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QThe other day I turned on a Frank Sinatra pro-

gram and I noted the shrill whistling sound,

created supposedly by a bunch of girls cheer-

ing. Last night as I heard Lucky Strike pro-

duce more of this same hysteria I thought:

how easy it would be for certain-minded man-

ufacturers to create another Hitler here in

America through the influence of mass-hyste-

ria! I believe that those who are using this shrill

whistling sound are aware that it is similar to

that which produced Hitler. That they intend

to get a Hitler in by first planting in the minds

of the people that men like Frank Sinatra are

O.K. therefore this future Hitler will be O.K.”—Anonymous letter to the FBI, August 13, 1943

“I have carefully noted the content of your let-

ter and wish to thank you for volunteering your

comments and observations in this regard.”—John Edgar Hoover, September 2, 1943

John Edgar Hoover’s response to the

anonymous writer concerned about Frank

Sinatra’s influence on millions of young people

seems dismissive. However, this letter

launched a five-decade FBI investigation of

Sinatra’s life and influence. Sinatra, a smooth

crooner who rocketed to stardom, worried the

FBI with his social and political influences,

particularly on the teenage population. Sinatra

was known to socialize with people from

organized crime, and the FBI worried about

what type of message his impressionable

audience would get from his songs. During

Sinatra’s time (and especially today), teens

were huge consumers of the music industry,

often determining the hottest artists and

breathing life into new music genres, like rock

& roll. The worry expressed by this anony-

mous writer would only be multiplied a hun-

dredfold when teens came forth as a major

market for a new and more disturbing musical

style: rock & roll.

01

WHAT WERE THE FIRST INFLUENCESOF ROCK & ROLL?

HOW DID NEW TECHNOLOGIES INFLUENCEMUSICAL STYLES?

WHAT MUSICAL STYLES PREFIGURED ROCK & ROLL?

HOW DID CROSSOVER HITS PAVE THE WAY FOR ROCK & ROLL?

CHAPTER

“Dear Sir:

THE PREHISTORY OFROCK & ROLL

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A SHEET-MUSIC ECONOMYAND A NEW MASS-MARKETMass-produced sheet music made up the bulk of the music publishingbusiness in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although recording andreproducing sound were still scratchy at best, printing sheet music wasmuch easier. For the first time in history, a single song could be mass-pro-duced and then sell thousands of copies in a single urban area, somethingpractically impossible with the oral folk tradition and certainly never so prof-itable. Sheet music sales took off in the early part of the century. Between1890 and 1909, sales more than tripled; and by 1910, sales totaled 30 mil-lion copies (Starr and Waterman 2003, 29). Because a single song sold foranything from 25 to 60 cents (roughly about five to thirteen dollars intoday’s dollar value), volume was essential to this method of publication.

Tin Pan AlleyTin Pan Alley referred to the many new publishing houses that were open-ing in lower Manhattan, on 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In

the early 1900s, the first major wave of Jewish Eastern Europeanimmigrants began many of these publishing houses, whichwere so popular that they challenged even the establishedpublishers. While the older publishers generally made theirmoney by publishing European-style parlor songs and clas-sical scores, this collection of newer publishers broke intothe business with mass-produced popular songs. At first,these songs were performed in vaudeville theaters as a

1921W.C. Handy and HarryPace form Black Swan,the first AfricanAmerican-ownedrecord company

1926Launch of the firstnationwide commer-cial radio network inthe United States

1914World War I begins with theassassination of ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand

1918World War I ends with theTreaty of Versailles

1920Prohibitionbegins with the18th Amendment

1929The Great Depressionbegins with the stockmarket crash of 1929

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1925Bessie Smith recordsW.C. Handy’s“St. Louis Blues,”introducing the bluesto many Americans

1918Irving Berlin writes“God Bless America,”at the beginning ofthe Golden Age of standards

1920OKeh becomes firstrecord company totarget African Americanaudiences with MamieSmith’s “Crazy Blues”

The Prehistory of Rock & Roll (1950)

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There are many competing stories about the “birth” of rock & roll, butone thing is certain: the audience that nurtured it was the postwarboom generation of teenagers. So, what brought rock & roll on thescene? There are numerous contributing factors, from the evolution ofthe way music was performed, heard, and ultimately popularized to thetransition from live performances to records as a major distributionmethod of popular music to the new technologies, such as radio net-works and electrical recording, that made it possible for music to beheard from coast to coast and beyond. Rock & roll seemed to combineall of these influences with the collective energy of the postwar gener-ation. Chapter 2 deals with these competing stories of rock & roll’s“birth” more closely, but first it is important to recognize the musicalconditions leading up to the decade after World War II—the era thatbirthed rock & roll.

Mongrel Genealogy:The Ancestorsof Rock & RollAlthough the end of World War II is considered the cradle ofrock & roll, the genre’s roots can be traced back to the late1800s. Rock & roll’s parentage is like a family tree turnedupside-down. Instead of having just two sources,rock & roll contains elements—either culturallyor musically—of Tin Pan Alley, jazz, blues, folk,country, and rhythm & blues—sometimes in bits,and often all at once. For this reason, no musicalchart could contain the new genre; the hits ofElvis seemed to climb up three or four of theBillboard charts at once. Some of the contributing pop-ular music genres that led to rock & roll originated in theUnited States, while others hailed from foreign shores.

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WHAT WERE THE FIRST INFLUENCES OF ROCK & ROLL?

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part of variety shows before later integration with a new form of entertain-ment: Broadway musicals.

Tin Pan Alley—so called because of the sound of dozens of pianosplaying all kinds of tunes at once—was once the center of the popular sheetmusic publishing world. Composers and lyricists churned out popularsongs that were then copied and published in-house. Song pluggers werepaid to get specific publishers’ songs played and purchased then hawkedthe tunes all over the city. During the day they went to big departmentstores such as Macy’s or Woolworth’s to play their tunes for customers, and

1941U.S. entry intoWorld War IIfollowing attackon Pearl Harbor

1944The Columbus Day Riot: Sinatra, Goodman, andpop star hysteria at theParamount Theater

1953Big Mama Thornton’s“Hound Dog” (later ahit for Elvis) spendsseven weeks on the R&B charts

1953Hank Williamsdies at 30 inhis car on NewYear’s Eve.

1945World War II ends with the surrenderof Japan

1938 1944 1950 1956

1938Robert Johnson dies at 27 yearsold, havingreleased only22 tracks

1940Woody Guthrieforms the AlmanacSingers with PeteSeeger, the firsturban folk group

1933Prohibition ends whenthe 21st Amendment isratified, repealing the18th Amendment

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195

at night to vaudeville venues where they tried to convince performers toincorporate new songs into their acts. This last method sometimes involvedbribing vaudeville performers to perform particular songs in the hopes ofincreased exposure and therefore higher sheet music sales.

Irving Berlin, a song plugger who eventually became one of themost famous popular songwriters of all time, got his start by being paidto sing along with composer Harry von Tilzer’s songs when they werebeing performed in vaudeville halls. The hierarchical structure of Tin PanAlley was later somewhat replicated in the Brill Building on Broadway,where aspiring songwriters would work in small cubicles to write songsfor various labels and artists (see Chapter 4).

Printed Music Becomes PrimaryTin Pan Alley, in its goal to publish music for the people but not necessar-ily by them, represented a huge shift in popular music and mass media thatin some ways continues to this day. Composers wrote specifically for apopular audience. One successful writer, Harry von Tilzer, advised hisyounger colleagues to keep the range of their melodies small so that theycould be sung by almost anyone (Starr and Waterman, 2003, 30).

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the method of distribution forpopular music was printed music. This allowed for mass distribution ofthe score of a single song or tune; however, distribution of a single

5

TIN PAN ALLEY area of Manhattan around 28th Street where much ofthe sheet music for the popular vaudeville tunes of the early 20th centurywere written.

SONG PLUGGERS employees of Tin Pan Alley publishing companiespaid to promote their employers’ songs around the city, in places rang-ing anywhere from department stores to saloons.

IRVING BERLIN one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters;wrote “God Bless America” and “White Christmas,” as well as the musicfor “Annie, Get Your Gun”.

