ORIGINS It is a popular misconception, one which grew into
one of the most enduring myths of the twentieth century, that rock music began
with Bill Haley's multimillion selling hit "Rock Around the Clock" in
1955. While it is certainly true that Haley, a one-time country singer, helped
to popularize Rock & Roll, he did it by diluting it to such an extent that
his records are now seen as being only of historical importance. Haley was
already middle age when he made his breakthrough and he would have been the
first to admit that his sound and style were contrived; cribbed from black
Rhythm and Blues (R&B) records which have been denied exposure on national
radio and television on racial grounds. By contrast, Elvis
Presley, Eddie
Cochran, Little
Richard, Chuck Berry and the other true pioneers of pop who
followed Haley's wake were not much older than their fans and they had a genuine
feeling for the music.
The roots of Pop & Rock music go far deeper than
Haley, deeper even the prototype "race records" recorder by black
American R&B artists in the 1940smor the hillbilly boogie and Western swing
songs performed by white country musicians in the 1930s, which Haley reworked.
The European settlers and the African slaves planted
the roots of Pop & Rock in the fertile soil of the southern states of
America in the latter years of the nineteenth century. By the early 1920s black
Negro spirituals and the so-called Holy Roller Sanctified Churches had
cross-fertilized with the white narrative folk-ballad tradition to create the
first rumbling of a new African-American music. Its first blossoming was heard
in the bittersweet beauty of the blues.
THE BLUES Blues was not the only ingredient stirred into the
intoxicating brew that was to be labeled Rock and Roll, but it was the most
potent. A derivative of Black American Jazz, a blues is characterized by a rigid
12-bar pattern built around three chords (the tonic, subdominant and dominant)
with minor intervals and flattened third and seventh notes in the scale (known
as "blue notes") to evoke a melancholy feel. Considering this rigid
format, its greatest exponents have consistently transcended these limitations
to express every aspect of the human condition. Initially it evolved in the
rural areas of the southern states as a form of work song lamenting the hard
times of the impoverished field lands, but when the migrating workers reached
the big cities, particularly Chicago, they realized their acoustic guitars
wouldn't carry their songs in the noisy bars. So they pawned their acoustic
instruments for electric guitars, which had been a feature of jazz bands since
the 1930s, and found that not only their music but also their lifestyle changed
with it. Instead of playing at the cotton fields or on their front porch for
free, they were now finding paid gigs, which gave them the wherewithal to dress
"sharp" and attract the women. Their music became harder, more
rhythmic, and from then on they had good times as well as bad to draw upon for
inspiration. The same style conscious attitude and desire to set oneself apart
from the crown, (not to mention the power to attract the opposite sex) have
driven virtually every rock musicians, male and female, from that day to this.
Other popular forms of the post-war period to be distilled into rock included
white country music, black gospel, crooner ballads, jazz, jump and R&B.
These provided drums and bass guitar for the obligatory driving beat which was
to distinguish rock from all other forms. They also supplied the instrument,
which would galvanize generations of youths throughout the world into selling
their souls (or at least their youth) for rock & roll - the electric guitar.
They used to call the Blues the "Devil's
Music" and for good reason. According to an enduring legend among
the black community of the Mississippi Delta, any musician with a
burning hunger to become one of the immortals could go to the crossroads
at Highway 61 and Highway 8 at midnight and offer his guitar to Legba -
more commonly known as the devil. If Legba took a shine to the musician,
he'd tune the guitar and breathe into it the tortured spirit of the
Blues which possess the young guitarist whenever he touched the strings.
Of course there was a price to pay for such a gift and it was the
traditional levy for supernatural talent - the musician's immortal soul.
ROCKABILLY The first expression of rock and roll to emerge from the southern
United States with a strong country / hillbilly element. The creation of rock
and roll on a sultry evening in July 1954 is traditionally credited to Sam
Phillips, owner of the tiny Sun Records studio in Memphis Tennessee, where B.B.
King, Howlin' Wolf and Ike Turner had recorded their first blues. Turner and
Philips had what could be considered a "dry run" for this apocalyptic
event way back in 1951 when they recorded "Rocket 88", a jump-blues
with a boogie-woogie beat and a raucous saxophone solo by vocalist Jackie
Brenstone. It was a song which prefigured rock music's obsession with fast,
gleaming automobiles.
The real catalyst, the
midwife to this hollering, illegitimate offspring of white hillbilly and
belligerent black R&B, which its creators were initially to christen
Rockabilly, was Memphis guitar picker Scotty Moore.
THE SOUL Soul music is an exclusively black form of American
dance music, which had evolved at the end of the 1950s, from the fusion of
Gospel with R&B. Despite its name, Soul was essentially sensual. Its
singers may have been baptized in the fiery spirit of the Holy Roller Sanctified
Churches, which urged their congregations to lose their inhibitions, stand up,
shout and praise the Lord, but on the dance floor their music moved their
fervently devoted young fans in ways which were decidedly secular.
Soul singers didn't declare their affiliations in as
loud and proud a fashion as did their religious brothers and sisters, and that
is why their music appealed across racial boundaries to both black and white. In
the early 1960s, you certainly had to be a young black American to sing those
songs - although, ironically, some of the steamiest soul records were made with
white musicians.
1950s
1960s
