What's That Sound?

Form: Simple Verse

* All verses based on same music, no chorus * Repetitive structures like the 12-bar blues and the doo wop progression often combine to form larger structural patterns. As these patterns repeat, we may think of them differently depending on what aspects are repeated. Averse is defined as a section with repeating music and non-repeating lyrics. * 12-bar blues or the doo-wop progression may occur as the basis for any of the sections

The singer steps forward: The singers and the big bands

* As country and western and rhythm and blues were beginning to infi ltrate wider markets during the 1930s and '40s, large-scale changes were also occurring in mainstream pop, especially after the end of World War II. During the period from about 1935 to 1945, often considered the big band era, much of the most popular music was created by dance bands that employed a rhythm section of bass, drums, piano, and guitar combined with a horn section of trumpets, trombones, and saxophones. These groups created arrangements of Tin Pan Alley songs designed to provide music appropriate for dancing, while also featuring the instrumental prowess of the musicians and the virtuosity of the arranger. Big bands were led by instrumentalists such as Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Glenn Miller, and singers were used sparingly as featured soloists. Thus, the celebrity in the band was its leader, as the musicians and singers often changed frequently. Arrangements during the big band era emphasized the band, often allotting only one time through the chorus of a song for the singer. Sections of the band, and perhaps instrumental soloists, were also featured both before and after the singer. Many swing arrangements, such as the Glenn Miller Band's 1942 number-one hit "A String of Pearls" employed no vocals at all. Such emphasis on the band may seem strange to rock listeners. In much rock music the vocalist is the focus of the song, while an instrumental solo takes a verse of the song to provide variety. In big band music, however, the vocalist provides the variety. Because of the emphasis on instrumental playing in the big bands, there was a close relationship between big band music and jazz, which developed both within and alongside big band music. In fact, many important jazz musicians played in big bands, and several bands fi gure heavily in most accounts of jazz history. Despite the general focus on bands during the big band era, a number of performing artists developed careers independent from any particular band. The most important pop singer in the 1930s and 1940s was Bing Crosby, whose relaxed, easygoing crooning made him a favorite in both the United States and abroad. Crosby enjoyed a long string of hit recordings, including "I've Got a Pocketful of Dreams" (1938), "Only Forever" (1940), "Swinging on a Star" (1944), and "White Christmas." In addition to being perhaps the most successful solo performer of his era, Crosby acted in fi lms (often with comedian Bob Hope) and hosted his own radio variety show (sponsored by Kraft Foods). In contrast to some of the pop singers who would come to fame after World War II, Crosby projected a wholesome, friendly, and paternal image; in many ways, he was America's dad (or favorite uncle).

Rural and Urban Blues: Independent labels target regional audiences

* As radio stations devoted to rhythm and blues arose across the country, so did record labels specializing in black popular music. Sun Records in Memphis, Chess Records in Chicago, King Records in Cincinnati, and Atlantic Records in New York were just a few of the more successful new rhythm and blues labels after World War II. Most of the new record companies were independents—that is, they were not part of a larger corporate conglomerate like the major labels that dominated the music industry at the time, including Decca, Mercury, RCA-Victor, Columbia, Capitol, and MGM. Major labels had enormous financial resources, manufacturing plants, and sophisticated distribution networks that allowed them to get their newest records out quickly to most areas of the country. At their smallest, independent labels were staffed by only a few people, perhaps the owner and a secretary, which required driving from store to store and distributing records out of the trunk of a car. This meant that smaller independents had to focus on local or regional markets. * Independent labels prospered precisely because the major labels were so big; and since the rhythm and blues market was not nearly as profitable as mainstream pop, the majors tended to devote their resources to pop, leaving room for the independents to survive—and in many cases, to thrive. In both radio and records, then, rhythm and blues in the period between 1945 and 1955 was popular music intended specifically for black urban listeners. Nobody expected that white listeners would hear this music. White teenagers could pick up black stations on their radios just as well as anybody, however, and when they developed a taste for rhythm and blues, the stage was set for rock and roll to emerge.

Building a National audience for music and entertainment: National versus Regional

* At the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of Americans lived in a world very much conditioned by their local and regional surroundings. People did not travel as much as we do now, and in many parts of the country there was limited access to national and world news. This meant that musical styles could often be identified with particular regions of the country. Mail-order catalogs from Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Montgomery Ward made recorded performances available via gramophone cylinders and 78-rpm discs, but the music that people knew best were pieces that they could either play or hear performed in person, perhaps at a vaudeville show. Many Americans read music and played the piano, and could purchase the sheet music to a favorite song at the local Woolworth's five-and-dime store, which had pianists on hand to play songs for customers trying to decide among competing titles. A wealth of music was also available through the oral tradition, and one could learn to play tunes by ear, without having to read music. * During the first few decades of the new century, however, technological and marketing developments in radio and motion pictures made the same kinds of popular entertainment available throughout the country, in many ways breaking down regional differences. The 1930s and '40s are often thought of as a golden age in the history of motion pictures, as Hollywood churned out a wide variety of films that proved popular across America. While films were undeniably influential, the most important technological innovation for the music business was radio. Radio technology was developed at the end of the nineteenth century and used initially for military purposes and communication with ships at sea. Radio was first used to broadcast commercial music in 1920, when KDKA in Pittsburgh and WWJ in Detroit went on the air with a blend of news, local information, and live music. It is hard to exaggerate the marked effect radio had on American culture, especially the history of popular music. Large groups of listeners within range of a regional radio station enjoyed music that might otherwise have been unavailable. Listeners in rural areas could hear live performances from far-off big-city nightclubs. * NBC went coast-to-coast with its national radio network in 1928, which was an important step in blurring the regional boundaries of popular culture. The same news, music, drama, and comedy became simultaneously available to significant portions of the country. Network radio audiences were now national audiences. Some pop styles became national, while others kept their regional identities. This can be attributed to network programming: the mainstream pop of Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, the big bands, and later Frank Sinatra was heard frequently on network radio, while country and western and rhythm and blues were not. Mainstream pop was similar in most markets, and was targeted to a white, middle-class listening audience. Music marketed to low-income listeners (rural or urban) was mostly excluded, or given a marginal role in network radio programming. Since country and western and rhythm and blues were considered music for low-income listeners, these styles were often not played on network radio; as a consequence, they retained their regional distinctions.

Music Group: Beatles

* Beatles' moptop haircuts upset a lot of parents in the mid-1960s, while setting a fashion trend among youngsters.

Music Group: Bing Crosby

* Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys benefited from Bing Crosby's 1941 remake of the song (New San Antonio Rose), which became a national hit and brought western swing far more attention than it might have received otherwise.

Song: New San Antonio Rose

* By Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys * 1940 * Western swing style that put a cowboy twist on the big band idea. In addition to a rhythm section and horns, as one might expect of a radio dance band, western swing featured fiddles, a steel guitar, and occasionally, mariachi-style trumpet parts imported from Mexico. This song is an an example of this eclectic blend of urbane dance band and rough-and-tumble western hoedown. * Wills's band greatly benefited from Bing Crosby's 1941 remake of the song, which became a national hit and brought western swing far more attention than it might have received otherwise.

Song: I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart

* By Patsy Montana * 1935 * Featured a yodeling style influenced by Jimmie Rodgers.

Song: Johnny B. Goode

* Chuck Berry * 12-bar blues structure

Regional styles of country and western music: "country" music in the Southeast in the 1930's

* Country and western music remained mostly regional until after 1945. Unlike the mainstream pop heard on radio networks, several musical styles that would come together under the umbrella of "country and western" after World War II kept distinctive regional accents until the late 1940s, when Nashville became a hub for this type of music. These regional styles can be divided into "country" music from the southeast and Appalachia, and "western" music from the West and southwest. *Country music can be traced to the folk traditions of the region, largely derived from the folk music of the British Isles. Some of the first recordings later associated with the American country music industry were made by Ralph Peer, a producer who roamed the South in search of what record companies called "hillbilly music." Peer recorded many of the earliest country performers, including "Fiddlin'" John Carson and Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers. Peer traveled from one small town to another, setting up his gear as he went, and local musicians lined up to record on his equipment. Among the acts "discovered" by Peer was the Carter Family, who became seminal figures in the history of country music. Accompanied by an acoustic guitar and an autoharp (played by Maybelle and Sara Carter, respectively), the voices of Maybelle, Sara, and A. P. Carter sing together in a style very much influenced by white gospel music. "Can the Circle Be Unbroken" (1935) captures both the musical style and confessional spirit of this music, as does "Great Speckled Bird" (1936) performed by Roy Acuff and His Crazy Tennesseans. The Acuff group added the slide guitar to the mix, which was associated with both country and blues music. A more developed version of the slide guitar, the pedal steel guitar, would come to play a central role in later country and western instrumentation.

In the studio: The role of recording techniques in rock music: Reverb and echo

* Every space we enter has specific acoustic properties. * Whenever a sound is made, it is the result of a series of vibrations moving through the air. Some of these vibrations reach our ears directly from the source while others bounce around the room and reflect back to us. * Hard surfaces reflect sound; more porous ones (like carpeting, curtains, or furniture) absorb sound. Architects who design concert halls are keenly aware of this, and they devote considerable energy to determining the balance of harder and softer surfaces in a hall and how these surfaces will be angled. This is to create a space that makes the performances in the hall sound as acoustically rich as possible. If there's too much reflection, the sound can be too bright or boomy; if there's not enough, the music can sound dry and lifeless. * When taking the audio snapshot approach, it is crucial to find a space with "good acoustics" (with the right kind of reflected sound for the ensemble or soloist involved.) * Major record companies have in the past maintained their own studios that have been acoustically engineered for the best natural sound. For them, the task is not only to capture the way the musicians sound but also to commit to tape how those musicians sound in that specific room. * It is possible to artificially create a room sound—often referred to as ambience—via electronic means, and this effect is called reverb. * Most commercially available electronic reverb units (or digital plug-ins) offer settings that reproduce the sound of small rooms, medium-size rooms, large rooms, auditoriums of various sizes, churches, and a number of "unnatural" spaces. * When an engineer knows that she will use reverb, she may record the original sounds with as little natural ambience as possible, often called a "dry" recording. This dry sound is then fed through the reverb device to produce the desired sound. * Reverb is used on almost all rock recordings, meaning that the "spaces" captured on tape are often not real spaces at all. * Different kinds of reverb can also be used on different instruments or voices, producing sounds that are the result of multiple "spaces," none of which could naturally coexist in a world with only three dimensions. * Reverb is different from echo. In the natural world, an echo occurs when sound bounces back to our ears to create two sonic images of the same event—we hear the original and then its reflection. This sound can be produced electronically as well, though some recording studios have built their own trademark "echo chambers" (the chamber at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles—now destroyed—has a mythical standing within the recording world). * Echo tends not to be of much concern to those who employ the audio snapshot approach; mostly they try to avoid it. * In rock, echo is used extensively and often on voices. Together with reverb, echo can make the singing voice sound much richer and even mask certain imperfections in tone or intonation. * The beginning of the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go?" offers an example of studio reverb. The clapping (actually two-by-fours being slapped together) is drenched in a rich reverb that creates the sound of a large gymnasium or some other big, reflective space. * The most famous echo can be found on Elvis Presley's Sun recordings. For many years after Elvis's success, studio engineers around the world tried to reproduce the distinctive echo found on songs such as "That's All Right (Mama)," in which the quick echo (often called "slap-back echo") gives Presley's voice a quality that he could never have produced live. * Reverb and echo provide what might be thought of as the ambient dimension of the music, and these effects can make instruments sound closer to or farther from the listener, depending on how much reverb or echo is employed—the more reverb or echo, the farther away the sound seems to be.

