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.
Rhythm & Blues (Post 1945)
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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
Well now we turn to Rhythm & Blues, and the period after 1945, closing in on
1955, and our at least provisional date for the birth of rock music.
One of the things that we have to keep in mind as we think about how this music
originally associated with, R&B culture starts, or black culture, starts to make
its way into urban areas. Is the migration occurred in this country
from the rural South to the urban North. The idea that, that, that blacks who were
liv, working in rural environments, in fields and doing farm work and that kind
of thing. Would get on the train and go to the end
of the stop, wherever it landed north, and that place north might be Chicago, it
might be Detroit, it might be Baltimore, it might be New York.
But whatever, they wanted to get out of that kind of life, and into the
increasingly available faculty or factory and service jobs that were available in
the big cities, and this was especially the case during the second World War.
Where everybody was being pulled together to, to to build the things that we needed
to compete in that war. So, there was a giant migration into the
cities. we're still talking about a time where
things are pretty segregated, so people are moving up from the south into the
cities. But still staying together in their own
neighborhoods, and that plays a big role in how it is that R&B is able to become
such an important force. Well, once these people are all in these
areas, there are independant labels, and now we start to talk about indie labels
Independent labels that start to take advantage of this.
These people are here, they want to hear music, we will put out records that they
will perhaps buy and and this is how you get these independent labels which are
mostly regional, mostly, in certain cities.
So, we can talk about places like Chicago and New York and Memphis and Los Angeles
and, and these kinds of places, Baltimore, you name it.
in addition to talking about indie labels, which we'll have to do, we'll
also need to talk about Regional Radio. Now, a couple of, several lectures ago, I
talked about how when the radio audience migrated from radio to television.
It left a lot of openings in radio, because the, the syndicated programming
that those stations were using didn't disappear immediately.
But it was clear that everyone was putting their money into television,
because that's what the next big thing was.
And so there were real opportunities in radio.
People who had these stations started changing their orientation.
Rather than being a local affiliate for a national network, they started to think
regionally. They started to think, well, if I'm going
to sell advertising, how can I sell that to some kind of a group right here
locally. And it turned out that one of those
groups they could sell advertising to was the black community.
and that's, that's a fantastic story of this chain, of this moving to television,
making opportunities for radio stations that could now focus on rhythm and blues
music. So, we'll talk about that in just a
minute. For now, let's go through the, the story
with indie labels and the rise of R&B. There are, at least, well there, there
are probably dozens of independent labels we could talk about, that have to do with
rhythm & blues. But there are some that are really
important, that we have to, that we have to take some time thinking about.
Let's first start with Chess Records, which was formed by Phil and Leonard
Chess in Chicago In 1947. Chess Records is mostly associated with
the style of Chicago electric blues that we hear in artists like Bo Diddley, Muddy
Waters, Howlin' Wolf. And also the first records of Chuck
Berry, which aren't so much Chicago electric blues, but Chess was the label
that Chuck Berry was on. Of course he made an awful lot Of money
from them, but Chess did more than that. They had other black artists on their
label who were doing things that weren't just Chicago electric blues, they had
doo-wop and other kinds of things. But what they become, have become known
for, is the Chicago electric blues of the 1950's.
And when you think about an independent label like Chess Records, you have to
figure that Chess Records consists of Phil and Leonard Chess, and maybe a
secretary who answers the phone and does all of their paperwork for them.
They maybe got a couple of rooms of offices, and so, they do their, their
office work by day, and then at 5 o'clock they clear all the desks away and create
a space. And then somebody comes in with a tape
recorder, and they actually do their recordings there.
And now as they're sort of making more money, they will be getting increasingly
better facilities. But these, these independent labels, I
mean they are really just living on a shoestring here.
They're having their records pressed in order to get them to dis, distributed.
You basically are going around to record stores yourselves with the, with the
records in the trunk of your car, distributing yourself.
So, there's certain limits to how much business you can actually do if the way
your doing it is this very limited circumstances.
And so this indie status had a way of sort of keeping indie labels small.
In fact there's a certain kind of penalty that can come to you, if you actually
have a record that gets too big, too fast, but we'll talk about that a little
bit later. Now in distinction to Chess Records,
which was, those Chess recordings are usually appreciated, because they have a
kind of rawness to them. There's a certain kind of unbuttoned
ruggedness to the way the record sound, and that's what people like the early
British blues rocker from the 1960's. They loved that aspect of what was going
on with Chess Records. And to a certain extent, I'm not sure the
guys at Chess wanted them to sound quite like that, but that's what they had
available to them and that's just the way they sounded.
But it became the mark of what a Chess blues record would sound like.
Now in distinction and sort of contrast to that, we turn to Atlantic Records
which was formed just a year later in New York.
