Music History Lesson – 4/24/13
What was invented during this time that made a mass market for music? RADIO!
Popular music, or "classic pop," dominated the charts for the first half of the decade. Vocaldriven classic pop replaced Big Band/Swing at the end of World War II, although it often
used orchestras to back the vocalists. 1940s style Crooners vied with a new generation of
big voiced singers, many drawing on Italian Canto Bella traditions. Mitch Miller, A&R man at
the era's most successful label, Columbia Records, set the tone for the development of
popular music well into the middle of decade. Miller integrated country, Western, rhythm &
blues, and folk music into the musical mainstream, by having many of his label's biggest
artists record them in a style that corresponded to Pop traditions. Miller often employed
novel and ear-catching arrangements featuring classical instruments (whooping french
horns, harpsichord), or sound effects (whip cracks). He approached each record as a
miniature story, often "casting" the vocalist according to type.
Whereas Big Band/Swing music placed the primary emphasis on the orchestration, postwar/early 50s era Pop focused on the song's story and/or the emotion being expressed. By
the early 50s, emotional delivery had reached its apex in the miniature psycho-drama songs
of writer-singer Johnnie Ray. Known as 'The Cry Guy' and 'The Prince of Wails,' Ray's onstage emotion wrought 'breakdowns' provided a release for the pent-up angst of his
predominantly teenaged fans. As Ray described it, "I make them feel, I exhaust them, I
destroy them.'[2] It was during this period that the fan hysteria, which began with Frank
Sinatra during the Second World War, really began to take hold.
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was born December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The
only child of Sicilian immigrants, a teenaged Sinatra decided to become a singer after
watching Bing Crosby perform. He dropped out of high school, where he was a member of
the glee club, and began to sing at local nightclubs. Radio exposure brought him to the
attention of bandleader Harry James, with whom Sinatra made his first recordings,
including "All or Nothing at All." In 1940, Tommy Dorsey invited Sinatra to join his band.
After two years of chart-topping success with Dorsey, Sinatra decided to strike out on his
own.
Between 1943 and 1946, Sinatra's solo career blossomed as the singer charted 17 different
Top 10 singles. The mobs of bobby-soxer fans Sinatra attracted with his dreamy baritone
earned him such nicknames as "The Voice" and "The Sultan of Swoon." "It was the war
years, and there was a great loneliness," recalled Sinatra, who was unfit for military service
due to a punctured eardrum. "I was the boy in every corner drugstore who'd gone off,
drafted to the war. That was all."
Play Video!
Popular Genre’s of the 1950’s!
GospelFollowing World War II, gospel began its golden age. Artists like the Five Blind Boys of
Mississippi, The Swan Silvertones, Clara Ward Singers and Sensational Nightingales became
stars across the country; other early artists like Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Dinah
Washington, Johnnie Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett began their career in gospel
quartets during this period, only to achieve even greater fame in the '60s as the pioneers of
soul music, itself a secularized, R&B-influenced form of gospel. Mahalia Jackson and The
Staple Singers were undoubtedly the most successful of the golden age gospel artists. The
creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according
to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes,
including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment
product for the marketplace. Gospel music in general is characterized by dominant vocals
(often with strong use of harmony) referencing lyrics of a Christian nature. Several forms of
gospel music utilize choirs, use piano or Hammond organ, drums, bass guitar and,
increasingly, electric guitar. In comparison with hymns, which are generally of a statelier
measure, the gospel song is expected to have a refrain and often a more syncopated rhythm.
Gospel music example!
CountryThe 1950s also saw the popular dominance of the Nashville sound in country music.
Country's Nashville sound was slick and soulful, and a movement of rough honky tonk
developed in a reaction against the mainstream orientation of Nashville.
In the 1950s, country music was on the verge of breaking through to wider appeal.
Nashville's Grand Ole Opry became a destination for country fans finally able to travel after
wartime restrictions and millions tuned their radios to WSM radio every Saturday night.
