History of Rock N Roll People and Places

Fats Domino

8 bar blues, The Fat Man (1949)

New York

Atlantic Records, founded in 1947 by Ahment Ertegun in New York;Freed moved to the Big Apple, New York City, in 1954 and had the same kind of show there, on WINS radio, reaching a pinnacle of success with major concerts and a television show; when rock 'n' roll became a national craze in 1955

Bill Haley

Bill Haley (1925-81) was born in Michigan to parents from England (mom) and Kentucky (dad). in his teens he idolized singing cowboys, and tried hard to become one, complete with fringe shirt and ten-gallon hat. his family having moved to Chester, Pennsylvania, he began singing and yodelling with a hillbilly band called the Downhomers; he then formed his own band, Bill Haley and the Four Aces of Swing, in 1947. they cut their first records on the Cowboy label in 1948. in 1949 he formed a second band, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, which began recording for the new Essex label in Philadelphia in 1951. that band featured the nucleus of Haley's famous rock 'n' roll ensemble, and was renamed Bill Haley and His Comets in 1952. in these changing names we see an ambivalent opportunism about which musical path and cultural image to embrace: is Bill going to make it as a polkster, cowboy, western swinger, 'spage-age star,' or what? it seems that he will try anything.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was a big fan of folk music, as well as lots of other music, so much so that he dropped out of the University of Minnesota in 1959 to move to New York City, settling in Greenwich Village, epicenter of the interwoven beat and folk scenes. he was young, but also had talent to burn; he composed, performed, and recorded steadily from 1962. until 1964 his style was solidly in the acoustic folk idiom, rooted in traditional styles but blossoming through his own compositions. but from the very beginning, his music was so compelling, both musically and poetically, that he came to incarnate the idea of the singer-songwriter; since then, he has exemplified its authority, profundity, and self-inventive creativity.

Bob Wills

Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. western swing quite simply forges an alloy between swing jazz and hillbilly music. uses a jazz big band (complete with horn, reed, and rhythm sections), complemented by Hawai'ian guitar, fiddles, and 'urbane hillbilly' style vocals, complete with barn-dance-style calls

Muddy Waters

Chicago; blues; guitar/singer; delta blues - in 1930s - field recording traditional blues; Hoochie Coochie Man

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley's first hit, That's All Right Mama, performed in rockabilly style (1954). rockabilly

Cleveland

Freed got an R&B radio show on WJW, Cleveland, in 1951, where his eclectic musical tastes became popular with both black and white audiences. Cleveland was a passionately musical town then, as it has been ever since, and it gave him a potent social platform for his musical ideas. he seems to have been first to the term rock 'n' roll systematically as a label for R&B;

Kingsmen

Kingsmen, a Portland Oregon band active from 1959, who peaked in about 1965: if there is one classic and definitive garage-band anthem, this is it, partly because it was one of the first and most influential break-through garage hits, and partly because it incarnates so much of what is great and awful about garage music, including the casual, even sneering vocals, the heavy electrified sound (with electric piano, as well as guitars), crashing drums, and absolutely monotonous, simple chord progression.

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin had been the name of a huge, World-War-2-era blimp that famously crashed and burned, as shown in the photo on the cover of their first album, Led Zeppelin (1968), which straightforwardly evokes a monumental erect phallus. this band started out in the vein of Cream and other hyper-ambitious 60s bands, but quickly revealed their brilliance in taking the music to a new place of theatrical intensity, from which even Cream seems limited and old-fashioned. jimmy page, robert plant, john paul jones, john bonham

Phil Spector

Spector is known for his hit songs within the mainstream pop idiom. if Esquivel seemed like a mad Latin scientist on the edges of pop music, Phil Spector (b1940) seemed like an Einstein at its center. as a teenager in Los Angeles, Spector had a hit record, 'To Know Him Is to Love Him,' with his trio the Teddy Bears (1958). from there on, his ambitious career shot more or less steadily upward for several years. in the early 1960s he and an industry partner formed their own record label, Philles Records, and he gradually developed an obsessively detail-oriented, symphonic approach to recording. he didn't record dozens of records in the hopes that one would hit; instead he lavished increasingly extreme attention on each of his recordings, producing far fewer songs, but a higher percentage of them were successful.

