(AM45) 1950's Era Music in the U.S. Lesson

1950's Era Music in the U.S. Lesson 

Information below from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s_in_music

Popular music, or "classic pop," dominated the charts for the first half of the decade. Vocal driven Classic Pop replaced Big Band/Swing at the end of WWII, although it often used orchestras to back the vocalists. 1940's-style crooners vied with a new generation of big voiced singers, many drawing on Italian Bel Canto traditions. Mitch Miller, A&R man at the era's most successful label, Columbia Records, set the tone for the development of popular music well into the middle of decade. Miller integrated country, Western, rhythm & blues, and folk music into the musical mainstream, by having many of his label's biggest artists record them in a style that corresponded to Pop traditions. Miller often employed novel and ear-catching arrangements featuring classical instruments (whooping french horns, harpsichord), or sound effects (whip cracks). He approached each record as a miniature story, often "casting" the vocalist according to type.

(Mitch) Miller and the producers who followed his model were creating a new sort of pop record. Instead of capturing the sound of live groups, they were making three-minute musicals, matching singers to songs in the same way that movie producers matched stars to film roles. As Miller told 'Time' magazine in 1951, 'Every singer has certain sounds he makes better than others. Frankie Laine is sweat and hard words - he's a guy beating the pillow, a purveyor of basic emotions. Guy Mitchell is better with happy-go-lucky songs; he's a virile young singer, gives people a vicarious lift. Rosemary Clooney is a barrel house dame, a hillbilly at heart.' It was a way of thinking perfectly suited to the new market in which vocalists were creating unique identities and hit songs were performed as television skits.

Whereas Big Band/Swing music placed the primary emphasis on the orchestration, post-war/early 1950s era Pop focused on the song's story and/or the emotion being expressed. By the early 1950s, emotional delivery had reached its apex in the miniature psycho-drama songs of writer-singer Johnnie Ray. Known as 'The Cry Guy' and 'The Prince of Wails,' Ray's on-stage emotion wrought 'breakdowns' provided a release for the pent-up angst of his predominantly teen-aged fans. As Ray described it, "I make them feel, I exhaust them, I destroy them". It was during this period that the fan hysteria, which began with Frank Sinatra during the Second World War, really began to take hold.

Although often ignored by musical historians, Pop music played a significant role in the development of Rock 'n' Roll as well:

[Mitch] Miller also conceived of the idea of the pop record 'sound' per se: not so much an arrangement or a tune, but an aural texture (usually replete with extra-musical gimmicks) that could be created in the studio and then replicated in live performance, instead of the other way around. Miller was hardly a rock 'n' roller, yet without these ideas there could never have been rock 'n' roll. 'Mule Train', Miller's first major hit (for Frankie Laine) and the foundation of his career, set the pattern for virtually the entire first decade of rock. The similarities between it and, say, 'Leader of the Pack,' need hardly be outlined here.

Patti Page kicked things off with what would become the decade's biggest hit, "Tennessee Waltz."

Other major stars in the early 1950s included Frank, Tony Bennett, Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin, Eddie Fisher, Doris Day, Guy, Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Peggy Lee, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Perry Como and vocal groups like The Mills Brothers, The Weavers, The Four Aces, The Chordettes, The Fontane Sisters, The Hilltoppers, The McGuire Sisters and The Ames Brothers.

Classic pop declined in popularity as Rock and roll entered the mainstream and became a major force in American record sales. Crooners such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the first half of the decade, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed by the decade's end. However, new Pop vocalists continued to rise to prominence throughout the decade, many of whom started out singing Rock 'n' Roll. These include: Pat Boone, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin and Andy Williams. Even Rock 'n' Roll icon Elvis Presley spent the rest of his career alternating between Pop and Rock. Pop would resurface on the charts in the mid-1960s as "Adult Contemporary."

Rock 'n' Roll dominated popular music in the latter half of the 1950s. The musical style originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music with country and western and Pop. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.

The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar (developed and popularized by Les Paul). Paul's hit records like "How High the Moon," and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise," helped lead to the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing of such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore. Chuck Berry, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of Rock and roll music, refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene Vincent released the initial rhythm and blues-influenced early rock and roll hits. Rock and roll forerunners in the popular music field included Johnnie Ray, The Crew-Cuts, The Fontane Sisters, and Les Paul and Mary Ford. The Rock and Roll Era is generally dated from the 25 March 1955 premiere of the motion picture, "The Blackboard Jungle." This film's use of Bill Haley and His Comets' "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" over its opening credits, caused a national sensation when teenagers started dancing in the aisles.

Pat Boone became the first rock and roll teen idol in 1955 with heavily Pop-influenced "covers" of R&B hits like "Two Hearts, Two Kisses (Make One Love)," "Ain't That a Shame", and "At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama)." Boone's traditional approach to rock and roll, coupled with his All-American, clean-cut image helped bring the new sound to a much wider audience. Elvis Presley, who began his career in the mid-1950s, soon became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances, motion pictures, and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial during that period. Boone and Presley's styles/images represented opposite ends of the burgeoning musical form, which competed with one another throughout the remainder of the decade.

In 1957, a popular television show featuring rock and roll performers, American Bandstand, went national. Hosted by Dick Clark, the program helped to popularize the more clean-cut, All-American brand of rock and roll. By the end of the decade, teen idols like Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Rydell, Connie Francis, and Fabian were topping the charts. Some commentators have perceived this as the decline of rock and roll; citing the deaths of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens in a tragic plane crash in 1959 and the departure of Elvis for the army as causes.

On the other side of the spectrum, R&B-influenced acts like The Crows, The Penguins, The El Dorados and The Turbans all scored major hits, and groups like The Platters, with songs including "The Great Pretender" (1955), and The Coasters with humorous songs like "Yakety Yak" (1958), ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the period.

Rock and roll has also been seen as leading to a number of distinct sub-genres, including rockabilly in the 1950s, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley. Another sub-genre, Doo Wop, entered the pop charts in the 1950s. Its popularity soon spawns the parody "Who Put the Bomp."

 

 

Be sure to watch the video presentation below before moving forward in the module.

 

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