In the studio: The role of recording techniques in rock music: Every breadth you take: Stereo placement

* For its first decade or so, most rock music was recorded and released in monophonic sound, mono, meaning that there was assumed to be only one speaker for playback and no possibility of stereo imaging. Almost all of the Beatles' records, for instance, were originally released in mono, with later stereo versions being prepared mostly (and sometimes hastily) for hi-fi enthusiasts, often without the band participating in the stereo mixes. * Among the most successful producers to work in mono was Phil Spector. By the late 1960s, however, stereo was the preferred format for albums and FM radio, and by the mid-1970s complex stereo mixes had become the norm. * The development of more and more tracks, greater use of the stereo field, and increasingly ambitious musical projects progressed in tandem throughout the late '60s and '70s, as listeners purchased more sophisticated stereo equipment to get the full effect of the music. * When we hear sounds in the natural world, we can locate the position of a sound source because the sound enters each of our ears in a different way. Our mind calculates where a sound is coming from on the basis of the "stereo" effect. In music that is recorded in stereo, the engineer can control whether a sound comes out of the right or left speaker, or some combination of the two. In order to hear this clearly, use headphones to listen to a stereo recording and close your eyes: you will notice that there is a kind of "sonic landscape" in the space between the two headphones. Some sounds seem to come from the center, while others seem to come from the right or left, or mid-right or mid-left. It is, of course, impossible for the sounds that seem to be coming from the center to really be coming from there; after all, you are sitting between the headphone speakers and there is no center speaker physically present. Stereo sound is thus an aural illusion that we construct as a result of how we hear. Engineers use this phenomenon to separate sounds so we can hear more detail in the recording. For instance, if a rhythm guitar and organ are playing almost the same thing in the same frequency range, the listener may not be able to distinguish them from one another—one will cover up or "mask" the other. If you adjust one to sound like it is coming from the right and the other from the left, each will be much more distinct. So, in a stereo recording, the instruments and voices are arranged across the stereo field and the result is that the recording sounds clearer and more sonically complex.

Viewing rock

* Formal structure, instrumentation, and studio techniques are among the most important aspects of recorded sound. Yet, rock music became popular in an age after the Second World War, when images of musicians were often inextricable from sound. Various forms of video-based media—including television, films, and music videos—have enabled rock musicians to reach audiences visually as well as aurally. * Images of rock have been vital to the formation of cultural tastes for dance, fashion, and behavior that would not have been possible without the combination of rock music with the moving image. * When studying rock in an academic setting it is informative to consider the relationship between music and images. For one, when viewing a musical performance on video it is important to observe whether the musicians perform live or lip-synch to a prerecorded audio track. Similarly, knowledge of the original context can change how we might view a video performance. Among television broadcasts, for example, there are noteworthy differences between late-night talk show appearances, prime-time variety shows, and daytime talk shows. Moreover, dramatic feature films starring rock musicians and performances have been popular for decades, and serve a different function than documentaries that compile footage from live performances.

In the studio: The role of recording techniques in rock music: River Deep, Mountain High: Equalization (EQ)

* Frequency also plays a major role in recording techniques, as equalizers are used to affect the quality of most sounds. Each note played by an instrument is called its "fundamental," but along with this note, every instrument also subtly produces other, higher notes that help to form the tone, or timbre of the instrument. * If you adjust the treble and bass settings on your stereo you can greatly affect the sound—more treble and the sound is brighter, less treble and it sounds muffled. These tone settings adjust the volume of the frequencies in the sounds you hear and affect not only the fundamentals but also the higher notes that are generated in each case (called "upper partials" or "harmonics"). * In the process of recording instruments, an engineer has a significant amount of control over the timbre of each recorded sound; for each microphone in use there may be multiple controls that work like the treble and bass on your stereo. * Adjusting frequencies of sounds is often called "EQ," which is short for equalization. A good recording is "EQ-ed" to produce a balanced distribution of frequencies. EQ can also help to highlight certain instruments, and keep instruments in a similar range from covering each other up, resulting in a crisper, clearer, more defined sound.

Viewing rock: Rock film

* From the beginning of the rock movement, many rock music performances were featured in motion pictures. While early depictions of rock music in films like Rock Around the Clock and Blackboard Jungle characterized rock musicians and fans as "hoodlums," rock performances were increasingly common in major motion pictures only a few years later. * After signing to RCA in the mid-1950s, Elvis Presley made dozens of films, most of which featured musical performances. Some of Presley's most iconic video performances came from his work in films, including the famous "Jailhouse Rock" sequence from 1957. Presley's move into motion pictures helped to usher rock and roll into Hollywood. *During the early 1960s it became common for low-budget teen-oriented films to feature musicians and rock performances. The most popular of these were the "beach party fi lms" produced between 1963 and 1967, many of which starred Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. * In addition to music performed by the stars, many of these films included a house band (often Dick Dale and the Del-Tones), and various pop and R&B stars of the time. * Throughout the 1970s and 1980s rock musicians continued to star in films. Some of these might be considered serious works, while others simply served as popularity vehicles. KISS famously starred in the cult-classic KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park in 1978, a made-for-television film that is best known for its embarrassing and campy acting. The Ramones were central to the plot of the 1979 film Rock and Roll High School. Many conceptual rock albums of the 1970s also translated easily into dramatic film, producing rock-oriented movies such as Tommy (1975) and Pink Floyd The Wall (1982). Prince also starred in a series of films during the 1980s, including Purple Rain (1984), Under the Cherry Moon (1986), and Graffiti Bridge (1990). * Concert films have also been important to the history of rock music. The first notable film in this genre was T.A.M.I. Show, a 1964 feature film shot at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium that included performances by many of the most popular rock stars of the time, ranging from British invasion groups to James Brown. The tradition of concert films has produced many of the most notable visual images in the history of rock, which include Otis Redding coaxing a newfound audience in Monterey Pop (1968), Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Woodstock (1970), and the Rolling Stones' catastrophic performance at Altamont inGimme Shelter (1970). * The artistic quality of the concert film continued to improve. These include Martin Scorcese's depiction of the 1976 Thanksgiving farewell concert by the Band at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom portrayed in The Last Waltz (1978) and Jonathan Demme's documentary of the Talking Heads' 1983 three-night stand in a Hollywood theater released as Stop Making Sense (1984).

Music Group: Robert Johnson

* His 1936-37 recordings became enormously influential on rock guitarists in the 1960s, largely based on Eric Clapton's enthusiastic endorsement. * Like many rural blues singers, Johnson was a solo performer who sang to the accompaniment of his own acoustic guitar playing. * The rural blues style allowed for tremendous flexibility, and artists could easily add extra beats or measures as the spirit moved them. This can be heard clearly in Johnson's "Cross Roads Blues" (1936), as he alters the regular blues structural patterns to suit his sense of musical expression.

Form: Doo wop progression

* I-vi-IV-V * It can occur in many styles of pop. This chord progression is most often associated with the doo-wop of the 1950s.

Regional styles of country and western music: "Western" music in the Southwest and California in the 1930's

* If country music was most often associated with the Appalachian Mountains, western music reflected the wide open prairie of the cowboys—or at least Hollywood's portrayal of it. Gene Autry was the first singing cowboy to appear in a long line of Wild West films. His "Back in the Saddle Again," complete with cattle call "whoopie ti yi yo," is representative of the songs that he and Roy Rogers sang throughout their careers in recordings and on the silver screen. Patsy Montana made her mark as the singing cowgirl with "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" (1935) and featured a yodeling style influenced by Jimmie Rodgers. * Historians may dispute how authentically western some of this music was, but for the national movie-going public, these artists defined "cowboy music." * Popularized by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, western swing also helped to define western music as a style that put a cowboy twist on the big band idea. In addition to a rhythm section and horns, as one might expect of a radio dance band, western swing featured fiddles, a steel guitar, and occasionally, mariachi-style trumpet parts imported from Mexico. Wills's "New San Antonio Rose" (1940) is an example of this eclectic blend of urbane dance band and rough-and-tumble western hoedown. Wills's band greatly benefited from Bing Crosby's 1941 remake of the song, which became a national hit and brought western swing far more attention than it might have received otherwise. * By the 1940s Wills and the Playboys were appearing in Hollywood films and expanding Americans' sense of western music beyond cowboy songs.

The world before Rock and Roll

* In 1956 a young, handsome Elvis Presley appeared on Toast of the Town, a weekly television variety program hosted by Ed Sullivan that aired Sunday evenings on CBS. Presley's appearance on the show was the source of considerable controversy. In an earlier performance of "Hound Dog" on The Milton Berle Show, Elvis had launched into an improvised ending to the tune, grinding his hips suggestively as he sang. Such on-stage antics caused a public uproar and earned the singer the nickname "Elvis the Pelvis." In spite of heated protests from parents, Elvis became the central figure in a new kind of popular music intended especially for teenagers: rock and roll. * Presley appeared before a national audience, eliciting simultaneous reaction from the entire country. As rock and roll erupted in 1955 and 1956, a unique feature of its success was that it didn't spread gradually from town to town and region to region, but broke onto the national cultural scene relatively suddenly. Rock and roll developed out of three principal sources that preceded it: mainstream popular music, rhythm and blues, and country and western.

