Quote
“If I could find a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars” - Sam Phillips
Rock & Roll
- Alan Freed
- Open Format DJ (Plays White music and Black music)
- “Moondog House” in Cleveland (1951-1954)
- He doesn’t invent Rock & Roll but he names it and spreads it
- Someone already had the name “Moondog” so Freed had to change the name of his radio show from “Moondog House” to “Rock ‘n Roll Party”
- “Rock ‘n’ Roll was just a white imitation, a white adaptaion, of Negro rhythm and blues” - Louis Jordan
- R&B
- R&R was “stolen” from R&B
- “Hound Dog” was a hit on the R&B charts for Big Mama Thornton in March 1953
- 7 weeks at #1
- Hit for Elvis Presley in summer 1956
- US Billboard the Hot 100 #1 for 11 weeks
- US Billboard Top Selling Country & Western Singles #1
- US Billboard Top Selling Rhythm and Blues Singles #1
- Over 3,000,000 sold
- “Shake Rattle & Roll” - Big Joe Turner
- Hit for Bill Haley & The Comets in August 1954
Country
- Hillbilly Music
- Derives from rural Southern communities
- Draws on immigrant traditions, especially the musical traditions of British Isles and Ireland, but also indigenous and African American influences
- Characterized by rhythmic dances, like the jig, the reel, the polka, the waltz, round dances
- Radio and records bring it to a wider audience in 1920s and 1930
- Branded commercially as “country music”
- Focused on the fiddle and the banjo
- Fiddle is a folk violin, which dates to medieval European fidula
- Banjo develops from the African mbanza
- Listening to “Old Chuck Hen”, 1927 recording of a popular Appalachian hillybilly tune
- Western Swing
- Bob Wills (1905-1975)
- Popular Texas style in 1930s and 1940s
- Origins in fiddle and guitar barn dance band
- Adopted elements of blues and jazz
- Unusual at the time in its incorporation
- Bluegrass
- Emerges in 1940s, commercially popular in 1950s
- Characterized by virtuosic // TODO review slides cause I missed it
- Honky Tonk
- Ernest Tubbs (1914-1984)
- Emerges in 1940s and 1950s
- Derives from bars and saloons, or “honky tonks”
- Country analog of Chicago Blues in terms of amplification
- Most commercially successful style?
- Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline