This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Rock emerged in the mid 1950s as a blending of mainstream pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western--styles that previously had remained relatively separate. This new style became the music of the emerging youth culture and was often associated with teen rebellion. We will follow the story of how this rowdy first wave of rock and roll (1955-59) was tamed in the early 60s but came roaring back with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then went psychedelic by the end of the decade.
Regional R&B Radio in the 1950s
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From the course by University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part One
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From the lesson
The World Before Rock and Roll (1900-1955)
The Role of Tin Pan Alley in mainstream pop, the formation of a national audience through radio and the rise of television, the pre-rock pop of Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, and Les Paul and Mary Ford; rhythm and blues in the years before rock and roll; country and western and the rise of Nashville.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
We talked in the last video about the rise of rhythm & blues in the period
leading up to 1955, our birth of rock, but especially,
the time between 1945 and 1955 and the role of independent labels.
As they were able to create music that people in urban areas wanted to buy but
they were limited by the amount of distribution they could get.
Limited by how far a guy could drive with records in his trunk
to put them in a record store each week.
Major labels, on the other hand, had distribution networks that could get
recordings out across the country in relatively short periods of time.
For most of that period up until 1955, the indies and
the major labels coexisted fairly easily.
That apple cart was upset in 1955 with the rise of rock.
But we're anticipating our story.
Let's talk now about the rise of regional R&B radio in the 1950s.
Now as I've said before, radio programming started to be directed
at an African-American audience in these urban areas.
Because radio broadcasters started to realize that there was a significant
population to which they could sell products.
And you may think, well, that's a kind of a cynical way to view.
But after all, radio is a for-profit enterprise,
the music is there really only to get you listening, so they can sell you a product.
It seems like a cynical thing to say, but that's the way that business works.
You don't have any advertisers, you can't stay on the air.
And so from that point of view, you can say well,
this advertising thing is not such a good thing.
But on the other hand, if you think about the fact that at that point,
African-Americans are living in a very segregated country.
Where there are certain stores that they could go into quite innocently to buy
something, where they could be turned away, simply because they were black.
There are restaurants where they might go, where they might want to get a meal.
But they would be turned away simply because they were black.
If they were listening to one of these stations and they heard an advertiser
advertising on their station, they knew they could go to that business,
be it a restaurant, or a theater, or a store, or something like that.
And their business would be welcome.
So to a certain extent, these radio stations,
even though they were about selling advertising and using music,
that they thought black listeners were appreciate to do so.
Were actually providing a public service in that they were helping folks out from
that point of view, at least that's a kind of more positive way to think about it.
Some of the most important R&B stations that rose up were
WDIA in Memphis and on the air were Rufus Thomas and BB King.
You thought he was originally a blues guitarist.
He's always been a blues guitarist, but he was a DJ in Memphis.
Also in Memphis, WHBQ, which featured Dewey Phillips,
the guy who originally played That's All Right Mama on the radio
in 1954 after Elvis Presley had recorded it at Sun Records.
WLAC in Nashville, Gene Nobles, John R Richbourg, and
Hoss Allen where the DJs there.
WGST in Atlanta featured Daddy Sears.
Out in Los Angeles on KFVD you had Hunter Hancock.
All of these guys were on the air doing shows
that featured exclusively black musicians, R&B musicians.
So when Alan Freed comes along in 1951,
first in WJW in Cleveland, and starts to put his show on the air,
he's already aware that these other guys have been doing this.
In fact, there are stories that Freed would call those stations and
ask the kinds of things they were playing.
Now not all of these DJs were black.
But they sounded black on the air.
And so did Alan Freed in 1951.
In fact, black listeners would come down to the station to see him when they
knew he was finished, and they would be surprised to see this white guy coming
out, and they would be, who's this guy?
We're looking for Alan Freed.
Well I'm Alan Freed.
Really, I didn't know you were white.
This just goes to show that some of the sort of race distinctions
that we like to draw are sometimes a little bit more fluid than we imagine.
Well in the case of Alan Freed, he ends up moving with
the success of his show in Cleveland to New York, WINS.
The original show was called The Moon Dog Show, but
it turned out there was a panhandler in New York by the name of
The Moon Dog who tried sue him so he just changed it to The Rock and Roll Party.
Because he changed it to The Rock and Roll Party.
And because it was so famous, because it was coming out of New York,
he says that he invented the word rock and roll.
Well, however that may be, the fact is that because the radio
population, that had been part of the national audience up to 1945,
was now migrating to television that offered these opportunities in radio.
R&B regional radio folks took advantage of that.
They started to play a lot of this black music because black
folks were now moving up from the rural areas, into the Northern cities.
And so there was a opportunity to sell advertising on these stations and so
far, so good, everything's fine.
What could possibly be disruptive about the fact that a black community is
listening to black music on a black station and
going into businesses and frequenting businesses that welcome their business?
Everything is fine.
But the problem is, or the problem came to be, not a problem for us,
we celebrated, was that white teenagers could also hear those stations.
Because just about this time, radios were starting to become portable,
you could have a radio in your car, right?
You could get away from what your parents were listening to and
you could listen to this music in the car.
You might never be able to go into the neighborhoods where these records were
sold, you might never be allowed to go into the clubs where this music is played,
but you could turn on the radio and hear it anytime.
So what happens in the first half of the 50s is that these shows get rolling
because people think they're playing music to black audiences, and they are.
But the white teenagers are listening in as well and
people don't find out about this until disc jockeys like Alan Freed start
to put on shows where they think it's going to have all black artists on it.
They think it's going to be attended by an all black audience and
all of a sudden there's all these white kids there, and
they're saying to themselves, where did these kids come from?
And that ability of this regional R&B radio to reach a white audience is,
to a large extent, responsible for how it is that music started to catch
hold as the music of America's youth, and it plays a big part in how
it is that rock and roll comes to be an important style in 1955.
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