Let's talk for a minute about two styles that are important with rhythm and blues, but sometimes are given a little bit of short shrift in our histories of popular music. again we're talking about the period leading up to 19 55 and the birth of rock. most of the period between the Second World War, 1945. and this birth of rock in '55. These two styles I mean are Doo Wop and Gospel. Both of them primarily vocal styles, and both of them play a big role in how it is that R&B music sounds the way that it does. Doo wop develops after World War II. It consists of acapella vocal singing that developed in urban neighborhoods. Mostly among black males, and it's kind of an acapella group, a Doo Wop group, it's kind of like a social club. And you would form it with kids who lived right on the same block as you, and you would work up arrangements. And then kids from these different blocks would go and challenge Other Doo Wop vocal groups from other blocks sort of competing for territory and that kind of thing. And I don't think there were ever any fights or that kind of thing, it wasn't an aggressive thing, but it was kind of a musical challenge. And it created a whole culture where you had say, in blocks with New York or Baltimore, places like that. All kinds of these groups who probably had a number of tunes worked up as arrangements, but they had one worked up that was really kind of the knock out blue. Man, when they did that tune that was their best shot at, at, at knocking the other knocking the other group out. And so what happened is, in a search for talent for, for these R&B Indie labels producers would come around and then they would bring these groups into the studio. Find their best song, bring in a backing band and do an arrangement of it and rush it out onto the market and see if they couldn't sell some of them. and so one thing that was great about that, is a lot of Doo Wop groups were given an opportunity to record. Well, one thing that was not so great about it, is that after they'd used their best number to do this recording, it was very difficult for them to follow up. What the second or a third number, because they'd already used their best stuff and it maybe had taken them months to work that one up. How, how to have something to, how can I follow that? And so one of the stories of Doo Wop is it's filled with one hit wonders precisely for this reason. groups that had one big hit, and then maybe a second one that wasn't as good, and then a third one that, that barely charted. There were other groups that had more success than that. There were more professional singer kind of things, but there were an awful lot of one hit wonders inside of Doo Wop. so, if you want to think about some representative records for Doo Wop that is, that sort of choral vocal singing that, that term Doo Wop really comes from the nonsense syllables that sometimes. They would use in the background vocals. A good example of that is the song from 1954 from the chords called Sh'boom. I won't I won't insult you by singing it for you now, but if you can find a recording of that, you'll see that there's an awful lot of background singing that just kind of uses nonsense syllables for the singers to vocalize without specific lyrics. Of course, there are lyrics as well in some parts. But a lot of this nonsense syllable. Another great example is The Five Satins, In the Still of the Night from 1956. One thing about these Doo Wop numbers, is they would often become novelty tunes, in other words there would be some sort of, funny hook with them, that would, that would make them sort of infectious and fun to listen to. but they were also Doo Wop tunes almost always the slow dance of choice in the 1950s. So, when there was a slow dance at one of these teenage sock hop kinds of things where the boys and the girls wanted to dance slow, and right up next to each other. It was often a Doo Wop tune which would be that slow number. And so, even in the middle of the sort of craziness of people like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard people listening to those kinds of records and dancing in all kinds of crazy ways, there would always be a couple of Doo Wop numbers in there to give the boys and the girls a chance Stead to get together. We should also talk about the roots of almost all rhythm, and blues in the music of the church, and the gospel tradition. these vocal music practices from the black church influenced both harmony singing and solo singing in rhythm and blues. You can hear this in some of the call and response elements, where a soloist will sing one thing and then a group of background singers will sing something back against them, the call an response kind of thing. The melodic embellishments that occur, when the solo singer is singing the melody oftentimes derived from gospel music. In gospel music there is a traditional conflict between the music of the church, the gospel music, which is considered God's music and the music of the club, the Rhythm and Blues music that, that would be played at in bars in the evenings, which was considered the Devil's music. Now, this may seem simple minded and simplistic to, to think of this sort of division between God's music and the devil's music. But a lot of R&B singers went through a certain kind of conflict. Even kind of an emotional problem with moving, if they were already gospel singers, moving to pop music. Or if they were pop singers, thinking they probably should give this music up and turn their musical talents toward praise in, in, and toward the church. And so, this also happened with white musicians as well, but it's especially prominent as we get into the 50s and there starts to be more and more market for R&B music and a lot more things were crossing over, a lot more singers are tempted. Some R &B artists even recast gospel numbers as pop songs and the mo, the most famous one of those is Ray Charles. Singing I Got A Woman from 1954, and this is the song where when Ray Charles did I Got A Woman, and changed it from a gospel number into a secular one, it was shocking to a lot of people in the black community who knew where he got it from. But as far as Ray was concerned, all music is God's music, and it didn't really bother him all that much. So, it's important when we think about rhythm and blues in this period, be sure that we we acknowledge the influence of Doo Wop and gospel.
