This course will survey the music of the Rolling Stones, beginning with the roots and first formation of the band in the early 1960s, and following the group through the release of It's Only Rock 'n' Roll in late 1974.
The Rise of British Blues
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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester
The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962-1974
106 calificaciones
De la lección
Introduction and Students of the Blues
Beginnings through the release of the early singles, and album, 1962-64.
Conoce a los instructores
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
We turn now to the rise of British Blues.
British Blues seem really as a, a very local kind of thing,
and localized to London, and what was happening there.
Now there were also other blues kinds of scenes
happening around Northern England and places like that.
But really, the intense activity was happening in London, and really,
unless you came to London and actually physically saw some of these performances.
In some of these venues we were talking about like the Ealing Club and and
the Marquee, you wouldn't have even known it was happening.
This interest on the part of British musicians, mostly middle aged men
in traditional American music, especially music associated with African American and
rural also rural American cultures is an interesting kind of phenomenon.
Who knows sociologically exactly why it unfolded the way it did?
Maybe there's a certain sense that America stands for freedom and stands for
opportunity.
And the British culture is, was at that time awfully stratified,
and without the proper education, you really couldn't move up the ladder.
And America seemed so much, so
much freer from the kinds of traditions and institutions that maybe,
sort of, people felt like, in Britain, held them back, who knows.
But anyway, there was a very strong interest in some of these styles,
blues being one of them.
But blues, really, was one, one of a few m, that, that people were interested.
May, maybe, maybe the most interesting and
the earliest one after the Second World War, is the interest in traditional jazz.
They, they would call it trad jazz, but we would call it Dixieland.
That is the, the Dixie Land music coming out of New Orleans clarinets,
banjos this kind of thing, trombones.
And so, there were, there were a number of artists who sort of made their
made their mark by imitating the trad jazz sound,
also, some of the swing band big band stuff, as well.
So, people like Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, and Chris Barber,
often called by pop historians the three B's of the trad jazz revival.
These guys were all very active in pushing traditional jazz.
Again with the sense that the American jazz out of New Orleans was
the real thing.
And they were doing their best to revive it and bring it to Britain.
There was also another movement that came out of this called Skiffle, most most,
probably best represented by Lonnie Donegan and
his big hit the Rock Island Line.
Which was not only a hit in Britain in the mid fifties,
but also was a hit record in the United States, before the folk revival that
brought us the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, and people like that.
At the end of the 1950's and early sixties, so it anticipates that.
Skiffle was kind of an upbeat version of folk music, and, you know, people who were
interested in trad jazz and skiffle really tried to do their research.
But the records that they needed the recordings, were not very available.
And so there were very few who had them, the,
the resources to actually go to America and hear the real thing.
Or buy, buy recordings from American shops.
Sometimes you would buy them via mail order.
And sometimes you'd go to places like libraries, or the American Embassy,
or places like that, and be able to listen to some of these recordings.
But it was a bit of a kind of a scavenger hunt to find this music and
put it together and do the original thing.
Lonnie Donegan as a skiffle artist was a great student of American folk music, and
again, Bill Ball and Barber, all big students of trad jazz and folk as well.
In the 1950's, acoustic or country blues was really big in the UK, but
as the fifties transitioned into the sixties,
there was a real rise in interest in electric blues.
Based on the Chicago blues scene.
And there were a few artists that came through that kind of helped helped
Britain's people in Britain get a sense of, of, of, how this music sounded live.
Josh White would, would, would tour the UK, Bill Big Big Bill Broonzy
is mentioned an awful lot by people, also Lonnie Johnson.
The, one of the reasons why they didn't see more artists in the UK is because
the musician, the British Musicians' Union had a kind of a deal where they,
they kind of kept Americans from coming in.
To do, too much live work, unless they would give a gig
a reciprocal gig to a British musician to come to the US.
And so, one of the reasons for that was a kind of a protectionism in terms of trying
to keep Americans from stealing work or taking work away from British musicians.
But what it meant was that there was not a lot of access to live
performance of American artists, but somehow, Josh White, Big Bill Broonzy, and
Lonnie Johnson all figured out a way around that.
As I said earlier, earlier video, Alexis Korner Cyril Davies,
a very important force forming this group called Blues Incorporated,
often using a guy by the name of Long John Baldry on lead vocals.
This group was very influential on the sixties, and
into the seventies, rock scene for musicians coming out of London.
The people who circulated in and
out of this scene read like a kind of a who's who of British rock of the sixties.
We have of course, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Brian Jones.
Charlie Watts played with Blues Incorporated for a short period of time.
Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Paul Jones,
Eric Burdon, John Mayall, Jimmy Page, and
John, even John Paul Jones were sort of on the periphery of this scene for a while.
All of this kind of happening around these, these club evenings on Sundays and
Thursdays where there, you know, there,
there weren't tons of people in the club at first.
But these musicians, very interested in this music.
There was a real eh, part of what made this scene work was a real embrace of
authenticity and a rejection of a commercialism and the softening of rock.
So what had happened in the British rock and
roll scene is in the period between about '56 and '59,
the rock and roll had been kind of rowdy, the way that American rock and roll was.
Of course, the American rock and roll was playing on the charts there as well, but
there were British artists who were imitating that,
Tommy Steele Cliff Richard, people like that.
But as the fifties transitioned the sixties, the British pop, or rock sound,
softened, not unlike the, the American pop sound softened.
As we started getting into the Brill Building era of the early sixties, and
the girl groups, and the teen idols, and sweet soul and things like that.
Well, a similar kind of thing was happening, and
this was seen as real kind of a commercialization of the music,
taking away all of its vital force, and kind of homogenizing it to make it polite.
And so what blues offered, especially electric blues,
was something a little bit more direct, something a little bit more visceral.
And, and, and in so, in so doing a little bit more honest and, and, and, well,
authentic, and so there was a real kind of attraction there.
And that's a lot of what attracted the Rolling Stones to this music.
Especially Brian Keith, and Mick.
An important document, an important album if you have a chance to to, to listen to
it, is called Blues Incorporated, R&B at The Marquee.
It is probably the first UK electric blues record released.
The significance of that is that blues records were hard to come by in the UK.
So if you had that one that was made and
distributed locally, that is in London, it was much more available to people
who wanted to hear what this music sounded like.
The album R&B at The Marquee was recorded in June of 1962 and
released In November of '62.
Alexis Korner initially thought of this as being kind of a business guard.
We'll make an album, and we'll get it out on, on, on Decca, and then we'll,
we'll circulate the album around and maybe get some more gigs, you know?
And instead of doing auditions we can send the record around.
He actually ended up using a few different backing musicians from the usual band.
He wanted this to be as, as solid and tight as it could be.
Interestingly, the song's mix, mix cover versions of Chicago electric
blues tunes and traditional blues things with originals.
You wouldn't think that a group that is dedicated to Chicago electric
blues would have their own original tunes, but they did.
They also really play in the blues, electric blues style, but
they're not slavish imitators.
So, the rule of thumb seemed to be, they,
when they when they would do a number that Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf or somebody
like that had done, they would do it in the style of that person and it could be.
They, they gave themself enough license to say,
it could be a performance that that person could have done.
But it doesn't have to be the particular one on the record.
So unlike a tribute band, say, that tries to match every single note and nuance.
They allowed themselves a little bit more flexibility, and
that gave the scene a kind of a vitality that it might not have had otherwise.
So not slavish imitators but they play in the style.
Now Alexis Korner favored a more improvisatory approach to blues.
The idea of, you know, stretching the tunes with improv and
this kind of thing, and of course John Mayall would pick up on that.
The Yard Birds, of course, would pick up on that.
And he'd be a big influence that way.
Cyril Davies, on the other hand, preferred a more traditional approach to the music.
And so there were kind of differences in clashes between Alexis Korner and
Cyril Davies,and so they ended up splitting.
Cyril Davies formed a group called the Cyril Davies All Stars.
He recorded for Pye Records one of the big independents in the UK, and
unfortunately died In January of 1964.
And you were going to think about somebody who is really the kind of father
figure of the British blues in the early 1960's.
It would have to be Alexis Korner,
who was a guy that as I said before, older than some of the rest of the guys.
A sophisticated fella who, you know, had his own apartment, and,
you know, stereo system and all these records that nobody else had, and
he really was the guy who guided this initial British blues scene.
Well, in the crowd, participating even,
Mick Jagger singing along with the group were the Rolling Stones,
Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, all part as kids.
I mean, we're talking teenagers as part of this early scene age of 18,
19 years old that kind of thing, somehow getting in these clubs.
It's out of that scene that the first version of the Rolling Stones emerges.
And that's what we'll talk about the next version, in the next video,
The Early Stones".
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