Harold Wright,clarinet of the processby which jazzbecameac-
'Sherman Walt, bassoon
Mary Davenport, contralto Charles Kavalovski,Frenchhorn cepted into the popularmusic main-
Ellalou Dimmock, soprano streamduringthe twentiesand thirties.
Maeda Freeman,mezzo empire brass quintet
Robert Gartside, tenor in residence
Phyllis Elhady Hoffman, mezzo Charles A. Lewis, Jr.,trumpet Russell, Tony. Blacks, Whitesand
Mac Morgan, baritone *Rolf Smedvig, trumpet Blues. New York: Stein and Day,
Chloe Owen, soprano 'David Ohanian, Frenchhorn
Allen Rogers, vocal coaching 'Norman Bolter, trombone 1970.
Wilma Thompson, mezzo Samuel Pilafian, tuba
This book documentsthe considerable
cross-influencesbetween Southern
black and white styles from the 1920s to
the 1930s.
Swing
Simon, George T. The Big Bands.
New York: Macmillan Co., 1967.
'79
This encyclopedic survey of hundreds This passionately partisan history of Dienstfrey, 1970; reprinted by Dell,
of swing bands includes useful in- gospel includes many interviews. 1972.
troductory chapters. This thorough account of the develop-
Urban folk music ment of early rock and roll traces its
Bebop and modern jazz Brand, Oscar. The Ballad Mongers: sources to rhythm and blues. It is, how-
Feather, Leonard. The New Edition Rise of the Modern Folk Song. New ever, less reliable on the music of the
of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, Vol. I. York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1962. sixties.
New York: Horizon Press, 1962.
This professional folk singer's often wry Shaw, Arnold. The Rockin' '50's: The
This biographical reference work offers and humorous account of the growth of Decade That Transformed the Pop
extended articles on a variety of music the field emphasizes the early years. Music Scene. New York: Hawthorn
topics.
Books, 1974.
Shapiro, Nat, and Hentoff, Nat, eds. Rock and roll This history offers an insider's view of
Hear Me Talkin' to Ya. New York: Gillett, Charlie. The Sound of the pop mainstream in the early fifties and
Rinehart & Co., 1955; Dover reprint, City: The Rise of Rock and Roll. the impact of rock and roll on the mu-
1966. New York: Outerbridge & sic industry.
The last seven chapters of this oral his-
tory of jazz offer valuable inside views
of the jazz scene during the forties and
fifties.
"Thereare a lot of interestingideas bouncing
Wilson, John S. Jazz: The Transition
New York: Ap-
aroundin this building.Last weekI was
Years, 1940-1960.
pleton-Century-Crofts, 1966. watchinga potterin the ceramicsstudio
This concise account of the changes that whenI realizedhow muchall art is
occurred in jazz contains many reveal-
ing quotes from musicians.
dependenton action."
Vance Reese, organ performance major
Rhythm and blues
Keil, Charles. Urban Blues. Chicago: Being a music major at the Meadows
University of Chicago Press, 1966. School of the Arts at SMU is a special
experience in sharing ... with a close
Though it focuses on the particular
blues styles of B. B. King and Bobby rapport between students and the
Bland, this book sensitively portrays the nationally known faculty; an interaction
meaning of the music and its con- of the artistic disciplines housed in the
nection to an audience. An appendix at- arts complex; and energy and ideas flowing
tempts to classify all blues styles, from between dance, theatre, music and art
country blues to rock and roll.
students. We know who we are and what
Shaw, Arnold. Honkers and Shout- we are achieving, and we invite you to join
ers: The Golden Years of Rhythm in our growth.
and Blues. New York: Macmillan
Co., 1978.
Southern Methodist University
This history of rhythm and blues is pre-
sented through a music industry execu-
Meadows School of the Arts
tive's point of view. Interviews with per- For information,write:
formers and producers are a valuable William Hipp, Chairman
addition.
Division of Music
MeadowsSchool of the Arts
Country-western SouthernMethodist University
Malone, Bill C. Country Music Dallas, Texas 75275
U.S.A.:A Fifty-Year History. Austin:
The Division of Music is a full memberof
University of Texas Press, 1968. of Schoolsof Music
theNationalAssociation
This history of country-western music
also serves as a model for writing about
popular music. It is unusually sensitive
to the delicate balances between folk
tradition and commercial appeal and
the changing nature of the country mu-
sic audience. Detailed chapters on blue-
grass and the urban folk movement en-
hance the book's appeal.

Gospel
Heilbut, Tony. The Gospel Sound:
Good News and Bad Times. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1971.

mej/december '79 91
Selected recordings

Swing DEAN
The Best of Count Basie (MCA
4050E;two discs) CONSERVATORYOF MUSIC
ThisIs Benny Goodman (RCAVPM
6040; two discs) University of the Pacific
Stockton, California
Bebop
The Smithsonian Collection of Clas-
sic Jazz (distributed by the The University of the Pacific, an independent University, invites
SmithsonianInstitutionor W.W. applications for the position of Dean, Conservatory of Music, in
Norton & Company,Inc.) the oldest conservatory west of the Mississippi. The Conservatory
of Music offers the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees.
Rhythm and blues
The Birth of Soul (Decca 79245) The Dean reports directly to the Academic Vice President, is
Eighteen King-SizeRhythmand responsible for the administration and fiscal management of
Blues Hits (Columbia CS 9467) programs in the Conservatory, and is a member of the President's
Golden Age of Rhythm& Blues Executive Policy Committee.
(Chess 50030)
History of Rhythm& Blues, Vols. Qualifications: Successful experience in administration and teach-
I-IV (AtlanticSD 8161-8164) ing; demonstrated achievement in performance, research or pub-
The Roots of Rock 'n'Roll (Savoy SJL lications; and appropriate advanced degree, and demonstrated
2221; two discs) leadership ability.
ThisIs How It All Began, Vols. 1 and
2 (Specialty 2117 and 2118) Applications for the appointment, effective August 1, 1980, must be
received by December 31, 1979 and must include a curriculum
Country-western vitae and the names and addresses of three references. Send
The Best of Roy Acuffand the applications to: Dr. Clifford J. Hand, Academic Vice President,
Smoky Mountain Boys (Capitol University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211. An Equal Oppor-
SM 1870) tunity, Affirmative Action Employer.
Country Hits of the '40's (Capitol
SM 884)
Country Hits of the '50's (Capitol
SM 885)
Favoritesfrom Nashville (Camden
CXS9019; two discs) School of
Hank Williams'GreatestHits (MGM
3918E) ITHACA Music
Gospel
Gospel at Its Best (Peacock 59200)
The Gospel Sound, Vol. II (Colum-
bia KG 31595)

Urban folk music

Best of the Weavers(MCA4052E;
two discs)
Pete Seeger'sGreatestHits (Colum- | 111.1E
!1.1?
bia CS 9416) a s _S ; IL_ @2a_!21. z!i 1!!zSS1 f
ThisIs Harry Belafonte (RCAVPS r
6024; two discs)
1S"|11E
r l,s l1| l1
Pop music of the fifties
LesPaul and Mary Ford: Greatest
Hits (Capitol DT 1476E)
The 50's GreatestHits (Columbia G
30592) Er11; __
!~~~~~
Early rock and roll
Chuck Berry'sGolden Decade
(Chess 1514; two discs)
Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. I (RCA
AFL1-1707E)
Elvis: The Sun Sessions (RCAAFM1-
1675)
LittleRichard'sBiggest Hits (Special-
ty 2111) 1

mej/december '79 93