Rock and roll in the 1950s

New musical genre that arose during the 1950’s

A wholly new form of music, rock and roll became a popular musical genre during the 1950’s and represented the music industry’s largest grossing sector by the end of the decade. Created from a variety of primarily African American musical styles and dealing with themes of love, teenage alienation, and the need to express those feelings, rock and roll became the music of the young and restless.

When the 1950’s began, many young white Americans and Canadians were listening to music made by African American artists. The most popular form of this music at the time was a derivative blues style known as “jump blues.” Jump blues was usually played by a small combo that featured vocals and solo saxophone. Its fundamental difference from other blues was that it was designed for dancing. Jump was not alone in its contribution to the music that would become rock and roll, however. Hillbilly and western swing music also contributed, namely with their guitar style and unusual vocal phrasings.

The other important roots from which rock and roll emerged were rhythm and blues and the electric blues, which was identified with the city of Chicago. Rhythm and blues had a danceable style, while electric blues featured the electric guitar as a solo instrument—two essential elements of rock and roll. Both of these forms were popular among certain segments of the white population but were sold primarily to black Americans. This divide was due to the extreme segregation of the races that ruled American society at the time. Not only were schools and other public facilities separated by race, so, too, were radio stations and record companies.

Innovations

The development of a solid body electric guitar and the growing sophistication of electronic amplification systems by inventors such as Les Paul and Leo Fender and their companies encouraged musicians to play loudly, an essential element of rock and roll. In addition to these technical innovations for performers, lighter, all-vinyl 45-rpm (revolutions per minute) records were quickly replacing the older and heavier 78-rpm discs that had been the standard since the days of the Victrola.

Encouraging this transition in record format was the fact that jukeboxes equipped to play the newer records were spreading to every part of the continent. Moreover, in 1954, the Japanese company TTK (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo) introduced the first transistor radio, thereby making music portable. Although it would not play as significant a role in the growth of rock and roll as the aforementioned technological advances, the mass production of the television (and the consequent decrease in price) was an important part of the technology that would help to popularize rock and roll.

Record Labels and Radio Stations

Independent record labels and radio disc jockeys were in large part responsible for the birth of rock and roll. The larger record labels kept their lists of “safe” acts—in other words, those that were mostly white, mostly slow, and mostly older. Consequently, it was up to smaller independent labels to sign the African American acts that played blues, and the “white trash” acts that performed the “hillbilly” music heard in the South. Sam Phillips’s Sun Records, based in Memphis, Tennessee, recorded blues musicians such as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and then sold the recordings to northern labels such as Chess Records in Chicago.

Phillips recorded the music of notable figures while simultaneously allowing anyone off the street with two dollars to record two sides of a record; Elvis Presley entered the world of Sun Records in 1953 in this manner. After recording a song for his mother that was simultaneously recorded by Phillips’s alert receptionist on the studio recorder, Presley was called in several months later. Presley, Phillips, and two other musicians—Scotty Moore on guitar and Bill Black on bass—recorded a number of songs. However, they failed to create what Phillips was looking for until Presley and the other two musicians began experimenting during a break in the recording session. The tune the musicians played was “That’s All Right, Mama” by Arthur Crudup.

Under Presley , the song was transformed into a rhythmic and energetic hip shaker. Sam Phillips heard the song and recorded the next take. The flip side was an upbeat version of Bill Monroe’s bluegrass tune “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Within the week, “That’s All Right, Mama” was played on the local rhythm-and-blues show on WHBQ, which was hosted by a disc jockey named Dewey Phillips. Dewey Phillips had a streetwise radio persona that appealed to young black and white listeners alike. Consequently, his show was always the most popular show during its nighttime slot. Presley’s song quickly became most-requested on the show and a regional best-seller. Sun Records would end up recording the first several singles of some of rock and roll’s most important names: Presley, Johnny Cash , Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins .

Chess Records was based in Chicago and made its name recording the blues genre in most of its nonacoustic forms. Some of its better-known artists included Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner , John Lee Hooker , Willie Dixon , Howlin’ Wolf, and Etta James . After Muddy Waters introduced Chuck Berry to the studio, Chess added guitarist and vocalist Bo Diddley to their label.

In the racially segregated world of 1950’s America, many of these performers sold thousands of records but were unknown to most white Americans. A few adventurous disc jockeys, however, fostered a change. One such disc jockey was Alan Freed , who began playing blues, rhythm and blues, and other so-called race music on his radio show on WJW in Cleveland during the summer of 1951. He called his show “Moondog House,” and the music he played “moondog music.” Despite some negative publicity, Freed’s show was more popular than ever and within the next eighteen months, his show attracted more white listeners than black. In addition, Freed’s popularity would outgrow Cleveland, and he would move to WINS in New York City. Furthermore, he would change the name of the music he played, after a New York musician and composer who went by the name Moondog sued Freed. The new name Freed coined was “rock and roll.”

Rock and Roll’s Musical Forms

Rock-and-roll music of the decade featured musical forms that were not far removed from traditional folk song structures. Borrowing from the blues, western swing, and hillbilly music, rock and roll combined and changed these forms and thereby created a new genre. Much like the styles from which it derived, the structure was a simple verse-chorus-bridge structure. Most of the chord progressions were slight modifications of the musical progression found in blues and country genres.

Rhythm was as important as melody on most early rock-and-roll songs. Rock-and-roll songs tended to be arranged in four-bar phrasings, yet, unlike traditional folk song forms, rock and roll depended more on a tonic harmony or an instrumental hook for song continuity and its formal delineation. Like most blues songs, early rock and roll featured a two-plus-two meter, in which the vocal cadence came on the third downbeat of the four beats; two measures of vocal activity were followed by two measures of melodic rest. When the third downbeat did not mark the melodic phrase, it usually occurred on the first beat of the subsequent measure.

Rock and roll of this decade also mutated the standard blues harmonic progression. Although most songs of this period are twelve-bar blues, the V chord in the ninth measure was usually placed before the IV chord in the tenth. This format was a reversal of the standard blues songwriting practice. In general, the harmonic standard in 1950’s rock-and-roll music was the diatonic scale. In addition, almost all the major and minor triads or chords were based on the harmonic tones, although alterations to this occurred frequently. When these changes did occur, they generally came from the particular way melody and harmony interact in rock and roll. The IV and V chords were usually the tonic chords, but often a dominant seventh chord was used instead to set the tonic harmony. Changes in the chord progressions were usually what distinguished different sections in a song, although sometimes merely a change in rhythmic pattern would have the same effect.

The Rise of the Genre

If rock and roll had a birthdate, it would be sometime in December of 1954. This was the month that the New York “Moondog” won his lawsuit against Alan Freed over Freed’s use of the same name for his radio show. Forced to come up with a new name for his show and the music he played, Freed took the phrase “rock and roll” from any number of rhythm-and-blues song titles. In those songs the connotation of the phrase was often sexual in nature. Freed was well aware of this, and one can assume this was part of the reason he chose this particular phrase. Meanwhile, his New York show (and similar shows around the country) continued to grow in popularity as more and more teenagers listened to what was rapidly becoming their music.

In early 1955, the film The Blackboard Jungle was released and became an instant hit. This story of juvenile delinquency opened with the Bill Haley and His Comets song “Rock Around the Clock,” which had been released in 1954 but did not do very well on the charts. The film and the single became hits. At the same time, they alarmed parents and religious leaders. At that point, rock and roll solidified its role with teenagers and delinquency.

Early African American Artists

Meanwhile, the bluesman Muddy Waters had introduced Chuck Berry to his producers at Chess Records. Berry was another African American artist who played guitar, although the music he played was mostly country-western. The first song he played for Chess was an old fiddle tune called “Ida Red.” By the time Chess and Berry were finished, Ida Red had changed her name to Maybellene. Within weeks of its release, “Maybellene” was in the top ten of Billboard magazine’s singles chart, where it stayed for most of the summer of 1955.

Chess was also recording Bo Diddley in 1955 and released the two-sided hit “Bo Diddley” and “I’m a Man” on their Checker label subsidiary that year. Diddley played guitar unlike anyone else. According to Diddley himself, he “play(ed) the guitar as if I’m playing the drums . . . I play drum licks on the guitar.” Critics labeled Diddley’s style the “hambone” style, after the hambone percussion instrument. Diddley was influential more for his guitar work than anything else, although he wrote and performed a few songs that became rock-and-roll classics: “I’m a Man,” “Who Do You Love,” “Diddy Wah Diddy,” and “Pretty Thing.”

Around the same time another black American musician, piano player and composer Fats Domino, had recorded several rhythm-and-blues records that sold well both nationally and in New Orleans, where he lived and played. His 1955 release “Ain’t That a Shame” (called “Ain’t It a Shame” on the label) would put him in the books forever as a founder of rock and roll, especially after white vocalist Pat Boone recorded it. Boone’s rerecording of Domino’s tune reflected the prevailing racism of the era: It was a practice often used to make a song by a black artist more “palatable” for white listeners. Nevertheless, Domino owned enough of the publishing rights to profit from Boone’s hit record. Domino’s piano style had a rocking, stomping flavor that translated easily onto the dance floor. He would continue to produce rock-and-roll hits throughout the decade.

Another African American artist making his mark in a rock-and-roll marketplace was Jackie Wilson . Wilson came to national attention as the replacement vocalist for the Dominoes. By 1956, he and the Dominoes were playing Las Vegas. A member of his audience one night was Elvis Presley . Wilson worked a couple of songs sung by Presley into his act. After Presley heard him, he not only was quite impressed, he also incorporated some of Wilson’s moves and inflections into his own act. Soon after his Vegas stint, Wilson met Berry Gordy, Jr., who hailed from Detroit and was working as the producer for the Brunswick label, a subsidiary of Decca. Wilson recorded the song “Reet Petite” for Gordy and Brunswick. Wilson and Gordy continued to work together, later recording “Lonely Teardrops,” which became Wilson’s signature tune, and its production would guarantee Gordy a prominent and pioneering role in the music business for years to come. Gordy would eventually start his own label, Motown, which became one of best known and biggest selling of all the American labels that sold pop music.

Los Angeles Labels and Artists

In Los Angeles, Art Rupe’s Specialty Records, which had released a string of rhythm-and-blues hits from 1952 to 1954, began recording an eccentric young piano-playing artist from Macon, Georgia, named Richard Penniman. This artist put pomade in his hair, wore eye makeup, and was nothing less than flamboyant in his appearance. Specialty Records invited the young man to record for them on the advice of rhythm-and-blues performer Lloyd Price, who had scored a hit for them with “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” Penniman used the name Little Richard and would have his first hit in 1956 with the ribald song “Tutti Frutti.” The original lyrics to the song included the suggestive line “Tutti Frutti, good booty, if it don’t fit, don’t force it, you can grease it, make it easy.” After some modifications to this line, the song was recorded in late 1955. It was still an unusual tune made even more so by Little Richard’s delivery. Within weeks of its 1956 release it was number seventeen on the pop charts of Billboard.

Other rhythm-and-blues songs from 1955 that were selling to the growing rock-and-roll audience of mostly white teenagers included “Earth Angel” by the Penguins, “Only You” by the Platters, “I Got a Woman” by Ray Charles , “Tweedlee Dee” by LaVern Baker, and “Flip Flop and Fly” by Joe Turner. Sun Records, meanwhile, was negotiating with various larger record companies to sell Elvis Presley’s contract to RCA, a label based in Los Angeles.

The Presley Machine and Influence

Also living in Los Angeles were two young men whose songs would become synonymous with 1950’s rock and roll. Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller considered themselves jazz-and-blues songwriters, but it was their tune “Hound Dog” that converted them to rock and roll when it was recorded by Presley in 1956. After RCA purchased Presley’s contract in 1955, the company began enacted their marketing plan of Presley. With the release of Presley’s version of the Lieber and Stoller song “Hound Dog,” they hit their mark. The flip side of that single was “Don’t Be Cruel,” and it was the second double-sided, million-selling single of the year for Presley and RCA. Presley would end 1956 with several hit records, including “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” and “Blue Suede Shoes.”

“Blue Suede Shoes” was written and originally recorded by Carl Perkins on the Sun Records label. Perkins and Sun Records did well with the record, which reached the top twenty of the pop, country, and rhythm-and-blues charts. Perkins was a self-described hillbilly who grew up impoverished. He began recording in 1955, and “Blue Suede Shoes” was his biggest hit. The style that Perkins popularized became known as rockabilly—a combination of rock and roll and hillbilly music.

Another rockabilly performer was reading about Elvis Presley in a magazine. Inspired by the story, Jerry Lee Lewis took his piano-playing talent to Sun Records and recorded the song “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.” Sam Phillips had another hit on his hands. Lewis was a country boy who played the piano a bit like Little Richard, stomping and jumping and banging. In 1957, after he played the song to a national television audience on The Steve Allen Show, it went to number one on the pop, country, and rhythm-and-blues charts. Lewis then released what would become his signature tune, “Great Balls of Fire.” Like Little Richard and Presley, Lewis upset the guardians of respectable society with his music, sense of fashion, and footloose lifestyle—all traits that made him undeniably even more popular with teenagers.

Buddy Holly

In Lubbock, Texas, meanwhile, were a group of young men led by Buddy Holly, who played electric guitar, wrote songs, and sang as if he had the hiccups. Holly played a Fender Stratocaster, a guitar made by Leo Fender’s electric guitar company and forever linked to Holly and rock and roll. Holly was signed by Decca Records as a solo artist when he was in high school but was let go after recording a few singles. He returned to Lubbock and began working with his band, the Crickets, which opened for both Bill Haley and Presley . After his gig with Presley, Holly became a committed rock-and-roll convert. His first single with the Crickets, “That’ll Be the Day,” was released in July of 1957. Holly would have several more hits, both with the Crickets and as a solo artist. His style was unlike any other rock-and-roll music being produced at the time and influenced many future musicians who heard him as teenagers, among them Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney.

Vocal Performers

Other performers were making an impact on the music with their voices. Perhaps foremost among them were Sam Cooke , the Everly Brothers, and vocal groups such as the Coasters and the Platters. The latter two groups came from the doo-wop tradition—a musical form created on the street corners of New York and Philadelphia by groups of young men who had no money to buy instruments and used their voices instead. This musical style usually involved one of the performers taking the solo spot and singing most of the verses, with the rest of the group doing backup harmonies, with all group members joining in on the chorus. The harmonies served as musical instruments, usually creating rhythms and bass lines for the soloist to counter.

Cooke was an African American gospel singer and talented songwriter who brought his sweet, soulful sound to rock and roll. His 1957 hit song, “You Send Me,” was an ideal representation of this particular style of rock and roll. A song of adoration for a woman, it epitomized 1950’s rock-and-roll lyrics, with Cooke’s words of infatuation for the object of his love ending with the expressed desire to “marry you and take you home.” The fact that the song ends with this hope might be interpreted to suggest that even though rock and roll scared society’s pillars of moral order, the sentiments the music actually expressed did not differ greatly from societal norms. On the other hand, such conservative sentiments may have been expressed in order to ensure more air play.

Phil and Don Everly began their careers as part of their parents’ act, the Everly Family Show. They spent a great deal of time traveling around the southern United States playing live radio shows, county fairs, revivals, and political meetings. By 1955, the brothers had a six-month contract with Columbia Records. They recorded four songs and played backup in various other recording sessions. At this time, their style could be classified as hillbilly. Their contract ended, and Phil and Don were signed by Cadence Records of Nashville in 1957. Their first recording session for their new label took place in March, 1957, and was overseen by the country music guitarist Chet Atkins. This session produced the Everlys’ first hit, “Bye Bye Love.” The Everlys’ use of a robust acoustic guitar sound and a rock-and-roll beat influenced by Bo Diddley’s records made the tune stand out. Their record sold more than one million units and helped rejuvenate the music business in Nashville, which had been suffering since the advent of rock and roll. “Bye Bye Love” was the first of several hits for the duo.

Television’s Influence

Television had already introduced rock and roll to a large audience with appearances by various performers on variety shows such as those hosted by Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan. Indeed, Presley’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show became legendary when his gyrations were deemed inappropriate by censors. However, during the late 1950’s, the medium would exert an even greater influence in the world of rock and roll, not only popularizing artists who appeared on the variety shows, but actually manufacturing rock-and-roll stars from actors who had never sung or played a note in their lives.

The prime example of this phenomenon was the recording career of Ricky Nelson. In 1957, Nelson was already a star of the television sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet , when his father, Ozzie, convinced him and the studio that there was money to be made by having him perform rock and roll. An element that certainly influenced the studio’s decision was the success of the song “Teenage Crush,” by Tommy Sands, an actor who debuted the song on the television show Singing Idol, a fictionalized story of Presley’s rise to fame. When the song rocketed to the top ten, it proved that an actor could actually become a pop singer in real life. Ricky Nelson went into the studio on March 25, 1957, and recorded three songs, including Fats Domino’s “I’m Walking.” Three weeks later, Nelson mimed the song during an episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and it was an instant hit. This formula was so successful that it continued to be used in subsequent decades.

Another television success was the show American Bandstand , hosted by radio and television broadcaster Dick Clark . Clark took over the Philadelphia show broadcast on WFIL after his predecessor was fired, and he immediately set about cleaning up the show’s image by enforcing a dress code for the show’s dancing audience, forbidding gum chewing on the set, and racially integrating the show’s performers. At the same time, Clark persuaded executives at ABC’s national offices (WFIL was an ABC affiliate) to carry the show nationally. Realizing the value of the teenage dollar, ABC agreed, and by 1958, American Bandstand was not only one of ABC’s most popular shows, it was setting teenage trends and popularizing records that were played on the show. Simultaneously, it was cleaning up rock and roll’s image.

Rock-and-roll music had always had an aura of the forbidden and delinquent about it. In part, this was due to its origins in the culture of black America. Another part of its aura was its overt sexuality. Clark made a conscious effort to change this reputation by enforcing a dress code and by introducing performers on his show who were not necessarily rockers, such as Frankie Avalon and Dion. Singing neither rock and roll nor old-fashioned standards, these artists released songs that made their way into the pop charts during the late 1950’s. Clark also used the show to build a financial empire by obtaining some piece of nearly every song he played on the show—the copyright, the label, the artist, or another facet of the song’s production.

Payola Scandals

Despite the success of Clark and other industry mavens, rock and roll still faced strong resistance from established elements inside the music industry. Consequently, artists and their labels often ran into roadblocks when they tried to get their songs on the radio. Often, they did what the industry had always done: They illegally paid people to promote their work. During the 1950’s, this meant that producers and labels gave disc jockeys and radio stations money and gifts to play their artists’ records. Because rock and roll was new (and because it was still considered morally questionable by mainstream America), the pillars of the industry, especially the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), launched an attack on this practice, soon to be known as “payola.” The ASCAP had an ulterior motive: They were facing stiff competition from a new rival, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), which had cornered much of the new market in music copyright and royalties by signing the majority of the songwriters writing blues, rhythm and blues, country, and rock and roll.

When the public finally heard the charges with the news in November, 1959, that Alan Freed had been fired from his job at WABC for refusing to sign a statement saying he had never taken money or gifts to promote a record, they were shocked. Congress next established a committee to investigate charges of corruption in the rock-and-roll music industry. The hearings made headlines the following summer, and Freed became a mythic hero to many young people who saw his fall as evidence of an establishment conspiracy against rock and roll.