Elements to Consider: Tracking the popularity arc

* In many cases, a specific style will appear within a relatively restricted geographic region and remain unknown to most fans of popular music. * Few rock fans were aware of the punk scene in New York during the mid-1970s, and bands such as Television, the Ramones, and Blondie played to small, local audiences. * The American punk style, which would morph into new wave by the end of the decade, developed within this small subculture before breaking into the national spotlight in 1978. * By the early 1980s, some artists formerly associated with punk embraced styles and commercial strategies of the rock mainstream, while the more die-hard, aggressive groups retreated back into the punk underground. * The rise of punk from a small, regional underground scene to mainstream pop culture, and its subsequent retreat, follows a pattern that we might think of as a "popularity arc." Specific styles in rock music follow this template. * Histories of rock music account for the time each style spends in the pop limelight—the peak of the popularity arc—creating a chronology without examining a style's pre-mainstream roots or existence after the commercial boom years. In a sense, it is difficult to avoid such a historical account, and similar problems arise in histories of other musical styles (such as jazz and classical music). * To keep the popularity arc in mind for any given style, ask yourself the following questions: How did this style arise? When did it peak in popularity? Does it still exist in a sub-culture somewhere? How are elements of this style incorporated into current mainstream pop?

Rural and Urban Blues: Regional radio and the Black experience in 1950's America

* In the 1950s, a new approach to radio disseminated rhythm and blues outside of regional black communities. * To understand how radio changed after the introduction of television it is important to know what makes a radio station work financially. Commercial radio makes its profits by selling advertising time; to reach a particular kind of listener, radio stations program music they hope will attract a specific group. These stations offer that audience to sponsors, who have an interest in targeting groups that might be interested in their products. * By the early 1950s, the national audience for popular music had largely shifted from radio to television. This meant that radio needed to adapt considerably to survive, and many stations opted for a local or regional approach. As black populations began to grow in urban areas, it soon became clear that they constituted a distinctive community with needs for particular goods and services. * In 1948, WDIA in Memphis began programming and advertising especially to the local black population, playing rhythm and blues records supported by a roster of sponsors who welcomed a black clientele. Soon black stations—or programs directed to a black audience on otherwise white stations—began to pop up around the country. These programs and stations provided African-American listeners with music they could enjoy and informed them of which advertisers would welcome their business. In the days of racial segregation, this was useful information.

Music Group: Elvis Presley

* In the mid-1950s, many adults accustomed to the fatherly crooning of Bing Crosby and the suave, swinging delivery of Frank Sinatra were shocked by Elvis Presley's emphatic blues-influenced singing and suggestive dance moves. Teenagers, of course, loved him. * In 1956 a young, handsome Elvis Presley appeared on Toast of the Town, a weekly television variety program hosted by Ed Sullivan that aired Sunday evenings on CBS. Presley's appearance on the show was the source of considerable controversy. In an earlier performance of "Hound Dog" on The Milton Berle Show, Elvis had launched into an improvised ending to the tune, grinding his hips suggestively as he sang. Such on-stage antics caused a public uproar and earned the singer the nickname "Elvis the Pelvis." In spite of heated protests from parents, Elvis became the central figure in a new kind of popular music intended especially for teenagers: rock and roll.

Song: Rocket '88'

* Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats' 1951 single * Recorded in Memphis and produced by Sam Phillips (Elvis Presley's first producer), "Rocket '88'" is considered by many to be the first rock and roll song. * It is legally credited to Brenston, but he may have written only the lyrics and lifted the music from an earlier song called "Cadillac Boogie" (such "borrowings" are relatively common in early rock and roll). Music timings simply give you an idea of where in the song a specific section begins and ends. *Words and music by Jackie Brenston, produced by Sam Phillips. "Rocket '88'" hit #1 on the Billboard "Best Selling Retail Rhythm and Blues" and "Most Played Juke Box Rhythm and Blues" charts in 1951. * Instruments used: Piano, drums, saxophones, solo vocals, distorted electric guitar playing a repeated boogie-woogie pattern. * Form: simple verse * Time signature: 4/4 (quadruple compound time, which many musicians simply think of as a "shuffle" in four (4/4)) * 12-bar blues structure (The entire 12-bar blues structure appears in the introduction, for example, and begins a second time with the vocals. Phrase one begins with the lyrics, "heard of jalopies"; phrase two, "yes, it's great"; and the third phrase, "ride in style." You will notice that, although "Rocket '88'" is constructed using the 12-bar blues, its lyrics do not follow the question/ question/ answer pattern.) * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:19 Instrumental Verse 12 mm., piano featured. 0:19-0:38 Verse 1 12 mm., "You women have heard of jalopies . . ." 0:38-0:57 Instrumental Verse 12 mm., saxophones featured. 0:57-1:10 Verse 2 (partial) 8 mm., "V-8 motor . . .", breaks off early. 1:10-1:28 Instrumental Verse 12 mm., sax solo. 1:28-1:47 Instrumental Verse 12 mm., sax solo continues. 1:47-2:05 Instrumental Verse 12 mm., sax solo continues. 2:05-2:23 Verse 3 12 mm., "Step in my rocket . . ." 2:23-2:46 Instrumental Verse 12 mm., sax and guitar featured.

Elements to Consider: Rock history in the media

* Magazines such as Rolling Stone and Mojo provide readers with useful information about rock musicians, their music, and aspects of the entertainment industry. * Books targeted at the general reader—often written by journalists and music critics—are plentiful and varied. * Cable networks such as VH-1 and MTV regularly offer profiles of artists and styles, frequently taking larger historical patterns into account. * The development of the classic-rock radio format in the early 1990s also encouraged a growing sense of rock's history, along with the time-tested oldies format that has existed for decades. * Be aware, however, that a scholarly approach to rock will differ significantly from general interest books or media accounts. In many cases, information found in the popular media is designed primarily for entertainment rather than educational or research purposes. Some of this information may be accurate, well researched, and balanced, but some of it is also skewed, gossipy, and unreliable. Remember that magazines and broadcast stations generate revenue through the sale of advertising; the worst thing that can happen in such businesses is for people to put the magazine down, change the radio station, or turn off the TV. It is in the best interests of media outlets to deliver what they believe people want most, which can lead to a focus on the more sensational and titillating aspects of biography, rather than serious consideration of musicians and their music.

Music Group: Jimmie Rodgers

* Most important figure in the early history of country music * His music and performances made him a national star * He died from tuberculosis in 1933 at the age of thirty-six. *He was primarily a solo performer, who sang and played the acoustic guitar. * "Blue Yodel" (1927)—often called "T for Texas"—is representative of his style, including his trademark yodel. * His singing style was imitated by later country and western singers, including Gene Autry, Ernest Tubb, and Eddy Arnold. * He was known as both "The Blue Yodeler" and "The Singing Brakeman." The Blue Yodeler image cast him as a kind of rustic back porch guitar picker and singer, while his Singing Brakeman persona was a roving hobo, wandering the country in the back of a freight car, only stopping long enough to sing a song about his lonely, nomadic existence. Neither was an accurate portrait of him. He frequently performed in stylish clothes. * His legacy to country includes not only his music, but the way he, and those around him, crafted its reception.

What to listen for in Rock

* Musical form refers to the structure and organization of different sections in a song or piece. Rock generally uses a limited number of common formal types; once you are familiar with these types, you will notice that most songs fit relatively neatly into one form or another (with certain exceptions). Understanding formal structure will help you hear new things in the music itself and perceive similarities between musical styles that may otherwise seem very different. The basic formal types are introduced below, along with short explanations of rhythm, instrumentation, and recording techniques. Instrumentation, or the types of instruments used in a given recording, can drastically change the way a song sounds and allow for variation within a performance. A familiarity with basic techniques used to record rock music will also help us understand some of the important differences between studio recordings, which form the bulk of the repertoire discussed in this book, and live rock performances. In addition to the sounds of rock, we will also consider the sights of rock with a special introduction to viewing rock in its multiple contexts.

Music Group: Bessie Smith

* One of the most famous Blues singers in the 1920's. * Her 1923 recording of Alberta Hunter's "Down Hearted Blues" sold over a million copies. (The history of selling blues records can be traced to the this song). Originally from Tennessee, she enjoyed enormous success for years after this popular recording. * Her style influenced many singers, including Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin. * As a child, she toured the South performing in tent and minstrel shows where she was undoubtedly exposed to early blues music. * In spite of her Southern blues style, her recordings were made in New York, where she was able to use the best jazz musicians of the day, including Louis Armstrong. * By the end of the decade, her career began to fade as blues fell off the commercial radar.

Viewing rock: Music videos

* Since the advent of rock, artists have used films as a vehicle for advancing their careers and increasing their popularity. * Short films made to promote singles date back at least to the 1960s, although these were more a part of the European market than the American one. * The Beatles created some of the earliest promotional videos, intended to promote their music after they stopped performing live. In 1966, the band made videos for "Rain" and "Paperback Writer." Judged by later standards, these seem unimaginative and bland: the band lip-synchs performances in various scenes shot in the same outdoor garden setting. But because the Beatles were weary of touring, these and later videos—most especially those for "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever"—became important tools in promoting new Beatles releases. The promotional video, which later became called the music video, has an extraordinary history that eventually made a massive impact on the entire popular music industry.

Instrumentation in Rock: Sweetening the sound: Horns and strings

* Some arrangements use horns or strings to add the finishing touches to a track. * Horn sections often consist of a combination of trumpets, trombones, and saxophones used to give a tune a little more "punch." This approach is evident in much of the soul music recorded in Memphis and Muscle Shoals. * Strings can make an arrangement sound bigger and more elegant. Strings are often saved until late in the arrangement and are employed to give the end of the track a convincing lift. * An arranger has to be careful that the horns or strings added to sweeten a track stay out of the way of the rhythm section and singers, creating a backdrop that enhances the song without drawing too much attention to itself.

In the studio: The role of recording techniques in rock music

* Some scholars argue that the rock repertoire is not simply a collection of songs, but a collection of specific recordings of songs. There is, for instance, only one recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that we value: the one made by the Beatles in 1967. Many recordings have what might be thought of as "sonic signatures"—features that distinguish them in terms of where and when they were recorded, as well as by whom. * Elvis's early recordings with Sam Phillips at Sun Records have a distinctive sound that is, in a sense, separable from the songs themselves or the actual performances of them. * For scholars with this view, rock is largely a recorded art, and when we talk about rock songs, we are almost always talking about rock records, even if we don't realize it.

