RnR as a phenomenon of "re-colonization", a musical genre shaping across the
Atlantic, ca. 1954-1964
Selected timeline
1931 – Electric guitar invented
1951 – March, Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats
record ‘Rocket 88’
1954 – April 12th, Bill Haley and His Comets record
‘Rock Around the Clock’
– July 5th, Elvis Presley records ‘That’s All Right
(Mama)’
1955 – January 14th, Alan Freed organises the first
‘rock and roll’ concert
– March 19th, film ‘Blackboard Jungle’ premiers
in New York
– May 21st, Chuck Berry records ‘Maybelline’
– September 3rd, Little Richard records ‘Tutti
Frutti’
– December 19th, Carl Perkins records ‘Blue
Suede Shoes’
1956 – March 24th, Rock n’ Roll Dance Party premiers
with Alan Freed on CBS radio
- June 5th, Elvis performs ‘Hound Dog’ on The
Milton Berle Show
1957 – February 8th, Bo Diddley records ‘Bo Diddley’
– February 25th, Buddy Holly records ‘That’ll Be
The Day’
– July 6th, John Lennon and Paul McCartney
meet
– August 5th, American Bandstand begins its 30
year syndicated run
– October 8th, Jerry Lee Lewis records ‘Great
Balls of Fire’
– Little Richard ceases recording to become a
minister
1958 – January 8th, Chuck Berry records ‘Johnny B.
Goode’
– March 24th, Elvis joins the army
– Jerry Lee Lewis’ career is scandalised after he
marries his cousin
1959 – February 3rd, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and
The Big Bopper die in a plane crash
– Chuck Berry arrested; legal issues remain until
1963
– Payola hearings begin
1960 – April 14th, Motown and Tamla merge to form
Motown Record Corporation.
– April 17th, Eddie Cochran killed in a car crash
– August 1st, The Beatles make their debut in
Hamburg
– Payola made illegal
1961 – January 15th, Motown records sign The
Supremes
– October 3rd, The Beach Boys release ‘Surfin’,
their debut single
1962 – April 7th, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet
Brian Jones
1963 – February 22nd, ‘Please Please Me’ by The
Beatles reaches #1 in the U.K.
– March 17th, The Kinks form
– November 22nd, With The Beatles is released in
the U.K.
1964 – February 9th, The Beatles perform on The Ed
Sullivan Show
– April 4th, The Beatles occupy all top 5 spots on
the Billboard Chart
– August 26th, The Kinks release ‘You Really
Got Me’
– September 5th, ‘The House of the Rising Sun’
becomes #1 in the U.S.
– October 25th, The Rolling Stones perform on
The Ed Sullivan Show
Selected Bibliography
Selected Discography (available on Youtube)
Bertrand, M, Race, Rock and Elvis. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2000.
1954: ‘Rock Around The Clock’ by Bill Haley and His
Comets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mZLpDuuf40
Curtis, J., Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and
Society, 1954-1984. Bowling Green: Bowling Green
State University Popular Press, 1987.
‘That’s All Right (Mama)’ by Elvis Presley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIWlWA1YTBw
Donnelly, M, Sixties Britain: culture, society and
politics. Harlow: Pearson/Longman, 2005.
1955: ‘Maybelline’ by Chuck Berry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75RiHJGfyUE
Ennis, P. H., The Seventh Stream: The Emergence of
Rocknroll in American Popular Culture. Hanover:
Wesleyan University Press, 1992.
‘Tutti Frutti’ by Little Richard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co47Pj9hUFE
Garofalo, R., Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the
U.S.A.(Fourth Edition). Upper Saddle River: Pearson
Prentice Hall, 2008.
Gillet, C., The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and
Roll. London: Souvenir, 1996.
Hatch, D., and Millward, S., From Blues to Rock: An
Analytical History of Pop Music. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1987.
