WHAT IS POP?

WHAT DOES POP LOOK LIKE?

WHAT DOES POP SOUND LIKE?

WHO MAKES POP MUSIC?

WHO CONSUMES POP MUSIC?

TEENAGER: wartime invention

1904 – 1938: CHILD LABOR

THE BOY SCOUTS ASSOCIATION

•  Formed by Robert Baden-Powell in 1910 •  Considered a manifesto for taming

young “hooligans” •  Encouraged patriotism, courage, self-

reliance and duty

1910 – 1940: HIGH SCHOOL MOVEMENT

•  Turn of 19th/20th Centuries: Secondary Education was considered more like trade school –  Entrance Exams restricted enrollment to 5% of

population –  Students should be prepared for work or

family by their junior year

•  1940s: high schools were being built throughout the country at a rapid rate, with 73% of American Youth enrolled

HIGH SCHOOL DANCE

EARLY FILM AS LIFESTYLE MODEL

Rudolph Valentino Clara Bow

TEENAGE TASTES | MORAL PANIC

“The times have made us older and more experienced than you were at our age. It must be so with each succeeding generation if it is to keep pace with the rapidly advancing and mighty tide of civilization.”

- A young woman in 1922 wrote an appeal to her parents’ generation on behalf of the flappers

THE FLAPPER

•  Derogatory term for young, unmarried girls

•  Loose morals •  Loose-fitting clothing •  Rail-thin figure •  Attended “petting” and “freak” parties •  Penchant for booze and drugs

HOW DARE THEY

BLACK TUESDAY

•  “Model” teenager •  Big voice, young face,

little body •  Relatable: Made you

feel like you knew her. •  Campy teen film star

with her partner, Mickey Rooney

•  Drug addict

JUDY GARLAND “You Made Me Love You”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFSczLif0q4

JUDY GARLAND •  Teenaged fans didn’t

quite relate to her as the studios hoped

•  Instead, she had quite appeal among young men

•  She was the ideal wife material, and as such, became a reluctant pin-up girl in the 1940s

Seventeen is your magazine, High School Girls of America — all yours! It is interested only in you — and in everything that concerns, excites, annoys, pleases, or perplexes you.

You're going to have to run this show — so the sooner you start thinking about it, the better. In a world that is changing as quickly and profoundly as ours is, we hope to provide a clearinghouse for your ideas. As a magazine, we shall discuss all the things you consider important — with plenty of help from you, please. Write us about anything or everything. Say you agree with Seventeen or disagree violently, say we're tops, say we're terrible, say anything you please — but say it!

- Helen Valentine, Editor in Chief (1944)

TEENAGE GIRL AS COMMERCIAL DEMOGRAPHIC

“When is a girl worth $11,690,499? “...when 1738 advertisers spend just that much money in four years – to sell her their product and their name in the magazine she reads “...when the magazine devoted to her interests surveys her needs – sets up a research department, a consumer panel, a library of fifteen market studies to determine her powerful present, her promising future “...when the magazine she buys on the newsstands or subscribes to can show a 150% circulation gain – 400,000 copies sold in September ’44; 1,000,000 in September ‘48 “Seventeen – the magazine that keeps pace with each new generation of teens.”

- Seventeen Magazine Promotional Brochure, 1948

TEENAGER COMES OF AGE

“As girls entered high school from 1920 to 1945, they exhibited strong interest in commercially defined ideals of fashion and beauty...They used mass-produced commodities to imitate flappers and college students, but they also used them to create fads and define themselves as teenage girls.”

- Kelly Schrum pgs. 170-71

THE BOBBY SOXER

THE BOBBY SOXER

•  The Bobby Soxer is a girl who is aged 13-17, and seeks out the latest fads in music and dress.

•  She was at the forefront of developing the relationship between the teen vanity market and music subsequently marketed to her.

•  They went to dances and concerts in droves, but it wasn’t until Frank Sinatra that the music industry took notice.

FRANK “SWOONATRA” •  Frank Sinatra is

widely considered to be the first “Teen Idol”

•  Female “hysteria” •  Music became an

outlet for releasing any sexual frustration or independence through dancing or singing

FRANK SINATRA

•  Previous stars were designed by the film and record industries to fit within very specific categories through rigorous grooming and styling

•  Sinatra’s image was that of genuine ease, though arguably just as constructed as the rest.