Los Angeles

Tequila, by the Champs (1958) -- from Los Angeles, California. this was not really a surfing band, but more of a California proto-surfing-era rockabilly / rock 'n' roll outfit, and this song in particular shows strong Latin qualities, having been thought up by their saxophone player Danny Flores. still, the song is an 'honorary' surf number, having had such a great influence on so many surf bands of the following ten years. SURFING MUSIC

Arthur Crudup

That's all Right Mama in 4, Who first performed the version of thats all right mama by elvis

Chuck Berry

a unique and towering figure in 1950s music is Chuck Berry, who many consider to be the greatest figure in early rock 'n' roll, or maybe in all of it. African American, born and raised in St. Louis, Berry was exposed to all kinds of music in the great cultural crossroads of that city, but in his own approach, he settled on a hillbilly more than a R&B or 'jump blues' style. his music was firmly grounded in the blues, but had the thin, twanging sound, guitar-based instrumentation, and fast, intense style of rockabilly, and his vocal tone was also relatively thin and clean. when DJ's and audiences first heard of him, they didn't quite know what to make of his 'black hillbilly' music. Berry moved to Chicago in 1955, where he met Muddy Waters and hooked up with Chess Records.

Little Richard

another piano player from the deep South, younger and entirely more radical than Fats Domino, was Richard Penniman, a.k.a. Little Richard. born in 1932 in Macon, Georgia, Richard was a Seventh-Day Adventist as a child, and was deeply influenced by his youthful experiences in a sanctified gospel church; like Jerry Lee Lewis (who emerged a bit later), he was saved and tortured by internal angels and demons that would battle for his soul in the public eye over the ensuing decades. Richard was also formatively influenced as a performer by the flamboyant, androgynously sexual edge of post-War R&B, most famously represented by his mentor Billy Wright, a fixture of the Atlanta R&B scene, whose gender-bending pompadours, glittering outfits, and outrageous stage behavior provided a potent role model. (for an example of Wright's style, listen to Billy's Boogie Blues, an upbeat jump-band 12-bar blues from 1950.) Wright's intense combination of sacred and secular flamboyance encouraged Little Richard to become one of the most passionate and theatrical performers in entertainment history, outstripping even Jerry Lee Lewis in this respect. Richard's songs and performing style were not only exuberant, but suggestive of a feverish, wild sexuality just barely (if at all) under control. Richard made recordings in 1951 in New Orleans, but at that time had not yet found the sound that would make his career; at that time, he still sounded like Billy Wright or many other post-war jump-blues singers. Richard's breakthrough hit came several years later with Tutti Frutti (1955, on Specialty Records, an indie label based in Los Angeles), whose producer, Bumps Blackwell, had to prod Richard to get down, dirty, and wild.

Jimmy Page

another superstar guitarist emerging from the electric blues scene in 60s London was Jimmy Page of the Yardbirds, probably the most gifted of all of them in his combination of sheer virtuosity, breadth of concept, and creative ambition.

Chicago

any blues musicians preferred a grittier, hotter sound that in some ways translates the older feel of southern country blues. the most important development in this direction was what came to be known as Chicago Blues, because of the large number of singers and players who congregated there, recorded there, and interacted with one another in similarly intense, rough-edged styles of electric blues that have been extremely influential on rock 'n' roll.

New Orleans

birthplace of jazz, combined the syncopation of ragtime with the wailing intensity of blues, and incorporated them both into a loose, often raucous-sounding polyphonic band style that set the nation on its ear

Pat Boone

born in Jacksonville, Florida, Boone began singing while at North Texas State and signed his first recording contract in 1954 (with the indie Dot Records; interestingly, he stayed with them, declining to move to a major label even when he became world-famous). Boone was a polite, demure, impeccably behaved southern boy with a nice, well-behaved European American voice, but he made many covers of hot rhythm and blues, which commonly sold more copies in his cover versions than in their original versions. because of his almost unmatched fame and success during this period, this strategy has been a matter of much contention over the years. it could be said that he 'robbed' the original musicians of the money they should have earned (either in record sales of their own recordings, or in royalties that they never received -- although this case would presumably be impossible to make on any legal basis), but it is no less true that his covers, by their very existence, drew fans to the originals and their performers.

Woody Guthrie

born in Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie, European American, led a mainly rural life until the drought, or Dust Bowl, of the mid-1930s. like thousands of other Okies, he migrated to California, where he gained notoriety as a folk musician and writer in L.A., before moving to New York. he was the father of another famous 'folkie,' Arlo Guthrie. Woody's music is full of humor, irony, idealism, and street-wise charm. in this way, he recalls Jimmie Rodgers. his most famous song is This Land Is Your Land (recorded 1944), which has become a kind of alternative American anthem; but it is one that celebrates the 'people's' America.

