MUSIC 162 Midterm 1

Gospel music

A large body of sacred song with texts that reflect aspects of the personal religious experience of Protestant evangelical groups.

String band

A musical ensemble associated with Southern country music, originating in the 1920s. The typical string band consisted of acoustic guitars, a string bass, fiddles, and a banjo, perhaps also a mandolin. String band is also sometimes used to describe a blue grass ensemble or a folk ensemble. The string band was combined with the swing band rhythm section (piano and drums) and horns in Western swing.

Strophic

A musical structure in which the same music is used for each stanza of a ballad, song, or hymn.

Minstrel Show

stage entertainment consisting of songs, dances, and comic scenes performed by white actors in blackface makeup; originated in the nineteenth century

verse-chorus form

standard strophic form of a song in which there is a regularly recurring refrain (chorus)

Country and Western

A term used to describe popular country music from the late 1940's on, replacing the earlier term hillbilly music Haley once described his early sound as "a combination of country and western, Dixieland, and the old style rhythm and blues The term crossover refers to that process whereby an artist or a recording from a secondary or specialty marketing category, such as country and western (c&w) or rhythm and blues (r&b), achieves hit status in the mainstream market The passing of the big bands created something of a void in popular music, which contributed to the rise of rhythm and blues and, to a lesser extent, country and western. With folk temporarily discredited, country or the compound country and western became the chosen industry term after 1950 The strategies of the major companies for reclaiming country and western proved to be remarkably effective, if somewhat dispiriting in retrospect According to Gillett, record companies exploited the "novelty" of the Southern accents of country and Western singers such as Tex Williams—singer of "Smoke That Cigarette" (1947), issued by Capitol—or Gene Autry, whose many hits for Columbia included "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1950) By marketing recordings like Frankie Laine's "Mule Train" and "High Noon," as Gillett suggests, country and western music was soon firmly back in the hands of the major companies The one exception to this rule was King Records in Cincinnati, Ohio, which boasted a strong roster of country and western artists like Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Moon Mullican, who, as we shall see, came into regular contact with rhythm and blues and were heavily influenced by the western end of the country music spectrum The entry of two new major companies into the music industry during this period contributed to the majors' hold on country and western music. The first was MGM Records, formed originally in 1946 as an outlet for the film company's movie soundtracks but soon expanded into other kinds of music. The second entry was Mercury, which began in Chicago in 1947 as a specialty label focusing primarily on polka and rhythm and blues. In 1947, Mercury signed Frankie Laine, whose million-seller hits, "Mule Train" (1949) and "Cry of the Wild Goose" (1950), were in the ersatz country mold. It was MGM, however, that picked up Hank Williams, the biggest country and western star since Jimmie Rodgers. The major labels were able to bring country and western music firmly into their fold, and new developments in African American music seemed less desirable to them King Records was distinguished by its ability to produce r&b and country and western with equal success The formula is elegant in its simplicity and not without an element of truth—rhythm and blues and country and western (c&w) were the primary styles that gave birth to rock 'n' roll—but it suffers from a number of shortcomings that can easily distort the contributions of participating groups. Marketing categories were simple, narrow, and limiting: pop for the national market, country and western for the regional market, and rhythm and blues for the African American market. In one blow, rock 'n' roll swept away this conventional wisdom.

Charles Harris

1867-1930, Jew from Milwaukee, first to sell sheet music in millions of copies Charles Kassel Harris was a well regarded American songwriter of popular music. During his long career, he advanced the relatively new genre, publishing more than 300 songs, often deemed by admirers as the "king of the tear jerkers". He is one of the early pioneers of Tin Pan Alley Charles K. Harris's "After the Ball," written and published in 1892, "quickly reached sales of $25,000 a week" and "sold more than 2,000,000 copies in only several years, eventually achieving a sale of some five million. took notice of records and eventually pushed record companies to record their songs, but for a variety of reasons—practical, technical, legal, aesthetic, and economic—Tin Pan Alley never embraced records

AFM strike against radio

1942-1944 musicians' strike. On August 1, 1942, the American Federation of Musicians, at the instigation of union president James C. Petrillo, began a strike against the major American record companies because of disagreements over royalty payments.

verse-refrain

A Tin Pan Alley musical form that fused elements of verse-and-chorus form with AABA form.

Race music

A term put directly on record labels in the 1920s and '30s by small independent companies that marketed black roots music specifically to African-American listeners.

Alan Freed

A disc jockey who began playing a unique style of music at the time called "rhythm-and-blues" on a Cleveland radio show, who gained a wide following from black and white teenagers due to his on-air attitude and style, gaining a wide following for this new genre that evolved into rock-and-roll.

Country Blues

A family of African American folk blues styles that flourished in the rural South. It differs from commercial blues mainly in its accompanying instrument-usually acoustic guitar -and its tendency toward less regular forms. From these pre-blues forms, which were largely improvised and unaccompanied, a crude blues form developed that would evolve into what came to be known as country blue Although all of what is now called blues was categorized as race music in the 1920s and 1930s, many historians have distinguished between country blues (also referred to as down-home or rural blues) and city, or classic, blues (also known as urban blues or vaudeville blues). "Classic blues was entertainment," Amiri Baraka (a.k.a Leroi Jones) has said, "and country blues, folklore," although the two styles were more interdependent than such opposition would suggest. Country blues was intensely personal, highly improvised, and quite irregular in form. It was usually performed by a single male vocalist with guitar accompaniment. In the cities, the myriad of blues styles were codified into eight- and sixteen-bar patterns, as well as the twelve-bar form that became the standard for classic blues In contrast to (usually male) country blues singers, these classic blues women were typically accompanied by "a red hot jazz band" or a "scintillating master of the keyboard.

sectional form (ragtime)

A form in which each verse or half-verse receives its own material (for example, ABCD)

Intellectual property rights

A product of the intellect, such as an expressed idea or concept, that has commercial value.

Jazz

A style of dance music popular in the 1920s

Benny Goodman

A twentieth-century American jazz clarinetist and bandleader. He was known as the "King of Swing." Goodman in particular could swing more than most; he hired Fletcher Henderson, among other African Americans, as his arranger, and he made jazz history when he added black pianist Teddy Wilson to his band in 1936. Wallerstein had judged correctly that CBS would benefit from acquiring an established trademark, a pressing plant, and the rights to British Columbia's U.S. recordings. Abandoning RCA Victor to become head of the new CBS record division, Wallerstein lured talent such as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie to the Columbia label. One of the key players in the talent raids that brought Goodman and Basie to Columbia was John Hammond, a wealthy Vanderbilt on his mother's side, a staunch civil rights activist, and an aficionado of African American music; he was soon to become Benny Goodman's brother-in-law. It was Hammond who convinced Benny Goodman to add Teddy Wilson to his band Female singers who worked with big bands were some of the first to break out. Ella Fitzgerald started her career with Chick Webb; "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" (1938) made her a pop star. Peggy Lee sang with Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington and then moved into songwriting and acting [Glenn] Miller died in a wartime plane crash, but Herman, James, and Dorsey had folded their original bands in late 1946, together with Benny Goodman and many others. The straighter, less jazzy bands like Lawrence Welk's and Guy Lombardo's survived (for a specialist and aging public) but the Big Band Era, just over a decade, was finished

Irving Berlin

A twentieth-century American writer of popular songs (words and music). His songs include "God Bless America," "White Christmas," and "There's no Business like Show Business." took notice of records and eventually pushed record companies to record their songs, but for a variety of reasons—practical, technical, legal, aesthetic, and economic—Tin Pan Alley never embraced records If one had to choose a single artist who epitomized the Tin Pan Alley ethos, it would be Irving Berlin, about whom the Literary Digest, after praising his work, remarked with surprise: "And Berlin belongs to the Jewish race."23 Berlin (Israel Baline) was four years old in 1892 when he and his family came to the United States after escaping Russian pogroms. Irving Berlin lived to be 101 years old and became one of the most prolific songwriters of the twentieth century. Because he could play piano in only one key, he compensated by using a piano with a moveable keyboard that could transpose into other keys. : "At fourteen, he was a singing waiter in the honky tonks of Chinatown and the Bowery, absorbing the rich sounds and rhythms of the musical melting pot." Two years later, Berlin landed his first Tin Pan Alley job. There, he wrote classics such as "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" (1919), "Puttin' on the Ritz" (1929), "Easter Parade" (1933), and "God Bless America" (1939), which captured the hearts and minds of generations and made Berlin a household name. "The range of his songs, in content and mood, if not in form," Hamm has said, "is enormous. . . . Some take on a bit of the flavor of ragtime, of the blues, of country-western, Latin-American, or jazz."25 His appropriations of ragtime and jazz in particular speak volumes about the ways in which European "ethnic" Americans could find their way into the American mainstream by drawing on African American music and culture, using black racial difference to lay claim to a whiteness otherwise denied them. Irving Berlin turned out dozens of ragtime songs, including "Play Some Ragtime" in 1909; "Stop That Rag," "Dat Draggy Rag," and "Oh, That Beautiful Rag" in 1910; and "Ragtime Violin" and his best-known, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," in 1911. Berlin was subsequently billed as the Father of Ragtime His recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" from the 1942 film Holiday Inn sold more than 30 million copies and entered the pop charts eighteen years in a row The indefatigable Irving Berlin, whose fee for a musical film score was $75,000 plus a percentage of gross receipts, contributed hit songs to films like Puttin' on the Ritz (1930), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), and On the Avenue (1937). By 1937, the music publishing houses associated with Hollywood shared 65 percent of ASCAP's publisher dividends and continued to do so for the next decade

Ragtime

A type of music featuring melodies with shifting accents over a steady, marching-band beat; originated among black musicians in the south and midwest in the 1880s

12 bar blues

AAB form that is 12 measures in length and is more defined by its chord progression. Although this chord progression is common in other forms, it helped to define the blues.