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performance was not yet possible. In this way, the score preceded theperformance, something that had been commonplace in classical musicbut was now available in popular music as well. This mass productionhad a few downsides that led to homogenization; customers of varyingskills had to be able to play the scores themselves, so innovation and vir-tuosity did not generally sell well. Although the music incorporated ele-ments of other styles such as ragtime music, it still tended to be simplerthan the highly syncopated rags of Scott Joplin.

THE “GOLDEN AGE” OF TIN PAN ALLEY: 1920s AND 1930sTin Pan Alley’s “Golden Age” is the source of many of the standards thatwe have today, including some that have been reinterpreted and replayedfor almost a century now. These songs were a part of the Broadway musi-cals of that era, which had by and large replaced vaudeville theaters asthe primary proponents of new popular music. However, for much of the

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sources of information and entertainment. In fact, the Depression hurt therecord companies so much that their sales dove from $106 million in 1921to $6 million in 1933 (Gillet 1996, 4). Record sales of the new “swing”music by big bands made up much of the recovery in sales to $44 millionby 1939, but it was the post-war boom that really improved the health ofthe recording industry. The audience that emerged at the end of the warwas a much younger one than had previously existed. Teenagers now hadmoney to spend, and much of this money went to music.

RECORDING TAKES HOLDWith the development of commercial radio and record players, musiclistening became at least potentially a private activity. In 1919, the VictorCompany released the first hit song ever popularized as a recording beforeit was issued as sheet music. Later that same year, the Victor Company

Technological BreakthroughsCreate a New AudienceBetween 1900 and the mid-1930s, the most influential form of dissemi-nation for music moved from printed sheet music to 78 r.p.m. records toradio broadcasts. One of the most significant effects of this transition fromprinted to recorded music was a shift in how audiences received music.In the past, people had used sheet music to perform popular songs athome, with audiences standing around the piano, a middle-class parlorstaple. Now, however, people were able to listen to the radio or torecords, changing both the economics and the production of music.

During the Great Depression, radio was favored over the phono-graph, Radio was free to listen to, and with the start of commercial radioin 1920 and radio networks in 1926, listeners could tap into national

early part of the Golden Age, the musicals were merely vehicles for thesongs; the shows themselves were largely forgettable. Where present-dayBroadway show tunes often expand on the thoughts of a particularcharacter, a song like “I Got Rhythm” employs a vaguer lyricism, makingit possible for other performers to reinterpret it. Golden Age songs tendtoward thematic and formal conservatism and sometimes employnostalgic elements—a hit for Depression audiences looking for an escape.In many ways, these standards bear much greater resemblance to mod-ern-day pop and rock songs than to today’s Broadway show tunes.

Golden Age SuccessesThe greatest artists of the Golden Age wrote many songs and scores forBroadway stage musicals, and the songs themselves have generally out-lasted the musicals. Many of the composers are still very well known:Irving Berlin (“God Bless America,” “White Christmas”), Richard Rodgerswith both Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II (the musical Oklahoma!in 1943), Cole Porter (the musical Kiss Me Kate), and the brothersGeorge and Ira Gershwin (“I Got Rhythm,” the musical Porgy and Bess).These composers’ diverse output ranged from Berlin’s decidedly prolificcareer—899 songs still in print in 1969 (Starr and Waterman 2003, 64)—to the double entendres and witty social commentary of the Ivy League-educated Cole Porter. George Gershwin,who also composed the orchestral workRhapsody in Blue, did much to bringthe classical and popular audiencestogether, while Richard Rodgers,writing the songs for many hitmusicals, worked to developthe Broadway musical as acoherent art form. Thesecomposers exemplify thework ethic and versatilitythat were required tosucceed as a Tin PanAlley writer.

>>> Irving Berlin, the most prolific of the Tin Pan Alleycomposers, has many songs that are still popular today.

RAGTIME a “rag” is a derivation of an African American term describingthe process of syncopating a piece of music.

SYNCOPATED describing the state in which the accent of a measure ofmusic falls either between the beat or on a beat not normally accented.

STANDARDS songs with predictable forms written during the Golden Agethat were commonly interpreted by many performers.

R.P.M. revolutions per minute, or the speed at which a record rotates on aturntable; the quicker the speed, the less information can be encoded persquare inch of vinyl.

RADIO NETWORK a series of linked commercial radio stations, allowingfor live broadcasts to be transmitted across the country.

ELECTRICAL RECORDING method of recording that utilizes an ampli-fied microphone to capture and transmit sound to an electromechanicalrecord engraver.

CROONING an exaggerated style of singing that developed withthe invention of the electric microphone, allowing for more intimacy thanwas previously possible with acoustic megaphones.

HOW DID NEW TECHNOLOGIES INFLUENCE MUSICAL STYLES?

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produced the first record to sell more than a million copies. In this record-ing—the Selvin Novelty Orchestra’s “Dardanella”—listeners could hear“Oriental”-sounding banjos and saxophones, sounds that would certainlyhave been difficult to transcribe as piano-based sheet music.

Even though more musicians began recording their work, most per-formers continued to see live performance and sheet music as their mainway to make a buck. However, practical home sound reproduction—products such as the radio and the phonograph—continued to improve,making recorded music a cheaper, more viable option for personal listen-ing. In the mid-1920s national record sales overtook sheet music for thefirst time ever. Because rock & roll revolved around the recording studio,this commercial feat marks a momentous shift in the conditions thatwould lead to the emergence of the genre.

POPULAR MUSIC AND THE NATIONAL SCENEIn 1926, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) launched one ofthe first nationwide commercial radio networks in the United States,heralding the beginning of a new market for popular music. Now listen-

ers in Chicago could hear live performances by singers in New York,laying the groundwork for national music celebrity. Radio networks andmass-distributed phonographs allowed for regional artists to reacha wider audience without necessarily displacing or destroyingregional scenes.

However, the lack of any electric amplification required an exagger-ated style of singing; the nuance of today’s recording was impossiblewith the acoustic megaphones that vocalists had to use. In the days ofacoustic recording, the entire band played into a large megaphone, withthe singer at the front; a needle engraved the record mechanically in onetake, with no mixing board—a fixture in any modern recording studio. Inthis early studio, the singer practically had to shout over the band to beheard on the recording. By the 1920s, the development of electricalrecording, which utilized an amplified microphone to capture and trans-mit sound information to an electromechanical record cutting mecha-nism, allowed singers to sing at a more natural volume. Without havingto shout, singers could deliver performances that gave vocal recordingsa novel feeling of intimacy. This pseudo-intimacy led to a new style ofsinging, called crooning, begun by Bing Crosby and developed by twoof the great crooners: Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole.

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of the microphone after instrumentalists in much“the way that Tommy [Dorsey] played his trom-bone.” (Starr and Waterman, 2003, 158–159).Without the need to shout into a megaphone,Sinatra could afford to sing an entire phrase with-out taking a breath. The expressive qualities of thisbel canto singing, modeled after the Italian operaticstyle, were a huge hit with audiences across theUnited States (Morris, 2009).

The new technology also allowed for national stardomon unprecedented levels. Crosby and other crooners werearguably the first national superstars, in part because lis-teners felt a connection to their personal lives throughthe intimacy of their voices.

The electrical recording system marked a huge change in American popu-lar music. Without having to shout into a large, acoustic megaphone,singers could now convey a large range of emotion and intimacy in theirrecordings. Crooners such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Nat “King”Cole used this refined amplification technology to concentrate on pitch andsensitivity in their interpretations, leading to a wide variety of singing styles.

Although this originality was supposedly the goal, Sinatra wrotein 1974 that “everybody was trying to copy the Crosby style—thecasual kind of raspy sound in the throat,” but it occurred to Sinatrathat “maybe the world didn’t need another Crosby.” Sinatra devel-oped a new technique centered on the electric microphone, in whichthe microphone was more like an instrument than an accessory tothe natural human voice. Indeed, for Sinatra the microphone was anextension of his singing technique. He modeled his technical control

Electrical Recording

Black Swan RecordsAlthough recording technologies werebecoming increasingly popular for musicdistribution, in 1920, there were no recordingstudios that would allow African Americanartists to record their work. To remedy this, in1921, Harry Herbert Pace created the PacePhonograph Corporation, Inc, later renamedBlack Swan Records. Pace believed that therewas a large market for these artists’ work,although he had not been able to convincethe large recording studios: “Companieswould not entertain any thought of recording acolored musician or colored voice. I thereforedecided to form my own company and make

such recordings as I believed would sell”(Scott 2001).

