The Roots of Rock 'n' Roll
by Jack Madani
In 1945, World War II ended.
By 1946, American servicemen began returning home to start up the
families they had had to put on hold for 4 years. Thus began the
unusually large bubble in the population curve of America known as
the Baby Boom, as gazillions of babies were born all of a sudden in
the span of five to ten years. Remember that all those babies born in
1946-1947 would be 18 in 1964-1965 (and eventually 22 and out of
college, and into the marketplace in the early '70's, to kick off the
Me Decade). What that means is that American society would suddenly
find itself catering to a generation of young people in a way that
had never occurred before.
Sixties rock finds its roots in several places, starting as far back
as the big swing bands of the pre-war era that the 60's kids' parents
listened to as youngsters: Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman,
Count Basie, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Duke
Ellington's bands are some of the most famous. Except for Duke
Ellington, all those bands were primarily dance bands, with big
swinging backbeats. You can still hear some of their greatest hits
today in such unusual places as the Chips Ahoy commercial (1,000
chips in every bag).
There were also the smaller, "rhythm combo" groups, usually of only
four or five players. Their tunes were popular on the jukeboxes of
the day, but were not considered artistically important which is why
we have mostly forgotten them today. The recent Broadway show "Five
Guys Named Moe," which highlights the career of Louis Jordan, tells
about one of the most popular rhythm combos of the day. Nat King
Cole also had a small jazz combo that had popular success, before
he became a Sinatra-style pop ballad singer in the '50's.
Then there was Country & Western--especially what was called
"Texas Swing," of which Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys was
the king. Hank Williams Sr. was another important
singer/songwriter of that era and genre.
Over in Memphis there was Sam Phillips and his Sun Studios,
where rockabilly and Elvis Presley were born. Besides Presley,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and
Roy Orbison all began their recording careers at Sun
Studios.
Two other sources of modern rock'n'roll, absolutely essential to the
sound we think of as 60's rock, were, first, the blacks.
blacks began as the music of black sharecroppers in the poor
cotton-farming region of the Mississippi Delta, and traveled north to
Chicago with the sharecroppers as thousands of them moved north in
search of a better life. It was in Chicago that the blacks went from
acoustic solo guitar music to electric guitar-electric bass-drums
combos. Muddy Waters, Little Milton, B.B. King,
and Howlin' Wolf were just a few of these important Chicago
blacks artists.
The last source of modern rock'n'roll is actually a single man.
Les Paul was a studio whiz and guitar player who designed the
Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, and pioneered the technique of
overdubbing, allowing one person to play more than one part on a
recording. Working with his wife Mary Ford, who sang the vocal parts,
Les Paul created a series of two-person recordings that sounded like
an entire band was playing--and the music was all guitar-based.
The 1960's Begin:
As the late fifties gave way to the early sixties, the rockabilly
stars of the previous decade (the Everlys, Elvis,
Roy Orbison) were still having hits, but the older pop-music
stars were fading away as they struggled to find material that would
click with this new and energetic generation of kids. Pop music
gradually became controlled by new young "vocal"-groups, taking their
power from a combination of the performer's charisma along with the
songwriting talents of the production team, who operated behind the
scenes. Eventually rock artists came to be expected to write and even
produce their own songs, becoming responsible for everything about
how their records sounded--but that would have to wait for Marvin
Gaye, Brian Wilson and Lennon & McCartney.
In general there were four main pockets of early 60's pop:
the East Coast DooWop and girl groups were singers and
groups whose origins are in the streetcorner a cappella groups found
in many urban centers. With very rare exceptions, these groups did
not write their own songs, but relied on their handlers to set up the
recording sessions, pick the material, and produce the records. In
fact, many of these behind-the-scenes people eventually became stars
in their own right in the seventies.
