Rock & roll songs in America 1959-1964? (Charles Hamm)

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Here's Charles Hamm in Yesterdays: Popular Song in America:

"By 1960, the early rock 'n' roll style (as defined at the beginning of this chapter) had virtually dropped out of sight." (416)

And later:

"Like the Beatles...British groups took American rock 'n' roll of the mid-1950s as the basis of their own style. Their music can be heard as a continuation of what had begun in America in 1955-58 - the only continuation, since American music in 1959-64 had moved in quite different directions." (423)

Here's how he's defining rock 'n' roll:

"Built on the 12-bar blues form; performed at a fast, driving tempo with heavy emphasis on the bass line and the beat, by a singer back with a small band made up of amplified guitars, bass, drums, and sometimes a piano and/or one or more saxophones; using a text that usually contained thinly veiled sexual innuendos and delivered in such a way as to underline and emphasize this sexual message." (408)

And finally, he acknowledges that "the term was soon used to cover a much wider range of musical styles." (408)

I'm not concerned with this wider range of musical styles which includes most of the music in the following modes: teen idol, doo-wop, girl groups, and the more Tin Pan Alley-style hits of The Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Elvis, etc. I'm merely looking for a list of American songs from 1959-64 that conform to the definition of rock 'n' roll above.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:07 (nineteen years ago)

1. The Wailers - Dirty Robber

― theboyqueen, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 04:04 (nineteen years ago)

a lot of beach boys songs. brian wilson was also obviously doing the kind of symphonic pop stuff that phil spector and the brill building people were, but he liked his rock'n'roll. (so much that he had to pay chuck berry for it.) "surfin u.s.a.," "fun fun fun," "little deuce coupe," "i get around," "help me rhonda," etc.

― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 04:13 (nineteen years ago)

Ah yes, The Wailers. Thanx!

Not much blues in The Beach Boys, though

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 04:55 (nineteen years ago)

those beach boys songs are ALL built on 12-bar progressions.

― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 05:06 (nineteen years ago)

Bo Diddley Is Jesus...

― Display Name, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 05:16 (nineteen years ago)

"Fun Fun Fun" is built on a 16-bar progression, no?

And while "Little Deuce Coupe" is built on 12-bard progressions, it seems as if the overall structure of the song mirrors the AABA structure of many Tin Pan Alley songs rather than the repetition of a 12-bar AAB as in "Johnny B. Goode" or "Tutti Frutti."

Am I wrong on this?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 05:58 (nineteen years ago)

What about the Isley Brothers (for instance, "Shout")? -- though they are perhaps at once too primitive and too ornate to be rock and roll by this definition.

― theboyqueen, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 08:07 (nineteen years ago)

Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm - Rocket 88 (1951)
Big Joe Turner - Shake, Rattle and Roll (1954)
Muddy Waters - Hoochie Coochie Man (1954)
Little Richard - Tutti Frutti (1955)
Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On (1957)
Ike & Tina Turner - A Fool In Love (1960)

― nicky lo-fi, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:29 (nineteen years ago)

Tin Pan Alley-style hits of The Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Elvis, etc.

Kentucky, New Orleans and Memphis are a long way from Tin Pan Alley.

― m coleman, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:09 (nineteen years ago)

Tin Pan Alley was the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph and radio supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll.

― m coleman, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:11 (nineteen years ago)

I think Kevin meant that 1959-1964 was a period where formerly straight Rock & Roll acts like Elvis, the Everly Brothers and Fats recorded Tin Pan Alley material. I think that's certainly true of Elvis and the Everlys (who did some Goffin/King at that time, right?), but it'd perhaps be more accurate/specific to say they did Brill Building stuff than to call it Tin Pan Alley. Dunno enough abouts Fats' career during this timeframe, though wasn't he stepeped in old school Tin Pan Alley from the get-go? "My Blue Heaven" is TPA, right?

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:02 (nineteen years ago)

my point is that drawing such an iron-clad definition of "rock & roll" is too narrow and reductive -- girl groups and teen idols and doo-wop singers are part of the R&R continuum as are reworked TPA standards.