Typical formal types in American popular music

* The analysis of musical form is a study of the way sections are structured in a piece of music, and the way these sections combine to produce larger structures. Most musical styles work within the constraints of a small number of formal types, so formal analysis of a single work usually consists of noting its similarities to and differences from some formal design common to the style. Formal types and musical styles are often linked to one another. * 12-bar blues * Doo-wop progression * Simple verse * Simple verse-chorus * contrasting verse-chorus * AABA

Instrumentation in Rock: The low down: Electric bass

* The bass player's job is to "lock in" with the drummer rhythmically, and to provide the important bass notes to the chord progressions played by the guitar and/or keyboards. Within the rhythm section, the bassist is a kind of bridge between the rhythmic and harmonic (or chord-based) dimensions of the music. Often the bass player will create their part around the rhythmic pattern played on the bass drum, stressing those notes rhythmically while filling in other notes to provide an interesting bass line. * Much early rock music used the acoustic upright bass, which could be amplified; but by the early 1960s, the more easily amplified electric bass guitar was the preferred instrument for most popular music except jazz and country. The bass (both acoustic and electric) usually has four strings that match the bottom four strings of the guitar. * The distance between the tuning of guitar and bass strings is an octave

Elements to Consider: The ups and downs of chart positions

* The best-known American charts appear in Billboard magazine. * Charts help us draw general conclusions about the popularity of a song or album at the time it was released. It can also be useful to compare how certain songs did on pop charts with the way they fared on rhythm and blues or country charts, or even on the British charts. * Charts can help us avoid the fan mentality—in a sense, they keep us honest. * Among scholars, charts are viewed with understandable suspicion because little is known about how they have been put together in the past, making them susceptible to manipulation. Charts are not precision instruments for measuring a song or album's success or popularity, and they do not accurately reflect the popularity or influence of some songs or albums. A record can chart well and have little influence, or chart moderately well (or even poorly) and have a lot of influence. But charts are still the best instruments we have available to judge listeners' changing tastes, even if chart measurements are flawed. * We would have access to comprehensive radio playlists of various eras, or the actual number of records sold of any song or album. However, playlist data is not plentiful and record companies often manipulate sales numbers. * The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) does award gold records for sales of 500,000 units and platinum records for sales of one million units, which can be helpful in measuring the success of an album or single. The RIAA website (www.riaa.com) allows you to look up any hit record and track its award history. * Google Books search engine also provides access to an extensive collection of Billboard magazines, allowing us to consider aspects of advertising and industry news at a particular date.

Building a National audience for music and entertainment: The rise of the radio networks in the 1920's

* The early years of radio were an exciting time. As broadcasters worked to get radio into every home in America, they discovered two reliable ways to reach larger audiences. First, they broadcast radio signals via high-power transmitter. Under the most favorable atmospheric conditions, such "superstations" could reach listeners within a radius of several hundred miles. The federal government also licensed a few stations for exclusive use of a particular frequency. Without local stations to mask the signal, these "clear channel" stations could regularly reach entire ultistate regions. Other enterprising broadcasters placed their transmitters in Mexico, just south of the border where the U.S. government had no licensing authority. These "border radio" stations could sometimes be picked up as far north as Chicago. * A second, more effective way to reach a large audience was linking a number of local and regional stations together to form a network. NBC used telephone lines to link sixty-nine stations across the country for its first coast-to-coast broadcast in 1928. Soon NBC was running two networks and other companies followed suit. The network system had a number of distinct advantages: programming could be run from a central location (most often a studio in New York), and it was possible to run live broadcasts from member stations (called "affiliates"). This gave the networks a tremendous range of programming from which to choose. When networks could get one of the clear-channel stations on board, this offered the best of both worlds. Today, the network system still exists in the television industry, where most prime-time programming originates from studios in Los Angeles or New York, while other shows and newscasts originate locally. Talk radio also employs this model, with shows originating from many parts of the country and playing to a national audience. * Live radio was also an important vehicle for music publishers, who had to convince bandleaders and singers not only to perform a song, but also that using the song in their live shows would serve their career interests. For most musicians during the 1930s and '40s (much as today), "career interests" meant future bookings for more money. Publishers bargained with bandleaders, singers, and radio producers to get their songs into live radio broadcasts that the bands and singers were using to generate future bookings. * The radio networks, performers, and song publishers relied on one another to succeed, and much of the music business during those years focused on pairing artists with songs and appropriate radio shows. Network radio programming offered listeners a wide range of entertainment: soap operas, adventure shows, and comedies were all popular, as were variety shows and live music. The Guiding Light appeared in 1937, while shows like The Lone Ranger and Superman entertained listeners throughout most of the 1930s and '40s. One of the greatest successes of the era was the comedy Amos 'n' Andy, which premiered in 1929. Its use of racial stereotypes, drawn from the minstrel tradition, would be unacceptable today, but the adventures and mishaps of Amos and Andy held the attention of the entire United States (not unlike the success later enjoyed by television shows such as All in the Family, Cheers, and Seinfeld). Network radio created an audience that stretched from coast to coast, and in so doing, it created a national popular culture in which music played a central role. Through the medium of radio a song could become popular almost overnight, eliminating the need for word of mouth to spread gradually from town to town and region to region. With radio, a song could be heard far and wide in a single performance. * Radio in the 1930s and '40s was unlike modern radio because most of the music was performed live. While modern radio listeners expect that the music they hear is recorded, early radio listeners assumed that what they heard over the airwaves was live. Before 1945, it was considered unethical to play records on the air. Consensus dictated that by playing a record you were trying to fool people into believing a performance was live when it was not. This was a benefit to live musicians, who eagerly took advantage of the work opportunities afforded by radio. Even though affiliates were fed network programming for large segments of the broadcast schedule, most larger stations employed a studio band for local programming. In addition, stations had to fill the gaps between network programs, which created plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurial local bandleaders. In this context, it is not surprising that the musician's union (American Federation of Musicians) took strong political steps in the 1940s to keep records ("canned music") off the airwaves—keeping music live meant keeping musicians (and union members) working.

Music Group: Gene Autry

* The first singing cowboy to appear in a long line of Wild West films.

Building a National audience for music and entertainment: Sheet Music Publishers and Professional Songwriters

* The mainstream popular-music business was shaped by a number of factors in the decades before rock and roll. Newly developed radio and television technologies made a huge impact on distributing performances, while the business of music publishing determined how songs were sold. In the first half of the twentieth century, sheet music was the principal method of selling music. The sheet music business was concentrated in an informal district of New York City often referred to as Tin Pan Alley, where songwriters and producers clustered to form the geographic heart of the industry. The area got its name from the high concentration of songwriters plunking out their ideas on rows of pianos, which sounded to the locals like a bunch of people banging on tin pans. The term "Tin Pan Alley" has become shorthand not only for the body of music produced at that time, but also for a way of doing business and a style of American popular music. The body of music consists of the thousands of songs written and made popular, mostly in the first half of the twentieth century, by professional songwriters such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, and Jerome Kern. * Musically speaking, Tin Pan Alley songs follow a standard, though very flexible, formal pattern. Many of these songs make use of a sectional verse-chorus format, in which the chorus is the part of the song listeners are likely to recognize, while the verse is an introduction that sets the scene for the song. Tin Pan Alley choruses are often cast in a 32-measure AABA form. "Over the Rainbow"—a song featured in the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz—provides a representative example of this form in a Tin Pan Alley context. While there are some standard variations on this common structural pattern in the Tin Pan Alley repertoire, the basic 32-bar chorus appears in many songs. Thus, what holds these songs together musically is a fairly uniform approach to musical form, practiced by a majority of the professional songwriters of Tin Pan Alley, along with a consistent approach to the many other musical elements that are used to help delineate the form. * While the sectional verse-chorus form is rare in rock and roll, the AABA form common to so many Tin Pan Alley choruses plays a central role in rock. This repertoire was also unified by the way it was marketed. In rock music, the basic unit of trade would become a specific recorded performance, available in formats ranging from records and tapes to MP3 files. But in the Tin Pan Alley era, the basic unit of trade was the song itself, not a specific recording of the song. A successful song was recorded by a series of artists, each trying to tailor the tune to his or her personal style. More recorded versions of a song allowed the songwriter and publisher to earn more money. Professional songwriters composed songs, and publishers worked to get each tune heard by the public. The songwriters themselves were rarely performers, so publishers had to "pitch" songs to artists who might consider performing them. Songs were pitched in all kinds of ways—some more ethical than others. The usual path to popularizing a song was convincing a professional to perform the tune as part of a show. * With the rise of musical theater in the 1930s, Broadway musicals became a prime vehicle for bringing songs to the public's attention. Many early Broadway shows had very skimpy plots, which were created merely to tie the show's songs together (later musicals were far more integrated). The first movies had no sound, although music was often furnished by local musicians—sometimes even an orchestra—and sheet music was occasionally provided by the film studio. When sound films became popular in the 1930s, musicals were often released in film versions, and new musicals were composed expressly for the movies. Records also helped to promote songs, although in the prerock era the central element in a record was still not a particular performance. The best way to promote a song during the 1930s and '40s was to get it on the radio, which was dominated by big bands from 1935-45 and by star singers from 1945-55. If a song was performed on national radio, a publisher could expect the best chance of success. In some instances, sales of a recorded version of a song might outsell the sheet music, but sheet music sales were the key to success in the Tin Pan Alley business model.

In the studio: The role of recording techniques in rock music: Is it live or is it Memorex?

* There are two principal approaches to thinking about what a recording represents. * The first is to think of the recording as an "audio snapshot." In this case, the recording is meant to reproduce a live performance as faithfully as possible and the listener should be unaware that a recording process is involved. On these types of recordings, the sounds should seem natural and indiscernible from an actual performance. This approach to recording is frequently used in classical, jazz, and folk music. * The second approach to recording is to exploit the possibilities offered by the studio. This often produces sounds that would be impossible to re-create in a live setting. The records of Les Paul and Mary Ford are early examples of this second approach. By progressively building up tracks of his guitar and Ford's voice, Paul was able to create a recorded sound that was very much a consequence of the recording technology that produced it. * The recording studio also allows instruments to be combined in ways that would not easily work in a natural acoustic setting. Since the early 1970s live performance technology has made it increasingly possible to combine acoustic instruments with louder electric ones, which is largely a result of sounds that first occurred in the studio. * Since the days of Elvis Presley's Sun recordings in the 1950s, rock music has been more dependent on exploiting the possibilities of the studio than creating audio snapshots.