By Ahmet Ertegun, who would become one of the most important people in the music
business in the second half of the 20th century.
and Herb Abramson, that was a slicker, more traditional approach to R&B.
Traditional in the sense that there would be arrangements done for tunes.
So, the artists would come in reading charts, there would be professional
session musicians who would do these, these these sessions.
Where as opposed to, to Chicago with Chess Records if it would show up for the
session. They'd kind of make stuff up as they went
along. And this was really a kind of imitation
of what main, of how a mainstream pop recording session would go.
And the people at Atlantic Records tried to get the best possible sound they could
out of their recordings. They didn't want them sounding rugged,
they didn't want anybody to say, what a fantastic, raw sound.
Of course, they liked a kind of a raw performance, but the actual sound of the
recording they were very particular about.
And Atlantic had a guy by the name of Tom Dowd doing all of the engineering.
Tom Dowd has become one of these legendary figures in the history of of
rock music, for being one of the first guys to really master the recording
studio and get some great sounds. In fact, we talked before about Les Paul
and that first eight track recording machine that he got, that he called the
octopus, that he got thanks to Bing Crosby.
Well the second one that was made was made for Atlantic Records.
And Tom Dowd had that machine, and so Atlantic was making recordings on eight
track, oh, 15 years before the Beatles, Sergeant Pepper.
so they were really concerned about sound quality.
Some of the artists they had in the period before rock and roll were Ruth
Brown, who was really kind of their go to artist.
Ray Charles was on the was on the label at that time.
Big Joe Turner, and The Drifters, all had had hits on the R&B charts for Atlantic
Records. The other important Indie that we
definitely need to spend a little bit of time on is Sun Records from Memphis,
Tennessee founded by Sam Phillips in 1953.
Now, Sam Phillips didn't start in the music business in 1953, he had been an
independent recording guy. His thing was he would go out and record
all kinds of things, usually he'd be recording you know, choirs that sang,
church music and that kind of thing. But on the side he was recording a lot of
African American musicians because that was the kind of music he liked.
In fact, before Elvis Presley came in to his studio and recorded in 1954.
Sam Phillips was recording and releasing almost exclusively black artists.
In fact, an important record, Rocket 88, which was the number one R&B hit in 1951
for Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, interestingly enough with Ike Turner,
later of Ike and Tina Turner Review on piano.
that record was actually by Sam Phillips in his, in his studios in Sun, but then
leased to Chess Records who released it in 1951 on the Chess label, they bought
the rights to the recording from Sam Phillips.
So, he was involved in doing a certain amount of that.
But when he got his own artist, maybe his biggest artist early on was Rufus Thomas,
who had a some hits from an R&B charts. But then he was famous for having having
signed Elvis Presley in 1954 and then having sold Elvis' contract to RCA.
Other artists he had later in the 50's Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny
Cash, was also and Roy Orbison, were also on the Sun label in the second half of
the 1950's. But that gets ahead of our story.
Other important indie labels in R&B, Specialty Records in Los Angeles, started
by Art Rupe in 1945, he would later release all of his singles by Little
Richard. Imperial Records also in Los Angeles,
started in 1947 by Lew Chudd. He would release all those Fats Domino's
records, although all the Fats Domino's records were recorded by Dave Bartholomew
down in New Orleans. And then interestingly, Dot Records in
Tennessee, run by Randy Wood, it started in 1951, which released the records of
Pat Boone, of all people. Interestingly, the story about Pat Boone
is that we like to think about him as being exclusive appealing to white
artists, but Pat Boone actually had a bunch of hits on the R&B charts.
Now we want to, we want to just take a minute to contrast those indie labels,
Chess, Atlantic, Sun, Specialty, Imperial, and Dot with what would have
been the major labels in the 1950s, and those, those labels were.
And this line will come up and you'll see these as they go by.
Decca, which was started in the UK in 1937.
Mercury, out of Chicago. RCA-Victor out on New York.
Columbia out on New York. MGM, affiliated with the Hollywood
Studios out there. And Los Angeles, also Capital in Los
Angeles which was taken over by EMI. The Americ, the British label in 1956.
You can see the artists that are affiliated with each of those major
labels. Those labels, when they release a record,
could get it into national distribution almost immediately.
The indie labels were regional, it was very difficult for them to release
anything nationally. And so you had these fantastic major
labels that were focusing almost entirely on mainstream pop.
And that left room for these independent labels to focus on R&B.
Mostly not bothered too much or harassed in any way by the major labels.
Until rock and roll hit, and until these R&B labels started to sell big numbers of
records. Then all of a sudden, the majors took
notice, and they were going to start fighting back.
But that get's ahead of our story. In the next video, let's talk about the
role of radio and the rise of R&B.
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