Demise of independent labels, 1930s

According to many who lived through the Depression, you can't be sad and dance at the same time. Music and dancing made people forget the hardships of daily life. Jazz and swing were popular. People danced to the big band tunes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. But it seems independent labels went out of business at this point In the early 1930s, the American Recording Company (ARC) moved in to become a big player in the record industry by buying out small independent labels. ARC leased Brunswick from Warner Brothers in 1931 and also picked up Banner, Cameo, Conqueror, Melotone, Pathe, Perfect, OKeh, Romeo and Vocalion. ARC became a giant in 1934 by purchasing Columbia, which had sold to radio manufacturer Grisby-Grunow a few years earlier, but went bankrupt. In 1938 ARC was bought by CBS network founder William Paley. The Columbia name was kept under the CBS umbrella.

ASCAP

American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. A membership organization that represents individuals who hold the copyrights to music written in the United States and grants licensing agreements for the performance of that music. The Tin Pan Alley songsters organized the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914 to recover royalties on performances of their copyrighted music. Until 1939, when a rival organization was formed, ASCAP was a closed society with a near monopoly on all copyrighted music. As proprietor of its members' compositions, ASCAP controlled the use of any selection in its catalogue, thereby exercising considerable power in shaping public taste. Membership in ASCAP was skewed toward writers of show tunes and semiserious work ASCAP income from 199 radio licenses was $130,000, up from the previous year's $35,000 but far from the million predicted when the drive to collect from broadcasters began in the summer of 1922 If radio never quite measured up to ASCAP's musical or financial expectations, the creation of another new medium—talking films—held out the promise of even greener pastures for Tin Pan Alley composers By 1937, the music publishing houses associated with Hollywood shared 65 percent of ASCAP's publisher dividends and continued to do so for the next decade

Thomas Edison

American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb, acoustic recording on wax cylinders, and motion pictures. With potential sales such as these, it is not surprising that music publishers were not particularly interested in the cylinder phonograph that Thomas Edison had invented in 1877. They were far too preoccupied with the sale of sheet music—their primary source of revenue—to bother about records.

W.C. Handy

American musician and composer. He was the first person to recognize the importance of blues as a legitimate musical form and the first to publish a blues composition, "The Memphis Blues" (1911). In 1912, four blues compositions were published: Chris Smith and Tim Brymn's simply titled "The Blues" came first, followed by Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues," Arthur Seals's "Baby Seals' Blues," and "Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy s. In 1959, blues historian Samuel Charters took the narrow view: "Both Handy and Arthur Seals were Negroes, but the music that they titled 'blues' is more or less derived from the standard popular musical styles of the 'coon song' and 'cake walk' type W. C. Handy was one of the first songwriters to bring a feel for the blues into the world of popular composition. Also a successful businessman, Handy established his own publishing house and record label with his partner Harry Pace. Handy's claim to being the Father of the Blues. Handy was a trained composer who was as conversant with African American folkloric idioms as he was with musical notation. During this period, he published some of his most memorable compositions, including "St. Louis Blues" (1914), "Joe Turner Blues" (1916), and "Beale Street Blues" (1917). Accordingly, Baraka has argued that "W. C. Handy, with the publication of his various 'blues compositions,' invented [the blues] for a great many Americans and also showed that there was money to be made from it. Handy's success alerted Tin Pan Alley writers, who turned out a rash of so-called blues songs during this period.38 Given record company practices at the time, these songs were invariably recorded by white singers. As Robert Palmer has said, "The idea of making recordings by and for blacks hadn't occurred to anyone in a position to do anything about it when the so-called blues craze hit around 1914-15, so [W. C.] Handy's 'blues' and the blues of other popular tunesmiths, black and white, were recorded by whites, many of them specialists in Negro dialect material The tango also had an effect on the African American music that became popular in the mainstream; it can be heard most prominently on the tango introduction to W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues."

Rhythm and Blues (R&B)

An African American musical genre that emerged after World War II and consists of a loose cluster of styles derived from black musical traditions, characterized by energetic and hard-swinging rhythms. At first performed exclusively by black musicians and aimed at black audiences, R&B came to replace the older category of "race records."

Little Richard

An African American rock-n-roll singer and recorded hit songs in the 50's including Tutti Fruiti

Chuck Berry

An African-American rock 'n' roll musician and composer, who influenced many musicians of the 1950s and 1960s, including the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Following from these efforts, early rock 'n' roll guitarists such as Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore combined the coarse, distorted tone pioneered by African American blues guitarists with a level of dexterity and melodic invention that owed no small debt to jazz, and gave rock 'n' roll a distinctly modern edge The cliché is that rock & roll was a melding of country music and blues, and if you are talking about, say, Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, the description, though simplistic, does fit. But the black inner-city vocal-group sound . . . had little to do with either blues or country music in their purer forms When rock 'n' roll erupted full-blown in the national pop market in 1956, it presented itself as an integrated phenomenon with performers such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley sharing the stage equally with artists like Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Coasters, the Platters, Fats Domino, Lloyd Price—major stars all, and on a rough par with the likes of Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly."7 But this only happened after it had begun to expand to disruptive proportions among mainstream fans. As Greil Marcus correctly points out: "Most of the first rock 'n' roll styles were variations on black forms that had taken shape before the white audience moved in. Chuck Berry merged Walker's approach with those of jazzman Charlie Christian and Louis Jordan accompanist Carl Hogan to create the definitive rock 'n' roll guitar style and mixed in universal odes to teenage life: "School Day," "Rock 'n' Roll Music," and "Sweet Little Sixteen. Chess's pioneering role in advancing rock 'n' roll was even more apparent in the label's next two major performers—Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry However, he was overshadowed at Chess by the label's biggest star and possibly the greatest rock 'n' roller of them all—Chuck Berry. Were it not for the dynamics of racism in U.S. society, Chuck Berry probably would have been crowned king of rock 'n' roll. When Berry, the son of a middle-class contractor from St. Louis, Missouri, walked into the offices of Chess Records on the recommendation of Muddy Waters, he was already a seasoned performer from years playing at the Cosmopolitan Club in his native St. Louis in a band that featured (and was originally led by) pianist Johnnie Johnson The country-tinged "Maybellene" went to number five on the pop charts in 1955, but some of Berry's songs were too socially relevant for pop. His next four singles featured a style more clearly indebted to blues and found him addressing a range of social issues outlined by Charlie Gillett, including legal troubles and unfair judges ("Thirty Days"), car salesmen and credit ("No Money Down"), cultural authority ("Roll Over Beethoven"), and the wide-ranging "Too Much Monkey Busines Berry is best remembered for the simpler, teen-directed but socially relevant recordings that came later—"School Day" and "Rock & Roll Music" in 1957, and "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Johnny B. Goode" in 1958 Chuck Berry had it all: sex appeal, talent, wit, stage presence, and an incredible ability to relate to teen culture. Had this country been more tolerant of racial differences, this "brown-eyed handsome man" would probably have been crowned the "King of Rock 'n' Roll. Chuck Berry's 1950s singles represent what are in some ways the clearest combination of cross-cultural influences of early rock 'n' roll: the forms, harmonies, and pounding backbeats of rhythm and blues, and the twangy, clear-toned guitar solos of "hot country." Chuck Berry's music very much represents the musical and cultural boundary-crossing that went on in the music underworlds of Memphis and St. Louis.