The R&B and Soul scene included many talented
people who often didn't receive the popularity of less-talented white
groups, because of barriers and prejudices against buying "race"
records. Later in the decade, after the British groups acknowledged
their debt to soul music, and as the civil rights movement inspired
black pride, the general American public rediscovered these
performers.
the California scene was first dominated by instrumental
surf groups like the Surfaris, the Crossfires, and
Dick Dale & the Del-tones. Dale, the "King of Surf
Guitar," in particular helped define how modern rock guitar solos
would sound. Then the Beach Boys added vocal harmonies to the surf
sound. This surf-&-drag, fun-in-the-sun sound was so popular that
the style showed up all over the place, even in tv theme songs such
as the Munsters and Hawaii Five-O. But the real important stuff was
happening in the recording studios, where young studio wizards like
Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, and the team of Sloan
& Barri began turning the studio itself into their
instrument, looking for new sounds in a quest not for records but for
productions. There were studio svengalis back east, too, including
Bob Crewe and the team of Burt Bacharach & Hal
David. Modern artists like Prince, Lindsey Buckingham, and Jimmy
Jam & Terry Lewis who use synths and samplings, are rather like
the spiritual descendants of those white suburban teenagers, taking
their distinctive sound with them regardless of the particular artist
they happen to be working with.
The Motown record label in Detroit was founded by Berry
Gordy Jr., and while its recording stars were all black, still you
couldn't necessarily call this totally black or "soul" music. Instead,
Gordy controlled the performing styles, clothes, even hairdos of his
artists, grooming them for success in the wider mainstream (read
white) American audiences. The label's slogan, "the sound of young
America," and their nickname, "Hitsville USA" point to the wide net
that Motown attempted to cast. Among the many successful performers
who recorded for Motown, one ought to mention Marvin Gaye, who
was first to take control of his own career and insist on artistic
control over his recordings. Later Stevie Wonder and Smokey
Robinson would also prove to be outstanding writers and
producers, but Marvin Gaye was the first at Motown.
The British Invade:
With 1963 comes the end of rock'n'roll and the beginnings of "rock."
Of course, in 1963 John Kennedy was assassinated, and his vice
president Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president. Soon LBJ
escalated the United States' involvement in Viet Nam and declared war
on poverty as part of his Great Society program, a systematic
widening of the government's powers that required higher taxes and
spurred ruinous inflation. Meanwhile, the televised police beatings
of members of Martin Luther King's nonviolent Civil Rights movement
made it plain to many people that the powers that be were not
necessarily interested in protecting people's human and
constitutional rights. Thus it wasn't long before the youth of
America was finding itself deeply questioning its country's leaders.
A large part of the innocence went out of pop music. And then came
the British.... The Beatles were merely the most visible of
the many British music acts that found success in America in the
mid-60's. Many people count the Fab Four's landing at La Guardia
airport on February 7, 1964, and their performance on the Ed Sullivan
Show a week later, as the official beginning of what came to be
called the "British Invasion." The Beatles were hugely popular; at
one point they had the top five records on the Billboard Hot 100
list. Their sound and attitudes influenced everything that came
afterwards--even today, when kids sing along with pop tunes on the
radio and sing soft Britty "r's", they're unconsciously mimicking the
English sound. Like the killer meteor that caused mass extinctions 65
million years ago, clearing the way for a whole new evolutionary path
based on mammals instead of reptiles, the British Invasion killed off
almost all the existing American groups (only the Beach Boys, Four
Seasons, and the biggest Motown acts managed to survive). In their
place rose up all sorts of American groups who dressed and sounded
just like the Brits, as for instance the Knickerbockers,
Beau Brummels, Buckinghams, Sir Douglas Quintet,
and Turtles--before the Turtles became famous they used to
hang out at bowling alleys and order tea with plenty of milk,
speaking in fake English accents and trying to pass themselves off as
Gerry and the Pacemakers. Then the folkies went
electric. For this the great turning point was 1965, at the Newport
Folk Festival. Bob Dylan turned up to perform with an electric
guitar, and was practically booed off the stage, but he had shown the
new path for folk music. And the Byrds had their first big hit
with Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," using that record to show how
folkie songs could be built on a Beatle-esque sound (the first time
group founder Roger McGuinn saw the Beatles on tv, he went
right out to buy a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar just like George
Harrison's). From Songs to Productions: Rock'n'Roll's death and the
Birth of "Art Rock": The next two years, from 1965 to 1967, saw the
most amazing experiments and changes in rock music ever. The simplest
way to watch those changes is to review the back and forth record
releases by the Beatles and the Beach Boys, perhaps the two most
innovative recording groups of the mid 60's. Back in 1964, these
groups produced such fun energetic pop as:
| BEATLES | BEACH BOYS |
| A Hard Day's Night | I Get Around |
By 1965 these groups became more studio-oriented and less interested in performance-friendly songs. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had a nervous breakdown while on tour at the beginning of 1965, so he stopped touring and concentrated on working in the studio. John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles also became more interested in the production angle, collaborating more with their longtime producer George Martin.