•  Lead singer for Tommy Dorsey band •  Transitioned to mega movie star

“Night and Day”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUs-QT6a2gA

FRANK SINATRA “Girls responded enthusiastically to Sinatra’s ‘helpless’ stage presence. Lear described him as ‘that glorious shouldered spaghetti strand...[whose] suits hung oddly on him.’...Fans identified with his projected vulnerability, solicited his advice on personal problems, and wrote repeatedly that Sinatra understood them. Swooning for Frankie offered a safe outlet, a way to admire independence and sexuality, to imagine being the idols as well as being with the idol. Swooning in the form of screaming, fainting, and crying offered an opportunity to abandon control, to ignore societal pressure that girls should listen, show interest in others, and contain sexual feelings or public displays of sexuality.”

- Kelly Schrum, pg. 123

SINATRA’S MUSICAL STYLE •  Crooning: vocal style that deviates from the

straight jazz intonation and phrasing, and incorporates more sensual and expressive phrasing. –  Sliding up to notes, rather than hitting them straight

on. –  New microphone techniques used

•  This style of music is deeply rooted in jazz, but almost exclusively white –  classical vocal traditions of heavy vibrato usage.

•  Crooning was a product of major record labels in New York and Los Angeles and mirrored what was happening in the movies.

ROCK AND ROLL

•  Postwar SOUTH •  Hiring major swing and dance bands

became very expensive and club owners were looking for more cost-effective dance music.

•  Record production became cheaper. •  Southern musicians began combining

African American blues with the up-tempo and white country music traditions.

ROCK AND ROLL •  Boom of independently-owned record

companies who released their records locally and received airplay on niche-oriented radio stations.

•  Of course, once major labels realized that middle class white kids were listening to the stuff, the distribution spread like wildfire.

•  Rock and Roll: anything that couldn’t be categorized as Jazz, Classical, Country, or Blues. –  Rhythm and Blues –  Rockabilly –  Doo Wop

CHUCK BERRY | RHYTHM AND BLUES

•  Rhythm and Blues: was originally a catch-all term for any music played by and for African Americans –  Jump blues but sped up –  “Race Records”

•  Chuck Berry mixed old country songs with a Rhythm and Blues backbeat, but sped up – Way to get gigs in white neighborhoods – Gets people dancing

“Maybellene”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvKDr8AgvK8

“MAYBELLENE” lyrics CHORUS Maybellene, why can't you be true Oh Maybellene, why can't you be true You've started back doin' the things you used to do VERSE 1 As I was motivatin' over the hill I saw Mabellene in a Coup de Ville A Cadillac arollin' on the open road Nothin' will outrun my V8 Ford The Cadillac doin' about ninety-five She's bumper to bumper, rollin' side by side CHORUS VERSE 2 The Cadillac pulled up ahead of the Ford The Ford got hot and wouldn't do no more

It then got cloudy and started to rain I tooted my horn for a passin' lane The rainwater blowin' all under my hood I know that I was doin' my motor good CHORUS VERSE 3 The motor cooled down the heat went down And that's when I heard that highway sound The Cadillac a-sittin' like a ton of lead A hundred and ten half a mile ahead The Cadillac lookin' like it's sittin' still And I caught Mabellene at the top of the hill CHORUS

CHUCK BERRY – “MAYBELLENE”

•  Berry adapted an old fiddle tune, called Ida Red •  Utilizes blues lyrical standards based on an untrue lover

loaded with double-entendre and car-based scenario •  Released in 1955 •  One of the first major crossover hits for an African

American artist, and considered to be among the most important Rock and Roll hits.

•  Released a string of songs based on teenage themes, though he was a man in his 30s by this point: –  Sweet Little Sixteen –  School Days –  Roll Over Beethoven

LITTLE RICHARD

•  Born to a bootlegging Baptist preacher father in Macon, Georgia

•  Was a preacher, gospel singer, nightclub performer, and was the first Rock and Roll show to use flashy lighting on his concert tours

•  First hit single to cross over: Tutti Frutti

“Tutti Frutti”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kM1khne_sg

CARL PERKINS AND ROCKABILLY

ROCKABILLY

•  Rockabilly began much in the same way that Rock and Roll and R&B began, by speeding up the standards.

•  Perkins, however, decided to begin writing songs with that utilized the country twang, but with the back beat of early Rock and Roll.