Cosimo Matassa

An Italian American jukebox operator named Cosimo Matassa, co-owner and chief engineer of J&M Studio, was a key figure in the construction of the New Orleans sound. From the 1940s until the late 1960s, almost every r&b record cut in New Orleans was recorded in one of his studios. Matassa's productions had no overdubbing, multitracking, or electronic embellishments. His style was best described by drummer Earl Palmer, who called Matassa a "genius": With this finely tuned approach and a stable of brilliant sidemen, Matassa created classic New Orleans rock 'n' roll—heavy on bass and drums, light on horns and piano, with a strong vocal lead—that had independent labels flocking to New Orleans to record. The first label to use Matassa's studio, in 1947, was De Luxe from New Jersey Little Richard's first hits were recorded in Cosimo Matassa's famous studio in New Orleans with Dave Bartholomew's band, the same musicians who can be heard on recordings of Fats Domino and other New Orleans luminaries. "Tutti Frutti" hadn't been on the docket for that particular recording session, but Richard started singing it during a break

Urban blues

An early form of blues, also known as classic blues, that typically featured a female perspective.

Robert Johnson

As a result of all these forays, commercial and noncommercial, dozens of country blues artists—among them Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie McTell, Son House, Charlie Patton, Lead Belly, and Robert Johnson—were brought to wider public attention. Robert Johnson, later to be known as the King of the Delta Blues Singers, led a life shrouded in myth and mystery. Even after he allegedly sold his soul to the devil to enhance his talent and career, he remained a relatively minor player on the blues stage of his time. His entire recorded output comprised 29 songs (plus alternate takes) made in two sessions in 1936 and 1937. For anyone who was listening, it revealed the genius of his ability to "sing and play cross-rhythms on the guitar, relating the parts in . . . complex syncopations."32 Still, it wasn't until Columbia released King of the Delta Blues Singers (1961), a compilation of Johnson's recordings, that British rockers discovered and popularized his material and Johnson became the towering blues figure that he is remembered as today. The pioneering guitar work of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson is echoed in the playing of Lightnin' Hopkins, Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, Muddy Waters, and B. B. King. It is fitting that Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, and Howlin' Wolf have been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as "early influences. Some artists seem to embody the myths associated with their particular style of music: Robert Johnson with Delta blues, Charlie Parker with bebop jazz, Tupac with hip hop.

Duke Ellington

As a result, most mainstream listeners associated jazz with sweet dance music, even though, by the time of Whiteman's success, most jazz musicians, including African Americans, were playing scored arrangements that combined sweet and hot styles; some, like Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, had improved on the model, creating the space for hot improvised solos within innovatively structured arrangements. While other black writers and composers who were schooled in musical notation (W. C. Handy, Duke Ellington) were able to gain entrance to ASCAP, the vast majority of black artists were routinely excluded from the society and thereby systematically denied the full benefit of copyright protection. While significant markets existed for jazz and blues records, African American artists rarely performed on radio or in film. Following Bessie Smith's starring role in St. Louis Blues in 1929, the film's director, Dudley Murphy, made Black and Tan Fantasy, a movie built around Duke Ellington's composition. African American jazz bands were usually relegated to late-night broadcasts from popular nightspots—Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, Chick Webb at the Savoy in Harlem, Earl (Fatha) Hines from Chicago's Grand Terrace. African American jazz bands were usually relegated to late-night broadcasts from popular nightspots—Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, Chick Webb at the Savoy in Harlem, Earl (Fatha) Hines from Chicago's Grand Terrace. Abandoning RCA Victor to become head of the new CBS record division, Wallerstein lured talent such as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie to the Columbia label. Peggy Lee sang with Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington and then moved into songwriting and acting. Jo Stafford began with Tommy Dorsey and went on to record numerous pop hits that included folk and country material

Piano

Because middle-class home entertainment at this time centered on the piano, sheet music was the main vehicle for the mass dissemination of music, and publishing firms were the core institutions of the music business.

Classic Blues

Blues written by professional songwriters and performed by professional female blues singers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.

Chapter 2:

Chapter 2

Chapter 3:

Chapter 3

Chapter 4:

Chapter 4

Stephen Foster

Composer of popular minstrel show tunes such as Oh, Susanna, and My Old Kentucky Home. minstrelsy generally moved toward a more sympathetic treatment of African Americans. No one was more identified with this trajectory than Stephen Foster, perhaps the best-known U.S. songwriter of the nineteenth century. Foster humanized minstrelsy, but without directly challenging black stereotypes or the institution of slavery. One of his first and most popular minstrel songs, "Oh! Susanna" (1848), portrayed African Americans as good natured but simple minded The term n***er was liberally sprinkled throughout "Old Uncle Ned," written the same year, but by the song's end the slave master genuinely mourns Ned's passing. "Old Folks at Home," "My Old Kentucky Home"—Foster began to downplay the exaggerated black dialect and achieved "a lament for lost home, friends, and youth, cutting across racial and ethnic lines. . . ." But even as late as 1860, "Old Black Joe," which borrowed respectfully from the "Negro spiritual" tradition, could be criticized for its racial condescension. Foster's songs were sufficiently popular—some selling in the range of 100,000 copies—that he became the first U.S. composer to eke out a living from songwriting alone. Still, never having received his due from publishers, he died with thirty-eight cents in his pocket.

Louis Jordan

Early R&B bandleader/singer that wrote hits such as "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Keep a-Knocking". If there was one artist who signified the transition from the controlled energy and smooth delivery of the big bands to the unbridled emotion of rhythm and blues, it was Louis Jordan. Signed to Decca in 1939, Jordan and his group, the Tympani Five, anticipated the decline of the big bands and helped to define the instrumentation for the r&b combos that followed. Louis Jordan was a pivotal musician in the development of rhythm and blues. He and his group, the Tympani Five, brought African American working-class sensibilities into the mainstream with polish and humor. Film clips of their engaging performances were shown in movie theaters between features. Walker had an obvious effect on Memphis-based B. B. King ("Three O'Clock Blues," "The Thrill Is Gone"), whose bent notes and vocal-like melodies influenced generations of rock guitarists. Chuck Berry merged Walker's approach with those of jazzman Charlie Christian and Louis Jordan accompanist Carl Hogan to create the definitive rock 'n' roll guitar style and mixed in universal odes to teenage life: "School Day," "Rock 'n' Roll Music," and "Sweet Little Sixteen. Even before Fats Domino and Little Richard recorded with some semblance of the big band sound, as Otis called it, Roy Milton (Specialty), T-Bone Walker (Imperial), Amos Milburn (Aladdin), and Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers (Exclusive) had developed distinctive regional variants of Louis Jordan's jump blues.

Bill Haley

Early Rock with Country influence Trying to pinpoint the beginning of rock 'n' roll is like trying to isolate the first drop of rain in a hurricane. The uninitiated may claim it began in 1955 when "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets became the best-selling record of the year Charlie Gillett has said it was Bill Haley's "Crazy Man Crazy" in 1953 When rock 'n' roll erupted full-blown in the national pop market in 1956, it presented itself as an integrated phenomenon with performers such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley sharing the stage equally with artists like Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry Among the artists who could have been considered rock 'n' roll musicians prior to 1955, there was only one white act that made a national impact—Bill Haley and His Comets. Never a sex symbol or a musical iconoclast, Domino managed to transcend, to a great degree, the racism that cheated so many other African American artists and the ageism that plagued Bill Haley's career The song Rocket 88 rocketed to the top of the r&b charts and inspired Bill Haley to move in an r&b direction. Even as Bill Haley was "rocking around the clock" in 1955, he cracked the Top Twenty with "Mambo Rock In fact, Bill Haley and His Comets, not Presley, were the first major white rock 'n' roll act to reach the mainstream market with a fusion of r&b and c&w Bill Haley's celebrity was quite different. Balding and looking somewhat middle-aged by the time his career took off, he was a most unlikely candidate to become a rock 'n' roll sensation Bill Haley and His Comets drew their inspiration from sources as disparate as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and Louis Jordan and the Tympani Five in constructing their country/r&b fusion. Adding outrageous stage antics to the mix, they earned a memorable niche in rock 'n' roll history

Bessie Smith

Easily the most famous classic blues singer of her time was Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues. A protégé of Ma Rainey, she spent years on the road perfecting her craft. Her singing style "combined the emotional fervor of country blues with the vigorous appeal of jazz Mamie Smith's singing style owed much to popular theater and vaudeville, and lacked some of the "down-home" quality that later blues queens such as Bessie Smith would exhibit. The flamboyant and talented Bessie Smith rose to the pinnacle of classic blues success during the 1920s. Her career crashed along with the stock market at the end of the decade. The pioneering guitar work of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson is echoed in the playing of Lightnin' Hopkins, Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, Muddy Waters, and B. B. King. It is fitting that Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, and Howlin' Wolf have been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as "early influences." B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters have been admitted as rock 'n' roll artists in their own right. While significant markets existed for jazz and blues records, African American artists rarely performed on radio or in film. Following Bessie Smith's starring role in St. Louis Blues in 1929, the film's director, Dudley Murphy, made Black and Tan Fantasy, a movie built around Duke Ellington's composition. Hammond had produced Bessie Smith's final recording session and Billie Holiday's first session within months of each other in 1933. In 1939, he became a full-time producer at Columbia; his years at the label spanned generations and influenced the careers of artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen Given Columbia's historical connection to African American music (its vaults contained some of the best recordings of Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie), the label's comparatively lukewarm response to rock 'n' roll is somewhat surprising.