Lipsitz, G., ‘Land of a Thousand Dances: Youth,
Minorities, and the Rise of Rock and Roll’ in
Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of
Cold War ed. Lary May. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989. pp. 267- 284.
Marwick, A., The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in
Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c.1958 –
c.1974. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Carl Perkins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yENF0NuIKQ
1956: ‘Hound Dog’ by Elvis Presley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXiulKIgGpg
‘Tutti Frutti’ by Pat Boone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0BOOvmfw74
‘Long Tall Sally’ by Little Richard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9prOI4433M
1957: ‘That’ll Be The Day’ by Buddy Holly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6YDzmqZ0I
‘Great Balls of Fire’ by Jerry Lee Lewis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpaQwbQ7NYg
1958: ‘Johnny B. Goode’ by Chuck Berry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWNykOk2ckE
Perone, J. E., Mods, Rockers and the Music of the
British Invasion. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2009.
1961: ‘Surfin’’ by The Beach Boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2sfev-gu3I
Stilwell, R., "Music of the youth revolution. Rock
through the 1960s" (in The Cambridge history of
twentieth-century Music, by N. Cook and A. Pople).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
1964: ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ by The Beatles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMNPPwq8I2Y
‘Long Tall Sally’ by The Beatles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66csXnFkmEU
‘You Really Got Me’ by the Kinks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3Ei_yoI4c
‘The House of the Rising Sun’ by The Animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdPQp6Jcdk
Serena Tarascio, University of Western Piedmont - Vercelli
Session 11
RnR meets Folk Revival and goes political, ca. 1965 (from Dylan goes electric to
Woodstock).
Quotations:
“How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?”
(Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan - 1965)
“He’s a Rebel and he’ll never ever
be any good,
He’s a Rebel ‘cause he never ever
does what he should,
Well just because he doesn’t do what
everybody else does,
That’s no reason why I can’t give him
all my love.”
(He’s a Rebel, The Crystal – 1952)
"An artist has to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's at somewhere. You
always have to realize that you are constantly in a state of becoming." (quoted from Bob Dylan, No
Direction Home, 2005)
“When Dylan picked up an electric guitar, folk music died as an influential musical form. In fact,
Dylan said about rock, “In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel valid off a record
player.” Was he referring to the rock-inspired death of folk?” (from London, 77)
“It’s 10 A.M., Monday, August 18, 1969: Jimi Hendrix is playing to a crowd of forty thousand.
Another half million or so have left during the night. Many had to be at work; others had to return
to worried families who’d heard conflicting reports about the chaos at Woodstock. As I watch from
the stage, I see more and more people wandering away. Jimi notices too, and says, “You can live if
you want to. We’re just jamming, that’s all. You can live, or you can clap.” He looks up at the
streaks of sun pouring through the clouds – some of the first rays we’ve seen in a while. “The sky
church is still here, as you can see,” he murmurs.”(from Lang, 1)
“For me, Woodstock was a test of whether people of our generation really believed in one another
and the world we were struggling to create. How would we do when we were in charge? Could we
live as the peaceful community we envisioned?” (from Lang, 4)
“Woodstock came to symbolize our solidarity. That’s what meant the most to me – the connection
to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions
who couldn’t be there but were touched by it. Over that August weekend, during a very tumultuous
time in our country, we showed the best of ourselves, and in the process created the kind of society
we all aspired to, even if only for a brief moment.” (from Lang, 4)
“The Woodstock Music and Art Festival will surely go down in history as a mass event of great and
positive significance in the life of the country… That this many young people could assemble so
peaceably and with such good humor in a mile-square area… speaks volumes about their dedication
to the ideal of respect for the dignity of the individual… In a nation beset with a crescendo of
violence, this is vibrantly hopeful sign. If violence is infectious, so, happily, is nonviolence. The
benign character of the young people gathered at Bethel communicated itself to many of their
elders, including policemen, and the generation gap was successfully bridged in countless cases.