Pace signed on artists such as FletcherHenderson, Ethel Waters, and RevellaHughes, and consumers quickly proved thatPace had been correct in his beliefs. However,this success came with a cost. After thecompletion of a successful tour, otherrecording companies began signing AfricanAmerican singers, and Black Swan lost itscompetitive edge. Pace closed its doors in1924. However, this company took a majorstep in helping African American artists breakinto the recording industry and paved the wayfor the rock & roll artists to come.

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In 1931, American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald described the JazzAge: “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age ofexcess, and it was an age of satire” (Fitzgerald 1996, xvi). Indeed,Fitzgerald’s writing gives a good picture of what could be calledAmerica’s first youth-culture phenomenon. Usually rich and carefree,Fitzgerald’s flappers saw jazz as a way to rebel against their parents’19th-century morality, but African Americans were nowhere to be seen.Whiteman’s Orchestra was relevant in this regard, particularly because itpromised some contact with the exotic, exciting new musical form, with-out actually requiring any contact with the people who were trulyresponsible for it. Although it is easy to get caught up denigrating thisgeneration for its exclusion of African Americans—Whiteman’s bandwas completely white, made “multicultural” by its mixture of Europeanheritages—it did set the stage for the upcoming swing bands, some ofwhom were pioneers in integration.

THE SWING BANDS GET IN THE MOODIn the late 1920s, a new style of jazz music called “swing” sprang up.Led by celebrity bandleaders, swing bands were more like PaulWhiteman’s Orchestra in size and like Dixieland dance bands in theiremphasis on professionalism.

MAJOR SWING BANDSAND BANDLEADERSIn 1939, the Glenn Miller Orchestra ruled the charts for 12 weeks with“In the Mood,” a 12-bar blues-based swing tune. William “Count”Basie, a blues pianist and bandleader, exemplified the Kansas Cityblues style. Bandleader Duke Ellington took a unique experimentalapproach to his band, developing new instrumental combinations and

harmonies. His fusion of various ele-ments of American music from the min-strel song to ragtime to Tin Pan Alley tothe blues in his own style made him oneof the most important musicians andcomposers of the 20th century.

Famed trombonist Tommy Dorseyled several bands during his career.Dorsey—who often played ballads—had apure tone and a gift for phrasing that someconsider unmatched to this day. Dubbedthe “King of Swing” by radio stations,Benny Goodman was a clarinetist. Hispopularity among the white populationsoared despite Goodman being the firstmajor bandleader to integrate his band,hiring African American pianist TeddyWilliams, guitarist Charlie Christian, andvibraphonist Lionel Hampton.

The Big Band SingersGo SoloAlthough the big bands struck a chordwith listeners amidst the increased

THE JAZZ CRAZEBeginning around World War I, an influential “jazz craze” swept both theUnited States and Europe. This jazz craze followed a short-lived ragtimecraze led by composer Scott Joplin. Joplin began by studying classicalmusic theory, but while working as a café pianist developed a style thatimprovised on themes of well-known songs. These “rags” caught onbecause of their heavy rhythmic syncopation, which was practicallyunknown in most music popular among white audiences.

Jazz, born in New Orleans of Caribbean and African influences, alsorelied heavily on syncopation. New Orleans was home to many popula-tions and cultures, particularly French, the people who lived there oftencame together for weekend musical performances in city parks or townhall dances. These gatherings allowed people from diverse backgroundsto share their various music styles with one another. The proximity of NewOrleans to the Caribbean also contributed to jazz’s growth in the city, asit brought high-energy dance bands that added loud percussion, wind,or brass instruments to the more standard lineup of string bass, guitar,violin, or even banjo. These dance bands did what ragtime pianists didto the rhythms of European marches—except they did it all at once,improvising together. Their music crossed racial lines, as white audiencessought out the illicit thrills of the hybridAfrican American hot music in theTenderloin district of New Orleans. Jazzspecifically targeted a dance audience, andthe genre caught on like wildfire.

A Victim of Its OwnSuccessPaul Whiteman’s Ambassador Orchestrawas the most commercially successfuljazz ensemble of the 1920s. AlthoughWhiteman was an excellent businessmanwho helped defend jazz against its mostlywhite detractors, his orchestra played anon-threatening, severely attenuated formof the music originally imported from NewOrleans to white audiences around theUnited States. This early example of whitemainstreaming of African American musicwas replicated again and again through-out the 20th century. Whiteman’s stagger-ing 150 top-selling records between 1920and 1934 set the stage for hits suchElvis’s “Hound Dog.”

WHAT MUSICAL STYLES PREFIGURED ROCK & ROLL?

HOT MUSIC a catch-all term to describe jazz at its beginning; it referredto the driving, syncopated rhythms of the Dixieland dance bands.

WILLIAM “COUNT” BASIE the pianist and bandleader most closelyallied with the blues tradition, exemplified the Kansas City style in that hewas inspired by the blues.

BENNY GOODMAN one of the most successful swing band leaders, anda pioneer in integrating his band.

RACE RECORDS any record marketed toward a predominantly AfricanAmerican audience.

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commercial success.

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optimism at the end of the Great Depression, they did not last throughthe end of World War II for myriad reasons. During the war, band mem-bers were drafted into the army, and the wartime audience was morefocused on supporting the troops than on attending dances. It becameexpensive for bands to tour, and wartime gas rationing made fuelingvehicles difficult. Meanwhile, public tastes changed and the big bandaudience for shrunk. Even as the big bands declined, however, thesingers who had performed with them took off. The most charismaticsingers, such as Nat “King” Cole, Rosemary Clooney, andFrank Sinatra, went solo, and the new crooner era revisitedthe standards of the Golden Age just as the big bands hadbefore them.

Nat “King” Cole introduced the world to the idea of thestill widely imitated drumless trio with Cole on piano, accom-panied by guitar and bass. The most successful AfricanAmerican recording star of the post-war decade, Cole enjoyedcrossover success by scoring hits on both the race (rhythm &blues) and pop charts. Like Cole, Rosemary Clooney andPeggy Lee had their starts in the swing era and became suc-cessful solo artists. Both recorded with the illustrious FrankSinatra—quite possibly the first “teen idol” in American popu-lar music—during their careers.

Race Records and the BluesIf Tin Pan Alley catered to mostly white, middle-class audiencesshopping for sheet music at department stores, then the bluesdid just the opposite originally. Music labels originally referred toblues and jazz records as race records, although this was notnecessarily intended as a derogatory term. As some of the firstrecordings made by and for African Americans, race records ini-tially catered to black audiences in the rural South. The firstAfrican American-owned record company, Black Swan, wasfounded in 1921 to record and distribute such recordings.Entering the record business proved difficult for Black Swan,however, as many white-owned companies attempted to ham-per Black Swan’s success. For example, one white-ownedcompany bought out a local pressing plant to stop Black Swan

from manufacturing race records. Despite such obstacles, Black Swanfound a way to produce its first record. The company’s success provid-ed it with the resources to buy its own pressing plant, eliminating allobstacles from the company’s competitors. By the 1920s, Southernmusic such as the blues reached new audiences because of migrationfrom the South to Northern cities including Chicago. These changingdemographics opened up new markets, as people moving to the citiesstill wanted to hear Southern-influenced music, and people remaining in

Breakdown of “Race Music” Record Releasesin the 1920s and 1930s

Blues

Gospel

Jazz

Total “race music” records: 15,000

3,250 10,000

1,750

“Race music” was the general term used forall music, including jazz, gospel, and the

blues, aimed at an African American audience.

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Source: St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, “Race Records,”http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov_2419101005.

T he Columbus Day Riot in 1944 was the first example of pophysteria. Sinatra had bought out his contract with TommyDorsey’s band, and in 1942 he debuted with Benny Goodman’s

band at the Paramount Theater. By 1944 when they returned foranother concert, Sinatra had become a huge sensation. Thirty thousandfans showed up for tickets at the 3,600-seat Paramount Theater. Whenaudience members—many teenage girls included—refused to leaveafter the first show, there was a riot. Sinatra’s fans followed himeverywhere, sometimes falling into a “Sinatrance.” As the quote fromthe concerned anonymous writer at the beginning of this chapterpredicted—albeit a bit too rashly—this was just the beginning of whatwould become a series of celebrity pop stars.