•  Regional Record labels increased their output, releasing many one-hit-wonders but not many with national appeal –  Sun Studio in Memphis

“Blue Suede Shoes”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAa8BW_sR_c

ELVIS PRESLEY!!!!!!!

ELVIS AND THE COLONEL

•  Colonel Tom Parker was Elvis’ ruthless manager

•  Brought him from Sun Studios to RCA Victor for a $40,000 recording contract

•  Parker managed every aspect of young Elvis’ life.

•  Made sure to get Elvis on TV right away

ELVIS PRESLEY

•  Elvis’ first commercial release in 1956 was a record made almost exclusively of covers of rockabilly and blues standards.

•  His first televised performance was of Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes, on the Milton Berle Show (which was filmed on the USS Hancock here in San Diego).

“Blue Suede Shoes”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke1B0FpIZ8

“HOUND DOG” AND CONCERNED ADULTS

•  Cover of a Big Mama Thornton blues standard.

•  Presley had been busy touring the South, playing county fairs and picking up legions of teenage fans along the way.

•  Performance on the Milton Berle show 1956, again, but this time to a much wider audience.

•  Media backlash to his suggestive pelvis and frenzied girls!

“Hound Dog”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU4i5gyFK1s

ED SULLIVAN •  Ed Sullivan was nervous

about booking Presley on his show, and agreed to have him appear only if he were shown from the waist up.

•  Medley on Ed Sullivan: 1957, Waist-up, the sneer, seeming amused by the girls’ reactions.

•  A year later, a book called, On Becoming a Woman: a frank, modern discussion of everything a teen-age girl wants and needs to know, was released.

DOO WOP •  Multi-part vocal harmonies and onomonopoeric

backing vocals, meant to mimic the sounds of other instruments.

•  Comes from the vocal jazz tradition, but with the rise of Rock, these groups started to incorporate more instruments into the acts. –  Sax, drums, guitars

•  Doo Wop remained largely a vacuous territory of one-hit- wonders until groups like The Platters, The Coasters, and the great Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

•  Later, this style would get a white makeover in groups like the Four Freshmen, Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons...more to come on those guys...

FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS

FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS

•  The first bona fide teen-aged pop star –  Frankie was 13 years old when they recorded

“Why Do Fools Fall In Love”

•  Notably integrated group whose members were of Puerto Rican and African American descent.

•  George Goldner, producer/manager •  Frankie left shortly after the first record

was released to try his hand at a solo career, with mediocre success.

“Why Do Fools Fall in Love”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I

FRANKIE LYMON •  After “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” was released, puberty began

to affect Frankie’s vocal range. •  Worried that fans wouldn’t respond to him if he were to

perform without his signature boy soprano voice, Frankie trained his falsetto register and recorded exclusively in that range.

•  However, he couldn’t perform consistently in his falsetto register, and as such, lip synced many of his live appearances.

•  Controversy: In an appearance on a live taping of ABC’s The Big Beat, Lymon spontaneously began dancing with a white girl. Southern states revolted, and the show was immediately canceled.

•  Lymon also became addicted to heroin as a young teenager, and passed away at the age of 25 of an overdose.

TEEN IDOL vs TEEN STAR

TEEN IDOL: ELVIS •  The teen idol is

threatening to the moral fabric of society.

•  Young girls screaming their heads off, fainting, swooning, crying are all disruptions to the ways a self-respecting girl should behave.

•  He is candid about his personal life and pleasure pursuits.

TEEN STAR: FRANKIE LYMON •  Frankie is a non-

threatening peer with well-kept, dark secrets.

•  He sang songs about puppy love, with no indication that amorous feelings might be acted upon.

•  He inspires nothing more in teenagers than to dance and bounce around.

TEEN POP FORMULA 1. Must be cute.

TEEN POP FORMULA 2. Sexiness is dangerous and also your most powerful weapon.

TEEN POP FORMULA 3. Know your audience and sell to them accordingly.

TEEN POP FORMULA 4. Possess mature talent beyond your years,

while still playing up your youthful personality.

TEEN POP FORMULA 5. Maintain an active media presence.

TEEN POP FORMULA 6. Embrace the emotional instability of your fan base.

TEEN POP FORMULA 7. Your growing pains are our entertainment. Make money by

showing us how adult you’ve become.

TEEN POP FORMULA 8. A public breakdown can ultimately be good for your image.

TEEN POP FORMULA 9. Everyone loves a comeback.

SEE YOU THURSDAY