In the studio: The role of recording techniques in rock music: Mixing

* These dimensions of recorded sound—ambience, EQ, stereo placement, and overall volume—are controlled from a mixing board. A mixing board is used in two ways: first, to record the sound to tape (or more recently to a digital recorder) and second, to play the recording back. * In classical music, the engineer's job is to capture the sound in the natural ambient space as faithfully as possible; a playback should not color the sound (though it may, and sometimes adjustments are made at this second stage). * In rock, sounds are often recorded dry (except when special room effects are desired) and stored for playback. Until the 1960s, most popular music was recorded using a single performance. The use of tape after World War II allowed engineers to begin experimenting with multi-track tape, creating recordings from multiple performances. Early recording tape could store three tracks of music (meaning that three performances could be played back simultaneously), but as the '60s and '70s progressed, tapes could contain eight, sixteen, twenty-four, forty-eight, or even more tracks. As computer hardware and software have become less expensive, in the last decade more musicians have turned to digital audio workstations (or DAWs) to record music, shedding the need for large, expensive recording studios. * Although now encased in computer software, modern recording programs such as GarageBand and Pro-Tools still incorporate the same principles as older mixing boards. However, with the advance of digital technology in recent years, the number of tracks available is so large that track space is no longer a technical limitation. * Regardless of the process used to capture the sounds (analog or digital), once all the tracks are recorded, the engineer is ready to mix down, meaning that she will adjust the ambience, EQ, stereo placement, and relative volume of the tracks to produce the final version of the song. (The word "track" is used in recording to designate a recorded part, but it is also used more generally among fans and writers to mean "song.") * Mixing is a complicated and creative process undertaken by highly skilled professionals who are often known for their distinctive "sound." Since the mid-1960s, bands have often spent more time mixing an album than recording the individual tracks.

Form: 12-Bar blues

* This is a common structural pattern found in rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and many styles of jazz. * A 12-bar blues is a structural pattern that consists of twelve groups of four-beat measures. The twelve-measure structure of the 12-bar blues is distinctive because of the way its measures fall into three groups of four. These groups can be seen in the measure length, phrasing, lyrics, and chord structure. Once this twelve-measure pattern is in place, an entire song will often repeat the structure several times, with new lyrics and instrumental solos added to make these repetitions fresh. The first four measures, which are called a phrase, often feature a lyric that is repeated in the subsequent four measures. The words of the final four measures often complete the thought begun in the repeated initial phrase. Think of this pattern as " question— question—answer" (although the lyrics don't literally have to ask a question). The first line in each verse is repeated in the second phrase, with the third phrase completing the thought with a new line. * I-IV-I-I IV-IV-I-I V-IV-I-V

Form: AABA form

* Verses and bridge based on different music; can employ full or partial reprise * The song form most associated with mainstream pop before the birth of rock and roll. This is one of the most common formal patterns in Tin Pan Alley songs and usually occurs in a 32-bar scheme that combines four 8-bar phrases. We use the designation AABA to show that the first two 8-bar phrases are very similar, the third 8-bar phrase is contrasting, and the last 8-bar phrase is similar to the first two. * Most AABA songs would be too short if the song did not repeat some or all of the 32-bar pattern. (In "I'm Sittin' on Top of the World" and "Hey Good Lookin'," the entire AABA form returns, but in "Over the Rainbow" and "Blueberry Hill," only part of the AABA structure is repeated.) When the entire AABA form is repeated, it is a full reprise, and when only part of the AABA form returns, a partial reprise. While the 32-bar AABA is common, this form can also be modified to include sections that exceed eight measures. * Jerry Lee Lewis's recording of "Great Balls of Fire" provides a good example of this from the rock and roll repertoire. The A sections are 8 measures long, but each presentation of the bridge uses twelve measures of music. This extended bridge structure produces a complete AABA pattern of thirty-six measures, not the usual thirty-two. Note that "Great Balls of Fire" employs a full reprise of this 36-bar pattern to form the second half of the song. * 12-bar blues or the doo-wop progression may occur as the basis for any of the sections

Form: Contrasting Verse-Chorus

* Verses and choruses based on different music. * Forms like contrasting verse-chorus may also include a bridge, or a section that provides a contrasting, non-repeated section of music and lyrics and returns to a verse or chorus. * 12-bar blues or the doo-wop progression may occur as the basis for any of the sections

Form: Simple Verse-Chorus

* Verses and choruses based on same music. * The melody portion of a song may change from verse to chorus, while the chords underneath stay the same. The biggest difference between a simple verse and a simple verse-chorus is the presence of a repeating set of lyrics to form a chorus section. * 12-bar blues or the doo-wop progression may occur as the basis for any of the sections

Regional styles of country and western music: Jimmie Rodgers: The first star of country music

* Western music's biggest stars were Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, but the most important figure in the early history of country music was Jimmie Rodgers. Rodgers's music and performances made him a national star, although his career was cut short when he died from tuberculosis in 1933 at the age of thirty-six. He was primarily a solo performer, who sang and played the acoustic guitar. Rodgers's "Blue Yodel" (1927)—often called "T for Texas"—is representative of his style, including his trademark yodel. Rodgers's singing style was much imitated by later country and western singers, including Gene Autry, Ernest Tubb, and Eddy Arnold. During his brief career, Rodgers was known as both "The Blue Yodeler" and "The Singing Brakeman." The Blue Yodeler image cast Rodgers as a kind of rustic back porch guitar picker and singer, while his Singing Brakeman persona was a roving hobo, wandering the country in the back of a freight car, only stopping long enough to sing a song about his lonely, nomadic existence. Neither was an accurate portrait of Rodgers, who, according to many reports, frequently performed in stylish clothes. These rustic images played on stereotypes of the time, and show an early awareness of the importance of marketing. Constructing homespun images would become the specialty of the country barn-dance radio shows, the most successful of which was the Grand Ole Opry. Rodgers's legacy to country includes not only his music, but the way he, and those around him, crafted its reception.

Music Group: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

* Western swing (popularized by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys) helped to define western music as a style that put a cowboy twist on the big band idea. In addition to a rhythm section and horns, as one might expect of a radio dance band, western swing featured fiddles, a steel guitar, and occasionally, mariachi-style trumpet parts imported from Mexico. * "New San Antonio Rose" (1940) is an example of this eclectic blend of urbane dance band and rough-and-tumble western hoedown. * By the 1940s Wills and the Playboys were appearing in Hollywood films and expanding Americans' sense of western music beyond cowboy songs.

Instrumentation in Rock: Beat it: Drums and Percussion

* While most rock fans can tell the difference between an electric guitar and a keyboard, or a drum set and a saxophone, far fewer listeners understand exactly how these instruments typically work together in songs. Instruments in rock frequently have specific roles within the music. The task of the rhythm section is to establish a solid foundation for singers, instrumental soloists, and other members of the group that focus on melody. * At the heart of the rhythm section is the drummer, whose role is to establish not only the tempo and meter, but also the "feel" of each song. Most rock drummers employ a set consisting of a snare drum (which sits on a stand between the drummer's legs), a bass drum (played by the right foot), and a high-hat (two cymbals that can be clamped together using a stand controlled by a foot pedal). Most drummers also use medium-sized drums called tom-toms. Tom-toms that are mounted on the bass drum are called ride toms; those that stand on the floor are called floor toms. A drummer may also use several cymbals, most often a larger ride cymbal and a smaller crash cymbal. The rhythmic patterns drummers play work something like the gears of a clock, with some gears moving quickly and others moving more slowly. The high-hat or ride cymbal is often used for the fastest notes, played in a regular stream. The bass and snare drums are generally played at slower intervals, and often seem to be in dialogue with one another. * The drum set can be enhanced by the addition of other percussion instruments, such as tambourine, cowbell, conga drums, or even hand claps. Most drummers will use one pattern for verses and another for bridges or choruses, and also break the pattern to play "drum fills" that help lead the music from section to section. * Typical drum beat: Count: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & High-hat X X X X X X X X Snare X X Bass X X X

Music Group: Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five

* While much of the development of rhythm and blues during the 1940s remained regional and outside the pop mainstream, the jump blues of Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five became popular with mainstream listeners through a series of hit singles, including "G.I. Jive" (1944), "Caldonia Boogie" (1945), and "Choo Choo Ch'boogie" (1946). * He adopted the fast tempos of swing dance music but pared down the instrumentation to only a rhythm section and saxophone, a move that worked both musically and financially, considering the expenses of traveling with a larger band. * His vocal delivery was upbeat and often comical, although his humorous lyrics often touched on pressing social issues such as racism and poverty. In "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (1949), for example, Jordan describes a typical weekend evening party scene in the New Orleans African-American community, which ends when the police take everyone to jail and book them on "suspicion."

Instrumentation in Rock: Harmony in motion: Rhythm guitar and keyboards

* While the bass usually provides the foundation for a song's harmony within the rhythm section, the rhythm guitar fleshes out the harmonic dimension by playing full chords. * Rhythm guitar can be played on either acoustic or electric guitar. The electric guitar produces little sound on its own, but can reach high volume levels when connected to an amplifier. * The rhythm guitar part complements the bass and drum parts, and these three instruments work together to establish the harmonic and rhythmic basis for the song. * The rhythm guitarist also has to be careful to fit his part in with the bass and drums. Sometimes if the bass locks in with the bass drum, the rhythm guitar will lock in with the snare, emphasizing the snare part while filling in the remaining space between beats. * Sometimes the piano, organ, or synthesizer is used along with, or even in place of, the rhythm guitar. If keyboards or organs are used with rhythm guitar, they may play the same rhythmic figure as the guitar or simply sustain chords while the guitar plays its more rhythmic part. However the parts are organized, rhythm guitar and keyboard players have to be careful not to conflict musically.

Instrumentation in Rock: In the spotlight: Lead singers and backup vocals

* With the rhythmic and harmonic dimensions of the piece firmly secured by the rhythm section, the singer focuses on the melodic dimension of the music. *Singers are sometimes very free with the rhythmic placement of their melody notes, which translates into a lively dialectical tension with the tightly structured grid of the rhythm section. The singer's job is to create melodic interest and deliver the lyrics in a convincing manner— one that does not seem contrived or unnatural in comparison with normal speech. * Many listeners attend as closely to the lyrics as to the melody that projects them, so a vocal performer has to be sure that the words come across effectively. * Many solo vocalists are also accompanied by background vocals. A singer may have no backup vocals (Elvis Presley's "That's All Right (Mama)"), or the singer's melody will be accompanied by harmony vocals that follow the melody (The Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl") or support and echo some part of it (The Beatles' "Twist and Shout"). * The vocals are usually coordinated (with one another and with the rhythm section) to avoid conflict between parts.