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rural communities often had friends in the city who introduced them tonew hit records.

Migration also expanded the audience for hillbilly, or countrymusic, aimed toward white, rural audiences rather than toward themore general pop record audiences. Although blues and countrywere targeted at segregated—and therefore limited—markets underthe labels of “race” and “hillbilly” music, the effects of the migrationcarried these styles, formerly limited to the South, to a much larger,national audience.

SURPRISE HITS FIND A MARKETIn 1920, the OKeh Record Company planned to have Jewish Americansinger Sophie Tucker record the blues song “Crazy Blues.” When Tuckerbecame ill, Perry Bradford, the song’s composer, persuaded OKeh tobring in African American singer Mamie Smith to record the song. Therecord company was pleased when this decision resulted in a surprise hitsong. Although the record company wasbased in New York, its director Ralph Peer—who was responsible for the term “racemusic”—made trips to the South, bringingequipment with him and setting up studioson the road. This was a new effort to tap intounderserved markets, as the major labels pri-marily focused on white, urban audiences.When Mamie Smith recorded “Crazy Blues”and OKeh advertised it in black communities,it sold a profitable 7,500 copies. In 1921,W.C. Handy and Harry Pace founded BlackSwan, while Paramount Records opened in1922 as the second white-owned companyto market race music in addition to its othermusic offerings. These small-label successesinspired the major labels to enter the “racerecord” field: Columbia in 1923, Vocalion/Brunswick in 1926, and even Victor, who hadrejected Mamie Smith in 1920, in 1927.

Because African American musiciansrarely received radio exposure and live ven-ues were subject to segregation, recordswere the primary source of musicalexchange between black and white audi-ences. Because of this, records were in veryhigh demand beginning in 1920 and even-tually culminating in 1927 with around 500race records released yearly. However,these artists were often paid far less than their white counterparts, andtheir songs, which had not previously been published, were thenowned by record companies, which collected royalties without givingany money to the artists.

COUNTRY BLUESCountry blues began in the rural South around the Mississippi Delta andEast Texas. Although there were many different styles of country bluesrecorded in the South, this region produced the most popular and influ-ential style: delta blues. Country blues began as a purely oral tradition,passed down in a flexible form by musicians who changed both the lyricsto suit their own experiences and the music to fit those lyrics. The lyricswere not only personal but also gritty, both in content and in singing andinstrumental style.

Even though the 12-bar blues tunes of the swing era hold to steady,written forms, the non-notated nature of country blues often led musiciansto add or subtract beats at will, ending up with odd numbers of bars. Someinnovative country blues forms could be based just on a single riff (with noaccompanying chords), or just move between two chords. Most of all,country blues was fundamentally rough, employing vocal slides and stylesmuch closer to speech than traditional singing, with songs that seeminglyhad no origin or finished rendition. A few country blues musicians managedto find widespread success, albeit well after they had died.

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson,and Muddy WatersA few important figures in the history of country blues stand out, for boththeir representative approaches to the blues and their influences on laterforms of music. Blind Lemon Jefferson was born in East Texas in 1897.He released his first recordings in 1926, and although he died poor in

1929—Paramount Records denied himroyalties—he was one of the first stars ofthe genre, marketed as “old-fashionedblues” well after other artists had popular-ized a smoother form of blues.

Although Jefferson was the first star,Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters wereprobably most influential on later rock musi-cians. Johnson died young, living from 1911to 1938 and releasing just 22 songs, whichsold poorly during his lifetime. He was pri-marily an entertainer, but many of his bluessongs were not necessarily indicative of the type of blues being played by manyother musicians at the time. However, hedid achieve success posthumously andinspired many contemporary musiciansdecades after his death; Eric Clapton cov-ered Johnson’s song “Crossroad Blues,”and many guitarists, from Jimmy Page (LedZeppelin) to Keith Richards (the RollingStones) emulated his guitar licks. Part of thereason for this was the mythology surround-ing Johnson and other blues players of histime; it was rumored that Johnson had soldhis soul to the devil in exchange for his gui-tar-playing skills and that he would turn hisback to audiences in performance so thatthey couldn’t see what his fingers were

doing. However great the myths, the music persisted as something evengreater for decades to come.

Muddy Waters was the only one of these three musicians to leavethe Mississippi Delta. While in Mississippi in the late 1930s, Alan Lomax,

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HILLBILLY RECORDS the country music of the rural South; analogous to “race records” in terms of the audience targeted.

COUNTRY BLUES a rough style of blues performed by Robert Johnsonand others; also called “delta blues,” after the Mississippi Delta.

RIFF a repeated musical phrase, used often in jazz and swing music, andlater in rock & roll.

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Robert Johnson was mythologized after his death

at a young age, and he strongly influenced later rock musicians.

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a collector of folksongs in the 1930s and early 1940s, recorded Watersfor the Library of Congress. Shortly after making those recordings,Waters moved to Chicago, picked up an electric guitar, and by the early1950s was the most popular blues musician in Chicago. (You will readmore about Lomax and his field recordings of musician Lead Belly inChapter 5.) These early field and commercial recordings of country bluesartists are the beginning of the knowable history of the music—the restis in the songs themselves.

“CLASSIC” BLUES ANDTHE SMOOTHER SOUNDThe “classic” blues of the early 20th century differed from their coun-try counterparts. Although influenced by the styles of the MississippiDelta, they were filtered through the lens of Tin Pan Alley and the sheetmusic publishing industry. Because of this, the strong structures of theTin Pan Alley songs made their way into the construction of the coun-try blues, and blues forms including 12-bar and 16-bar structureswere finalized. As European notation did not account for the multitudeof sounds that blues singers produced, much less the bends andbottleneck slides that were the trademarks of blues guitar, the publi-cation of blues in sheet music format led to a homogenizing andsmoothing of the delta blues’ roughness. Initially, the blues songs thatactually made it to publication were mostly written by professionalcomposers seeking tomake a profit by market-ing these songs to mostlymiddle-class audiences.Mamie Smith’s recordingof “Crazy Blues,” thesurprise hit for OKehrecords, was one of theseblues songs. However,even though it was a hitwith both black and whiteaudiences, “Crazy Blues”did not quite achieve thehuge crossover successthat W.C. Handy did.

When Bessie Smithrecorded W.C. Handy’s“St. Louis Blues” in1925, it was the firsttime many Americans—white and black alike—had ever heard some

version of the blues. Bessie Smith, joined by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey,performed classic blues songs mostly for working-class AfricanAmerican populations in Chicago and New York. W.C. Handy himselfwas one of the forces behind the popular blues movement, both asa co-founder of Black Swan records and as a composer and lyricist,his “St. Louis Blues” foremost among them. However, the differencebetween Smith’s recording of Handy’s song and the country blues ofJohnson is unmistakable: The strong chord changes alone make itmore European in feel, and the form is a solid 12-bar unit rather thanthe mostly arbitrary forms of country blues artists.

St. Louis BluesHandy’s achievement is not to be understated; the poet T.S. Eliotcalled the song’s opening line, “I hate to see the evening sun godown,” the most perfect line of iambic pentameter verse in theEnglish language. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Eliot

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W.C. HANDY one of the most successful African American Tin Pan Alleycomposers, and the artist responsible for bringing some version of theblues to a wide audience.

Country orDelta blues

MississippiDelta andEast Texas

Gritty in sound,singing styleand lyricalcontent. Passeddown orally.

Classic andelectric blues,jump blues, R&B

Classic blues

Electric blues Chicago, viaDelta blues

Driving rhythms,using distortionand feedback withelectric guitars.

Some R&Bsingers,swing bands

Rock & roll, R&B

Blind LemonJefferson

Bessie Smith

Muddy Waters

Smoothed andhomogenizedversion of theblues,disseminatedthrough sheetmusic orvaudeville.

Tin PanAlley andurban areas

Category Characteristics InfluencedGeographicorigin

Exemplaryperformer

ectric blues Chicago, viaChicagDelta blues

Driving rhythms,using distortionand feedback withelectric guitars.

Rock & roll

blues,es, R&B

&B

Jefferson

B i S ithB

ds

Bessie SmithB Bessie Smith

l, R&B Muddy Watersll

>>> The blueswas a mixture ofmany styles andinfluenced avariety of othermusical genres.