Any event which can do this is touched with greatness.” (The Boston Globe, about Woodstock,
from Lang, 249)
Key Dates:
1965: Bob Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited and the famous show of Dylan took place at the
Newport Folk Festival , when he and The Band played with electric instruments.
15th,16th, 17th August 1969: Festival of Woodstock
Suggestions for further reading:
Bennet, Andy, edit. Remembering Woodstock, Aldershot, Hampshire, England ; Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2004
Dettmar, Kevin J. H., The Cambridge companion to Bob Dylan, Cambridge University Press, 2009
Greil, Marcus. Like a rolling stone : Bob Dylan at the crossroads. New York: PublicAffairs, 2006.
Lang, Michael, and Holly George –Warren. The Road To Woodstock, New York: Ecco, 2009
London, Herbert Ira. Closing the circle : a cultural history of the rock revolution. Chicago: NelsonHall, 1984
The Paradox of Re-Colonization: the European Invasion of American Popular Music
Black Music Goes Mainstream in the 1960s
Student: Robert Moscaliuc
Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Andrea Carosso
Social/Political Background
Black power, state repression, and black communities

of resistance

What’s Going On
The period from 1968 to 1972
→ state-sanctioned repression
against
AfricanAmericans (blatant attacks on
the Black Panthers, shooting
of students at Jackson State
College in Mississippi and
point of view
black power appeared
limited
and uneven: by
1980 less than 1
per cent of elected officials in the
“By speaking of communities of resistance, I am suggesting that various class, generational, regional, and
ideological communities embraced the Civil Rights or
Black Power movements as legitimate symbols to organize based on local struggles. […] Understood in full
context, the growth of the Black Panther Party and
other black nationalist organizations represented the
emergence of diverse communities of resistance that
were not necessarily formal members of any political
‚With What’s Going On, Gaye, with the
assistance of modern recording technology and a bevy of cowriters, crafted a
musical tome which synthesized the
acute issues within black urban life, with
organization, but that embraced the codes and sym-
the prophetic and existential vision of
bols of black nationalist rhetoric.” (Mark Anthony Neal,
What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black
the African-American church. *<+ Dealing with the personal demons of drug
Public Culture, 1999)
addiction, depression associated with
the death of singing partner Tammi Terrell, and his brother Frankie’s service in
Southern University in Louisiana, assaults on prisoners at
Attica state prison in New
York) → being a dissident
(and black) was very dangerous; → restraints of black political expression reduced the
black protest movement to
‚dated and uncritical tropes of
black empowerment and masculinity‛; from a political
United
States
were black despite the fact that
the black population comprised
over 11 per cent
of
the
total;
‚schizophrenic
phase in the
black
freedom
the Vietnam War, Gaye produced a singular protest statement readily accessible
within mass consumer culture. *<+ I
maintain that the centrality of Gaye’s
recording to the black protest tradition
and mass-market culture should be interpreted as one incarnation of the nonviolent mass civil disobedience that Mar-
tin Luther King demanded shortly before his death.‛ (Neal, 1999: 62-3)


struggle‛ (Ward, 1998: 344);
Amidst this social and political turmoil, Marvin Gaye records and releases what later
became
the
prototypical
black
protest
recording:
What’s Going on (1971). Gaye’s
recording exerted a major influence on later artists who
recorded compositions from
the recording → this reflected
a certain commitment to musically enhance the black protest tradition of the 1960s and
early 1970s.