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald started her career with Chick Webb; "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" (1938) made her a pop star Ella Fitzgerald ("My Happiness") nard and Phil Chess were Jewish immigrants from Poland who had settled in Chicago in 1928. In the 1940s, they owned and operated the Macomba, a nightclub that presented talent such as Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine, and Ella Fitzgerald. Struck by the lack of adequate recording facilities in Chicago, the brothers took over Aristocrat Records in 1947 and changed its name to Chess in 1950, eventually establishing three subsidiaries, Checker, Cadet, and Argo

DJs

Entertainers playing prerecorded music that is broadcast on the radio. By the early 1970s, most discos featured DJs and light shows; and the dancers had added their own pharmacological embellishments.

World War II and aftermath

Here Gillett was referring to urban sounds that were perceived as "brutal and oppressive." In this world of droning machines, post-World War II adolescents "staked out their freedom . . . inspired and reassured by the rock and roll beat Not until the social and cultural changes brought about by World War II did the barriers between marketing categories become a bit more porous. As the categories "race" and "hillbilly" began to come to the attention of the mainstream audience, these styles were said to cross over. The greater acceptance of African Americans in the mainstream market after World War II not only prompted some changes in music charting practices but also put the industry on the horns of a racial dilemma that has been the subject of heated debate ever since. Until World War II, the four national networks that dominated radio viewed the market as one monolithic listening audience. Their strategy was to pull in as broad a slice of this total listenership as possible—hence the term broadcasting The military buildup that preceded the United States' entry into World War II greatly enhanced the country's prospects for a complete economic recovery from the Great Depression The removal of World War II price ceilings on items like gasoline made it more difficult to keep large orchestras on the road The population migrations that had begun with the pre-World War II military buildup had opened the possibility of nationwide markets for specialty music. During the war, the major record companies were unable to exploit this market because materials shortages significantly reduced the number of records that could be manufactured The first technical advance that had a marked impact on independent production was magnetic tape recording, "liberated" from the Nazis during World War II. Using a plastic tape coated with iron oxide as its recording medium, magnetic tape could be edited and spliced; it was more durable, more portable, and less expensive, with better sound reproduction, than the wire recording it replaced The outbreak of World War II stalled the further development of television and FM. After the war, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assigned FM radio to the frequency band between television channels 6 and 7 (88 to 108 megacycles), where FM later thrived First, several independent radio stations, desperate for inexpensive programming, were created as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cleared away its backlog of World War II-era license applications.

Muddy Waters

Hoochie Coochie Man The blues revival had its beginnings in Chicago in the early 1960s, where white teenager Paul Butterfield served as the U.S. counterpart to Britain's Alexis Korner and John Mayall. Butterfield jammed with blues greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and others, eventually forming his own integrated blues band in 1963 with Mike Bloomfield on guitar In blues, players like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf sideman Willie Johnson turned their low-wattage amplifiers as high as they could go and generated the first stirrings of distortion that would come to define the electric guitar's sound in rock Muddy Waters have been admitted as rock 'n' roll artists in their own right. He contributed in other capacities to any number of hits by Chess artists, including Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Mississippi Delta-born Muddy Waters (née McKinley Morganfield) was one of Chess's earliest discoveries. Alan Lomax and John Work, working for the Library of Congress, recorded Waters, a master of slide guitar, in 1941 When Waters heard the sound of his recorded voice and guitar played back to him, he gained a new confidence in his musical abilities that motivated his move to Chicago two years later, in 1943 In Chicago, Delta bluesman Muddy Waters held forth on WOPA before going on to record for Chess records. There was also a white r&b deejay on WOPA This list of influences does not even include Muddy Waters ("Rolling Stone"), who "electrified" country blues in Chicago so he could be heard above the din in noisy juke joints. Shortly thereafter, Bo Diddley ("Bo Diddley," "Say Man"), another Delta-born Chicago transplant, crossed over as a rock 'n' roll star with a distinctive Afro-Caribbean variant of the style Chicago was one of the main watering holes for urbanized blues musicians from the Mississippi Delta, including Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Mabon, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. All of them, except Broonzy, recorded for Chicago's two main independent record labels, Chess (Williamson, Mabon, Waters, and Wolf), and Vee Jay (Reed and Hooker). Muddy Waters, he was already a seasoned performer from years playing at the Cosmopolitan Club in his native St. Louis in a band that featured (and was originally led by) pianist Johnnie Johnson.

Carter Family

In 1927, two of country music's most influential acts—Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family—were first recorded within days of each other at a landmark set of recording sessions overseen in Bristol, Tennessee, by the tireless Ralph Peer, now at Victor Rodgers represented the archetypal "ramblin' man"; the Carter Family projected stability. (These two polar—and equally marketable—images were well represented among country musicians for years to come.) While Rodgers roamed through vaudeville and the blues, the Carter Family explored the traditional folkloric component of country music. The Carter Family represented "family values" in country music even after Sara and A. P. divorced. Their traditional image corresponded with the treasure trove of traditional songs they helped to preserve. Neither Rodgers nor the Carter Family toured extensively—the Carters because of their complicated family dynamics, which included separation and divorce, Rodgers due to a running battle with tuberculosis, which eventually took his life

ASCAP demands for higher royalties

In 1934, ASCAP's radio royalties were $850,000—still not the sought-after $1 million. By 1937, however, its radio royalties had jumped to $5.9 million, thanks to advertisers The ASCAP boycott was a boycott of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) by radio broadcasters, due to license fees. From another perspective, it was a boycott of radio broadcasters by ASCAP,[1] "concerned about the unlicensed radio broadcast of its members' material ..." Between 1931 and 1939, ASCAP increased royalty rates charged to broadcasters some 448% In 1940, when ASCAP tried to double its license fees, radio broadcasters prepared to resist their demands by enforcing a boycott of ASCAP,[4] and inaugurating a competing royalty agency, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI).[5] It is currently the largest performing rights organization in the United States and one of the largest in the world.

Jump band

In the late 1940s, a small band-rhythm section plus a few horns that played a rhythm-and-blues style influenced by big-band swing and electric blues. Saxophonist/vocalist Louis Jordan was a key performer in this style.

Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash started at Sun in 1955; after a few country hits (including "Folsom Prison Blues"), his "I Walk the Line" went pop Top Twenty in 1956. Cash switched to Columbia in 1958 and embarked on a career that included gold and platinum albums, films, and even his own television show. These techniques had made Columbia the most successful label in the country.5 Only in 1958, when the tide of rock 'n' roll had proved more unstoppable than Miller had earlier assumed, did he publicly denounce the music—even as the label signed Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins—for its "paralyzing monotony" and lack of "entertainment value for anyone over fourteen.

Jim Crow

Laws implemented after the U.S. Civil War to legally enforce segregation, particularly in the South, after the end of slavery.

LP

Long-playing record Warner released a compilation long-playing record (LP) called The People's Album, which was largely a repository for its singer/songwriters and soft rock acts Years later, Goldmark described the challenge the creation of the LP had presented to the group: In 1948, thanks to CBS, we were introduced to the world's first LP (Long Play) record. Created by Peter Goldmark, this vinyl record had a capacity of around 21 minutes per side and was 12 inches wide, playing at a speed of 33 1/3 RPM.

AAB form

Music for the opening sentence (A) and for the next sentence (A) as well. Here same music twice, but new words second time. A new melodic idea (B) appears for third and fourth sentence of text and is not repeated. - form star spangled banner is written in - common form in music

Musical genres and demographic marketing

Musical genres and often marketed with demographic in mind.