End of an Era

The fall of Freed symbolized, in its own way, the end of the early phase of rock-and-roll music. Another, considerably more tragic event that signaled an end of an era was the plane crash on February 3, 1959, that killed Buddy Holly, the disc jockey known as the Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson), and Ritchie Valens. The men were on a three-week national tour with their bands. They had been traveling on a bus that malfunctioned; Holly then chartered a plane, and Richardson and Valens joined him. Richardson’s seat was originally intended for Holly’s guitarist, Waylon Jennings, but he gave up his seat to Richardson, who was ill. Jennings and the others on the tour continued by bus. Despite bad weather (and because of financial pressure to perform their next concert on time), the men boarded the plane in Clear Lake, Iowa. It crashed several minutes after takeoff, killing all on board.

Impact

By the end of the decade, rock and roll was the entertainment industry’s gold mine. Although most groups came and went, the big names continued to release records, making millions of dollars for the record companies in the process. In a very short time, rock-and-roll music had become a major player in the industry, a social and cultural influence in the United States, and was well on its way to becoming one of America’s best-loved exports, as British teenagers looking for something different from their parents found it in American rock and roll. The presence of large numbers of American soldiers stationed at bases around the United Kingdom helped to spread the rock-and-roll gospel, as the young men shared the records they bought with local teenagers.

Rock-and-roll music not only remade the music industry, but its influence also remade society. Rock and roll reflected and bolstered the growing youth culture and its disillusionment with entrenched societal norms. After accepting its popularity, the entertainment industry began aggressively to market the sound, despite opposition from social and political organizations who feared and opposed the freedom it seemed to represent. Much of that fear stemmed from rock and roll’s roots in African American culture and its relative openness with sexuality. The mores of the 1950’s tended to be determined by various church establishments, and rock and roll’s celebration of a more open sexual expression would have come under fire even if most of its fans were adults. However, because the fans were largely adolescent, the music and the culture it spawned provoked intense criticism from mainstream society, and its performers and audiences were often held up for ridicule or, even worse, suffered police persecution. Ultimately, however, the freedom that rock and roll represented to its audience won out over its more socially conservative opposition.

Subsequent Events

Rock-and-roll music became the most popular music of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and many other regions of the world. Musically, it grew well beyond its roots and incorporated aspects of virtually every genre known to humankind. As the music developed, the publicity industry that it spawned divided the music into several subgenres, from progressive rock to punk rock, country rock, and beyond. Culturally, its influence spread into most aspects of American life, from politics to literature, television, fashion, and film. During the 1960’s, rock music was often the sound of the opposition culture that existed among the Western world’s young and became increasingly political in content. As the twentieth century continued, however, much of the music lost its oppositional content, although new forms and bands continued to put forth messages that ran counter to the morals and societal expectations of mainstream society.

Bibliography

Altschuler, Glenn C. All Shook Up: How Rock ’n’ Roll Changed America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Places rock-and-roll music in the context of the cultural conservatism of 1950’s America and explains how its effect laid the foundations for the cultural upheavals of the 1960’s. The effects of race and class are emphasized.

Escott, Colin, and Martin Hawkins. Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock and Roll. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. The story of Sam Phillips and Sun Records. Individual chapters are devoted to Sun’s biggest artists.

Hochman, Steve, ed. Popular Musicians. 3 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 1999. Encyclopedic reference work on late twentieth century musicians, with numerous articles on individual rock musicians and bands of the 1950’s.

Miller, Jim. Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Explores the influence of industry, performers, and radio on the birth and growth of the cultural phenomenon of rock and roll.

Rock and Roll Generation: Teen Life in the 1950’s. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1998. A great pictorial companion to more text-driven histories and the music itself, although it focuses primarily on white youth.

Ward, Brian. Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A thorough study of the role of African American music and culture in the second half of America’s twentieth century. Documents not only the influence of black music but its elemental importance to the rise of rock and roll.