Music perceived as a form of
resistance → ‚specific social
problems elicit a musical re-
sponse, which in turn reinforces public attitudes‛ (Herbert I. London, Closing the Circle: A Cultural History of the
Rock Revolution) → the creation of the so-called ‚communities of resistance‛; ‚the period of 1968 – 1972 was probably the most significant period for music devoted to the
dominant themes of black
struggle and social movement‛; → the rhythm and
blues of the later 1960s and
early 1970s was full of songs
explicitly about the struggle,
about the social, political and
economic plight of black

Americans, and about the
state of American race relations;
Corporate annexation of
black music: ‚to market soul
music, if not blackness itself,
to a young mainstream consumer base and as a purveyor
of youthful sensibilities for
older audiences, but also as a
measurement of racial and social difference‛ → the mass
commodification of soul reduces blackness to a commodity that could be bought and
sold (Neal, 1999: 94);
Short bibliography:
Nelson, George. Where Did Our Love
To Europe They Went
“The Beatles sent limos
to the airport to pick up
the entourage and tried
in vain to arrange for a
jam session, but they
were in the midst of finishing up their longwaited Sergeant Pepper album and were
never able to do anything more than attend
Carla Thomas’s show at
the Bag O’Nails, where,
upon meeting Steve
Cropper, the four Beatles stood in unison and
bowed from the waist.”
(Peter Guralnick,
Sweet Soul Music)
Go? : The rise & fall of the Motown
sound. New York: St. Martin's Press,
The raviest, the grooviest,
1987.
and the slickest
Guralnick, Peter. Sweet Soul Music:

The first official StaxVolt tour of Europe in the
spring of 67’: ‚Just in case you
haven’t heard – the Stax Show
must be one of the raviest,
grooviest, slickest tour packages that Britain has ever
seen. And if you haven’t seen
it already – pull your finger
out!‛ (New Musical Express,
March 18, 1967) → almost all
British papers, with the exception of some, heralded the arrival with headlines so that
the interviews, reviews, and
expressions of faith were so
laudatory as to be almost embarrassing; yet there were also
dissenting voices, Bill Millar,
critic and fan, wondered if
Eddie Floyd’s ‚overriding talent is to see how many times
it is possible to cram ‘Let me
hear you say yeah’ into three
Rhythm and blues and the southern
dream
of
freedom.
Boston:
Little,
Brown, 1999.
Ward, Brian. Just My Soul Responding:
Rhythm and blues, black consciousness,
and race relations. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1998.
Neal, Mark Anthony. What the music
said: Black popular music and Black public culture. New York: Routledge,
1999.
London, Herbert I. Closing the Circle:
A cultural history of the rock revolution.
Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1984.
songs‛; he was also concerned
that Otis’s vocal style was becoming increasingly mannered, his gestures aiming at
pleasing the crowd rather
than expressing authentic
emotion;
Marina Muravyeva
The Paradox of Re-Colonization: the European Invasion of American Popular Music, 1961-1969, Professor
Andrea Carosso, Università di Torino
22 September 2011
Rock Around the Bloc: the British Invasion on Native Soil
Important dates:
1945-1965:
Mainstream: twist, jazz are popular.
Counterculture: Stilyagi and “Rock on the Bones” dominate.
1957 - The World Festival of Youth and Students, VI, Moscow. The festival contributes a lot to the
growth of the Stilyagi movement. Foreign students bring to the USSR Western clothes, records, and
drugs.
mid-60s – end of the Stilyagi era and the beginning of the Beatniks era. First beat-bands appear: both
official and non-official. Beat dominates both in mainstream culture and in counterculture, with the
difference that the official beat is to a great extent adjusted to the Soviet ideology. Tape recorders
appear: end of “Rock on the Bones” and start of the Magnetic Era.
late 60s – youth got completely into British and American bands, especially into the Beatles and the
Rolling Stones. Hundreds of beat-bands appear at universities.
1967 – first record of the Beatles officially published in the USSR.
1967 – Radio Mayak starts a series of programs about Western Music.
1971 – first Rock festival in the USSR, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) with more than 30 bands
playing.
mid70s – Western music appears officially.
1975 – first record of the Rolling Stones published.
1976 – Cliff Richard comes to the USSR. A blast! 12 sold out shows in St. Petersburg and 8 in
Moscow.