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himself used iambic pentameter meter, which has lines that are five“feet” with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.Eliot gave credence to the idea that an African American artist couldbe as artistically successful as the canonical writers of the Englishlanguage.

Handy’s version of the blues soon became popular among bothblack and white communities. Performances like Bessie Smith’sretained strong elements of the blues tradition, such as the prominentuse of blue notes and the free rhythmic syncopation that Smith addsto Handy’s already-syncopated rhythms. Certainly, Handy’s versionwas a huge hit with white audiences, but it was also a hit with blackaudiences as well.

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as a result, alternating nostalgia and idealization of rural life with a real-istic accounting of the problems facing many people. Woody Guthrie,a particularly talented young country musician, charged his music withpolitical relevance, developing a form of folk music that was emulatedfor decades thereafter.

WOODY GUTHRIEWoodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie was one of the foremost early folk musi-cians, beginning his career singing hillbilly music but becoming more polit-

ical after his time as an impoverished migrant travelingfrom Oklahoma to California. Guthrie’s music reflectedexperiences from his nomadic lifestyle as he criss-crossed the country. He eventually headed north andeast to New York, where he took a decidedly politicalstance with his music. He wrote the politically chargedsongs “This Land is Your Land” and “Talking Dust BowlBlues,” and once the Depression was over, he wasmostly known as a protest singer.

In 1940 in New York, Guthrie joined PeteSeeger’s Almanac Singers, which sustained Guthrie’spolitical approach. Guthrie’s populist appeal wasclear, but he didn’t achieve success until later in life.You will read more about Guthrie and his work inChapter 5.

URBAN FOLK: FROMGUTHRIE TO SEEGERThe Almanac Singers disbanded in 1942, but two ofthem—Lee Hays and Pete Seeger—recruited twoother musicians and formed the Weavers in 1949.The first “urban” folk group, the Weavers had hugehits playing folk songs by such artists as Lead Bellyand Woody Guthrie. The Weavers borrowed from theaesthetics of the hillbilly music of the rural UnitedStates, but they were New Yorkers in their urban lyricsand cosmopolitan sensibilities. Their hits ranged from

the early Guthrie folk tunes to “Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight),” anadaptation (and accidental misspelling of “Mbube,” Zulu for “lion”) of aSouth African song.

Blues Goes ElectricBy the end of World War II, traditional delta blues had more or less diedout. However, when Muddy Waters moved from the delta to Chicago, hebegan using an electric guitar to be heard over the noise of the crowdsin the city’s tiny blues clubs. This Chicago-style “electric blues” employedthe bottleneck slides of delta blues but had a driving pulse from the heavyrhythm section of bass, piano, and drums. Just as Robert Johnson man-aged to get otherworldly sounds from his guitar, Waters’s technique ofeliciting new harmonic effects with his slide certainly prefigured rock &roll’s use of the electric guitar as a special effectas much as an instrument. Waters’s sound wasmore urban than that of his country blues pred-ecessors, with its driving beat and use of mod-ern sound capabilities.

Folk Begins withthe DepressionThe Great Depression all but wiped out themarkets for race records, and AfricanAmerican families especially had very littleextra money to spend on records. Networkradio grew to fill the gap, but exposure onthese radio networks was generally restrictedto white musicians. Although the commercialblues was nearly destroyed and generally sac-charine Tin Pan Alley songs tended to fill radiobroadcasting, hillbilly music had measuredsuccess relative to other genres with 25 per-cent of the total market (Starr and Waterman2003, 113). Because blues artists couldn’t getradio play and the race record companies wereeither going under or being bought up, the onlyreal proponent of working-class concerns suchas poverty, mass migration, and economic di-saster was hillbilly music, soon to becomeknown as country music.

During the Depression, millions of rural poor were displaced, mov-ing across the country or moving to the cities. Country music flourished

HOW DID CROSSOVER HITS PAVE THE WAYFOR ROCK & ROLL?

BLUE NOTES “bent” notes, or notes slightly flat of a normal note asplayed on a piano; played in the country blues era by either stopping thestring with a bottleneck slide or bending the string on the fret.

WOODY GUTHRIE a pioneer of “urban folk,” he combined traditional folkmusic with an urban, cosmopolitan sensibility.

PETE SEEGER played with Woody Guthrie in the Almanac Singers; laterwent on to form the first commercially successful urban folk group, theWeavers.

B-SIDE the opposite side of a record relative to the “A-side” of a single.

SINGLE a 78 or 45 r.p.m. record, containing an A-side and a B-side;usually the A-side was the one referred to as the “single”.

ALBUM a collection of songs on a 45 or 33 1/3 r.p.m. record.

Woody Guthrie finallysettled in New York

after traveling all aroundthe country during theDepression.

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WHAT’S HOT!APRIL 11, 1945

Although his façade was folksy, banjo player and songwriter PeteSeeger was politically active to the point that he and two of the otherWeavers were accused of being Communists during the McCarthy era.This mix of world music, political activism, and rural instruments con-founded the record labels. Seeger and the rest of the Weavers placed apremium on authenticity and operating outside the system.Nevertheless, after Decca Records dropped them from their label amidaccusations of communism, the Weavers did not again make the popcharts. However, their music paved the way for the future success ofother urban folk performers, including Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul, and

Mary (for more on folk music, see Chapter 5). In this way, their aura ofindependence paradoxically allowed record companies to profit fromtheir appeal to urban, educated markets.

The Beginning of CountryAs millions of Americans moved from rural areas to urban centers, theysang about two things: the past and the present. The songs were nostal-gic for times before the mechanization of agriculture, but they were alsoevocative of the restless, migrant nature of rural displacement. At the aes-thetic roots of country music was a strong link to the English folk ballad tra-dition, much like the urban folk music that would come later. The narrativeof these ballads contrasts sharply with the lyrical Tin Pan Alley tunes; theballads often mention specific names and places and are passed downthrough folk traditions, rather than published and copyrighted.

The first star of country music, somewhat analogous to RobertJohnson in the blues tradition, was Jimmie Rodgers, “The SingingBrakeman.” Like Johnson, Rodgers died young; he contracted tubercu-losis and passed away at age 27. He hung out with hobos and cow-boys, collecting their songs and writing his own songs about them.Rodgers’s “blue yodel” recordings, or songs that combined blues musicwith yodeling, reflected the reckless attitudes of the hobos and cowboyswith whom he associated, making him an early prototype of the “too fastto live, too young to die” mythology of rock stars. Rodgers’s 13 blueyodel recordings (all named “Blue Yodel”) were simply numbered“No. 11” or “No. 8 [Muleskinner Blues].” Although he accompanied him-self on guitar, his playing never reached the level of Johnson or otherblues musicians; rather, it maintained the lyric-driven folk tradition, withthe guitar as an accompanying instrument.

THE CARTER FAMILYThe Carter Family were perhaps the most important performers in coun-try music’s early history. They were made up of A.P. “Doc” Carter, his

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TOP OF THE CHARTS

1. “Dream” – Pied Pipers

2. “There, I’ve Said It Again” – Vaughn Monroe Orchestra

3. “If I Loved You” – Perry Como

4. “The More I See You” – Dick Haynes

5. “Sentimental Journey” – Les Brown Orchestra

6. “I Don’t Care Who Knows It” – Harry James Orchestra

7. “You Belong to My Heart” – Bing Crosby

8. “Bell Bottom Trousers” – Tony Pastor Orchestra

9. “Gotta Be This or That” – Benny Goodman Orchestra

The Weavers’ biggest hit, “Goodnight Irene,” reached number one onthe pop charts in 1950. Written by Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, thesong has a tangled history. Lead Belly originally learned the tune fromhis uncle and added verses as he pleased throughout his life, includ-ing his stints in prison. He was pardoned in 1923, but ended up inprison again until he recorded “Irene” with Alan Lomax for the Libraryof Congress in 1934. He later received his pardon for good behaviorand sang “Goodnight, Irene” as his theme song until his death inManhattan in 1949.

The Weavers’ version was more suited for a sing-along thanLead Belly’s, especially the repeating chorus, “Irene goodnight,Irene goodnight.” This probably helped them reach the top of thepop charts. In addition, they omitted the final verse of Lead Belly’ssong, with its reference to the distraught lover using morphine toease his pain. That same article described the Weavers’ versionas “prettied up and cut in half.” Indeed, the Weavers and theirrecord label did not necessarily intend this song to be as big asit was; it was a B-side to another one of their hits, “Tzena,Tzena, Tzena.”