| BEATLES | BEACH BOYS |
| Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) | God Only Knows |
| Michelle | Pet Sounds |
In 1966 the Beatles announced that they would no longer tour at all and retired full-time to the recording studio. John was particularly interested in using recording tricks in Beatles songs, and the subject matter of their songs was becoming more and more openly radical. Brian, meanwhile, was now working completely with studio musicians, often using 25 musicians at a time in what was in effect the first rock-orchestra. He stopped writing songs in the traditional manner, instead "constructing" songs out of recorded bits and pieces (pre-dating Todd Rundgren's recent forays into "interactive music" by 25 years).
| BEATLES | BEACH BOYS |
| Eleanor Rigby | Good Vibrations |
| Love You To | Heroes and Villains |
| Tomorrow Never Knows | Cabinessence |
1967 saw the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile. Sgt. Pepper was a complete and revolutionary album, full of weird effects and songs about drugs. Smiley Smile was also a revolutionary album, full of weird effects and songs about drugs. But it was not a finished album. Brian went through another breakdown, this time caused by LSD, and the album he released wound up a pale imitation of what he had intended to produce. Sgt. Pepper became the anthem for 1967's "Summer of Love;" it was the height of flower power, arty progressive music that seemed to influence the social fabric, and of the youth movement's naive sense that a new age was about to dawn.
| BEATLES | BEACH BOYS |
| Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds | Fall Breaks and Back to Winter |
| Within You Without You | Wind Chimes |
| A Day In The Life | Vegetables |
1968 & 1969: The Unraveling:
No sooner had 1967's "summer of love" passed than it all started to
come undone in 1968. In that year both Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King were assassinated. LBJ had so escalated America's
involvement in the Viet Nam conflict that across the nation's
campuses students were rioting, while the "war on poverty" seemed to
be going nowhere. The constant criticism from every corner finally
convinced Johnson not to run for re-election. There were riots in the
inner cities of many urban centers around the country (which would
continue to occur each summer for the next several years). The civil
rights movement gave up its nonviolence philosophy as SNCC was taken
over by radical extremists; in Oakland the black Panther movement, the
extremest of the extreme, was born. Richard Nixon was elected
president, and Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California; both
ran on strong law-and-order campaigns.
Rock music took a step back from its drug-fueled experiments of just
a year before, and turned to less-experimental sounds, while the
topics became angrier. Creedence Clearwater Revival was the
most successful of the roots rock groups, with hits ranging from
"Green River" and "Proud Mary" to the ferocious anti-Viet Nam song
"Fortunate Son." Even mainstream acts like Elvis Presley and
the Supremes released protest songs. The Yardbirds
broke up, and Led Zeppelin, the quintessential seventies hard rock
band, grew up out of its ashes (that was also the year that the first
version of Pink Floyd appeared, although it would still take a couple
years of tinkering with the line-up to create the
progressive-album-rock juggernaut that would reign over the FM
airwaves in the next decade). Finally, the rise of the black Power
movement helped spur soul music to heights of popularity never before
experienced. Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin became
major stars.
The next year, 1969, saw two important rock festivals,
Woodstock in August and Altamont in December. While people
tend to remember Woodstock fondly because the hippies were mostly
able to organize and run a 450,000-person three-day festival with few
major problems, in retrospect its overwhelmed facilities (only
200,000 had been expected) and lousy weather were a symbol that
Woodstock was in reality the end of an era, not the dawning of the
Age of Aquarius. Only a few months later, at a concert in Altamont,
California, (which was documented in the movie "Gimme Shelter,") a
fan was knifed to death in the audience as the Rolling Stones
performed on stage.
