MUSI 2007 W12
Introduction
• One thing to be aware of: although this course has a very
broad title (“popular music”), we are going to be talking almost
entirely about U.S. popular music, and a little bit about the
U.K.
• Why might that be?
• “Popular” is a vague term, and various kinds of music have
been called popular for different reasons. Some of the
particular types we’ll be looking at in this course include…
• Folk musics and/or musics connected to particular social
activities which were especially subject to…
• Professionalization and marketing, partly in response to…
• “Pop” as a distinctive mentality and aesthetic. This includes
commercialized versions of musics which first existed in less
commercial forms, and also musics that were originally
created with commercial intent.
• What would be some examples of all the above?
• Also, it is important to understand a little about the nature of
African-American culture, and racial politics in the U.S.. Why
is that?
• So to begin to flesh out some of these issues, and also to give
you some background information necessary to understand
the course material, I want to look at a few pre-1945 forms
which are all quite different from one another. But what all
these have in common is that they each provided important
source material for popular music as it evolved in the second
half of the twentieth century.
• These styles are: Anglo-American folk ballads; delta blues;
Tin Pan Alley pop; early country music, and; rhythm and blues
(R+B).
• Audio: Blind Alfred Reed “The Wreck Of The Virginian.”
• There are two common meanings of the word “ballad.” This
particular meaning (as in “Anglo-American folk ballad”) goes
back to at least the 16th century, and the repertoire itself goes
back even farther (compare to Greek drama, Norse sagas,
and the poetry of West African griots, for example).
• Discuss: the nature of the lyrics and the relationship between
the music and voice.
• Discuss: the social importance and function of these kinds of
songs. Also, what kind of people sang these songs, and under
what sorts of circumstances?
• Explain the “folk process”: oral/aural transmission, variants
(sometimes without originals), authorship.
• Explain the general meaning of “form,” and “strophic form” in
particular (AAAA…)
• Now on to delta blues. There are many different types of
blues, and they have all been important in one way or
another. But we’ll focus on delta blues for two reasons: (i) it is
an especially good example of some main features that most
kinds of blues share; (ii) it was especially influential on later
rock and folk musicians (along with electric Chicago blues,
which we’ll discuss in a later lecture).
• We don’t have a precise timeline for the evolution of this
music, because the earliest sound recordings date from the
1920s, at which point the music had already developed.
However, delta blues as we know it couldn’t have developed
before 1865, so that lets us roughly pinpoint the period when
it was appearing (probably somewhere around 1870-1900).
• What happened in 1865, and why would that event have been
crucial for blues and other kinds of U.S. popular/folk music?
• A few important things to keep in mind about early AfricanAmerican culture: (i) why it is so central to popular music
history (the strange blend of segregation and intermingling in
U.S. culture); (ii) the slave trade and connections to the
Caribbean and West Africa; (iii) the immediate and long-term
effects of slavery; (iv) challenges and features of the postslavery era: sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, migrancy and
migration, the church/juke-joint dynamic.
• Audio: Robert Johnson “Me And The Devil Blues” (read
lyrics while listening).
• Although this was recorded rather late (1937), it is a good
example of the delta blues style.
• First, the lyrics. How do these lyrics reflect the influence of
some of the post-slavery factors we’ve already discussed?
• Two other important features in blues lyrics: associative
coherence (as opposed to narrative coherence), and the
floating pool of verses.
• In a general way, how does this performance resemble the
folk ballad we just heard? Why is the delta blues usually
included in the larger family of “folk blues”?
• Consider also: what was the lifestyle and persona of the
average folk blues musician? How was it influential on later
forms of popular music?
• Finally, explain 12-bar blues form.
• Preliminary to understanding this: beats and bars as
measures of musical time. Also, what is a chord and what do
we mean by chord changes (a.k.a. harmony).
12-bar blues form
Bar
1
Chords
I
IV
Lyrics
a
a
Guitar
2 3
Res.
4
5
6 7
I
8 9 10 11 12
V IV (T)
b
Res.
Res.
• One style that’s dramatically different from blues and folk
music, but was equally influential on 20th century popular
music, is Tin Pan Alley pop.
• As a warm-up, listen to this and try to answer two questions:
(a) in what ways does it differ from what we’ve heard up to
this point; (b) how is it similar to styles that we still call “pop”
today?
• Audio: Judy Garland “Over The Rainbow”
• The post-civil-war era in the U.S. was also marked by greatly
increased urbanization and industrialization. By around 1900,
we start to see the existence of a “mass audience” as we
usually think of it, and musical genres begin to appear which
deliberately pitch themselves to this audience.