George Martin

e Beatles landed a record contract with the major British label, EMI, and began working with a brilliant producer, George Martin, sometimes referred to as the fifth Beatle (though there are various candidates for that honor), who would continue to work with them throughout the 60s. with his keen understanding of music and the marketplace, Martin was essential to everything musical about their career

Cream

formed in 1966, were arguably the first power trio in rock history, the band that gave this expression meaning. they set out to revolutionize the music world by combining three hard-driving stars of the London scene, all of whom had lately been in the Bluesbreakers band: Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and harmonica, and Ginger Baker on drums. and they did just that -- for some. these guys were obsessed with Chicago blues and its forerunners in Delta blues, and their music is absolutely steeped in Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson -- but played louder than almost any music had ever been played before, with the possible exception of some other 1966 bands.

Hank Williams

from Alabama. he was a brilliant songwriter, not only for the potency of his words, melodies, and performances, but for their remarkable simplicity and directness.

Golden Gate Gospel Quartet

golden gospel train, had backup voices imitating a train on the tracks, and later in the song, the voices imitating a whistle, a bell, and even taking a muted, jazzy 'trumpet solo.'

John Lennon

grittier lead vocal; rhythm guitar, by 1966 John Lennon could make the comment, only half-joking, that 'we're more popular than Jesus.' that statement, as well as the firestorm of reaction to it around the world, illustrates the tremendous phenomenon of the Beatles at that time.

Kingston Trio

he Kingston Trio: something strange happened in 1958. a group of clean cut college types, wearing striped shirts, khaki pants, and loafers, and toting banjos and guitars, struck a goldmine of success with the American public, singing a kind of upbeat, easy-going folk music which, although it wasn't overtly political, did exude a kind of implicit 'consciousness-raising' quality that was an important part of the contemporary scene. the Kingston Trio became, and has remained, the most popular 'folk' group in American history.

Kinks

he Kinks raised the whole issue of 'Beatles effect' to a different level. formed by brothers Ray and Dave Davies in 1964, this band combined blues, R&B, rock 'n' roll, folk, and country influence, but ended up with something that truly sounded like no one else. the Kinks was one of the rare British Invasion bands to make it through the 60s (and indeed, well beyond that).

Monkees

he Monkees (consisting of Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith) were essential punk (anti-)heroes: artificial inventions, clones of the Beatles, created for the Monkees situational-comedy TV show, helpless and hopeless pawns of the music industry, gaining teenybop stardom and then getting shafted when they began to take themselves seriously -- but not before recording some classic pop songs, concise, straightforward, fun, a 'clean rock band' sound with an attractive vocal style. a classic example would be I'm a Believer (1966), a song actually written by Neil Diamond.

Sun Studios

he crucible of rockabilly was Sam Phillips's Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. Phillips founded the studio in March 1952. he had been active earlier, producing Jackie Brenston's classic 'Rocket 88' in 1951 among other remarkable recordings. he was interested in all kinds of music, and Memphis had them: it was a thriving musical town and an important commercial crossroads, rich in both European- and African- American traditions. Phillips produced major blues ad R&B artists early on, including B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, and Howlin' Wolf. but, especially after Elvis, he focused principally on developing the sound that came to be known as rockabilly, centering on white musicians, and in the process cultivated what came to be known as the Sun Studios sound.

Louis Jordan

he most famous jump band by far, however, was Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, who maintained a delightful balance between swing sophistication, understatement, and urbanity, on the one hand, and a simple, driving, blues-and-boogie-based intensity on the other. alto saxophonist Louis Jordan's earliest recordings show him singing and playing in a style that is more or less indistinguishable from swing; listen for example to Oh Boy, I'm in the Groove (1940), which is yet one more song about the joy of dancing and rhythm. Jordan's singing style incorporates elements of jive, meaning the playful, witty rhythmic slang (commonly spoken, but could be sung) which was common in humorous or upbeat African American vocal pop music of the 1940s.

Jimmy Preston

his post-War rhythm-&-blues, refrain blues

Link Wray

historic moment in rock music was the day in 1958 when South-Carolina-born Link Wray (1935-2005) and his Raymen went into a studio in Virginia to make a record. Wray was using a Les Paul guitar and a Premier amplifier, which, he says, he modified by punching holes in the speaker with a pencil, which made the sound rougher, buzzier, and more distorted. Wray had listened long and hard to blues and had learned from blues players; it must be in part that his desire for that earthy, rich, rough sound stems from his love for country and other blues styles. but the shockingly simple, slow, monotonous 12-bar blues they came up with, Rumble, was unlike almost any mainstream popular music at the time.

