By the late l940s, the popular music of America, jazz, was going through an important transformation. From the first major style of jazz, Ragtime, jazz was danceable; thus jazz could fulfill the definition of a popular music. But by the Swing Era, jazz was beginning to be also concert music and once Bop became the new style of
35 jazz, all ability to dance to the jazz style evaporated. This was not a negative development for the true artistic and musical elements of jazz; yet the fact that jazz was difficult to dance to by the Bop era destroyed the role of jazz as the American popular musical style.
After World War II, America emerged as a world super power with a very powerful and prosperous economy. The American people after the ravages of the Great Depression and the turmoil of World War II now had growing disposable income to spend however the public desired.
Before the l950s, American society was divided into two major age groups, adults and children. But in the early l950s, a new age sub-group began to form in America and in other countries of the western world. This new section of society would soon become known as “teenagers.” These teenagers would be a separate entity, not quite adults yet not children and, as the group evolved, it would seek its own unique identity and purpose. This "baby-boom" generation (those born from approximately l942-64) would have a profound effect on American society.
Along with the sheer numbers of the new teenager sub-class, the baby-boomers had one other power that would shape American society: a new power of economic clout! America was prosperous and teenagers shared in the prosperity.
Record companies in the late l940s and l950s featured three major recording charts (a chart is a listing of songs by a major musical style). These three major charts were the Pop chart, Rhythm and Blues chart, and the Country and Western chart.
The Pop chart had by far the most economic power especially since the major record companies controlled it. These major record companies had a vast network of distribution throughout America and the world. Pop music consisted of big stars who sang and performed a very conservative and non-threatening style of music (actually a
36 very watered down version of Jazz). Its lyrics consisted basically of white middle class sentimentality and were safe and clean. Some of Pop's major artists included Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Doris Day.
Rhythm and Blues was a hard driving music with earthy, sexual, and tangible lyrics set upon a 12 bar blues harmonic foundation (and with many other elements of jazz). Unlike Pop, Rhythm and Blues (R+B) did not attempt to be squeaky clean. Its lyrics could consist of any subject the composer or performer felt was fitting for the message of the song, be it sex or an everyday occurrence. This style was not popular throughout the country (as Pop was) but seemed to concentrate around the major urban centers or in the South. Major record companies would seldom touch R+B music because of its content and because of the African-American artists who were its primary performers. Independent record companies were the primary suppliers of R+B, but unlike the powerful major labels, the independents did not have extensive distribution networks nor large financial foundations; thus R+B could only have limited exposure. Some important musicians from the Rhythm and Blues style of the early l950s include Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Ray Charles, and Muddy Waters.
One of the great R&B artists was Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfield in l915). Muddy Waters had a dramatic influence on many styles of American popular music. As a performer, writer, preserver of traditional African-American music, and pioneer electric guitarist, Waters contributed to developments in blues, R&B, country, and rock. One of his most famous songs, "Rollin' Stone," inspired the name of the British rock group (Rolling Stones), a song by Bob Dylan, and an important rock magazine, The Rolling Stone.6
6Irwin Stambler, The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock, and Soul, revised edition, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), 731.
37 Another important early R&B artist was Ray Charles. The following is an excerpt from an article (interview) written by Jeff Levenson featured in the January l989 edition of Downbeat magazine.7
JL: Ray, let's talk about singers. Aside from Nat [King] Cole, have other classic
jazz singers influenced you?
RC: When I was a youngster, the people I heard were Blind Boy Fuller, Tampa
Red, Lonnie Johnson, Joe Turner, and people like that. That was when I was a child-- maybe nine, ten, eleven years old. These people were very big.
I remember Big Boy Crudup. I don't know if you are familiar with him, but I bet you Elvis Presley knew about him. You better believe he knew about him, because Elvis did some of his stuff--[sings "That's Alright, Mama."] That's where he got that from. Elvis got a lot of stuff, my friend, from the old blues singers. People may not realize it because he never stopped to credit them. I'm not knocking the man and I'm not starting no racial shit or nothing like that. I'm just telling you where the stuff came from.