In 1969, Charles Manson and his gang were living in Beach Boy
Dennis Wilson's house, sponging off Dennis and using his
credit cards. Manson was writing songs and trying to break into the
music business. At the same time he was also trying to build up a new
religion with himself as God, with followers who were willing to do
his bidding. Musically, he got as far as to get the Beach Boys to
record one of his songs ("Never Learn Not to Love," on the album
20/20), before Dennis got fed up and kicked him and his gang out. A
month later, Manson and his followers committed the infamous
Tate-LaBianca murders. The grizzly multiple murder was part ritual
sacrifice to show loyalty to Manson, and part warning to the music
business not to mess with Charlie (a producer used to own the house
in which the murders took place). One of the clues that led to their
finally being caught was the fact that Manson had smeared "Helter
Skelter" (a Beatles song title from the White Album) in blood on the
walls at the scene of the crime. Seems like '60's rock no longer
pointed the way to a better world.
By the end of 1969, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones of the
Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix had all died of drug
overdoses. In England, the Beatles produced a documentary ("Get
Back") that had been meant as a kind of new start for the group, but
which instead showed how the boys could barely stand to be in the
same room with each other anymore. In America, on the tiny island of
Chappaquiddick off Martha's Vineyard, Senator Edward Kennedy was
involved in a car crash in which a young woman died. The bizarre and
ambiguous circumstances surrounding the fatal accident put a stain on
the remaining Kennedy brother's reputation that he was never able to
shake.
In 1969 Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but when that singular
moment in the history of mankind was announced at an Earth-bound rock
festival, the self-absorbed audience booed the news. A year later,
the Beatles broke up and Diana Ross left the Supremes; one year after
that, Berry Gordy moved his Motown operations from Detroit to Los
Angeles. The musical decade of the sixties was over.
TEXTBOOK EXAMPLES OF THE GENRES
1950's pop music
the "popular vocalist" type such as often recorded in Los Angeles for Capitol Records, Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, The Four Freshmen, Patti Page, Bobby Darin, Tony Bennett
Rhythm'n'blacks, Rockabilly
"Race" music (which eventually became soul music)
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Roy Orbison, Sam Cooke, The Coasters, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Billy Haley & The Comets, The Everly Brothers, Rickie Nelson, Little Richard, LaVern Baker.
1960's early pop music
the behind-the-scenes people who wrote and produced songs, especially for the NY groups (and who eventually in many cases became the sensitive singer/songwriters of the 1970's), Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich, Neil Diamond, Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Quincy Jones, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman.
New York Doo Wop and girl groups
The Skyliners, The Tokens, The Shirelles, The Chiffons, The Shangri- Las, The Duprees, Dion & The Belmonts, Little Eva, The Four Seasons.
R&B, Soul
Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, The Isley Brothers, Jackie Wilson, The Impressions, Inez Foxx, Wilson Pickett, The Drifters, Ike & Tina Turner, Percy Sledge, James Brown, Ray Charles, Booker T. & The MG's, Ben E. King, Otis Redding.
California Studio Wizards and Surf Groups
Beach Boys/Brian Wilson, Jan & Dean, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, Phil Spector, Dick Dale & The Deltones, The Surfaris, The Ventures, The Fantastic Baggys (Phil Sloan &Steve Barri), Terry Melcher, Gary Usher, Curt Boettcher, Gary Zekley.
Detroit Motown (Berry Gordy, Jr., founder and producer)
The Supremes Marvin Gaye, The Temptations Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops Mary Wells, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Holland, Dozier & Holland (producers & songwriters).
The British Invasion:
in their own category
The Beatles
the mop-tops
Chad & Jeremy, Peter & Gordon, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas, Gerry & The Pacemakers.
mods and rockers
Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Spencer Davis Group, The Hollies, The Swinging black Jeans, The Kinks, The Small Faces, electric blacks, Derek & The Dominoes, Cream, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin.
the phonies and wanna-be's, and other heavily-influenced's
The Standells, The Monkees, The Buckinghams, The Searchers, Tommy James & The Shondells, The Turtles, The Beau Brummells.
Electric Folk
The Byrds, The Lovin' Spoonful, Donovan, The Band, The Mamas & Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Creedence Clearwater Revival.
White blacks, black-eyed Soul
Janis Joplin, Mitch Ryder, Three Dog Night, The Animals.
Mainstream Protest Songs
War (What Is It Good For), Eve of Destruction, Think, Who'll Stop The Rain, Cloud Nine, Abraham Martin & John, Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), What's Going On, Living For The City, Love Child, Have You Ever Seen The Rain, Ball of Confusion, Fortunate Son, In The Ghetto.
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