Song: "Sh-Boom"

* Words and music by Jimmy Keyes, Carl Feaster, Claude Feaster, Floyd "Buddy" McRae, and Ricky Edwards (The Chords). * Reached #5 on the Billboard rhythm and blues "Most Played in Juke Boxes" chart in 1954. (This recording dropped quickly off of the charts after a cover version was released by the Crew Cuts.) * FORM: Simple verse with several interludes and a bridge. * TIME SIGNATURE: 4/4 * INSTRUMENTATION: Electric guitar, bass, piano, drums, saxophone, solo vocals, and lead vocals. * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:06 Prelude, 2 mm. "Life could be a dream . . ." 0:06-0:22 Verse 1, 4 mm. "Life could be a dream . . ."; solo vocal with background harmonies. 0:22-0:29 Interlude (partial), 2 mm. Nonsense syllables; "De dong e ding dong . . . " 0:29-0:43 Verse 2, 4 mm. "Life could be a dream"; beginning of verse punctuated by vocal harmony. 0:43-0:57 Bridge, 4 mm. "Every time I look at you . . ."; performed by bass vocalist. 0:57-1:11 Verse 3, 4 mm. "Life could be a dream"; performed as harmony throughout (note the high range of the tenor vocalist). 1:11-1:25 Interlude (full), 4 mm. Nonsense syllables followed by entrance of saxophone. 1:25-1:39 Instrumental verse, 4 mm. Saxophone solo. 1:39-1:53 Instrumental verse, 4 mm. Saxophone solo. 1:53-2:07 Verse 4, 4 mm. Repeat of verse 3. 2:07-2:23 Interlude, 4 mm. Repeat of full interlude.

Song: Down Hearted Blues

* by Bessie Smith * 1923 recording of Alberta Hunter's "Down Hearted Blues" sold over a million copies. (The history of selling blues records can be traced to this song)

Song: Shake, Rattle, and Roll

* by Big Joe Turner * 1954 * 12-bar blues structure

Song: That'll Be the Day

* by Buddy Holly * Words and music by Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Norman Petty (The Crickets) * Produced by Norman Petty. * Reached #1 on the Billboard pop "Best Sellers in Stores" chart, and #2 on the Billboard "R&B Best Sellers in Stores" chart in 1957. * FORM: Contrasting verse-chorus with instrumental bridge * There are differences between the 8-bar verse and chorus sections, in addition to the instrumental bridge formed out of a 12-bar blues pattern. * TIME SIGNATURE: 12/8 (shuffle in 4) * INSTRUMENTATION: Electric guitar, acoustic bass, drums, lead and backup vocals. * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:04 Introduction, 2 mm. Solo guitar featured. 0:04-0:19 Chorus, 8 mm. "Well, that'll be the day . . ." 0:19-0:34 Verse, 8 mm. "Well, you give me . . ." 0:34-0:49 Chorus, 8 mm. "Well, that'll be the day . . ." 0:49-1:12 Instrumental Bridge, 12 mm. Guitar solo over 12-bar blues. 1:12-1:27 Chorus, 8 mm. "Well, that'll be the day . . ." 1:27-1:42 Verse, 8 mm. "Well, when Cupid shot . . ." 1:42-1:58 Chorus, 8 mm. "Well, that'll be the day . . ." 1:58-2:14 Ending, 8 mm. Based closely on chorus, "That'll be the day . . ."

Song: Smoke on the Water

* by Deep Purple * A prime example of how rock music from the mid-1960s (and beyond) is organized in terms of instrumentation. *The track follows the contrasting verse-chorus formal pattern: after a lengthy introduction there are four verse-chorus pairs (the third of which is instrumental), with a coda rounding the tune off. * It is easy to hear each instrument during the introduction, since the band brings them in almost one at a time. The song begins with the electric guitar alone, playing a four-measure blues-inflected riff that is then repeated. The guitar has a distorted tone, which is a result of overdriving the amplifier; this tone is used extensively in rock. * The third time through the guitar riff, the drums enter (0:17); first the high-hat alone, and on the fourth time through, the snare drum as well. The guitar is also doubled by the organ here, although the effect is subtle because the organ is also distorted and sounds like a second guitar. * With the fifth occurrence of the guitar riff (0:34), the bass guitar is added * The sixth time through (0:43), the bass is doubled by the bass drum. * As the vocals enter for the first verse (0:51), the drummer is primarily playing the high-hat, bass drum, and snare, using crashes on the cymbal and bass drum to mark the beginning and end of vocal phrases. The guitar and bass are playing almost the same part, while the organ takes the "rhythm guitar" role, playing the chords off the drums and bass. * As the chorus begins (1:25), the organ becomes more sustained, as do the guitar and bass, while more crashes and drum fills and a second vocal harmony are added. * The verses and choruses that follow are mostly the same as the first pair, although the verse and chorus during the guitar solo are different (2:58). The bass moves in faster notes during the solo, while the drum part emphasizes the snare on the faster notes rather than the high-hat. * The arrival of the chorus during the solo is particularly dynamic (3:30), as is the return to the guitar riff in the passage before the beginning of the last verse (3:40). * While rock music sometimes gives the impression of musical simplicity, there are often layers of complexity. A good rhythm section helps the listener's focus on the vocals or solos, making the background instrumentation relatively transparent.

Song: Jailhouse Rock

* by Elvis Presley * 1957

Song: Heartbreak Hotel

* by Elvis Presley * Simple verse form * 1956 * Each 8-bar verse is based on the same chord progression, which is actually an abbreviated version of the 12-bar blues (though it is not a 12-bar blues). * The song consists of repetitions of the same music with different words for each verse (and one instrumental verse). * Words and music by Mae Boren, Tommy Durden, and Elvis Presley * Produced by Steve Sholes. * Reached #1 on the Billboard "Top 100" chart, #1 on all three Billboard country and western charts (sales, jukebox, and radio), and #3 on the Billboard rhythm and blues "Most Played in Juke Boxes" chart in 1956. * FORM: Simple verse. * TIME SIGNATURE: 12/8 (shuffle in four). * INSTRUMENTATION: Electric guitar, piano, acoustic bass, drums, and lead vocals. * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:22 Verse 1, 8 mm. "Well, since my baby left me . . ." 0:22-0:42 Verse 2, 8 mm. "Oh, though it's always crowded . . ." 0:42-1:01 Verse 3, 8 mm. "Now, the bellhop's tears . . ." 1:01-1:22 Verse 4, 8 mm. "Well, if your baby leaves you . . ." 1:21-1:42 Instrumental Verse, 8 mm. Guitar solo for fi rst 4 mm., then piano solo. 1:42-2:05 Verse 5, 8 mm. "Oh, though it's always crowded . . ."

Song: Back in the Saddle Again

* by Gene Autry * Has a cattle call "whoopie ti yi yo" in it * Representative of the songs he sang throughout his career in recordings and on the silver screen.

Song: Great Balls of Fire

* by Jerry Lee Lewis * Words and music by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer * produced by Sam Phillips. * Reached #2 on the Billboard "Top 100" chart, #1 on the country and western "Best Sellers in Stores" chart, and #3 on both the "R&B Best Sellers in Stores" and "Most Played R&B by Jockeys" charts in 1958. * FORM: AABA, with full reprise (The A sections are 8 measures long, but each presentation of the bridge uses twelve measures of music. This extended bridge structure produces a complete AABA pattern of thirty-six measures, not the usual thirty-two. This song employs a full reprise of this 36-bar pattern to form the second half of the song.) * TIME SIGNATURE: 4/4 * INSTRUMENTATION: Piano, drums, acoustic bass, and lead vocals. * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:13 A-Verse, 8 mm. Vocals delivered in stop time, "You shake my nerves . . ." 0:13-0:25 A-Verse, 8 mm. Full band in, "I laughed at love . . ." 0:25-0:43 B-Bridge, 12 mm. "Kiss me baby . . ." 0:43-0:55 A-Verse, 8 mm. "I chew my nails down . . ." 0:55-1:06 A-Instrumental Verse, 8 mm. Raucous piano solo. 1:06-1:18 A-Instrumental Verse, 8 mm. 1:18-1:37 B-Bridge, 12 mm. "Kiss me baby . . ." 1:37-1:49 A-Verse, 8 mm. "I chew my nails . . ."

Song: Blue Yodel

* by Jimmie Rodgers. * 1927 * often called "T for Texas" * This song is representative of Jimmie Rodgers' style, including his trademark yodel.

Song: Over the Rainbow

* by Judy Garland with Victor Young and His Orchestra * Words by E. Y. Harbaugh, music by Harold Arlen. * Reached #5 on the Billboard pop chart in fall 1939. * FORM: This example uses AABA form which is closely associated with Tin Pan Alley songwriting and is one of the most common of the mainstream pop formal designs used during the 1900-1950 period. Typically an AABA form presents two verses, followed by a contrasting bridge, and a return to the verse. To fill out a particular performance arrangement of an AABA song, verses and the bridge may be repeated. Here two verses are repeated, as well as part of the bridge, after the complete AABA structure has been presented. The verses within the AABA form are not the same as the verse employed in the sectional verse-chorus form * TIME SIGNATURE: 4/4. There is frequent speeding up and slowing down of the tempo. These tempo variations help shape the vocal phrases and make them more expressive. Such changes of tempo are not common in dance music or any style that uses a drummer. In this case, a conductor directs the changes of tempo and dynamics. * INSTRUMENTATION: Vocalist with orchestra. *Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:11 Introduction, 4 mm. String melody with pulsating winds accompaniment sets the dreamy mood for the song. 0:11-0:34 A-Verse, 8 mm. Vocal enters, "Somewhere . . . way up high . . ." There is a large leap in the melody, which then works its way back to Earth, paralleling the words. 0:34-0:55 A-Verse, 8 mm. As before, "Somewhere . . . skies are blue . . ." 0:55-1:18 B-Bridge, 8 mm. "Some day I'll wish . . ." The first half of each vocal phrase seems to rush forward, then slows down toward the end. 1:18-1:40 A-Verse, 8 mm. As before, "Somewhere . . . bluebirds fly . . ." There is melodic support in the orchestra. 1:40-2:01 A-Verse, 8 mm. Vocal gets a rest and the melody is played by clarinet and answered by orchestra. 2:01-2:25 A-Verse, 8 mm. Vocal returns with variations that make the melody seem fresh, "Somewhere . . . bluebirds fly" 2:25-2:46 B-Partial Bridge, 4 mm. Beginning of bridge serves as the basis for the ending, "If happy . . ."

