This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Rock emerged in the mid 1950s as a blending of mainstream pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western--styles that previously had remained relatively separate. This new style became the music of the emerging youth culture and was often associated with teen rebellion. We will follow the story of how this rowdy first wave of rock and roll (1955-59) was tamed in the early 60s but came roaring back with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then went psychedelic by the end of the decade.
Radio and Records
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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part One
603 calificaciones
De la lección
The Birth and First Flourishing of Rock and Roll (1955-59)
Chart crossover and cover versions, the first hits of Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, the rise of Elvis Presley, the music of Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, the rise of American Bandstand, the payola scandal and the "death of rock and roll."
Conoce a los instructores
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
At the end of the last video, we asked the question, we, we first observed that
there was a, a development of the invention of the teenager, a, a rise of
youth culture in, in the United States in the 1950s.
And then we left off by saying that R&B was an important influence in the
development of rock and roll, but how is it that white teenagers actually got to
hear rhythm and blues? Now you say well, well how, how, why not?
I mean how, why wouldn't it have been available to them?
Well, think about it, think about what we said before.
We were living in a very segregated country back then some people would say
we still are. But certainly we were living in a very
segregated country back then, and rhythm, and blues records were thought of as the,
the music of, of black America, of, of urban, mostly sort of urban African
American folks were who were living in a, in, in pretty close confines in, in one
particular neighborhood in town. I mean that gets into a whole other
series of issues that have to do with American culture that.
But let's, let's just accept that as having as, as having been, and for the
white, for the white middle class kids to go into that neighborhood would have been
a real problem, not because they would have been so much in danger, but because
their parents would not have allowed them to do so.
There was a real divide. and so how is it that they would have
come to hear that music, if they couldn't go to the clubs where the music was being
played, if they really couldn't get to the record stores where those kinds of
records were being sold, because they weren't being sold in mainstream pop
record stores that they might have had access to, how did they get to it?
Well, one of the most important ways, in which R&B came to young white teenagers,
and it, it wasn't, it wasn't by intention, nobody who was doing R&B at
that time was trying to reach white teenagers in the first half of the 1950s,
but one of the most important ways that it reached them was through radio.
And this hooks into the story that we were telling last week about how it is
that this large, this large network of, of radio stations and a national audience
was created by radio, developed up to the, the second World War and then after
the second World War, that national audience and a lot of the technology that
went with it, started to migrated to television, which was going to be the
next big thing. Leaving a fairly developed radio business
there, but with a certain amount of attention being taken away from in
nationally, and being put into a television program at the national level.
That opened up a lot of opportunities regionally, and so stations started to
look at their region, think about opportunities for advertising, and some
stations decided they would focus on rhythm and blues music, and sell
advertising that might appeal to the African American community.
And so one of the important figures in rhythm and blues radio, in fact, fact, in
radio generally, at this time, was the disc jockey.
Now I think it's, I think I mentioned this last week, but it's important for us
to, to realize that up until this time, the second half of the 1940s into the
1950s, playing a record on the radio was considered cheating.
Any body who heard music on the radio before then assumed that the music was
live. So if you were playing a recording, it's
like you were trying to trick the listener into believing you had an
orchestra in your studio that, in your station there that you didn't actually
have. And so there was, sort, a sort of sense
of sort of, second rate quality if you played records instead of live music.
But with the rise of the disc jockey, records were played increasingly.
it was seen as a very cheap alternative to live music.
And for some, some stations that were sort of keeping an eye on the budget this
was a, they, they didn't go exclusively with disc jockeys but they used disc
jockeys more and more. and one of the important things about the
disc jockey is the disc jockey had a lot of discretion in terms of which records
they would play, which gave, gave the disc jockey a certain amount of power.
Some people would think it gave the mobil, the ability especially in a
regional station to make a regional hit, or not and so they became very important
figures in, in shaping the music as it, as it began to develop.