Elvis did "Hound Dog"--that was Big Mama's Thornton's. Elvis did "Jailhouse Rock"--that belonged to a friend of mine, Shifty Henry; he wrote that song. As a matter of fact, if you listen closely you'll hear [Elvis] sing about Shifty--there's a verse in there about him. Shifty Henry was a real person. He got 20 bucks for that song. Twenty fucking dollars. The reason I know this is that Shifty Henry was a very, very good friend of mine. When I first came to L.A. he was one of the few people who took me by the hand and tried to take care of me. The only problem was he was fooling around with drugs and he ended up selling his soul to the devil. You know what I mean?
Be that as it may, when I was young coming up the people I listened to were a lot of the people that I later discovered Elvis was listening to. I don't mean no harm, but I'm telling you the truth. On the other hand, these people were my inspiration too.
And of course, I always remember the first song that I heard that really captured me, that really made me fall in love with Billie Holiday. She did a song called "Hush Now, Don't Explain." I have to tell you, I never heard anything like that, before or since. It was incredible.
JL: What was it about the song that got to you?
RC: Something about her voice. Something that was so haunting. Billie Holiday
was one of those people--you've got to give them credit, these singers who came up in the early years--who were so unique they could say one word and you knew who they were. One word! You never had to ask who was singing when Ella Fitzgerald opened her mouth. You didn't have to ask nobody.
7Jeff Levenson, "What'D I Say--A Conversation With Ray Charles," Downbeat, January l989, 17-19.
38 And that's the thing I miss today in our modern society,. . . .The record companies want [youngsters] to sound like whoever had the last hit. . . . We're in a kind of lull, right now. . . . I'm very saddened because I don't see a lot of youngsters coming up to where you can say, "Hey man, give this guy another three or four years and he's going to be a bitch." I'm talking about originality. I'm talking about somebody who has a sound of his or her own--they've got it, it belongs to them. That's what I'm looking for and that's what I'm not seeing.
JL: Why is it different today than when you were coming up?
RC: What we had then that we don't have today, is a lot of small record
companies. In fact, Atlantic was very small. . . . When I was coming up, I was blessed, man, because I was with a company that said, "Hey Ray, you play the music and we'll put it out." That was it. Now you got 15 producers and a guy tells you what song to record. I never had no guy telling me shit like that. . . .
JL: Today, how do you feel about performing?
RC: Sir, believe me sincerely, my performing is my existence. . . . I really mean
this. You have two kinds of people in entertainment. Those who do it on the side, and they can play piano and dab in medicine and do this and that; it's a side thing and they enjoy it. And then you have another kind of person like myself, for whom music is like the bloodstream. It is their total existence. When their music dies, they die. That's me. That's the difference.
How can you get tired of breathing? Music is my breathing. That's my apparatus. I've been doing it for 40 years. And I'm going to do it until God himself says, "Brother Ray, you've been a nice horse, but now I'm going to put you out to pasture."
The third popular music chart, Country and Western (C+W), was very different from Country music today. Country and Western music of the l950s was, along with R+B, controlled and marketed by the independent labels and not by the major labels. Country and Western was also called "hillbilly" music. Its audience was basically white and lower to middle class, and it was centered in the southern farm-belt of the United States. Compared to today's Country music, C+W of the l950s was crude and "twangy" with very simple "down-home" lyrics. Unlike R+B's 12 bar blues format, C+W hovered close to American southern folk music in harmony and melody.
39 Several styles of C&W including Western Swing, hillbilly boogie, honky-tonk (when honky-tonk combined with the Blues, a style known as rockabilly was created), and bluegrass, influenced the birth of rock music.8
American teenagers were looking for a music to call their own and, very simply, this new music would evolve from the combination of the preceding three styles of music. By the l950s, the predominantly white, middle class teenagers were not yet ready for the earthy and sexy lyrics of R+B, but they loved the sound of that music. To accomplish an acceptable blend, white musicians borrowed the R+B sound and combined it with clean Pop style lyrics. Some of the early white stars began their music careers as C+W musicians; thus the C+W influence could also be heard as an ingredient of the new style of American popular music that was evolving. Slowly musicians and audiences began experimenting with this new combination and the new style emerged. According to many rock historians, in l956 came the advent of this new style of American popular music, which would become known as Rock and Roll.