Memphis

home of sun records, which recorded both black and white musicians and helped to develop new sounds in hillbilly, R&B, and crossover styles, notably the rockabilly style so integral to the early history of rock 'n' roll.

Jerry Lee Lewis

in jump-band style; Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On, by Jerry Lee Lewis

Eric Clapton

influential rock musician, in any event, the Yardbirds modeled themselves on Chicago blues bands, and soon picked up Eric Clapton as lead guitarist; but Clapton quit in 1965 when one of their singles, For Your Love, cast in an intentionally poppier, 'British Invasion' kind of style, became a big hit, signaling a turn away from hard-edged electric blues. Clapton (we'll get back to him in a bit) was quickly replaced by guitar genius Jeff Beck, who brought a playful and experimental edge to the band; Bluesbreakers band in 1963. the band went through many personnel changes, but found its greatest fame after Eric Clapton joined in 1965, lead guitarist, Clapton's brief solo in this song (which I have also pasted onto to the end of the earlier clip) is, to my mind, one of the best guitar solos in recorded 60s music, showcasing Clapton's mastery with string-bending inflections, coloration, inter-related phrases that tell a complete 'story' -- and, above all, a wonderful concision, being under one minute long. (the era of interminable rock guitar solos, which Clapton himself will help initiate, has not yet begun!) Clapton shows fine control over the electric guitar, with beautiful, smooth sustain and not wasting a single note; and he is playing in a 'pure,' but perfectly original and updated, blues style.

the Beatles

innumerable bands played, or tried to play, '50s-style rock 'n' roll; many of them never made it, many are known today as historical footnotes. but one young band from the industrial city of Liverpool began to cause a sensation in 1963, first in England and then in the U.S.: the Beatles, made up of songwriters John Lennon (grittier lead vocal; rhythm guitar) and Paul McCartney (sweeter lead vocal; bass); George Harrison (lead guitar), and Ringo Starr (drums). the Beatles, in their unprecedentedly brilliant and meteoric career, definitively transformed the world of popular music and, in the process, starkly revealed some of its deepest tensions and contradictions. notice the name of the band, which right away illustrates their original debt to 50s culture: the beat-les, punning on 'beat' as in beat generation, 'beat' as in having a beat, and 'beetles' as a tribute to Buddy Holly's group, the Crickets.

Robert Johnson

is one of the greatest twentieth-century icons of American music and, in his way, of American identity itself. born in Mississippi, he traveled extensively and recorded little, and much about his life is shrouded in mystery, including his death by apparent poisoning. he died young and did not, like many of his contemporaries, live to make the transition from acoustic to electric guitar; and we have only two sessions of recordings by him, from 1936 and 1937. these display only a smattering of his broad tastes and abilities in music, but have sufficed, over time, to raise him to a pinnacle of fame and influence in American music, and in rock 'n' roll in particular, of which he has been considered as one of the primary 'godfathers,' especially by the British generation of the 60s including the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton.

San Francisco

jazz nightclubs, progressive jazz

Keith Richards

lead guitar; he also spells his last name 'Richard' sometimes, Richards looked comparatively tough and mean

Buddy Holly

musicians far from Memphis were inspired by the Sun Records music, including Buddy Holly (Texas). Buddy Holly with his backup band, The Crickets. 'That'll Be the Day' and 'Peggy Sue' (both 1957) were two of his biggest hits. Holly was one of the most important and influential figures in 50s music, because he managed to convey such a complete, distinct, and authentic sense of original personality in his music, even though he died in a plane crash at age of 22

Dick Clark

one of the great figures in the national popularization, and, some would say sanitization, of 1950s rock music was Dick Clark (b1929). working as radio DJ in Philadelphia, Clark was presumably subject to the same pressures and opportunities as his opposite number, Alan Freed in Cleveland. but Clark's personality, and no doubt business savvy, nudged him in a different direction. rather than emphasizing the racial crossover of R&B or the revolutionary excitement of rockabilly-style rock 'n' roll, Clark hosted a good-natured 'bandstand'-type radio hour, featuring live performances with a live teen audience, whose success led it to become an ABC national television program in 1956, American Bandstand. the show was such a tremendous hit that the mere appearance of a song on it often guaranteed high sales, and countless millions of teenagers watched it regularly. boys and girls, dancing on the show, were dressed 'wholesomely' and behaved themselves 'properly,' the music was performed in a 'clean' way, and the effect was to help rock 'n' roll seem for the first time like an acceptable mass youth music. African Americans were not entirely excluded from the show, but they were in the distinct minority, and there was no inter-racial dancing. the show lasted all the way until 1989, by which time MTV (let alone metal, punk, new wave, grunge, etc.) had completely transformed the broadcast image of popular music.

