'Rock 'n' Roll' and the songs that changed the world

[albertjohn]

The Weavers' date=' Pete Seeger, etc., were doing blues for a long time before the Beatles.

 

[/quote']

 

Of course they were, but The Beatles are reason why thousands of young musicians formed bands and dreamed of stardom.

 

So, I say "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" which I think was one of the songs they did on their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 1963 (?) So they ceased to be a British beat combo, from then on they were a global phenomenon.

[Californiaman]

Actually I think the history discussion has relevance...

 

Songs that changed the Rock world? Gotta be seen in historical context.

 

I don't think some of my favorite 60s and 70s stuff could have happened without some of the 50s stuff.

 

No Milod' date=' it's Rock Songs That Changed The World.[/size']

[charlie brown]

I can't agree Charlie Brown...

 

I was listening to blues before the Brit "invasion' date='" and I was playing it.

 

The post WWII era brought huge changes in the economics of music toward the smaller combo and the new technology of the electric guitar.

 

It also brought major changes in terms of racial attitudes.

 

Dixieland was "black" music. It was awfully popular. Hell, what of "St. Louis Blues?" Ragtime was "black" but in forms roughly the same as "white" classical short form music. Basie and Ellington were "mainstream" even if they went through hell trying to find a place to eat or sleep on tour - and not just in the south.

 

I don't see much difference in Pat Boone or Elvis doing "covers" of black musicians and the Brit guys doing it. Both increased the inevitability of some increased popularity of blues and black musicians. It's the same thing. Why are certain American "black" blues artists lionized today and few hear of Mississippi John Hurt or Gary Davis as "blues" guitarists? Because they didn't get into the "rock" paradigm in the UK as passed over to the US in the '60s.

 

And yet... yeah, we know about BB. How many have recordings of Howlin' Wolf or Sunnyland Slim, though, outside a very select "community" of musicians or blues "nuts?"

 

Why didn't BB outsell the Stones? Or why didn't John Lee Hooker outsell the Animals? In fact, why were younger black "R&B" groups outselling John Lee in the 60s even in the black community?

 

Why did a few swing bands in the 30s and 40s push so hard to break the "color line?" In the '50s there was a big to-do over "mixed bands" and whether they were good for the music or bad?

 

Louis didn't hate Bunny Berigan because Bunny freely admitted his artistic admiration and emulation.

 

The Weavers, Pete Seeger, etc., were doing blues for a long time before the Beatles.

 

And then also comes the question "what is Blues?" How about "Irene Goodnight?" The folkie classic "Dink's Song?" Is a "field holler" a blues? That stuff was all out there in the 40s and 50s.

 

In spite of "race records" and such, there's no question in my mind that what we call today "blues" is black modified by white then modified by black and then modified by white and then modi.....

 

To be really blunt, consider that "blues" as we know it today is a heavily guitar, organ, bass, drum, harmonica, brass and woodwind art.

 

How "ethnic" do you want to get? Early fretless gourd banjo playing a rising and falling English variation of some half-remembered African tune heard from one's grandmother? Is that blues?

 

Ah, well...

 

<grin>

[/quote']

 

"Blues" has been around (in this country) since Slavery, at least.

No one's arguing that. But, just because "You" were listening, or even lots of other's, doesn't mean it was on the standard rotation of radio stations all over the country! Pete Seeger, and others, were all but banned, from radio for being "Communists" or "Communist Sympathizers!" So, they weren't making a lot of "mainstream" music, at the time, either. Stupid, as it was! But, like "blues" or "race records" they had their audience, underground or not.

I wasn't implying that NO ONE was listening, to that music...simply that the "mainstream" was not! The Beatles (Stones, Animals, and Yardbirds, espeically) made it more accessible to the white masses, that's all. The Byrds

made Dylan more "mainstream rock" as well, although he was doing just fine, on his own, by that time.

 

Heck, where I grew up, there was only "Country" music, for a long time, so "Rock & Roll" seemed more an offshoot of that (which in many ways, it was, really). There were some inroads, with "Soul" music, or the slicker ("tamer")

"R&B," that was polished up, to make it more airwave friendly. But, after "The Beatles" were on Ed Sullivan, the music scene, all around, just exploded! It was THE major "turning point/seismic shift," if you like, towards "Rock" as we know it today, even if we didn't know it yet, at the time. That's all. ;>)

 

CB

[grampa]

To elaborate on "My Generation". It stated in no uncertain terms one of the premier attitudes of rock and the generation, "Hope I die before I get old".

[milod]

Well, CB, for what it's worth...

 

I played in both pre and post "brit invasion" rock bands. Rock was "in" regardless. Bill Haley, movies such as "high school confidential," and such had already put rock on the map. In fact, when I start going back to some of the stuff of the 50s era I continually surprise myself at how similar a lot of the music was.

 

The radio speeded the way people heard different types of music. Minnie the Moocher isn't all that different with a big band than with a single good guitar player.

 

Blues back to slavery days? Not really as we "know" blues. That's a much more modern development. Again, it's like W.C. Handy. Is St. Louis Blues "blues" or does it have to sound like Howlin' Wolf with electric guitars and a i-iv-v progression? Where did Handy get his stuff into his head? By a lot of crossing musical cultures.

 

Hmmmm.... Bill Monroe and "Muleskinner Blues." True blues done by white farmers in southern Indiana or what?

 

There's Gary Davis playing... whazzat, Stars and Stripes Forever on his big Gibson? Blues? Heck, that blew away even the kids who were burning flags in the spring of '64. Frankly Chet Atkins was doing darned near the same, but he was white, spoke with a mild southern accent and used an electric guitar and was obviously "country" and therefore to be ignored instead of emulated.