Certain for, I, I, the statistics for this show that in 1947 for example, there
were about 3,000 disc jockey's in this country.
A handful of them were, were, were black disc jockey's, but most of them were
white disc jockey's and, and these, a lot of these white disc jockey's were on R&B
stations playing music to African American listeners.
some of the important R&B stations that we should think about especially with
regard to rhythm and blues and, and the way that it, it spread is WHBQ which
which in 1949, launched Dewey Phillips' show, Red Hot and Blue in Memphis.
Dewey Phillips turns out to be the guy who helped launch the career of Elvis
Presley in 1954. We'll talk about that in just a minute.
that launched the career of Elvis Presley by playing his first record on his, first
Sun recording That's Alright Mama. But then there was also Gene Nobles, John
Richbourg and Hoss Allen at WLAC in Nashville.
Daddy Sears at WGST in Atlanta, and Hunter Hancock who, who was a black DJ in
K, at KFVD in Los Angeles. These guys were all doing R&B shows,
usually in the evening where they were playing all kinds of R&B records by by
independent labels. and, they were, they were really, if you
were, if you were a, a, a young kid tuning the radio in, even though you
couldn't get to the neighborhood where this music might have been played, by
turning it in on the radio, the music was available to you.
And to a lot of these, these young teenagers, this was a very alluring
thing. The world of R&B was a world of, of
danger, and forbidden sexuality, and all the kinds of things that teenagers love.
And the fact that their parents would have been very, very upset if they knew
they were listening to it, made it all the more appealing.
After all, teenagers have always been teenagers, and they certainly were back
then. The most important of all the R&B DJ's,
the guy who really sort of towers above the rest in terms of influence and
importance was a Alan Freed. And Alan Freed really became a kind of
celebrity national celebrity, in and of himself.
In fact he became one of the biggest targets at the end of the decade when the
payola scandal started to come in, and we'll get to that a little bit later.
Anyway, Alan Freed, by the time he launches his his show called The Moondog
Show in July of 1951 at WJW in Cleveland, by the time he's doing that these other
DJ's had already been doing that kind of thing.
So it wasn't like he invented this kind of a show, other people had been doing
it, but Freed did it in a way that really began to pick up some real attention.
He was initially sponsored by a fella named Leo Mintz who, in Cleveland, owned
one of the biggest record stores called Record Rendezvous.
And Leo Mintz had, had been sponsoring a classical music show because, of course,
classical classical records sold pretty well back in those days.
Had been sponsoring a classical show on the same station, but at 11:00, after I
guess they thought most decent people had gone to bed, they decided to put on this
show devoted to R&B music. So in other words, the station that Alan
Freed was initially on was doing classical music until 11:00, then at
11:00 he comes on with the R&B, and Alan Freed, for all intents and purposes,
sounded like he was a black DJ. He was doing a lot of things, like you
know, pounding on phone books, and, and, and you know, all excited in his
delivery, and all the kinds of things that we, we came to expect from AM DJs
later. he was doing all of that stuff and very
effectively. Most of his listeners were surprised to
find out that Alan Freed was actually white.
People who would come to the station would say, you know, you know who are
you? I'm Alan Freed.
I thought, really? I thought you were black.
this kind of thing, and so Leo Mintz helps get this thing started, and they
don't really know it, but in this period between 1951, 52, 53 in Cleveland, there
are a lot of white kids tuning in to this.
Now how would they ever know? Well one story is that this kid started
coming in to the store and buying the R&B records.
But it probably didn't happen that way. prob, probably the, the way they really
found out about it is, Alan Freed an entrepreneur always interested in making
a little bit of extra money, starts to put concerts together where he brings all
of these R&B groups together. A concert like that would have to, would
be like a package show, five or six different groups, put them on at a big,
at a big theater in Cleveland. And all of a sudden he, all of a sudden
all of these kids show up who are both black and white and they're together at
the same show. Now that wouldn't raise much of an
eyebrow today, but back then the white power structure that was in charge of
these kinds of things didn't think so, didn't think that was good.