1980 – The Spring Rhymes Festival in Tbilisi, - “the Soviet Woodstock”
Stilyagi
Stilyagi (style hunters, hipsters) youth underground subculture
emerges in the aftermath of WWII and dominates until the mid-60s,
when it develops into the Beatlemania movement. Stilyagi were
primarily distinguished by their snappy or fashionable clothing, and
were considered politically incorrect and contrary to the communistsocialist realities of the time, admiration of modern, especially
American, lifestyles, and fascination with modern music and
fashions. Records and clothes were partly taken from Germany after
WW2 and were later accessible through people going abroad, mainly
the Soviet elite.
“Rock on the bones”: people duplicated records with a converted phonograph that would "press"
a record using plentiful and cheap discarded x-ray plates. Millions of duplications of Western and
Soviet groups were made and distributed all over the Soviet Bloc.
VIA Music
VIA (Russian: ВИА), or Vokalno-Instrumentalny Ansambl ("Vocal – Instrumental Ensemble"), was
the official name applied to pop and rock bands in the Soviet Union.
Soviet VIAs played a specific style of pop music. They performed youth-oriented radio-friendly
music, which was a mix of contemporary Western and Soviet trends. Folk instruments were often
used; songs varied from pop ballads, dance-beat disco and new wave to mainstream rock.
Dean Reed, “the ultimate maverick cowboy”
Dean Reed in the late 60s and in the 70s was probably the most
famous American in the world. Everywhere, but not in the United
States, where he was considered to be a traitor.
A singer and an actor, he is often called the Red Elvis, partly
because of his singing approach close to the one of Elvis, and
mostly because of the fact that he brought to the Soviet Bloc a
new kind of music – Rock'n'Roll. Everything Reed did was highly
welcomed in the USSR as he had strong socialistic views which
he was constantly sharing.
This outrageously good-looking American revolutionary and
passionate freedom fighter is definitely an inalienable part Soviet
of Rock music history.
Some biographical notes:
1938 – was born in Denver, Colorado, USA.
1958 – moved to Los Angeles, California, where recorded his first album in 1961.
1963 – went on tour to Latin America, where he was extremely popular, and stayed there.
1966 – moved to Rome.
1965 – first visited the USSR. Became hugely popular there, and eventually settled in Moscow.
1973 – moved to East Berlin and lived and worked there till 1986.
1986 – received hate mail from the U.S. following an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes.
6 months later Reed was found dead in Zeuthener Lake. The cause of his death remains unknown.
Discussion questions:
1. What do you think about the “tough line wall of the American culture” William Roberts is talking
about as compared to the Iron Curtain? Does it really exist, or did it ever exist?
2. To what extent music defines culture or is it culture that defines music? In Russia there is a
very well-spread opinion that it was the Beatles who contributed to the collapse of the USSR.
Could you possibly agree with that?
Suggested reading/watching:
1. American Rebel. Dir. William Roberts. USA. 1985.
2. Ball, Alan M. Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia.Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers. 2003.
3. Dean Reed, the Iron Curtain Elvis. David Gordon Smith. Spiegel. June 2, 2007. Web.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,466847,00.html
4. Kto Vy, Mister Reed? (Who Are You, Mister Reed?) Dir. Viktor Belyakov. Russia. 2004. Web.
www.rutv.ru/video.html?vid=123880
5. Stilyagi (Hipsters). Dir. Valery Todorovsky. Russia. 2008.
6. The Red Elvis. Dir. Leopold Grün. Germany. 2007.
7. "The Jazz-Rock Counterculture is Born". The Historical Political Development of Soviet Rock
Music. Tracy Donovan Drake. Web archive.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080615011159/http://www.powerhat.com/tusovka/tus.ch1.html
8. Troitsky, Artemy. Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia. Omnibus Press. 1987.
9. Nadelson, Reggie. Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American
Boy Who Brought Rock 'N' Roll to the Soviet Union. USA. 1991.