During this era, B-sides werelargely considered “filler” tracks.Most groups were releasingsingles, which were usually 45 or78 r.p.m. records with aboutthree minutes of possible musicon each side. These usually con-tained an A-side featuring thesong that the group was promot-ing and a B-side to fill the extraspace. As technology began toimprove, albums, or collectionsof songs on a slower-turning, larger record (33 1/3 r.p.m.), began toreplace singles. However, these albums were initially just collections ofunrelated singles, and it was not until some of the conceptual albumsoutlined in Chapter 6 that they began to have real coherence andstructure. The term “B-side” is still used today to refer to recordedtracks that did not make the original album; many bands put outwhole albums of B-sides from previous recording sessions.

CLASSIC RECORDINGS“GOODNIGHT IRENE,” by The Weavers (written by Lead Belly)

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wife, Sara, and his sister-in-law, Maybelle. They recorded 300 songs, pri-marily between 1927 and 1941, and owed much to the folk tradition.Initially, Ralph Peer recorded them for RCA’s record label. A.P. sang bassand collected and arranged the folk tunes he found in the country, thencopyrighted them regardless of whether he had actually composedthem. When Peer’s company published the songs, he split the profits inhalf with A.P.

However, there were other reasons for the Carters’ success.Maybelle, who played guitar, was primarily responsible for the guitarstyle that is associated with country music today: The chords arestrummed on the higher strings on the off beats to accompany thesinging with melodic “fills” on the bass strings in between. The Carterscould be considered a parallel to the Sacred Harp tradition of singing;

unlike earlier country styles, where the guitar was merely a back-ground accompaniment, this new style of music included sectionswhere the guitar took a prominent role in the song. Their singing wasalso meant to be interactive and included audience participation ratherthan having the vocalist simply sing at listeners (Ellertson 2005). Thisadded to the highly vocal, sing-along feel of country and westernmusic, which remained influential in the genre.

ROY ACUFF, SINGING COWBOYS,AND CROSSOVER HITSThe swing era was called that for a reason—big bands filled the popcharts—but country music charts were still in a category all their own,

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Between the years 1900 and 1930, the U.S. population shifted from a majority inrural areas to a majority in urban areas.

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Population Change from Migration, 1900–1930

Population (in millions)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 9000000000000000000 100 120110 130

1930

1920

1910

1900

Rural population

Urban population

30,214,832(39.6%)

45,997,336(60.4%)

42,064,001(45.6%)

54,253,282(51.2%)

69,160,599(56.1%)

54,042,025(43.8%)

50,164,495(54.4%)

51,768,255(48.8%)

n millions)

0 80 90 100 120110 130 Rural population

Urban population

54,042,025(43.8%)

495%)

1,768,25548.8%)

Source: 1990 Census of Population and Housing. “1990 Population and Housing Unit Counts: United States,” (CPH-2); and 1980 PC80-1-1,http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html.

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and only occasionally did crossover hits find a popular audience. Thiswas in part because the pop charts were concerned with the large urbancenters, and the audience for country music lived mostly in the ruralSouth. However, throughout the first third of the century, many ruralSoutherners were moving to these urban centers to escape the eco-nomic and ecological catastrophe of the Dust Bowl. This audience wasripe for the crossover hits that would eventually find their way into thestandard repertoire of popular singers like Bing Crosby.

One of the first crossover hits, Roy Acuff’s 1936 “Great SpeckledBird” took its name and theme from a Bible verse, which probably helpedit become so successful. In addition, the song was based on a traditionalmelody that was repeated for each verse. Other crossover hits emergedbecause of the influence of Hollywood film. As Hollywood capitalized onthe mythology of the West, associating it with the future and opportunitywhile still retaining traditional sounds, the “Singing Cowboy” personabecame popular. Gene Autry was the first to become successful; by thetime he played a small role in a Western film, he had already been asuccessful hillbilly performer. In this new role, he developed the image ofthe singing cowboy, both allowing country music to reach a wider audi-ence and making it possible for later country music stars like Roy Rogersto be successful.

HYBRID STYLES: WESTERN SWINGAND COUNTRY-LITEAnother side effect of Depression-era mass migration took things onestep further than the crossover hits of the singing cowboys. One newstyle, “Western swing,” arose in the mid-1930s when Bob Willis and hisTexas Playboys began playing country-influenced swing music (or swing-influenced country music) in Oklahoma and the vicinity, eventuallybecoming very popular in California after World War II. Although Willis’ssongs were mostly derived from old country and fiddle tunes, his stringband—including a banjo and guitars—was backed up by a full swingorchestra of trumpets, saxophones, and a rhythm section. The arrange-ments owe quite a bit to the swing music of the time, even though theymay not have swung themselves.

Patti Page was a singer who did not necessarily have the samehybrid qualities as Bob Willis, but she drew on influences from country

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CROSSOVER a hit popular with multiple audiences; for example,Roy Acuff’s “Great Speckled Bird” was a hit with both popular and countryaudiences.

Technological developments in the early 20th century transformed the landscape ofAmerican popular music.

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Viable recording was possible whenband performed into a large acousticmegaphone, through which a smallneedle would engrave the acousticenergy onto a wax “master” copy.

The acoustic energy was turned intoan electrical signal, which could thenbe mixed and engraved live onto amaster disc.

A linked chain of radio stationsthroughout the country, radionetworks allowed bands to achievewidespread fame in areas other thanthe ones they were playing in.

The electric signal is transferred toa thin layer of iron on plastic tape,allowing for post-recording mixingand studio mastering.

The modern multi-track machinerecords each track on a differentstrip of magnetic tape. For example,on a two-inch-wide tape, each of theeight tracks would have a half-inchwidth (as both sides of the tapewere used).

1919: The Victor companyreleases the first hit song popularized as a recordingbefore its release as sheet music.

1925: The electric microphoneallows for more control oversound recording.

1926: The year NBC launchesthe first nationwide radionetwork.

1930s: The Japanese andGermans develop taperecording for militarypurposes.

1948: Les Paul designs his own multi-track tape recorder.

Multi-track taperecorder

78 r.p.m record

Electricmicrophone

Radio network

Magnetic taperecorder

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music to become successful on the popular charts. In fact, Pagewas one of the most successful female singers of the 1950s,sometimes with cloying novelty songs such as “The Doggiein the Window.” However, her biggest hit was a poparrangement of a country song, “The Tennessee Waltz.”This recording sold six million copies, on the strength ofSouthern nostalgia and sentimentality. Page sings harmonywith herself on this recording, using multi-track tape recordingto layer vocal parts, a process that would become stan-dard for most music produced in the second half ofthe 20th century.

BLUEGRASSAND INSTRUMENTALPROFICIENCYAlthough bluegrass could not explicitly be called abacklash against the mainstreaming of countrymusic, its style was focused on one of the originalinstrumental combinations: the string band. Thelabel bluegrass comes from Bill Monroe’s groupformed in 1938, the Blue Grass Boys. The BlueGrass Boys’ focus was a dual goal of both reachingback to the roots of the Southern, Anglo-Americanstring band while maintaining a high level of instru-mental proficiency. The tempos were fast and the music is primarily forinstrumentalists, rather than the moderate tempos and lyrical lines ofmost pop tunes. There were also improvised solos, melding the formatof African American blues and jazz with the Southern string band sound.However, there was a distinct style of singing that went with bluegrassmusic often called “high lonesome” singing. Practiced by the CarterFamily, this style that reached back to the traditional singing of theAppalachian Mountains. Bluegrass music never had much commercialpotential, however. Its focus on the instrumentalists, the unique singing,and the open-ended format assumed a degree of familiarity among itsaudience that did not translate well to the mass market.

Genre-Bending Country HitsThere was one true country music star whose songs translated acrossthe charts, and that was Hank Williams. Williams had 36 Top 10 coun-try records between 1947 and 1953. When he died at the age of 30, his

songs went on to become hits for all kinds of performers. Williams wasborn devastatingly poor in Alabama, but after performing on the streetas a child, he got his own radio show and started the band the DriftingCowboys at age 16. Although he was greatly successful by his mid-20s,he became dependent on alcohol and painkillers and died from a heartattack in the back of his car on New Year’s Day, 1953. Much like JimmieRodgers, Williams’s early death only heightened the intrigue of his lifeand work.

