The Stars of Pop Music Before Rock and Roll

we continue our discussion of

main-stream popular music in 
the period before 1955, the world
before rock and roll. 
Main-stream pop

• The important thing for us to know is that the song's

the thing. Not a particular performance of it.
• The important role that radio played in creating a
national audience for mainstream pop.
• That national audience is going to migrate to
television. And it will leave opportunities for rhythm
and blues and country and western.
• what the mainstream popular music sound like during
these years? This period from 19, the 1920's into the
period leading up to 1955
 Bing Crosby. 
• A singer who is maybe the
first singer at least one of
the first singers to really
take advantage of the
microphone. And that the
singers before Bing Crosby's
day didn't have the
advantage or weren't really
trained to use microphones.
The big bands
• They weren't really about
the singing at all. It was
about the bands it was
about the playing.
• These big bands were often
called dance bands.
• Engage and Capture
Audience attention.
 Frank Sinatra
• Mostly during this Big Band era of the
1940s where the bands and the
instrumentation was the thing. The
singers were kind of secondary.
• Exactly the inverse of what we see in
rock and roll tunes. Rock and roll tune
is, the songs are mostly sung, and
then there'll be a guitar solo for a
minute, and the singer will come back
in. But with these big band
arrangements, they would be mostly
played instrumentally.