Song: G.I. Jive

* by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five * 1944 * Rhythm and blues * Jordan adopted the fast tempos of swing dance music but pared down the instrumentation to only a rhythm section and saxophone

Song: Caldonia Boogie

* by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five * 1945 * Rhythm and blues * Jordan adopted the fast tempos of swing dance music but pared down the instrumentation to only a rhythm section and saxophone

Song: Choo Choo Ch'Boogie

* by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five * 1946 * Rhythm and blues * Jordan adopted the fast tempos of swing dance music but pared down the instrumentation to only a rhythm section and saxophone

Song: Saturday Night Fish Fry

* by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five * 1949 * Rhythm and blues * Jordan adopted the fast tempos of swing dance music but pared down the instrumentation to only a rhythm section and saxophone * In this song, he describes a typical weekend evening party scene in the New Orleans African-American community, which ends when the police take everyone to jail and book them on "suspicion."

Song: Nowhere to Run

* by Martha and the Vandellas * This well-known video footage was filmed for a summer 1965 television special hosted by disc jockey Murray the K and sponsored by the national Office of Economic Opportunity. The lip-synched video features Martha and the Vandellas in a car factory in Detroit, riding down the assembly line in a Ford Mustang as it is being assembled. Images taken from this footage have often been associated with Motown, the Vandellas' record company. As the most important record company to emerge from Detroit, historians often associate Motown's creative process with an assembly line, akin to the city's many car factories. This footage might seem like an effort on the part of Motown to create this association, but the video actually comes from a larger television special called It's What's Happening, Baby, not created by Motown, that featured many of the most popular acts of the period, including Ray Charles, the Righteous Brothers, Johnny Rivers, and the Ronnettes. The purpose of the special was to get young viewers to mail employment concerns to a government-sponsored organization called New Chance. At the end of the Vandellas clip, Murray the K drives the Mustang created during the performance to a beach-oriented setting, segueing into a video featuring Jan and Dean. From this clip we learn several things about the connection between video and musical performances during the early rock era. First, we see how the government was attuned to the power of musical performances to inspire youth to action. We also see how specific settings can enhance regional and cultural stereotypes of musical sounds. Finally, we witness how the larger context of a video performance can be lost over time, and how reconnecting these settings is valuable to the study of rock music and its history.

Song: Cross Roads Blues

* by Robert Johnson * 1936 * The rural blues style allowed for tremendous flexibility, and artists could easily add extra beats or measures as the spirit moved them. This can be heard clearly in this song, as he alters the regular blues structural patterns to suit his sense of musical expression.

Song: Great Speckled Bird

* by Roy Acuff and His Crazy Tennesseans * 1936 * This group played in a style very much influenced by white gospel music. It captures both the musical style and confessional spirit of this music. The Acuff group added the slide guitar to the mix, which was associated with both country and blues music.

Song: Josie

* by Steely Dan * Words and music by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen * produced by Gary Katz. * Reached #26 on the Billboard "Hot 100" chart in 1978. Contained on the album Aja, which reached #3 in the United States and #5 in the UK in late 1977. * FORM: Compound AABA form, with A sections employing a verse-chorus pair. * TIME SIGNATURE: 4/4 * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:32 Introduction, 16 mm. 8 mm. guitar figure then 8 mm. vamp. A 0:32-1:03 Verse 1, 16 mm. "We're gonna break out . . ." 1:03-1:28 Chorus, 12 mm. 8 mm. chorus then 4 mm. link to verse 2. A 1:28-1:59 Verse 2, 16 mm. As before, "Jo would you love . . ." 1:59-2:15 Chorus, 8 mm. No link this time, "When Josie . . ." B 2:15-2:31 Bridge, 8 mm. Instrumental. A 2:31-3:03 Instr. verse, 16 mm. Guitar solo. 3:03-3:19 Chorus, 8 mm. As second chorus, "When Josie . . ." 3:19-4:24 Coda, 32 mm. 8 mm. as intro, then 24 mm. vamp and fade. * INSTRUMENTATION Rhythm section: Electric piano, 2 rhythm guitars, "Funky" guitar, Drum set, Bass Singing: Solo w/ some backing, vocals on verse and chorus Solos: Electric guitar Sweetening: Horns, Synth strings, Percussion * MIX Left: cymbal, rhythm guitar, tom-tom, synth strings, solo guitar, backup vocals, horns Center: lead vocal, electric piano, percussion, snare drum, bass, bass drum, backup vocals, horns Right: high-hat, cymbal, "funky" guitar, rhythm guitar, tom-tom *A reverb and echo have been added to the lead vocals and a heavy reverb on the synthesizer strings and solo guitar; by contrast, the bass, bass drum, and high-hat are very dry. In addition to the separation that occurs through stereo placement, ambience is also used to help keep the parts distinct. The distribution of instruments and equalization across the full frequency range makes the recording sound full, with plenty of low end balanced by bright highs.

Song: Can the Circle be Unbroken

* by The Carter Family * Words and music by A. P. Carter, recorded in 1935. Released before the era of country charts in the United States. (There were no Billboard country charts until 1944.) * FORM: Simple verse-chorus * TIME SIGNATURE: 2/4, with dropped beats. * In order to count the measures in "Can the Circle Be Unbroken," rather than the four-beats-per-measure rhythmic pattern we encountered in the 12-bar blues, this song uses a two-beats-per-measure pattern. This song involves irregular counting of measures. When you try to count measures during the verses of this song, the twelfth bar contains only one beat, while in the choruses the fourth and twelfth measures contain only one beat. Musicians often refer to this as "dropping a beat," meaning that in each instance the second beat is dropped. The only instance of this 16-bar pattern not to drop these beats is the first instrumental verse on the guitar. In this verse the group "corrects" the dropped beats from the sung verses and choruses by playing sixteen full measures of two beats. * INSTRUMENTATION: Acoustic guitar, two female and one male voice, with one female voice taking the lead during verses and choruses sung in three-part harmony. * Timings Section Description: 0:00-0:06 Introduction, 3 mm. Guitar accompaniment. 0:06-0:26 Verse 1, 16 mm. (only one beat Solo vocal, "I was standin' . . ." in m. 12) 0:26-0:44 Chorus, 16 mm. (only one beat Choral vocal, "Can the circle . . ." in mm. 4 and 12) 0:44-1:04 Instrumental Verse, 16 mm. Guitar solo. (no dropped beats) 1:04-1:23 Verse 2, 16 mm. As before, "I told the undertaker . . ." 1:23-1:41 Chorus, 16 mm. As before, "Can the circle . . ." 1:41-2:00 Verse 3, 16 mm. As before, "I followed close behind her . . ." 2:00-2:18 Chorus, 16 mm. As before, "Can the circle . . ." 2:18-2:28 Instrumental Verse (partial), 8 mm. Guitar solo. 2:28-2:47 Verse 4, 16 mm. "Went back home, Lord . . ." 2:47-3:04 Chorus, 16 mm. "Can the circle . . ." * Accompanied by an acoustic guitar and an autoharp (played by Maybelle and Sara Carter, respectively), the voices of Maybelle, Sara, and A. P. Carter sing together in a style very much influenced by white gospel music. "Can the Circle Be Unbroken" (1935) captures both the musical style and confessional spirit of this music

Rock music

* started in the mid-1950's with Elvis Presley * Rock continued to push the envelope in later years: artists such as Jim Morrison, Alice Cooper, and David Bowie challenged cultural values in the late '60s and early '70s, while Madonna and Prince did the same in the 1980s. * Issues such as payola and obscene lyrics have even been the focus of federal government hearings. While only a small portion of rock has been the source of controversy or cultural struggle, nonconformity and misbehavior are central to the rock movement. * Despite the acknowledged importance of rock music, determining exactly what "rock" means is not easy. Some scholars use the term "rock and roll" to describe the first wave of rock from 1954 to 1959. Other scholars describe music after 1964 as "rock." Using these two distinct terms preserves what many scholars and fans see as an important difference. This book will employ the term "rock" in a broad sense, however, using the term to designate popular music that is produced specifically for a youth audience. But even this more encompassing usage is still problematic and includes seeming contradictions. Is rock defined by race, or musical style, or specific musical elements, such as instrumentation or lyrical content? Can 1960s soul be considered rock? How about folk or rap? Is all pop also rock, and is all rock also pop? Moreover, how do we think about rock music after its musicians and audience have grown up? Few will argue that artists such as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Police, and U2 were central to the rock movement. But artists like the Supremes, Madonna, and the Kingston Trio are harder to categorize. * The chapters that follow consider rock in an inclusive manner, discussing artists as diverse as the Andrews Sisters, Bessie Smith, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Supremes, Santana, Parliament Funkadelic, Metallica, and Britney Spears. The main purpose of the book is to organize this repertoire—an enormous body of music that covers over fifty years of popular-music history—to make it easier to understand and appreciate. Today there is more popular music available to listeners than at any other time in the history of recorded music. The rock era included a vast amount of music, more than can be covered in a typical university course, which only scrapes the surface of rock music.

Song: Blueberry Hill

*FORM: AABA form (only part of the AABA structure is repeated.)

Song: Hey Good Lookin'

*FORM: AABA form (the entire AABA form returns)

Song: I'm Sittin' On Top of the World

*FORM: AABA form (the entire AABA form returns)

Elements to Consider: The four themes

*social, political, and cultural issues; issues of race, class, and gender; the development of the music business; and the development of technology. *Each of these themes play an important role in the development of rock music as a musical style and a force in popular culture. *The music business has changed dramatically since the early 1950s, as the rock element of the business has grown from small independent upstarts to some of the most successful and dominant corporations of the modern age. * In the realm of technology, the rise of radio in the 1920s and the emergence of television after World War II are central factors in rock's explosion into mainstream American culture in the mid-1950s. * Just as important is the development of cable television that facilitated the introduction of MTV in the early 1980s. * Issues of race, class, and gender are also essential to understanding the origins of rock, the constant challenge of stereotypes in this music, and the ever present struggle for authenticity in a form that blends down-home vernacular sensibilities with public adoration and extreme wealth.