Even though Hank Williams’s recording career was short, he isconsidered by many as the most important country star of all time. Hemelded traditional country music, with its fiddles and string-band setup,with modern and forward-looking instruments like the steel guitar. Thedrawl of his voice set the tone for much of the lonesome sound of coun-try music, since his Southern twang made the sound of the words asimportant as their meaning. He included honky-tonk themes in his songs,with lyrics about doing wrong and having wrong being done. However,his recording career was only part of the reason for his success. Hissongs themselves went on to become huge hits for performers across

the charts, especially mainstream pop musicians; it seemedas though his songs instantly appealed to a wide audienceif the country twang was replaced with a mainstream popsound. The young performer Tony Bennett even recordedone of Williams’s songs, “Cold, Cold Heart,” which stayed

at number one on the pop chart for six weeks. His otherhits are familiar in many incarnations as well, among them

“Lovesick Blues,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and “I’m SoLonesome I Could Cry.” This process of main-

stream, urban white musicians covering thesongs of niche markets—whether Southernwhite or African American “race music”—would only be amplified after producersmanaged to label the next big thing in AfricanAmerican music: rhythm & blues.

Rhythm & BluesAs big bands declined in popularity, rhythm &blues restored an African American characterto the swing style. Where swing took theblues and orchestrated it, using blues riffs anddevices with the discipline of Paul Whiteman’sband, R&B reached back to the ecstaticenergy of New Orleans jazz. R&B bands still

had horns—usually a couple of saxophones and brass—but they added adriving, bluesy electric guitar and hard-hitting drums to the mix. The“rhythm” part of rhythm & blues was the thriving energy, while the “blues”was the soulful singing style.

When the term “rhythm & blues” was first coined, it was meant torefer to all music made by or specifically for an African American audience.After the war, the major record companies in the “race market” realizedthat it was time to pick a new name to describe their target audience—perhaps something more euphemistic than “race.” The record companiestried out different names, but in 1949 Billboard—with no particular expla-nation—changed the name of its “race” charts to “rhythm & blues.” To thisday, Billboard’s “R&B/Hip-Hop” chart is almost exclusively dominated byAfrican American artists. Even as the musical style has evolved into some-thing worlds apart from the early rhythm & blues, the chart describes anaudience as much as a musical style. Rhythm & blues became a catchallphrase for many different styles of music, much as rock & roll would later.

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MULTI-TRACK TAPE RECORDING the process of recording multiple“tracks” (often each a single instrument) onto different sections (by width)of a reel of magnetic tape; allows for independent control of each instru-ment after it has already been recorded, and also lets performers “double”themselves on a different track, a process called “overdubbing”.

STRING BAND a country band, usually with banjo, mandolin, guitars,fiddle, string bass, or any combination thereof.

BLUEGRASS style of music that melded the format of African Americanblues and jazz with the Southern string band sound, and featuredinstrumentalists and “high lonesome” singing.

HANK WILLIAMS considered one of the most important country singers,he had a string of hits until his early death in 1953 at age 30.

RHYTHM & BLUES term describing many different styles of blues-influenced music and used as a euphemism for “race records” afterBillboard stopped using the term in 1949; often abbreviated R&B.

LOUIS JORDAN a pioneer of “jump blues,” who also had a hugeinfluence on rock & roll.

Before his death in 1953,Hank Williams was one

of the most popular andinfluential country musicperformers.

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One of these R&B styles relied on a heavily downsized swing bandand had a dynamic, energetic style that became known as “jump blues.”The jump blues combos centered primarily on a strong rhythm sectionconsisting of piano, guitar, bass, and drums with one or two saxophones.Rooted in the driving left hand of the pianist, the rhythm recalled theboogie-woogie patterns of the early part of the century.

The Dominoes and Doo-wopAnother strain of rhythm & blues in the years leading up to rock & roll wasthe “vocal harmony” group, described today as “doo-wop.” A precursorto these vocal harmony groups was the Mills Brothers. Their 1942 hit“Paper Doll” spent an incredible 36 weeks on the pop charts. But it wasthe Dominoes, featuring the young tenor Clyde McPhatter, who success-fully moved the vocal harmony format away from the smoother sound ofthe Mills Brothers and closer to the harder sounds of black gospel.Drawing heavily on the gospel tradition, this secular group appealed toan audience that grew up with a similar style of music in the black gospelchurch. The style paid off, as their 1952 hit “Have Mercy Baby” was inthe top spot of the R&B charts for 10 weeks.

WOMEN AND RHYTHM & BLUESThe R&B charts of the early 1950s weren’t just dominated by malegroups. Some women had widespread success, among them Big MamaThornton and Ruth Brown. Thornton was a powerful physical figure whodelivered the first line of her first big hit with an earthy growl, “You ain’tnothin’ but a hound dog.” “Hound Dog” was, in fact, written explicitly forher by two white college kids, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who went onto achieve success in the early days of rock & roll. This recording, whichwas on the R&B charts for seven weeks in 1953, is vastly different from

the recording that would be made just three years later by Elvis Presley,after rock & roll had officially been born. Thornton’s version sits at a slowertempo, and her singing is closer to the snarl of early blues artists than toElvis’s, which evokes Louis Jordan’s cooler, ironic delivery. Either way,Thornton created her own interpretation of this song that gave it earlyand influential success.

Ruth Brown was about as far away from Thornton in style as possi-ble while still occupying the very same charts. Her song “Mama, HeTreats Your Daughter Mean” was written by professionals and recordedwith horns and a full band, rather than Thornton’s sparse setup of only arhythm section and an electric guitar. However, Brown brought a gospelsound to her R&B recordings that clearly helped her audience appeal;“Mama” was in the top spot of the R&B charts for five weeks in 1953 andeven reached number 23 on the pop charts—an impressive feat for anyAfrican American artist at the time.

Post-war CrossoversBecome Rock & RollDespite all the genre distinctions of the decade after World War II, thecrossover phenomenon was increasingly common. For example, RayCharles combined features of gospel and country into a nascent R&Bstyle in “I Got a Woman.” This synthesis proved to be influential on latergenerations of performers. In any case, the music of the post-wardecade would not be able to maintain its separateness for long, as wasmade clear by performers such as Louis Jordan, drawing on swingmusic, or Woody Guthrie, plying folk with a new urban sensibility. Withthe new, younger generation of teenage audiences and performers,music soon developed into what would seem—to an earlier audience—like a series of inexplicable crossover hits.

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Louis JordanLouis Jordan and his Tympany Five was oneof the most successful jump bands of the eraand a clear forerunner of rock & roll. Jordan’sband was a downsized swing bang,consistingof piano, string bass, drums, trumpet, andtenor saxophone, with Jordan both playingsaxophone and singing. Jordan’s singing hada lighter feeling then the shout and cry vocalsof much of the earlier, bluesier R&B music,and his humorous, expressive vocals were hishallmark. Much of Jordan’s popularity can beattributed to his vocal delivery. His voice clearlyarticulates each word, removing the slurreddelivery that was popular with R&B singers ofthe era. This clear articulation undoubtedlyhelped his music gain footing with white audi-ences, as he only rises to a near shout in thelast line of his hit “Choo-Choo Ch’ Boogie.”His most popular song, “Choo-Choo Ch’Boogie” followed the 12-bar blues structure of

W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” or GlennMiller’s “In the Mood.” However, in Jordan’shands the form regains more of the originalblues character and driving rhythm of AfricanAmerican R&B while stillretaining the popularappeal of Millerand Handy.

Yet, certain writershave noticed that hislyrics can be read in away that shows theirappeal to black audi-ences. The lyrics contain“joking complaints aboutwomen of fate,” whilealso “implying an unjustsociety” (Gillet 1996,134). Whatever the rea-son for Jordan’s wide-spread popularity, he wasclearly influential on the

future of music; major rock & roll figuressuch as Chuck Berry and James Brownhave cited him as a primary influence(Starr and Waterman 2003, 170).

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WHAT WERE THE FIRST INFLUENCES OF ROCK & ROLL? 4

• The lyrical styles of Tin Pan Alley and Broadwayshow tunes moved away from the narrative traditionand toward a style of singing that could be inter-preted differently by many performers. This depar-

ture allowed for “cover” songs, where one artist would play a songpreviously performed by an earlier artist.

