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Week 4 |
| The Course |
Rock n' Roll really begins |
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Please watch this whole series (5 parts) - it's worth
watching! early days of rock and roll documentary (part 1) part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 and watch these The 1960s (Part 1) (Part 2) |
Although
a few disk jockeys were playing rhythm and blues occasionally,
this idea really came to fruition with Alan Freed who ended up
eventually at WINS (1010 WINS, New York). Some
say he coined the term "rock n' roll," although that
term could be found in at least several rhythm and blues songs
of the time. Freed discovered that the baby boomer audience he
catered to was "crazy for" the highly rythmic dance music of
the R & B sound. It was loud, fun, and not associated with
their parents generation. Teens of the time had become
(according to the parents) rebellious, difficult and hard to
deal with. Post war teens felt misunderstood, undervalued and
displaced. Perhaps this teenage angst was best represented in the movie "Rebel Without A Cause," starring James Dean. He represented the "bad boy" image of the new, rather bleak existential view of the world he inhabited. This had been forshadowed by the Marlon Brando films "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On The Waterfront." Later, on TV, Henry Winkler's "Fonzie" parodied the "bad boy image" as well. The American anti hero became a reality, and teens really chose their new roles according to their bringing up. This was the time of "beatniks," Greenwich Village, folk music, beards and scruffy dressing (jeans, Fry boots, Pendelton shirts, etc. ) A few years later, the Beat Generation, represented by Jack Keroac, Gregory Corso, Bobby Freedman, Alan Ginsberg and a host of other poetry reading, philosophical existentialists became the "Hippies" (The Hip Generation) and the generation of "make love, not war." As a result of this angst, America began to divide into separate and distinct groups, politically, philosophically, etc. Rock music generally showed both sides for some years until it split into subgroups and subgroups of subgroups. And thus, the vulgar anti hero (rock n' roll bad boy) becomes the popular idol and trend setter for American teens in the 1950s. African American songwriters and performers become part of the triumph of vulgarity in the U.S. (think of "The Ugly American") Up 'till now, African American rhythm and blues recordings had been considered "race records," appealing to only African American audiences. With the advent of Alan Freed and others, who discovered the huge market among all teens for this music, African American musicians and songwriters began to find themselves appearing on major network TV shows like Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," a show devoted to teens dancing to new records and featuring almost every episode another "new" artist lip-syncing to their new recording. This show was incredibly popular, being aired in the afternoons after school was out. if you appeared on this show, sales of your record were almost certain to rise. The other show that almost guaranteed stardom was the Ed Sullivan Show Now we'll listen to The Ink Spots to see how rhythm and blues, sung by a sophisticated and very talented group simply became the major rock n' roll. You should notice there is a "lead singer," and the other three sing "Oo" a lot of the time - there is the comedic talking "bridge" (between verses) which Lieber and Stoller used so succesfully in songs like "Charley Brown," Here is Steve Allen reading the early Gene Vincent song Bee Bop-a loo-la. This is a good example of the lineal-sequential intellect mocking the lyrics of this song. As Marshall McLuhan said, (I paraphrase [gynormously]) the world of rock music is not a world of "content" but a world of simultinaity - rock music is not listened to, it is felt. The text is really incidental here, so the mocking of those lyrics as "poetry" is funny, but out of step with rock n' roll as a sonic environment, not a visual one. Here's another with Peter Sellers doing a parody of "She Loves You" by The Beatles and another "It's Been A Hard Day's Night." |