American Popular Music

Lesson 6 - Combining the Streams - Page 3

While the blackface tradition has been mostly consigned to the rubbish bin of historical embarrassments, the influence of African-American styles on American popular music only grew more and more. As we saw in our earlier lessons, authentic African-American traditions like the blues and jazz quickly became fixtures of the American music landscape.  In the 1950s, a new style dubbed “rock ‘n’ roll” seemed to explode onto the radio airwaves. For many music listeners of the time, it might have seemed to come out of nowhere, but it had its genesis in the music of the rural south, both white and black. Essentially, we’re dealing with a combination of music from the country tradition with that of the blues tradition, although we should note that some Latin rhythms crept in as well. The reason why many of these sounds seemed revolutionary to many listeners was that the blues and country styles existed primarily on the margins of the music industry at the time.

By the 1940s and early 50s, the blues and jazz traditions had birthed a number of different spinoffs, but the most important for us here is rhythm ‘n’ blues,  or just R&B. Rhythm ‘n’ blues itself contained a wide variety of styles, including the electric blues style, the doo-wop vocal style, and the jump blues.  Electric blues, sometimes also called “Chicago blues,” featured a performer on electric guitar and vocals along with a backing band. Doo-wop had its genesis in gospel vocal quartets, but became an ensemble known for secular music as well. Finally, jump blues is essentially a streamlined swing band. Here are a few examples:

• Electric Blues: Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years
• Doo-wop: Billy Ward & The Dominoes - Have Mercy Baby
• Jump Blues: Louis Jordan - Choo Choo Ch' Boogie

Indeed, the first records marketed as “rock ‘n’ roll” were really just R&B records played by the DJ Alan Freed in New York City. The name was a way to conceal the fact that he was playing black artists.

Country music in the 1940s had come a long way from its roots as well, and had adopted a similarly “electric” sound in some cases. In particular, the honky-tonk style of country was quite influential on rock ‘n’ roll, as epitomized here in this track by Hank Williams: Hey Good Lookin'. Honky-tonk featured electric instruments, and the songs themselves often dealt with the ups and downs of romantic relationships in stark and honest terms, as in Ernest Tubb’s “Drivin’ Nails in my Coffin” (1944), a song about post-breakup depression and alcohol abuse.

In rock ‘n’ roll, the black R&B and white country styles came together in a dramatic fashion (even though they had been sharing ideas for decades). Much of the initial popularity of rock ‘n’ roll came from the DJ Alan Freed, who broadcast a late-night radio program in Cleveland in which he played rhythm ‘n’ blues and country records (promoted as “rock ‘n’ roll”). He later promoted a series of concerts featuring many early rock ‘n’ roll acts. Many of the famous rock ‘n’ rollers performers like Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis were from the South and were to varying degrees conversant in both the country and R&B idioms. We can also note that nearly all of these early rock ‘n’ roll hits remained based on the 12-bar blues. Chuck Berry in particular combined blues-style guitar with rhythms much more reminiscent of country music (check out “Maybelline”), and perhaps more than any other performer deserves credit for stitching the genres together in rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis sang with a variety of vocal hiccups, stutters, and other ornaments that were indebted to country music and rockabilly, as in “Mystery Train.” Buddy Holly emulated this style of singing in the recordings he made over his short career, even as he took the musical style in some different directions. Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were essentially boogie-woogie piano players, although they performed with an abandon that was slightly shocking in its day. In this clip from 1957, Jerry Lee Lewis performs “Whole Lotta Shaking Goin’ On” and basically pounds the piano into submission. One might watch this and wonder what parents in the 1950s would have made of this young man, clearly in need of a haircut, banging on a piano and asking their daughters to “wiggle around just a little bit!” Little Richard wears his gospel roots on his sleeve, singing in a shouting style with lots of falsetto whoops and hollers, as in this performance of “Lucille.”

We see the Latin influence as well, particularly in the iterations of the clave rhythm that informed the songs “Bo Diddley” and “Willie and the Hand Jive.” We can also see it showing up in Buddy Holly’s song, “Not Fade Away,” although in some places the rhythm is implied rather than played explicitly. We can also look to the music of Ritchie Valens, whose biggest hit “La Bamba” was a reworking of a traditional song from Veracruz. It’s possibly the biggest national hit in the USA that has its roots in Mexican music.

However, young rock ‘n’ roll fans might not necessarily have experienced these songs as recorded by their original artists, due to the widespread practice of white artists covering rhythm ‘n’ blues and rock ‘n’ roll hits originally by black artists. Although this seems odd by today’s standards, it was fairly common in the 1940s and 50s for a song to be released in various different versions aimed at different markets. Depending on where you lived (or what you parents allowed), you might hear either The Chords’ original recording of “Sh-Boom,” or the version by the Crew Cuts released several months later. You might hear Bill Haley’s rockabilly version of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” as opposed to the original bluesy version by Big Joe Turner. (Both of these pairs of covers are also on the Spotify playlist) When you listen to them, note that in both cases the cover versions made some concessions to the tastes of the presumptively white audience. The Chords’ version of “Sh-Boom” features a fairly equitable balance between the lead singer and the rest of the quartet, and has features for both the bass singer and saxophone player. The Crew Cuts’ version, on the other hand, focuses mostly on the lead singer’s Sinatra-esque crooning style and features a big band arrangement (complete with goofy timpani hits). Bill Haley’s version of “Shake Rattle and Roll” not only took the song into a faster rockabilly, but also re-arranged the song to put the catchy “Shake Rattle and Roll” chorus earlier. You might also notice that Bill Haley’s recording alters some of Joe Turner’s lyrics, since lines like “Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin’ through / I can’t believe my eyes all that mess belongs to you” were too risqué for white radio (yet the dirtiest line in the song, “I’m like a one-eyed cat peepin’ in a seafood store,” made it through, perhaps because the censors just didn’t get the double entendrés.)

In many cases, these versions by white artists sold as well or better than the ones by black artists. As one example, many of the early hit singles by the often maligned singer Pat Boone were sanitized versions of black R&B tunes, such as this version of Little Richard’s famous recording “Tutti Frutti” (which was itself a toned-down version of Little Richard’s original lyrics) Boone makes no attempt to emulate Little Richard’s exuberant vocal style (wisely, I would think) but also note that the versions treat the song’s female subjects, Sue and Daisy, a little differently. In both versions, Sue is the girl who “knows just what to do” and “who he loves best,” although in Little Richard’s recording she “rocks to the east and rocks to the west” while Pat Boone has instead “been to the East and been to the West.” Daisy is the problematic figure here though, because while Little Richard sings that she “almost drives me crazy,” she still “knows how to love me yes indeed / boy you don’t know what she’s doing to me.” In Boone’s version, crazy Daisy is discarded as a “real gone cookie, yes-sir-ee,” since “pretty little Susie is the gal for me,” turning the song into a wholesome ode to monogamy. Little Richard was at first none too pleased with this, especially as it all seemed to be a way to block him from reaching a white audience. In hindsight, he noted that the popularity of Boone’s version also boosted his version as well, although as he once put it, “the white kids would have Pat Boone on the dresser and hide me in a drawer.”