 

Stupid of us back then if we were "anti-country," but... it all was part of an incredible burst of available money, radio, television, high demand for "I'll do it myself, thank you" musical instruments... The stage was set for the baby boomers, who were in those teenage "record-buying years" as the Beatles descended upon America. The word at the time was, "Aren't they cute?" Then the Stones and "Aren't they ugly?" and so forth.

 

The 14-18 year olds didn't want the "old stuff" like Haley and Elvis and Doowop or the R&B that the "older people" were still listening to.

 

Phasing effects came out big time in '59 with "The Big Hurt." That doesn't even get to Les Paul's innovations.

 

Little Richard, Chubby Checker... No importance setting up the Brit "invasion?" They were "country?" Chuck Berry? Bo Diddley? Scotty Moore?

 

Jorgen Ingman and "Apache" was basically a copy of the Shadows treatment of the piece in the UK. It took a European to get that into the US, but functionally it was pre-Beatle Brit that arguably was pretty much the same as the Ventures and others were doing in the US.

 

No, "we" were looking for new things for an increasingly affluent youth marketplace and they were just entering their teens at that time period.

 

Me? <grin> Within 50 feet of Iowa corn fields I was listening to John Lee Hooker in the mid 1950s. Didn't start playing rock until '61 although I was listening for a lot longer. Pre-Beatle, post Beatle... Not really much difference.

 

And I don't think I was the only one - and this was NOT in urban beatnick society but in middle America that I heard and got into blues and such.

 

Hey, the Beatles did some neat stuff and it was a great marketing effort for some talented musicians.

 

But they didn't change the world. It was changing regardless, and at a nearly breakneck pace. The change in American music and musical attitudes had already begun before WWII.

 

As I say, it was a combination of a bursting-out new economic availability, technology, mass audio communications, accelerating cultural changes, a big marketplace for guitars and the "new" electric guitar, a melting pot of styles...

 

And record execs not above payola and always looking for "something new" to promote.

 

Yeah, the weavers had their political problems in the 50s, but their music already was "mainstream."

 

And Seeger wasn't the only one influenced by Lomax, for heaven's sake, even if he wasn't a houseguest.

 

Okay, maybe I see music development as an ongoing chain because I'm old and love history.

 

Let's all badmouth the Hammond B3 and the Leslie, the early effects folks who set up electronically changed sound concepts and the very idea that one could create different "concept" sounds, and call Bill Haley "country"... <ironic chuckle>

[matiac]

In it's beginnings' date=' "Real" Rock & Roll, was really just Gospel or Blues music, with a "Country" back beat!

 

Billl Hayley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee ("The Killer") Lewis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Johnny Cash,

ALL made "Rock & Roll," Rock! But, with Payola, the loss of Holly, The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, and some personal

scandals of some of the others, the very late '50's and early 60's were pretty dismal, for "Rock & Roll!" We were

listening to "lilly white" versions of some R&B songs, done by Pat Boone, and other "Pretty Boy," singers, of that

era. Black song writers, and musicians, couldn't break into the mainstream, back then...unless their songs were

done by those white artists. Unjust/Wrong?...Absolutely...but, that's the way it was!

Dylan was great, but still "Folk" at that time. The Beatles (and later, the rest of the British Invasion) changed all that, and brought back "Rock & Roll," to American audiences, and helped in no small way, bring R&B (AKA"Race" music), to the forefront, instead of leaving it relegated to relatively few specialty stations. It's interesting that on their first trip to New York, they requested only their "black" music heros records, mostly. And, because they were white, and "English," it made it all the more acceptable, to "White" audiences, there....and, all over the country.

 

 

Amen.

 

As to the "British Boy Blues" players not getting it?! I disagree! They GOT IT! It's easy to criticize them, now....but, at the time, they too, did a lot to bring that type music forward, as well. "Blues" you didn't hear, except by specialty stations, in the large Urban areas, and the "South!" It wasn't played, much at all, otherwise. But, after the second wave of the first British Invasion ("Cream" era), as well as some influential white American players (Mike Bloomfield, for one) "Blues" suddenly got very poplular and accessible, to a much larger audience. Was it "as good as" the originals? Maybe, maybe not? That would depend on one's personal preferences, and one's familiararity at that time, seems to me. But, the British Blues people loved American blues originators as much, if not more, than we did, here. We had to discover (or rediscover) that music, again...through the British! So...they "Got it!" Jazz has always been more popular in Europe, than here...and Jazz and Blues are really THE American Music. But, like so many things, we don't appreciate them enough, quite often, until they're reintroduced from somewhere else. Let's not forget, Hendrix couldn't get arrested as a guitar player (after Little Richard's gig), for a time, until he was "discovered" by Chas Chandler of The Animals, brought back to England, repackaged, and THEN became famous, because (at first) everyone thought he was English! ;>b

 

;>)

 

CB[/quote']

[myspace.com/jessenoah]

ZEPPELIN 1!

in terms of production, never before had their been a record with so much bottom end (that i can think of)

 

I can only imagine what it must have been like in the late 60s, to listen to zep1, and compare that to the beatles, or even hendrix, "popular music" had been dominated by vocals, and guitar/piano/lead instraments, with the bass and drums typically being drowned out by everything else

 

the songs are cool and everything, but it is the massive wall of bass and drums that had never been heard before in a studio recording, that makes zep1 a rock song(album) that changed the world