Radio Barn Dance

National Barn Dance, broadcast by WLS-AM in Chicago, Illinois starting in 1924, was one of the first American country music radio programs and a direct precursor of the Grand Ole Opry

Atlantic Records

New York-based independent label featuring Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, The Coasters, and The Drifters Perhaps the most important of the new independent labels was Atlantic Records, founded in 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun, the son of a prominent Turkish diplomat, and Herb Abramson, the former recording director for National Records Jerry Wexler, a reviewer for Billboard said to have coined the term rhythm and blues, joined the company in 1953 and went on to become head of artist and repertoire Ruth Brown began singing in the church. The lure of rhythm and blues, however, led her to Atlantic Records, where she became the fledgling label's first big star. Although Atlantic was among the most reputable companies and Brown had a decent contract, years later she sued the label for back royalties and won.

Count Basie

Next to Ellington's, the most prominent black-led band of the swing era was the Count Basie Orchestra. Whereas Ellington's sophistication prefigured jazz's move in the direction of art music, Basie's band remained committed to the dance orientation that paved the way for rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll. A native of New Jersey, in 1927 Basie settled in Kansas City, a regular stopping place for touring musicians due to its being a major junction for rail and riverboat traffic By 1935, after a stint with the Benny Moten band, Basie was fronting his own band, broadcasting from the Reno Club, and participating with his bandmates in the city's competitive jam sessions where the twelve-bar blues provided the flexible framework for extended improvisation. The Basie band carried this sense of excitement forward in material such as "Boogie Woogie," "One O'Clock Jump," and " Jumpin' at the Woodside." In addition, Jo Jones's propulsive drumming foreshadowed the rhythms that would come to dominate rhythm and blues It is not surprising, then, that two of the vocalists who performed with the Basie Orchestra, Kansas City blues shouters Jimmy Rushing and Big Joe Turner, blurred the line between jazz and blues and maintained vibrant careers through the ascendancy of rhythm and blues, even after the heyday of the big bands. The Count Basie orchestra maintained a connection to the blues as they helped chart the course for jazz. Abandoning RCA Victor to become head of the new CBS record division, Wallerstein lured talent such as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie to the Columbia label.

Fats Domino & Little Richard

One of the first R&B artists to "cross-over" and become a pop artist. When rock 'n' roll erupted full-blown in the national pop market in 1956, it presented itself as an integrated phenomenon with performers such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley sharing the stage equally with artists like Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry New Orleans boogie pianist Professor Longhair, who described his own playing as a "combination of offbeat Spanish beats and calypso downbeats" and "a mixture of rumba, mambo and calypso," was a major influence on Fats Domino, whose successful r&b career was transformed into rock 'n' roll legend with hits such as "Ain't That a Shame" and "Blueberry Hill. They can be heard as backup on Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952); Shirley and Lee's "I'm Gone" (1952); and Smiley Lewis's "I Hear You Knocking" (1955), with Huey "Piano" Smith on piano. Bartholomew's biggest successes were with Fats Domino, for whom he acted as mentor, manager, co-writer, arranger, and producer Like Big Joe Turner, Fats Domino was an aging rhythm and blues singer who hadn't changed his style in any appreciable way to accommodate the rock 'n' roll market. Yet, unlike Turner, Domino crossed over to become a major, if unlikely, rock 'n' roll star Perhaps it was his natural, laid back New Orleans style with its simple production values, soothing vocals, and infectious rhythms that made the difference. All of Domino's hits, with the possible exception of "I'm Walkin'," were recorded in Matassa's studio; all were produced and arranged, and most co-written, by Bartholomew; and all used some combination of the same session musicians. Fats Domino, who turned the label into one of the most successful independents in the country. Taken by Price's rendition of "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," Rupe put together a band to record it; Bartholomew rounded up the usual sidemen, including Fats Domino on piano. In some ways, Little Richard is Fats Domino's alter ego: Both played piano; both artists' records featured the same New Orleans-style instrumental combination, with its emphasis on sax and boogie-influenced piano rather than guitar; and both artists wrote accessible, catchy pop tunes. However, Fats's elegant New Orleans gentleman persona and smooth vocals were the polar opposite of Richard's outrageous stage presence and his manic yips and howls y. If Fats Domino was rock 'n' roll's safety valve, Little Richard was the steam that made it blow Fats had a friendly baritone and Little Richard's sound was strident and slam-bam. Fats' Cajuninflected speech had an appealing musicality; Little Richard was a shouter. For Fats, the band played New Orleans jazz with an after beat while he boogied and barrelhoused at the piano. With Little Richard's crashing piano triplets, the band picked up drive and went "a-womp-bompa-loo-bomp a-lomp bomp boom" and "bama lama bama loo Even before Fats Domino and Little Richard recorded with some semblance of the big band sound, as Otis called it, Roy Milton (Specialty), T-Bone Walker (Imperial), Amos Milburn (Aladdin), and Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers (Exclusive) had developed distinctive regional variants of Louis Jordan's jump blues

Frank Sinatra

One of the greatest entertainers in history; unique singing style & silky voice; starred in over 60 movies; led the Rat Pack during the 60s; created the role of the lead singer The first pop vocalist to engender hysteria among fans was an Italian American who refused to anglicize his name—Frank Sinatra, the Sultan of Swoon. A song stylist with an unmistakable baritone, Sinatra won the Major Bowes Amateur Hour with the Hoboken Four in 1935 and then toured with Bowes for two years. In 1939, an appearance on WNEW's Dance Parade led to engagements with the Harry James and the Tommy Dorsey bands According to legend, his 1942 appearance at the Paramount Theater with Benny Goodman unleashed a veritable teen frenzy. At his return engagement two years later, 25,000 screaming bobby-soxers blocked the street in what was referred to as the Columbus Day Riot. From 1943 to 1945, Sinatra was the top vocalist on NBC's Your Hit Parade. Following military service, he reentered popular music through a television special with Frank Sinatra, who by this time had become a vicious opponent of rock 'n' roll.

AABA form

One of the most common structures that Tin Pan Alley composers used to organize their melodic and harmonic material. This structure would be found in the refrain of a verse-refrain song.

Tenor saxophone

People who play the tenor saxophone are known as "tenor saxophonists", "tenor sax players", or "saxophonists". The tenor saxophone uses a larger mouthpiece, reed and ligature than the alto and soprano saxophones.

Zip Coon

Propaganda that blacks were not as smart as whites and could not comprehend the freedoms that abolitionism offered them

RCA Victor's home gramophone

RCA was set up as a holding company for the major radio patent holders in the United States. David Sarnoff, as vice president of RCA, engineered a merger between RCA and Victor records, becoming president of the new company. RCA Victor was one of the only record companies still holding its own. RCA formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), a twenty-five-station network extending from New York to Kansas City that went on the air with a most ambitious program, featuring the New York Symphony Orchestra at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria and a number of remote feeds including several popular dance bands and vaudeville stars such as Will Rogers. RCA Victor solved the cost problem when he offered the Duo, Jr.—an electric turntable with no tubes or speakers that could be jacked into a radio—for a list price of $16.50

Ralph Peer

Ralph Peer, the presiding OKeh recording director, dubbed these recordings "race records."25 The label remained the designation for black music by black artists for a black audience until 1949. . The person most associated with commercial field recordings was Ralph Peer, who had coined the term race records at OKeh. In the 1930s, the Library of Congress began field recording through the efforts of John Lomax and his son Alan. The first recordings of country musicians were as accidental as the classic blues and, once again, it was Ralph Peer who opened the market for the music. In 1923, when Peer visited Atlanta in search of new black artists, Polk Brockman persuaded him to record a man who had been a mainstay of the North Georgia folk scene for forty years, Fiddlin' John Carson. The word hillbilly had been used since the turn of the century as a catchall (and pejorative) term for Southern backwoods culture. In 1925, a string band headed by Al Hopkins recorded six songs for Ralph Peer. Asked the group's name, Hopkins responded: "Call the band anything you want Peer listed the band as the "Hill Billies"—which soon became the generic term for commercial country music. Just like the term race music, it was laden with contradictory meanings. According to Bill C. Malone, "Like the South itself, hillbilly music suffered and profited from a conflicting set of images held by Americans that ranged from stability and enchantment to decadence and cultural degeneracy In 1927, two of country music's most influential acts—Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family—were first recorded within days of each other at a landmark set of recording sessions overseen in Bristol, Tennessee, by the tireless Ralph Peer, now at Victor By the end of 1940, BMI had become a sizable operation, registering about thirty songs a month and acquiring a number of existing catalogues, including Ralph Peer's Southern Music Publishing Company Some key acquisitions by BMI contributed measurably to the boycott's success. Ralph Peer, now in the international market, offered a catalogue of Latin popular music; Roy Acuff and Fred Rose (ASCAP members since 1928) offered Acuff-Rose Music, the first all-country catalogue; and E. B. Marks, a major Tin Pan Alley firm, offered the familiar pop fare required for network broadcasts. Broadcasters and publishers came to terms in 1941, but only after a federally initiated antitrust action forced ASCAP into a consent decree regulating its dealings.