Other rural radio stations across the country changed their formats and play lists to country
songs. Hank Williams recorded his biggest hit, "Your Cheatin' Heart." Another huge country
artist of the time was Johnny Cash.
Johnny Cash Bio!
Cash was born on February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas. The son of poor Southern
Baptist sharecroppers, Cash, one of seven children born to Ray and Carrie Rivers Cash,
moved with his family at the age of 3 to Dyess, Arkansas, so that his father could take
advantage of the New Deal farming programs instituted by President Roosevelt. There, the
Cash clan lived in a five-room house and farmed 20 acres of cotton and other seasonal
crops.John, or J.R. as he was known to those close to him, spent the bulk of the next 15 years
out in the fields, working alongside his parents and brothers and sisters. It wasn't always an
easy life, Cash would later recall. At the age of 10 he was hauling water for a road gang and
at 12 years old he moving large sacks of cotton.
From an early age Cash, who first picked up the guitar at the age of 12, showed a love for the
music that enveloped his life. Perhaps sensing that her boy had a gift for song, Carrie Rivers
Cash scraped together enough money so that Johnny could take singing lessons. Cash was
only in his early teens and didn't have much in the way of formal musical training, but after
just three lessons his teacher, enthralled with Cash's already unique singing style, told him
to stop taking lessons and to never deviate from his natural voice.
And video!- “I Walk the Line”
Doo WopIn addition, doo wop achieved widespread popularity in the 1950s. Doo wop was a
harmonically complex style of choral singing that developed in the streets of major cities
like Chicago,Illinois, New York City,New York, and, most importantly, Baltimore. Doo Wop
singers would work a cappella without backing instruments, and practice in hallways of
their schools, apartment buildings, or alleys to achieve echo effects on their voices, and
lyrics were generally innocent youthful observations on the upsides of teen love and
romance. As a musical genre, doo-wop features vocal group harmony with the musical
qualities of many vocal parts, nonsense syllables, a simple beat, sometimes little or no
instrumentation, and simple music and lyrics. It is ensemble single artists appearing with a
backing group. Solo billing usually implies an individual is more prominent in the musical
arrangement.
Pittsburgh and Doowop:
Pittsburgh was one of the centers of Doo Wop and Vocal Group music in the 1950s and early
1960s. An entire industry of Pittsburgh based artists, record labels, DJs, radio stations, and
teen dance venues produced and and promoted classic Doo Wop and Pop hits that are
mainstays of the Doo Wop / Vocal Group revival shows and collectibles releases. Pittsburgh
was one of the first cities to play Doo Wop Music and launched several of the biggest selling
Doo Wop Groups. DJ's Porky Chedwick and Mary Dee began playing "R&B" records on AM
station WHOD in 1948. They gave many early Doo Wop and R&B groups their first airplay
anywhere. Pittsburgh was a breakout market for Doo Wop and R&B songs in the 1950s and
early 1960s. Many songs that first became hits in Pittsburgh went on to become national
hits. If you could sell a song in the large market of Pittsburgh, you could sell it
anywhere. Soprano or tenor part often sang in falsetto. HUGE DURING THIS TIME.
Doowop example!
“In the Still of the Night”
Rock ‘n’ RollRock and roll dominated popular music in the latter half of the 1950s. The musical style
originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and
quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing
together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel
music; with country and western and Pop.[5] In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan
Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited
with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.
Rock and roll sent shockwaves across America. A generation of young teenagers collectively
rebelled against the music their parents loved. In general, the older generation loathed rock
and roll. Appalled by the new styles of dance the movement evoked, churches proclaimed it
Satan's music.
Because rock and roll originated among the lower classes and a segregated ethnic group,
many middle-class whites thought it was tasteless. Rock and roll records were banned from
many radio stations and hundreds of schools.
The commercial possibilities were limitless. As a generation of young adults finished
military service, bought houses in suburbia, and longed for stability and conformity, their
children seemed to take comfort for granted. They wanted to release the tensions that
bubbled beneath the smooth surface of postwar America.
Rock ‘n’ Roll example! “Rock Around the Clock”