• The music of the Tin Pan Alley’s “Golden Age” included standards,or thematic songs that often employed nostalgic elements, making itpossible for listeners to escape the dreariness of life around them dueto the Great Depression.

HOW DID NEW TECHNOLOGIESINFLUENCE MUSICAL STYLES? 6

• Between 1900 and the mid-1930s, a shiftoccurred in the ways music was disseminated tothe population. This transition moved from printedto recorded music, which helped make music more

of a public event than a private one.

• The pseudo-intimacy of the electric microphone allowed for listen-ers to develop emotional connections to performers.

• The national radio networks allowed bands to earn fame in areaswhere they weren’t even playing. This phenomenon led bands to playmore for the radio exposure than for the actual audience in atten-dance.

• Higher-quality recording techniques made the previously inaccessibleblues music of the Mississippi Delta viable as an influence on otherstyles. Also, since African American artists were generally not played onthe radio, records became the primary method of dissemination.

WHAT MUSICAL STYLES PREFIGURED ROCK & ROLL? 8

• Paul Whiteman’s Ambassador Orchestra was anearly example of white mainstreaming of AfricanAmerican music. This would become practicallystandard, especially in the early years of rock & roll,

when white artists would record toned-down versions of AfricanAmerican songs.

• Musical styles such as swing, the blues, and country blues all influ-enced the rock & roll genre.

• Robert Johnson’s recordings would go on to influence generationsof rock & roll musicians, playing a large part in the musical styles oflater bands.

HOW DID CROSSOVER HITS PAVETHE WAY FOR ROCK & ROLL? 12

• The mass migration of people from rural to urbanareas during the Great Depression caused an influxof new styles. Among these was Muddy Waters’s“electric blues” out of Chicago, which melded the

delta blues with modern electric guitar techniques.

• There were many hybrid styles of country music that also came outof this migration, including Bob Willis and his Texas Playboys withWestern swing, Patti Page with pop covers of country songs, andRoy Acuff with “Great Speckled Bird,” a traditional song with a popu-lar, patriotic theme.

• The “jump blues” of Louis Jordan was riff-based with blues roots.Louis Jordan’s blending of the popular swing music with the energy ofthe solo singer R&B acts would go on to influence early rock & roll.

Summary

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CHAPTER

Tin Pan Alley area of Manhattan around 28th

Street where much of the sheet music forthe popular vaudeville tunes of the early 20th century were written 4

song pluggers employees of Tin Pan Alleypublishing companies paid to promote theiremployers’ songs around the city, in placesranging anywhere from department storesto saloons 5

Irving Berlin one of the most successful TinPan Alley songwriters; wrote “God BlessAmerica” and “White Christmas,” as well asthe music for “Annie, Get Your Gun” 5

ragtime a “rag” is a derivation of an AfricanAmerican term describing the process of syn-copating a piece of music 6

Key Termssyncopated describing the state in whichthe accent of a measure of music fallseither between the beat or on a beat notnormally accented 6

standards songs with predictable forms writ-ten during the Golden Age that were com-monly interpreted by many performers 6

r.p.m. revolutions per minute, or the speed atwhich a record rotates on a turntable; thequicker the speed, the less information can beencoded per square inch of vinyl 6

radio network a series of linked commercialradio stations, allowing for live broadcasts tobe transmitted across the country 6

electrical recording method of recording thatutilizes an amplified microphone to capture

and transmit sound to an electromechanicalrecord engraver 7

crooning an exaggerated style of singingthat developed with the invention of theelectric microphone, allowing for moreintimacy than was previously possible withacoustic megaphones 7

hot music a catch-all term to describe jazzat its beginning; it referred to the driving,syncopated rhythms of the Dixielanddance bands 8

William “Count” Basie the pianist and band-leader most closely allied with the blues tradi-tion, exemplified the Kansas City style in thathe was inspired by the blues 8

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Sample Test Questions

1. Which new technology facilitated the style of singing called “crooning”?a. the phonographb. the electric microphonec. the national radio networkd. the electric guitar

2. Which big band leader exemplified the bluesy, Kansas City styleof swing?a. Glenn Millerb. Duke Ellingtonc. Benny Goodmand. Count Basie

3. Which style of blues was often written in sheet music form?a. delta bluesb. classic bluesc. electric bluesd. rhythm & blues

4. What was NOT an explicit influence on Woody Guthrie’s “urban folk”style?a. the Tin Pan Alley songs played on national radio networksb. country and hillbilly musicc. the Dust Bowl and the Great Depressiond. the English ballad tradition

5. What was NOT a goal of the development of “bluegrass” music?a. to give country music more commercial potentialb. to reach back to the roots of country musicc. to take instrumental proficiency to a high leveld. to bring back the traditional country string band

ESSAY

6. Discuss how the development of Broadway musicals affected TinPan Alley song styles.

7. Pick one new technology mentioned in this chapter and discussits influence on musical style.

8. Pick a musical style from before the 1930s and discuss itsinfluence on 1930s swing bands.

9. How did the “race records” market encourage or hamper AfricanAmerican musical expression?

10. What are some styles of early 1950s R&B that foreshadow thebeginning of rock & roll?

WHERE TO START YOUR RESEARCH PAPER

For an overview of the many styles of blues and associated artists, goto http://www.allmusic.com

For more information on Alan Lomax’s recording project and folk musi-cal styles, go to http://www.culturalequity.org/index.jsp

For an extended biography of Benny Goodman, go tohttp://www.bennygoodman.com/about/biography2.html

For an in-depth look at recording technology with historical pictures, goto http://www.recording-history.org/HTML/musictech1.php

For a timeline of the life of Louis Jordan, go to http://www.louisjordan.com/timeline.aspx

For a video montage of Hank Williams’s performances, go tohttp://www.cmt.com/artists/az/williams_sr_hank/videos.jhtml

Benny Goodman one of the most successfulswing band leaders, and a pioneer inintegrating his band 8

race records any record marketed toward apredominantly African American audience 9

hillbilly records the country music of the ruralSouth; analogous to “race records” in terms ofthe audience targeted 10

country blues a rough style of blues performedby Robert Johnson and others; also called“delta blues,” after the Mississippi Delta 10

riff a repeated musical phrase, used often in jazzand swing music, and later in rock & roll 10

W.C. Handy one of the most successfulAfrican American Tin Pan Alley composers,and the artist responsible for bringing someversion of the blues to a wide audience 11

blue notes “bent” notes, or notes slightly flatof a normal note as played on a piano; playedin the country blues era by either stopping thestring with a bottleneck slide or bending thestring on the fret 12

Woody Guthrie a pioneer of “urban folk,” hecombined traditional folk music with an urban,cosmopolitan sensibility 12

Pete Seeger played with Woody Guthrie inthe Almanac Singers; later went on to form thefirst commercially successful urban folk group,the Weavers 12

B-side the opposite side of a record relativeto the “A-side” of a single 13

single a 78 or 45 r.p.m. record, containing anA-side and a B-side; usually the A-side wasthe one referred to as the “single” 13

album a collection of songs on a 45 or 33 1/3r.p.m. record 13

crossover a hit popular with multipleaudiences; for example, Roy Acuff’s “GreatSpeckled Bird” was a hit with both popularand country audiences 15

multi-track tape recording the process ofrecording multiple “tracks” (often each a singleinstrument) onto different sections (by width) ofa reel of magnetic tape; allows for independent

control of each instrument after it has alreadybeen recorded, and also lets performers“double” themselves on a different track, aprocess called “overdubbing” 16

string band a country band, usually withbanjo, mandolin, guitars, fiddle, string bass, orany combination thereof 16

bluegrass style of music that melded the format of African American blues and jazz with the Southern string band sound, and featured instrumentalists and “highlonesome” singing 16

Hank Williams considered one of the mostimportant country singers, he had a string ofhits until his early death in 1953 at age 30 16

rhythm & blues term describing manydifferent styles of blues-influenced music andused as a euphemism for “race records” afterBillboard stopped using the term in 1949;often abbreviated R&B 16

Louis Jordan a pioneer of “jump blues,” whoalso had a huge influence on rock & roll 17

ANSWERS: 1. b; 2. d; 3. b; 4. a; 5. a(continued)

Remember to check www.thethinkspot.com for additional informa-tion, downloadable flashcards, and other helpful resources.

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