Independent labels

Small companies that produce and distribute records. Not part of the three major-label corporations, they include those producing only one or two albums a year as well as larger independents, such as Disney.

Chess Records

Started by Phil Leonard, and Marshal Chess who had opened a liquor store/lounge in Chicago and ended up buying the Aristocrat label. Like King Records, Chess Records in Chicago was another instance of successful collaboration between Jewish businessmen and black producers. Brothers Leonard and Phil Chess were Jewish immigrants from Poland who had settled in Chicago in 1928 In the 1940s, they owned and operated the Macomba, a nightclub that presented talent such as Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine, and Ella Fitzgerald. Struck by the lack of adequate recording facilities in Chicago, the brothers took over Aristocrat Records in 1947 and changed its name to Chess in 1950, eventually establishing three subsidiaries, Checker, Cadet, and Argo With a small studio in the back room of its storefront record company, Chess was a quintessential shoestring operation, distributing records from the trunks of the owners' cars and using recording techniques such as hanging a mike in a tiny toilet to add echo. Even so, Chess Records managed to turn out some of the most significant urban blues recordings and eventually to become one of the most important rock 'n' roll labels in the country. In Chicago, Delta bluesman Muddy Waters held forth on WOPA before going on to record for Chess records According to legend, many of the Chicago blues greats simply walked into Chess Records off the street. Leonard Chess, however, was not one to sit and wait for talent to come to him

Ritchie Valens

The forefather of Chicano and Latin Rock one of the earliest Hispanic celebrities Conversely, when Ritchie Valens was riding the popularity of his pop-sounding number two hit "Donna," prior to the ascendancy of its B-side "La Bamba," most of his white fans simply assumed he was white. One artist who might have developed this sound further was Ritchie Valens (Richard Valenzuela), the first Chicano rock 'n' roll star. While his biggest hit, "Donna," sounded like it could have been one more classic rock 'n' roll ballad by another white rocker, Valens revealed a different persona on the record's B-side and challenged the conventional wisdom of the music industry, not simply by recording a rock 'n' roll version of a traditional Mexican song—the Champs had already done that—but by recording it in Spanish Ritchie Valens drew on his Chicano heritage to add another cultural source to the musical brew that was rock 'n' roll. Who knows how much further he might have taken that sound had he not been killed in a plane crash three months before his eighteenth birthday? Unfortunately, Valens was killed in the February 3, 1959, plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper, which has been eulogized as "the day the music died." But his legacy lived on in the Chicano rock groups of the 1960s (covered in Chapter 6) and in the rock/Mexican fusions of Los Lobos in the 1970s and beyond.

Television

The invention of new mass communication technologies—records, radio, film, and eventually television—inserted yet another distinction into the cultural lexicon, namely, the concept of mass culture Another group of artists that were not part of the AFM were vocalists. They were covered by a different union—currently called the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)— which didn't join the strike Television, because of its devastating impact on network radio, helped to clear the airwaves for local, independent broadcasting. Increasingly, the growth of independent record companies and of independent radio stations made it possible for consumers to hear the music so many were hungry for—rhythm and blues. Because of these technological advances, records emerged as a relatively inexpensive medium compared to radio, film, and television, which all required huge sums of money for production, elaborate systems for transmission, and/or complex bureaucratic arrangements In the late 1940s, the entry of frequency modulation (FM) broadcasting into the marketplace was intentionally, if temporarily, suppressed because it conflicted with the development of television. Ironically, the advent of television then opened the door to independent radio—and thus to greater dissemination of r&b. The outbreak of World War II stalled the further development of television and FM Television became a viable consumer item in the late 1940s. By 1951, nearly 16 million televisions were in operation in the United States, luring national advertising away from network radio

BMI

The late Dave Sanjek demonstrated over and over that he was one of the most knowledgeable and forthcoming researchers in the field. Having moved in his final years from his long-standing position of archivist at BMI to a well-deserved professorship of music at Salford University "Taking advantage of ASCAP's stringent membership requirements, as well as its relative indifference to the popular and folk music being produced outside of New York and Hollywood," Nat Shapiro has written, "BMI sought out and acquired its support from the 'have not' publishers and writers in the grassroots areas By the end of 1940, BMI had become a sizable operation, registering about thirty songs a month and acquiring a number of existing catalogues, including Ralph Peer's Southern Music Publishing Company.3 . Some key acquisitions by BMI contributed measurably to the boycott's success. Ralph Peer, now in the international market, offered a catalogue of Latin popular music; Roy Acuff and Fred Rose (ASCAP members since 1928) offered Acuff-Rose Music, the first all-country catalogue; and E. At first, BMI came up with few songs of lasting significance. Still, by the end of 1941, its catalogue contained 36,000 copyrights from fifty-two publishers What was originally envisioned as a throwaway bargaining tool emerged as a valuable source of music and ASCAP's primary competition. By the end of the decade, the Tin Pan Alley/Broadway/Hollywood monopoly on public taste was being successfully challenged by BMI writers like Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Hank Snow, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Roy Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Otis, Fats Domino, and Wynonie Harris. For ASCAP, the offensive against rock 'n' roll was simply an escalation of its efforts since 1939 to put BMI out of business. For the major labels, the fight was an attempt to halt the market expansion of the independents. To conservative elected officials, jumping on the bandwagon with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Steve Allen, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein to hold back the floodgates of social change may have seemed like a sure way of grabbing some quick and memorable headlines

Oral tradition vs. Literate popular music

The music arising from it was comparatively simple in form and structure, performed by nonprofessionals, and passed along, usually anonymously, in oral tradition. Its production and consumption were noncommercial Popular music is mass spread and sold. I think?

Hank Williams

The song laid the groundwork for a new country music style called honky-tonk that would gain further momentum after the war through the efforts of Lefty Frizzell, Webb Pierce, and especially Hank Williams, whose career will be detailed shortly. It was MGM, however, that picked up Hank Williams, the biggest country and western star since Jimmie Rodgers. A veteran of life on the road, Hank Williams continued along the path pioneered by Jimmie Rodgers. His honky-tonk swagger brought country music one step closer to rockabilly. Some artists seem to embody the myths associated with their particular style of music: Robert Johnson with Delta blues, Charlie Parker with bebop jazz, Tupac with hip hop. The high-lonesome, alcohol-drenched image of honky-tonk country was embodied in Hank Williams, singer-songwriter extraordinaire. His songs were perfectly crafted gems, simple in structure but deep in feeling, intensely personal, and universally accessible. Dead before his time at age 29, Hank Williams's long and celebrated shadow loomed over practically every country songwriter for the next two generations. "Hey, Good Lookin'" was recorded in March 1951 during the same recording session as his equally famous song "I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You." The other instrumental parts were provided by Hank's Driftin' Cowboys band, beefed up with a few studio musicians: Don Helms, steel guitar; Jerry Rivers, fiddle; Sammy Pruett, electric guitar; Jack Shook, rhythm guitar; Ernie Newton and Howard Watts, bass; and Owen Bradley and Fred Rose, piano. In contrast to the sad, soulful ballad style of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" or "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Hey Good Lookin'" is one of Hank Williams's up-tempo, honky-tonk songs with its backbeat (accents on beats two and four) and tasty steel guitar licks. The structure of the song is fairly straightforward: Each verse has an aaba form, where "a" is one melody that repeats several times with different lyrics and "b" is a contrasting melody. The instrumental in the middle of the song follows the same melodic form but gives the steel guitarist (Don Helms) and the fiddler (Jerry Rivers) a chance to show off their improvisational skills. Del Shannon ("Runaway," "Hats Off to Larry") evidenced musical roots in the country sound of Hank Williams. Gene Pitney delivered some powerful, if pop-oriented, vocals on hits such as "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," "Only Love Can Break a Heart," and "It Hurts to Be in Love."