― m coleman, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:09 (nineteen years ago)

"Like the Beatles...British groups took American rock 'n' roll of the mid-1950s as the basis of their own style. Their music can be heard as a continuation of what had begun in America in 1955-58 - the only continuation, since American music in 1959-64 had moved in quite different directions."

I just think this is wrong wrong wrong. The Beatles covered Motown etc

― m coleman, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:14 (nineteen years ago)

pop music style/categories are not mutually exclusive. esp WRT R&R

― m coleman, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:15 (nineteen years ago)

treating them as such makes music much easier to write about, tho

― m coleman, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:17 (nineteen years ago)

the beatles were COMPLETELY a continuation of what had begun in america in 1959-1964! motown, girl groups, everlys, arthur alexander, etc. not to mention, say, peggy lee, whose 1962 version of "till there was you" inspired the beatles cover. wrong wrong wrong times ten.

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:32 (nineteen years ago)

"Fun Fun Fun" is built on a 16-bar progression, no?

yeah true. but it (and the rest of wilson's early uptempo stuff) are very much in line with first-wave rock'n'roll. and the early rock'n'rollers all played a greater variety of stuff than that definition suggests. i think he's just drawing an artificial boundary. besides peggy lee, the beatles also covered smoky robinson, the shirelles and the marvelettes.

― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

(oops didn't mean to deprive smokey of his 'e')

― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:56 (nineteen years ago)

Is the answer Johnny Cash?

― sexyDancer, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:59 (nineteen years ago)

You left out the part about Elvis going into the Army in the original post, Kevin.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:15 (nineteen years ago)

This theory stuff is interesting, but how about indulging the conceit of the original question and coming up with some answers?

― theboyqueen, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 16:19 (nineteen years ago)

Early Rock N Roll may not have existed in the strictest sense. For most looking back at the canon, Jump Blues doesn't enter the radar until after the Dewey Phillips/Alan Freed radio format, and by then, Rock N Roll was already being used as a marketiung term to cover a wide range of styles, but remaining mostly Jump Blues centric.

The "rockin'" trend of Jump Blues was huge beginning in 1949, and WDIA went on air in Memphis in 1947 as the first all Black radio station that played a large diet of R&B/Jump Blues. Dewey Phillips followed their lead as a White station playing this music in Memphis before the much larger WLAC in Nashville spread it nationally. Then Alan Freed moved from Akron to Cleveland, and began peddling records for Leo Mintz's Record Rendezvous on air, which is how the marketing term came to be...but as a genre?

This always leads back to Rockabilly, which arguably was pinoeerd by Bill Haley's 1951 cover of Rocket 88 (because I don't buy the idea that Jackie Brenston's/Ike Turner's was terribly different from most rockin' R&B at the time)...but any discussion of Rockabilly's origins blurs with the whole Hillbilly Boogie thing, and the forced cross-polination between R&B and Hillbilly by Syd Nathan at King Records.

That all leads back to the cross polinaiton between Western Swing and Boogie Woogie, which seems to me to be the real root of the Rock revolution.

I maintain that Rock N Roll was both a marketing term early on, and an entire revolution in the way music was produced and digested in the end -- but frankly, the latter may just come down to the invention of TV, which freed up radio (no pun intended) for marginalized music to reach a new genreation...the same way the invention of records catapulted Jazz decades earlier, and the internet is beginning to do now.

All other arguements seem to me to take the established canon (Little Richard, Fats Domino, even Bug Joe Turner in more recent times) too literally while ignoring a slew of marginalized R&B records (Atlantic dominates, but so many more reaching for Atlantic's realm). It gives Alan Freed to much credit for "inventing a genre" rather than tossing a few things around the R&B fire and spreading it to the masses of youth.

R&B is R&B.

The payola scandel of 1959 shaped the 60s sound prior to the Beatles.

Those restrictions squeezed Rock into a proper genre.

― PappaWheelie V, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.reelradio.com/af/deweyp.jpg

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 17:44 (nineteen years ago)

Ok forget the Hamm quotes from the original. Just answer this question:

Are there any American songs released 1959-1964 that conform to these musical specifications:

1. Built on the 12-bar blues form
2. Performed at a fast, driving tempo with heavy emphasis on the bass line and the beat, by a singer back with a small band made up of amplified guitars, bass, drums, and sometimes a piano and/or one or more saxophones
3. Using a text that usually contained thinly veiled sexual innuendos and delivered in such a way as to underline and emphasize this sexual message.