Frank Sinatra

one of the greatest of post-War American popular singers, singing Blue Moon at the beginning of his career in 1939,

Rolling Stones

paint it black, minor, band that many feel is THE rock band to end all rock bands, the ultimate point of reference for rock music as a whole, the one that established the true identity of rock, etc. etc. the Stones achieved this result by combining musical brilliance with an almost unshakable grounding in 1950s and early 60s rock 'n' roll, blues, and R&B styles, and with a truly remarkable intuition about the marketing and updating of their image

Alan Freed

restless and visionary DJ Alan Freed. raised in northern Ohio, Freed got an R&B radio show on WJW, Cleveland, in 1951, where his eclectic musical tastes became popular with both black and white audiences. freed moved to the Big Apple, New York City, in 1954 and had the same kind of show there, on WINS radio, reaching a pinnacle of success with major concerts and a television show; when rock 'n' roll became a national craze in 1955, he seemed to be at its epicenter. then in 1959 he lost his job due to the famous payola scandal, where it was discovered that DJs were being paid by record companies to play certain songs, which means the public was being misled about which music was truly 'popular.'

Carl Perkins

rockabilly, who was meant to be another Elvis, but didn't quite have the sound or the charisma

Mick Jagger

singer for rolling stones, Jagger had an exaggeratedly sensuous face

Howlin' Wolf

spoonful (1960), unique vocal timbres to create a unique, memorable sound

Benny Goodman

started swing era, big band, Goodman's band was (at that time) entirely European American, and played in a 'cooler' style that was just as typical of many European American bands.

Paul McCartney

sweeter lead vocal; bass, who would write a lot of music that reflects on the old traditions.

Sam Phillips

the crucible of rockabilly was Sam Phillips's Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. Phillips founded the studio in March 1952. he had been active earlier, producing Jackie Brenston's classic 'Rocket 88' in 1951 among other remarkable recordings. he was interested in all kinds of music, and Memphis had them

Fletcher Henderson

the remarkable fact is that Henderson, who led one of the greatest big bands of the 1920s and early 30s, could not sustain his band in the depths of the Depression; it went out of business in 1934. a short while later, he began working as an arranger for Benny Goodman's band, selling him many of the charts he had used in his own band. hence the comparability of the two recordings: both are based on Henderson's own written arrangement of the same song, which he brought to both of these bands. Henderson's band was entirely African American, and played in a hot style that was typical of many African American bands of the era

Beach Boys

this was a true phenomenon, something amazing, new, and profound, a band around which the world of pop music could seem, in one moment, to revolve: the Beach Boys. they came out of late 50s music but had a fresh, modern sound that is classic early 60s, and were the most successful group in pop music at that time -- an essential bridge, but maybe also a buffer or separation, between the rock revolutions of the mid-50s and mid-60s. they came from southern California (Hawthorne, a suburb of L.A.), forming a band in 1961. three brothers, Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson formed the nucleus; Brian Wilson was the 'certifiable musical genius.' other early members were Mike Love and Al Jardine. all five were born between 1941 and 1946; none was over 20 years old in 1961. aside from covers, they wrote and played all of their own music; no outside professional songwriters or backup bands here. basic influences on the Beach Boys are easy to detect. first, the component of 50s doo-wop, leavened with a sophisticated sensibility that recalls the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Los. second, the component of guitar-band rock 'n' roll, in a Chuck Berry vein, viewed through that bleached surf-music lens, and incorporating the influence of blues music -- essential to their early style, but interpreted in a restrained way that is infinitely distant from Chicago or the South. third, the explicit surfing component, with lyrics about surfing, cruising, love, and dating. early Beach Boys songs tend to be either upbeat ('cruising and surfing' dance music) or slow ('dancing and romancing' ballads).

Robert Plant

vocals of led zeppelin, unbelievable voice. it is hard to describe the effect of his sound when it was new. shockingly androgynous is the word that comes closest -- shocking, but with plenty of familiar, traditional elements, including blues shouting and crying, passionate soul singing, and the rock 'n' roll falsetto that blurs 'male' and 'female' vocal qualities to disturbing and addictive effect . . . setting the stage for early-70s glam