"Passive" consumption of recordings

The technological advances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries introduced what later critics of mass culture would see as the historical schism that marked the transition from active music-making to passive music consumption. In the popular image of a family gathered around the living-room piano, music is "consumed" through the active participation of all concerned. With the invention of recording, it was no longer necessary to have any musical ability whatsoever to re-create the sound of music, a point that proponents of the phonograph used to argue for the device's potential to foster music education by bringing "great music" to listeners who might otherwise not get to enjoy it

Top Forty Radio

Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon, both chain owners, found the solution to this dilemma in a new format that placed the forty best-selling records in constant rotation all day long. This was Top Forty radio. The Top Forty format was essentially an on-air jukebox, Your Hit Parade, programmed daily and with records. As a total "sound," Top Forty radio integrated jingles, special effects, promotional gimmicks, and hourly news broadcasts in With Top Forty radio, the deejay became a replaceable element in a total sound formula

Scott Joplin

United States composer who was the first creator of ragtime to write down his compositions (1868-1917) It began in conjunction with a dance called the cakewalk, which involved blacks imitating the grand entrance of whites to society balls. In the hands of its most famous practitioner, the African American pianist and composer Scott Joplin, ragtime was a self-conscious art form, a composed music. Joplin himself, Whitcomb has noted, "presented the New Negro,"28 a polished composer well versed in musical notation. His "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) remains one of the best-known ragtime compositions.

Elvis Presley

United States rock singer whose many hit records and flamboyant style greatly influenced American popular music (1935-1977) According to Peter Wicke, white rock 'n' roll artists like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley no longer merely adapted African American musical practices to their own aesthetic ideas, as Tin Pan Alley composers had done Elvis Presley's exaggerated swagger and brooding features carried more than a subtle hint of androgyny, the perception of which may have contributed as much to the sensation he stirred as his perceived transgression of racial boundaries. From 1955 to 1963, well into his thirties, Domino charted thirty-six Top Forty pop hits, more than any other rock 'n' roll artist except Elvis Presley (unless Boone, with thirty-eight, is included) So it was that Elvis Presley, the supposed fulfillment of Phillips' wish, would be crowned the King of Rock 'n' Roll. By the time Elvis Presley hit the pop charts, over a year after "Rock Around the Clock" was released, Haley was in his thirties and over the hill by teenage standards. His star was soon supplanted by younger rockabilly artists from Memphis—Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, of course, Presley himself. Four dollars and a little more than a year later, Elvis Presley had changed the face of popular music forever. Elvis Aron Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, the only child (a twin brother was born dead) of Vernon and Gladys Presley, on January 8, 1935. When he was ten years old, he placed fifth in a talent contest, singing "Old Shep," a sentimental country tune By any measure, Elvis Presley—the rock 'n' roller who was crowned king—was a monster talent, albeit one who sometimes applied his considerable gifts to material that was of questionable value. He is pictured in a scene from Jailhouse Rock, one of his better movies. There has never been another career quite like that of Elvis Presley's. He charted 149 Top Forty hits on Billboard's Hot 100 and 92 long-playing records (LPs) on the album charts— all this with some of the most insipid material ever recorded

Rise of regional radio programming

Untouched by World War II, American radio stations rapidly expanded in number to more than 2,000 AM outlets by the early 1950s. Most were in smaller markets gaining local radio service for the first time. Beginning with the 1948-49 season, however, network television in the East and Midwest (with national service by 1951) doomed American radio networks. By 1938, the networks were using 98 percent of the available nighttime wattage, and NBC and CBS had already locked up fifty of the fifty-two clear channels—special frequencies allocated to stations with large transmitters positioned to broadcast over great distances with minimal interference—as well as 75 percent of the most powerful regional stations.

Sam Cooke

Was very different from Ray Charles in that he was known as the graceful voice in soul music. His voice had a more floating quality compared to Charles. Perhaps the most profound gospel desertion was Sam Cooke's. Son of a Chicago Baptist minister, Cooke joined the Soul Stirrers in 1950 and quickly became, according to gospel historian Tony Heilbut, "the greatest sex symbol in gospel history. Sam Cooke agonized over what musical direction to take, but in the end the decision was made for him, as his outraged gospel followers forced him to leave the Soul Stirrers in 1957

Bing Crosby

Who was the star of the movie titled "White Christmas" Bing Crosby, who would set the standard for pop vocals until World War II. Originally steeped in minstrelsy (he actually appeared on film in blackface), Crosby began his singing career in 1926 as one of the Rhythm Boys in the Paul Whiteman band. In 1931, he launched his solo recording career and landed his first radio show. He recorded with everyone from Al Jolson and Louis Armstrong to Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Crosby pioneered a style of singing called "crooning," a laid-back, more personal approach that allowed for greater vocal nuance and feelings of intimacy between artist and audience Crooning was made possible when the microphone replaced the acoustic megaphone and singers no longer had to project their voices to the far reaches of a nightclub or concert hall to be heard In addition, hits like "Sweet Leilani" (1937), a pseudo-Hawaiian number from the Oscar-winning film Waikiki Wedding, and "San Antonio Rose" (1940), a western swing song penned by Bob Wills, fed the mainstream attraction for exotic cultural influences. Crosby went on to star in over sixty musical films. His recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" from the 1942 film Holiday Inn sold more than 30 million copies and entered the pop charts eighteen years in a row

Johnny Otis

Willie and the Hand Jive Perhaps they did so because New Orleans' early jazz sound, steeped in the blues, resonated well with the transition from jazz to rhythm and blues that was then occurring. Johnny Otis recalled that the big band sound and format was integral to his own approach and that of West Coast peers like Roy Milton, T-Bone Walker, and Joe Liggins Only Johnny Otis, however, was able to make the successful transition to rock 'n' roll. After moving to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, he started his own big band, whose first hit, "Harlem Nocturne" (1945), was on Excelsior, a subsidiary of Exclusive, then one of the only black-owned labels in Los Angeles Otis was also part owner of the Barrel House, an r&b club in Los Angeles, and had a daily radio show and a weekly television show. The Johnny Otis Show, a traveling "rhythm and blues caravan," as he called it, featured vocalists Little Esther and Mel Walker, and their recordings included fifteen Top Forty r&b hits between 1950 and 1952 He is credited with discovering Hank Ballard, Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson, and Etta James. He also produced Johnny Ace33 ("Pledging My Love," 1955), as well as Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, for whom he claimed he co-wrote the original version of "Hound Dog" with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Otis hit rock 'n' roll pay dirt with "Willie and the Hand Jive" (1958), a novelty song played to the "Bo Diddley" beat, an Afro-Caribbean clave rhythm that Otis said he had learned twenty years earlier. Otis was such an important catalyst for African American culture and talent that people are sometimes surprised to learn that he was white. Otis identified himself as "black by persuasion." When speaking of African Americans, he used the pronoun we and did so with credibility My friend, Johnny Otis, is genetically white, but in all other respects completely black," wrote black musician Preston Love in the preface to Listen to the Lambs, a book Otis wrote after the Watts rebellion in 1965. "His life has been that of a black man joined with other black men to combat the outside—the hostile and unjust white establishment.

Demise of Big Bands

With the end of the war came the big band's decline. Returning soldiers (musicians) had little interest in hitting the road again as traveling musicians. And of course, the final blow for these huge performing acts was the advent of television. There was little need to leave the house for an evening of entertainment.

Jimmie Rodgers

Yodeling became part of American minstrelsy early on. Although Jimmie Rodgers popularized it on record, black musicians had also learned the technique. Blues artists contemporary with Rodgers, such as Stovepipe Johnson ("Devilish Blues," 1928) and Tampa Red ("Worried Devil Blues," 1934), can be heard yodeling on record In 1927, two of country music's most influential acts—Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family—were first recorded within days of each other at a landmark set of recording sessions overseen in Bristol, Tennessee, by the tireless Ralph Peer, now at Victor. Rodgers represented the archetypal "ramblin' man"; the Carter Family projected stability. (These two polar—and equally marketable—images were well represented among country musicians for years to come.) While Rodgers roamed through vaudeville and the blues, the Carter Family explored the traditional folkloric component of country music. Any number of their songs, including "Wildwood Flower" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," have become country music classics, but they exerted relatively less influence on the future of pop That's where Jimmie Rodgers came in. Jimmie Rodgers, known as "the Singing Brakeman" because of his time spent riding the rails, represented the archetypal "ramblin' man" in country music. Jimmie Rodgers, the "Singing Brakeman," was the first real star of country music. As a boy accompanying his father, a rail crew foreman, he learned the language and culture of the railroad men he would later immortalize in song. In 1925, he joined a minstrel troupe and toured the South and Midwest as a blackface entertainer After his Bristol recording debut, Victor executives invited Rodgers to their New Jersey studios, where he recorded the first of his twelve blue yodels, so-called because they incorporated yodeling into the blues. Popularly known as "T for Texas," this recording took the country by storm and became Rodgers's only million seller Though he usually performed solo, Rodgers featured a broad range of players and instruments in his recordings, including ukuleles and pianos, as well as brass and the one instrument that became a defining characteristic of certain strains of country music—the steel guitar. Like some of his blues contemporaries, Rodgers was inducted as an early influence into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Rodgers's influence on country music was incalculable. Following his success, groups like Roy Hall's Blue Ridge Entertainers and Roy Acuff 's Smoky Mountain Boys established the steel guitar as a staple in country music. With the rise of Texas hillbillies such as Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, and Bob Wills, all inspired by Rodgers, country music took a turn to the west, especially benefiting Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, who began his career as a Jimmie Rodgers imitator. Rodgers's blue yodels showcased the cultural diversity that informed his music and influenced generations of musicians. Like some of his blues contemporaries, Rodgers was inducted as an early influence into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. If you were searching for one artist who incorporated the widest range of American roots music in the early twentieth century, you couldn't go wrong with Jimmie Rodgers. While considered the first true country music star, Rodgers's songs incorporated blues, country, jazz, and even Hawaiian guitar. Rodgers wrote twelve blues-country hybrid songs known as "blue yodels." Blue Yodel #9, recorded on September 11, 1931, is listed as number 23 in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. It was MGM, however, that picked up Hank Williams, the biggest country and western star since Jimmie Rodgers. A veteran of life on the road, Hank Williams continued along the path pioneered by Jimmie Rodgers. His honky-tonk swagger brought country music one step closer to rockabilly His honky-tonk swagger, working-class sympathies, use of backbeat (accents on the second and fourth beats of a measure), and hot live performances made him a vital link in the musical chain that joined Jimmie Rodgers and Texas troubadours like Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb to Elvis Presley. Like Rodgers before him, Williams was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987.