• Question: what is a mass audience, and what conditions help
one to exist? In what ways might a music be transformed or
created to appeal to such an audience?
• In the 19th century and very early 20th, the big money in the
music industry was connected to music publishing. One
example of publishing success and the kind of money
involved is the song “After The Ball” (1892), which brought in
$25,000 per week for a time (roughly $600,000 / wk in today’s
money).
• By 1900, most popular music publishers had moved their
headquarters to the same small neighbourhood in New York
City. Prior to this, many U.S. cities hosted successful
publishers (including some that we might not nowadays
expect, e.g., Milwaukee), so the concentration was an
important change in the industry. This group of New Yorkbased publishers almost completely dominated the U.S.
popular music market from around 1900 to the 1940s.
• The phrase Tin Pan Alley consequently has three interrelated
meanings.
• First, it refers to the neighbourhood in New York where these
publishers were located. Although by the 1920s this complete
geographical domination weakened as Los Angeles became
an important secondary pop music centre (why did that
happen?)
• Second, it refers to a way of working (explain:
professionalization, overt commercialism, segregation of
tasks, volume of production).
• Third, it refers to a certain kind of mainstream aesthetic
(discuss details: formula, universal themes, accessibility,
professionalism again).
• Nowadays, people still use the phrase Tin Pan Alley to
describe a certain way of working and a certain aesthetic.
• TPA also gives us another musical form to add to our list
(along with strophic, and 12-bar blues). This form is
sometimes called Tin Pan Alley Ballad form, and sometimes
32-Bar Chorus form.
• Notice, this is the other meaning of “ballad,” referring to a
slow, commercial, sentimental song (usually a love song).
• This form can be written: AABA.
• Each section is eight bars long, and the ‘B’ section is often
called the ‘middle eight.’
• TPA pop is a good example of a music which was created to
be commercial and professional from the outset. By contrast,
country music began through the commercialization and
professionalization of folk music, much of which was not at
first commercial (or at least not as obviously so).
• Audio and overhead: The Carter Family “Keep On The
Sunny Side”
• Audio and overhead: Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel No. 1”
• Both The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers made their first
recordings in 1927 at the famous Bristol Sessions (explain
details).
• Together, they are generally regarded as the earliest
figureheads of country music as a distinct genre.
• In what ways does their music resemble the different kinds of
folk music we’ve already looked at? Are there significant
differences in sound or lyrics?
• So in what ways was folk music commercialized to create
country as a new genre?
• (a) Image creation. Discuss how Jimmie Rodgers and The
Carter Family represent clear-cut, different, and marketable
kinds of personas. And also how they established the two
basic prototypes for country images that came later.
• (b) Economic scale.
• (c) Music which sounds old-timey, but is newly composed (or
at least newly copyrighted).
• The last pre-1945 style to consider for now is Rhythm and
Blues (R+B).
• Audio: Big Mama Thornton “Hound Dog”
• How does this resemble the delta blues we’ve already heard,
and how is it different?
• Specifically, why might this style be called rhythm and blues?
• The R+B style developed in the early 1940s, by which time
African-American culture had mostly completed its
transformation from urban to rural. Also, by the 1940s black
Americans collectively had enough disposable income to be
an important force in the popular music market. So R+B was
one of the forms which expressed this new set of
circumstances.
• Some important features of R+B
• Instrumental arrangements were generally in 12-bar blues
form, although the vocals often deviated from the format.
• Accompaniments often built on riffs.
• Louder than delta blues because: (i) this was a group form
rather than a solo form; (ii) instruments and voices were often
amplified, and; (iii) drums were common. Although delta blues
was also used as a dance music, R+B was clearly specialized
as a dance music for use in larger, noisier venues.
• The lyrical range was generally narrower than in delta blues,
and the themes were generally lighter (lots of party lyrics and
less dark relationship lyrics).
• Frequent use of saxophone (influence of big band swing).
• Shouting vocal style.
• For our purposes, R+B is important for at least two reasons:
(i) it is one indication of how African-American culture was
making the transition from a predominantly folk culture to a
“popular culture”; (ii) it was a very clear influence on early rock
and roll. You could make the case that the term “rock and roll”
is more a sociological one than a musicological one, because
in practice it often essentially meant “R+B played by and/or
for white people” (more about that in the Elvis lecture).
• Also in the 1940s, some very similar things were happening in
country music. If you look up the history and stylistic details of
early honky tonk, you should be able to see how it resembles
R+B in some important ways.