Song: White Christmas

Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" is one of the most successful songs in the history of popular music. Originally featured in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, the song has been recorded by a wide range of performers, including Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, Elvis Presley, and Al Green. Crosby's version is reported to be the biggest selling record in history, and it returned to the upper regions of the pop charts during the Christmas season almost every year until 1962, hitting number one in 1942, 1945, and 1946. While the song has come to conjure up nostalgic and warm images of snowy winter nights in front of a crackling fire, the original opening has the singer stuck in sunny southern California during the Christmas season, lamenting the balmy climate.

Elements to Consider: I know what I like: The fan mentality

Many fans of rock are passionate about the music they like. Fans of rock music listen frequently to the music of a particular artist, group, or style and gather interesting facts about both the artists and the music. As students of rock music, we cannot simply ignore music we do not like. We must strive to be balanced as we study rock's history and development, which often forces us to consider carefully music we probably wouldn't choose to listen to otherwise. When it comes to studying music, you don't have to suspend your sense of judgment, but you do have to work to keep the fan mentality at bay.

Song: Purple Haze

by Jimi Hendrix

Song: Surfer Girl

by The Beach Boys

Song: Twist and Shout

by The Beatles

Song: Yakety Yak

by The Coasters

Song: Where did our Love Go?

by The Supremes

Song: Roundabout

by Yes

Song: Rockabilly

* 1950's * The acoustic rhythm guitar often replaces the drum set and provides the rhythmic propulsion that drives the song forward.

Rural and Urban Blues: Migration patterns from the rural south to the urban north

* After World War I, popular music played by black musicians and intended for black listening audiences was called "race" music. It was not until the late 1940s that a journalist at Billboard magazine named Jerry Wexler (who would later play a major creative role at Atlantic Records) coined the term "rhythm and blues." During the first half of the twentieth century black popular music developed almost completely outside the infrastructure created for mainstream pop. While country and western had at least a marginal presence in mainstream American pop, middle-class white listeners were largely unfamiliar with rhythm and blues before rock and roll. This was a reflection of racial segregation in American culture; most white, middle-class Americans were simply unaware of most aspects of black culture. Yet a great migration of African Americans from the South to northern industrial centers helped to integrate regional African-American popular styles into the American cultural mainstream. * Many black Americans left the South in hopes of finding better work in the North, and when they arrived in St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit, they brought their music with them. Before rock and roll, rhythm and blues was not a single musical style. Rather, it was a collection of popular-music styles tied together by its audience and its specific musical characteristics. * Within the music business, if a record was expected to have a black listening audience, it was classified as race or rhythm and blues, and which led to a number of distinctive black pop styles being grouped together under one label. * After World War I, blues enjoyed several years of popularity with mainstream white pop listeners, partly through the sheet music of W. C. Handy, whose "Memphis Blues" and "St. Louis Blues" sold well nationally. Composers like Handy also became popular through recordings of their material featuring female black singers. The history of selling blues records can be traced to the 1923 million- selling song "Down Hearted Blues," sung by Bessie Smith. Originally from Tennessee, Smith enjoyed enormous success for years after this popular recording. As a child, Smith toured the South performing in tent and minstrel shows where she was undoubtedly exposed to early blues music. In spite of her Southern blues style, Smith's recordings were made in New York, where she was able to use the best jazz musicians of the day, including Louis Armstrong. By the end of the decade, however, Smith's career began to fade as blues fell off the commercial radar. * Many of the blues recordings of the 1920s and '30s exist because record companies scoured the South in an attempt to find new rural blues artists who might repeat Bessie Smith's success. One example is Robert Johnson, whose 1936-37 recordings became enormously influential on rock guitarists in the 1960s, largely based on Eric Clapton's enthusiastic endorsement. Like many rural blues singers, Johnson was a solo performer who sang to the accompaniment of his own acoustic guitar playing. * The rural blues style allowed for tremendous flexibility, and artists could easily add extra beats or measures as the spirit moved them. This can be heard clearly in Johnson's "Cross Roads Blues" (1936), as he alters the regular blues structural patterns to suit his sense of musical expression. * As African Americans migrated to urban areas, blues musicians moved into city bars and clubs, often forming combos using electric guitars, bass, piano, drums, and harmonica (in addition to microphones to amplify the singer's voice). This arrangement forced them to stick more closely to a prearranged structure. * While much of the development of rhythm and blues during the 1940s remained regional and outside the pop mainstream, the jump blues of Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five became popular with mainstream listeners through a series of hit singles, including "G.I. Jive" (1944), "Caldonia Boogie" (1945), and "Choo Choo Ch'boogie" (1946). Jordan adopted the fast tempos of swing dance music but pared down the instrumentation to only a rhythm section and saxophone, a move that worked both musically and financially, considering the expenses of traveling with a larger band. Jordan's vocal delivery was upbeat and often comical, although his humorous lyrics often touched on pressing social issues such as racism and poverty. In "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (1949), for example, Jordan describes a typical weekend evening party scene in the New Orleans African-American community, which ends when the police take everyone to jail and book them on "suspicion."

Instrumentation in Rock: Steppin' up: Instrumental Solos

* In order to create contrast in arrangements, an instrumental solo is often introduced somewhere past the midpoint in a song. This might be a saxophone solo (the Coasters' "Yakety Yak"), a guitar solo (Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze"), or a piano solo (Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire"). * Sometimes an arrangement can feature several solos, as in Yes's "Roundabout." In all of these cases, the instrumental soloist is the central focus of the music for the duration of the solo, taking the place usually reserved for the singer. The job of the rhythm section remains the same as it was during the other sections of the song: to support the soloist. The instrumental solo often makes the return of the vocals sound fresh, since there is usually no singing during the solo. In this regard the solo is itself subordinate to the sung sections of the track (although with some bands—like Santana—this relationship can be reversed).

1920s' to 1940's

* In the 1920s, the radical sounds of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and others helped define the decade musically. F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) dubbed the 1920s "the jazz age," and jazz's strong rhythms, jagged melodies, and big sound made people get up and dance, with young, single, female "flappers" dancing (and smoking and drinking) right alongside their male counterparts. * The excitement and freedom of the "roaring" twenties were quickly snuffed out in one day, with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, forever known as "Black Tuesday." The crash sent the American economy into turmoil: 26,000 businesses failed in 1930. By 1932, 11 million Americans—25 percent of the labor force—were out of work. People were forced to move from their homes into shantytowns and many stood in line for bread every day. * In 1932, with the nation out of work and looking to its government for help, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president. Roosevelt promised Americans a "New Deal" and used the power of the federal government to get people back to work, creating government-paid jobs to improve the nation's roads, bridges, tunnels, and forests and national parks. Roosevelt also established the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which contributed significantly to the arts. With the creation of federal agencies like the WPA, along with the establishment of the Social Security system, Roosevelt defined a new role for the federal government that some argue broke the United States out of its psychological, if not its economic, depression. * No sooner had Americans started to leave the Great Depression behind than a new enemy emerged: Adolf Hitler. Like Roosevelt, Hitler was dealing with a severe economic crisis in his nation. Hitler, however, began to solve Germany's economic problems in a different way. He chose expansion, eventually leading his military forces into Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland and pitting the German "master race" against "undesirables," most notably Jews—6 million of whom were killed in Nazi death camps by 1945. Soon became World War II. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The war on the European front ended with Germany's surrender in May 1945. The Japanese fought until September when they surrendered after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war was over but the world had entered the atomic age.

Song: Tutti Frutti

* Little Richard * 12-bar blues structure

Music Group: Patsy Montana

* Made her mark as the singing cowgirl with "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" (1935) and featured a yodeling style influenced by Jimmie Rodgers.

Viewing rock: Rock television

* Prior to their demise in the 1980s, variety shows presented compelling rock performances on network television. They featured comedy, skits, dancing, and musical performances, among many other odd acts. Important variety shows in the history of rock included the Ed Sullivan Show (officially called Toast of the Town) on CBS and The Hollywood Palace on ABC. While many readers can easily conjure iconic images of the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan's variety hour, many have not considered these performances in the context of the variety show, in which the band performed alongside ventriloquists, acrobats, and magicians that rounded out Sullivan's nightly lineup. Other variety shows in the 1960s, such as Hullaballoo, Shindig!, and Shivaree, were more youth oriented, featuring Technicolor sets and go-go dancers. Although rock purists might find it odd to celebrate variety show appearances, the shows are often historically valuable because they included realtime (not lip-synched) musical performances. * Variety shows were often marketed to adults in prime-time slots * Teen oriented dance programs also became extremely popular during the 1950s. These programs were often locally produced, and broadcast in late-afternoon time slots to reach kids at home after school. Early dance shows popular during the 1950s included American Bandstand and The Arthur Murray Party, both of which became nationally syndicated. Dance-oriented television shows usually featured a room full of young dancers, both professional and amateur, who demonstrated new moves and fashion trends to a soundtrack of popular recordings. In many cases, these shows featured a special guest performance, but most artists did not perform their music live in this context, lip-synching instead. The dance show format maintained popularity well past the 1960s, with American Bandstand running until the late 1980s. * During the 1970s, disco-oriented shows such as Soul Train and Dance Fever continued this tradition. * 1980s audiences enjoyed programs like Solid Gold and Dance Party USA. MTV also played an important role in producing dance-oriented television shows, with Club MTV in the 1980s * Later with TRL (or Total Request Live) in the 1990s and 2000s. TRL was certainly created out of the same mold as American Bandstand: it aired in an after-school time slot, centered on a live studio audience, and featured live performances by the most popular teen-oriented groups of the time. * Television has also been an important forum for artists starring in musical sitcoms. Beginning with The Monkees in the mid-1960s, there have been numerous script-based comedies that featured rock musicians or musical performances. The Partridge Family was a fictional musical group, popularized during the 1970s, in a self-named television series starring teen heartthrob David Cassidy and his real life mother-in-law Shirley Jones. A decade later, the series Fame (based on a feature film of the same name) offered a similar musical-dramatic construct that included notable elements of theater and dance. Although no real-life rock stars were featured in this series, much of the music became quite popular, especially in the UK. A modern brand of this same musical sitcom can also be found in Glee, which has struck a chord with television audiences while racking up dozens of hit singles and millions of worldwide album sales.

Music Group: Steely Dan

* Some of the most sophisticated recorded sounds in rock were created by Steely Dan.

Song: Come Go with Me

* The Del-Vikings * Doo wop progression * 1957

Song: Evil is Goin' On

* by Howlin' Wolf * 12-bar blues structure

Song: In the Still of the Night

* by The Five Satins * Doo wop progression * 1956

Song: That's All Right Mama

by Elvis Presley