In fact, some theaters, the black patrons and the white patrons couldn't even be in
the same, you know, in the same part of the theater.
The black attendees would have to be in the balcony, say for example, and the,
the, the white kids on the main floor. But they started to sort of blend
together, and this was seen as very dangerous.
Rock and roll from the very beginning, was seen as a kind of a dangerous
influence. so these white, these black and white
kids coming together at these at these shows, a scandal.
Well Alan White has, or Alan Freed has so much success in Cleveland that he moves
to the big apple, to, to New York, to WINS.
And has, has to change the name of his show, the Moon Dog show, to the Rock and
Roll Party, I think as I said last week, because there was a panhandler in New
York who called himself The Moon Dog and actually took him to court about it.
So the Rock and Roll Party launches in September of 1954, and he's on he's on
doing this show in the, the biggest radio market in the world, New York City.
and so he, he makes a tremendous impact there.
Eventually that show of his, the Alan Freed show, gets gets, goes into
syndication nationally, so people get to hear them all over the country.
he does shows, just like he'd be doing in Cleveland, but now, he does tours, where
his, the Alan Freed show goes around from city to city, that kind of thing.
he did a bunch of movies. they were really sort of flimsy plots
with just an opportunity for you to see lip sync performances of some of the
early rock and roll performance, but for that they're great.
Rock Around the Clock from 56, Rock Rock Rock from 1956, and Don't Knock the Rock
from 1957. So as an important figure in sort of
championing the cause Of early rock and roll Alan Freed is an important figure
and probably the most important DJ for us to think about.
Lets turn our attention now to Indie labels and early rock and roll.
We said before, last week, that the, the major labels of the, of this era Decca,
Mercury, RCA, Victor, Columbia, Capita, and MGM, really were the ones that had
all the money, and had all the wherewithal to very quickly and
efficiently distribute their records nationally.
An independent label was a small company with limited distribution.
You could distribute your records about as far as you could get if you put them
in your trunk and drove to each place. I mean that's basically the way it was
for a lot of indie labels. There was one, maybe two guys, working
there, and really distribution was about taking the records out to the jukebox
providers to the radio stations trying to get the songs on the air, and to the
record stores. And that's the way it worked.
and so it really limited these guys in a lot of kinds of ways, so they kept their
focus low. And that's okay because the major labels
really didn't want this other business in R&B and country and western so much,
because it was just too small potatoes for them.
They were making the big money in mainstream pop and they were happy with
that. But these Indie label owners, they really
had to work hard to promote their records.
After all It was their money that was on the line.
If it worked for a major label, you were really working, spending the companies
money. But if you had an independant label, you
were spending your money. And so it made it a lot more different.
So these guys would really go at promoting these records, and in the
record business this meant sometimes what came to be called payola, that is you
would try to do something nice for a DJ, who had, as I said before, all this
discretion about what to play or not to play.
Do something nice for him to convince him to play your record and not somebody
elses. Sometime that would be a cash gift
sometimes it would just be a gift, maybe a case of whisky something like that,
sometimes it would be a paid vacation. There are all kinds of ways you can think
of that you could offer somebody something to do a favor for you.
Everyone was doing it. The majors were doing it too, but the
indies were really aggressive about it and really going after it.
So, what ends up happening is these indie records start to cross over onto the
mainstream pop charts, as we talked about in 19, the 19, well they're, we'll talk
in, in a minute when we talk about crossover, about what the figures were.
But when these things start to cross over from the R&B charts, which was thought of
as sort of a small potatoes, we don't care about that, by the majors, onto the
mainstream pop label, well, then they started to cut into the major labels
market share, then they were a lot more concerned about that, and then the race
was really on in rock and roll, to see who could garner the greater market share
and who could be more successful. So, before we can talk about that, let's
talk in the next video, about how crossover works.
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