Simple as that

― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 04:34 (nineteen years ago)

I think most people are getting hung up on this narrow definition of rock & roll. That's fine; I find it narrow too and am more than willing to count teen idol, doo-wop, girl groups, etc. as rock & roll. But the point of the post was simply to find 1959-64 American songs that conform to the definition above, narrow and reductive though it may be.

And Daniel Rf is right re: Tin Pan Alley. The original quote was "the more Tin Pan Alley-style hits of The Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Elvis." The keyword here being "more." Not ALL of the hits by these artists were in the Tin Pan Alley style, of course. Some were, though, and Hamm lists them: "Blueberry Hill" (and, right, "My Blue Heaven"), "All I Have to Do is Dream," "Devoted to You," "'Til I Kissed You," "Love Me Tender," "Can't Help Falling in Love," tons more Elvis hits and Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool."

Finally, I think some people are misunderstanding this quote:

"Like the Beatles...British groups took American rock 'n' roll of the mid-1950s as the basis of their own style. Their music can be heard as a continuation of what had begun in America in 1955-58 - the only continuation, since American music in 1959-64 had moved in quite different directions."

So yes, The Beatles were COMPLETELY a continuation of what had begun in America in 1959-1964. That's precisely what Hamm is saying

― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 04:57 (nineteen years ago)

Theboyqueen is obviously getting it! Thanx!

Listened to "Shout" a few times last night. It's all over the map stucturally. Sounds like a close enough fit, though.

And Johnny Cash...I'll have to drag out my box.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 05:01 (nineteen years ago)

PappaWheelie, I think you're right that too much is resting on this rather small Elvis-Fats-Little Richard-Jerry Lee-Carl Perkins-etc. canon. Whether or not something like "Shout" absolutely conforms to Hamm's definition, it certainly continues the rock & roll spirit if not sound that it was responsible for helping create in the first place.

Also, I think the advent of TV helped the dissemination of rock & roll. But even earlier than that, the creation of BMI to chip away at ASCAP's (and hence Tin Pan Alley's) hegemony definitely helped kick that entire revolution in the way music was produced and digested into gear.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 05:11 (nineteen years ago)

American songs released 1959-1964 that conform to these musical specifications

the shirelles, "boys"
tommy james and the shondells, "hanky panky"

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 05:18 (nineteen years ago)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/21/31773261_567d7cfacb.jpg?v=0

― m coleman, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 10:17 (nineteen years ago)

You shouldn't necessarily take "Tin Pan Alley" literally; the Brill Building songwriters, plus free agents like Pomus/Shuman and Leiber/Stoller were the rock equivalent of Tin Pan Alley.

xpostal

― mark 0, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:28 (nineteen years ago)

Speaking of which, has anyone read or heard anything about the new Doc Pomus book? Lovebug?

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:00 (nineteen years ago)

Restoration of Dewey Phillips to thread
http://www.gpservices38.freeserve.co.uk/blues/dewey_phillips.jpg

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:39 (nineteen years ago)

Ray Charles, What'd I Say

― dad a, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:23 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe I should just ask for any Nuggets-worthy, Wailers-esque singles from 1959-1964...

― Kevin John Bozelka, Sunday, 29 April 2007 02:49 (nineteen years ago)

1. Built on the 12-bar blues form
2. Performed at a fast, driving tempo with heavy emphasis on the bass line and the beat, by a singer back with a small band made up of amplified guitars, bass, drums, and sometimes a piano and/or one or more saxophones
3. Using a text that usually contained thinly veiled sexual innuendos and delivered in such a way as to underline and emphasize this sexual message.

Simple as that

It's called R&B

And R&B knockoffs

― PappaWheelie V, Sunday, 29 April 2007 03:18 (nineteen years ago)

Right, I hear ya.

― Kevin John Bozelka, Sunday, 29 April 2007 03:27 (nineteen years ago)

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