Emile Berliner

a German immigrant, developed the flat recording disc that became the industry standard. In 1888, Berliner unveiled his gramophone and, at its first demonstration, prophesied the ability to make an unlimited number of copies from a single master, the use of discs for home entertainment on a mass scale, and a system of royalty payments to artists derived from the sale of discs. In short, Berliner was the first to envision the contours of the modern music industry. Berliner delivered on his first prophecy when he made negative discs, called "stampers," which were then pressed into ebonite rubber biscuits to produce an exact duplicate, or "record," of the master. A later improvement replaced the rubber discs with shellac-based, 78 revolutions per minute (rpm) pressings, which became the industry standard until the late 1940s. To realize his second prophecy, the use of discs for home entertainment, Berliner recruited Fred Gaisberg. Gaisberg had been coordinating talent and recording at Columbia, and Berliner made him, in effect, the first artist and repertoire (a&r) man in the infant industry. Berliner hired Eldridge R. Johnson to manufacture the gramophones They adopted as the company logo the famous Little Nipper (the pup listening attentively to his master's voice emanating from a record horn). Shortly afterward, the major recording companies—Edison, Columbia, and Victor—pooled their patents and set about the business of making better records and machines

Jukebox

a cabinet containing an automatic record player

call and response

a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first

Rock and Roll

became a popular music genre in the fifties with the introduction of Elvis Presley

Blackface

black makeup used by primarily white performers playing African American roles, as in minstrel shows blackface minstrelsy and its controversial appropriation of African American culture for the primary benefit of a largely European American market. The marketing categories of the music industry have often classified performers as much by race as by musical style. Blackface minstrelsy set a pattern as early as the 1840s whereby "black music" would be shown to have great commercial value, but African American performers had little to do with its public performance and so received almost no financial reward for its success they were expected to personify roles that had been first carved out by white performers in blackface, and music associated with African Americans—which included ragtime as well as more standard Tin Pan Alley fare—circulated under the general, derogatory heading of "coon songs." mostly Northern whites in blackened faces, parodying their perceptions of African American culture Accordingly, the initial audiences for blackface minstrelsy tended to be white, working-class, and male Blackface masking did not begin with minstrelsy, nor was it inevitably race related. The practice dates back at least to the Middle Ages in Britain and Europe in certain ritual dramas such as morris dancing and mummer's plays Thomas Dartmouth Rice is most often credited with institutionalizing the practice of racial impersonation through blackface performance

Bluegrass

came from white music in the South and Appalachia, building on Irish and Scottish instruments and traditions During the late nineteenth century efforts were made to "elevate" the banjo into a parlor instrument, after which it found a home in ragtime and early jazz, only becoming a defining icon of Southern white tradition in the 1930s and 1940s with the advent of bluegrass. The early 1940s also saw the tradition-oriented sound of bluegrass begin to arise through the music of Kentucky native Bill Monroe. Monroe's recordings made in the immediate postwar years with his Blue Grass Boys became the standard against which subsequent bluegrass music would be measured, and his 1946 song "Blue Moon of Kentucky" would, eight years later, be one of the first songs recorded by Elvis Presley Haley's music, in contrast, sounds more arranged, more calculated. Haley related to his country roots through the instrumentation of a western swing combo; Presley's early Sun sides did not even include drums, like the bluegrass by which it was partly inspired.

Lieber and Stoller

famous songwriters and producers for Atlantic Records whose offices were in the Brill Building. Lyricist Jerome Leiber (April 25, 1933 - August 22, 2011)[1] and composer Michael Stoller[2] (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found success as the writers of such crossover hit songs as "Hound Dog" (1952) and "Kansas City" (1952). Later in the 1950s, particularly through their work with The Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits—including "Young Blood" (1957), "Searchin'" (1957), and "Yakety Yak" (1958)—that used the humorous vernacular of teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal.[3] They were the first to surround black music with elaborate production values, enhancing its emotional power with the Drifters in "There Goes My Baby" (1958), which influenced Phil Spector, who studied their productions while playing guitar on their sessions.

Bill Monroe

father of bluegrass Sure enough, that song, backed with Bill Monroe's classic bluegrass tune "Blue Moon of Kentucky," set in motion a chain reaction that ultimately changed the pop landscape The early 1940s also saw the tradition-oriented sound of bluegrass begin to arise through the music of Kentucky native Bill Monroe. Monroe's recordings made in the immediate postwar years with his Blue Grass Boys became the standard against which subsequent bluegrass music would be measured, and his 1946 song "Blue Moon of Kentucky" would, eight years later, be one of the first songs recorded by Elvis Presley

Hillbilly music

folk music combined with elements of popular music in which the banjo, fiddle, and guitar are principal instruments: a type of music that originated in mountain regions of the southern U.S.

Gran Ole Opry

he Grand Ole Opry is a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM. Currently owned and operated by Opry Entertainment, it is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history.

Tin Pan Alley

is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Rockabilly

music that mixes bluegrass and country influences with those of black folk music and early amplified blues

high-fidelity sound

recorded sound true to the original Developments in recording technology had a dramatic impact on the production of music. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, high-fidelity stereo records had become the industry standard (with various tape configurations vying for acceptance) and had increased the public's desire for high-quality sound

Great Depression

the economic crisis beginning with the stock market crash in 1929 and continuing through the 1930s She is one of the most influential singers of the early twentieth century, but like many of her musical contemporaries, her career could not recover from the economic downturn of the Great Depression. In 1937, she was severely injured in a car accident on Mississippi's notorious Highway 61 and died within hours. Two years after the advent of commercial radio broadcasting in 1920, annual record revenues showed a decline. By 1933, the height of the Great Depression, they had plummeted to an unprecedented low of $6 million The tension between "culture" and straight commercial entertainment in radio programming continued until the economic imperatives of the Great Depression put the advertisers in a position to determine the tone of radio more than the programmers That same year she recorded "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," her last big hit before the Great Depression wrecked her career. But the Great Depression shut most independent black-oriented films out of the business, leaving Hollywood firmly in control—and Hollywood seldom cast African Americans in anything but subservient and/or degrading roles At one point, he worked at W. C. Handy's publishing house and at the Black Swan record company; during the Great Depression, he worked as an arranger and staff composer at both WCBS and WNBC in New York The Great Depression decimated the ranks of small independent blues, jazz, and country music labels, and things were not much rosier for the majors Radio remained the focus of home entertainment throughout the Great Depression, but it provided far more access to pop and country music than to blues, while white jazz artists were featured much more prominently than black By the end of the Depression, Columbia, Victor, and Decca had emerged as the big three in recording.

Mammy

the stereotypical view of enslaved women as the nannies who love the white children they care for and therefore are trustworthy

Doo wop

type of soul music that emerged in the 1950s as an outgrowth of the gospel hymns sung in African-American churches in urban Detroit, Chicago, and New York; its lyrics made use of repeating phrases sung in a cappella (unaccompanied) harmony below the tune

Fiddle

violin

Sam Philips

worked at Sun records and discovered Elvis, sold Elvis's contract to RCA records for $35K Samuel Cornelius Phillips (January 5, 1923 - July 30, 2003) was an American record producer. He was the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where he produced recordings by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Howlin' Wolf.