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.
Rockabilly Popsters
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Из курса от партнера University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part One
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The Demise of Rock and the Promise of Soul (1959-63)
Was this era the dark ages for rock music or was it a golden era cut short by the British invasion? The music of teen idols, the folk revival, early surf music, sweet soul, rockabilly pop, and girl groups. The Brill Building songwriters and the rise of the producer. Playlets and splatter platters.
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John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
In last weeks lectures, we dealt with the question of rockabilly and
talked about people like Elvis Presley as an important rockabilly artist, although
Elvis was a little bit broader than that, but other people like Carl Perkins,
Jerry Lee Lewis, we talked about Eddie Coker and we talked about Gene Vincent.
And at that point I said to you I was going to reserved discussion of
Ricky Nelson and The Everly Brothers for this week,
because they had hits that continued into the early 1960s.
And so they kind of cross the boundary from the late 50s into the early 1960s.
This rockabilly as I call them Rockabilly Popsters, that is a version of rockabilly
that's a little bit more influenced by the teen idol kind of imaging.
It's a squeaky or clean kind of rockabilly image.
There's none other kind of rough neck troublemaker part of rockabilly left at
this point.
It's really very sort of squeak clean and
almost as they say a kind of another version of a safe Elvis.
It's Elvis but without any of the kind of threatening or potentially problematic
aspects for parents, the Elvis Presley's original image would've presented.
And one of the most important groups in
this new sort of softer version of rockabilly are the Everly Brothers.
And as I said before, the Everly Brothers go back into the 1950s and really are sort
of contemporary with people like Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis.
They have their roots in traditional country music of the Southeast and
Appalachian singing that involves high harmony singing.
And so that's a little bit where their distinctive vocal style comes from.
They were signed to Acuff-Rose Publishers in Nashville.
I remember we talked about them in the first week.
Acuff-Rose formed by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose in Nashville, it's one of the most
important publishers when Nashville became the center of country and western music.
They were signed by Wesley Rose,
the son of Fred Rose who had now gotten into the family business.
And they had a very strong advocate in Chet, Atkins,
the famous country guitarist who was working at RCA at the time as a producer.
In fact,
produced some of those Elvis Presley sessions when Elvis moved from Sun to RCA.
And so they were signed to Acuff-Rose by Wesley Rose, and Wesley Rose promised them
that if they signed with Acuff-Rose, because they wrote their own songs, too.
If they did, he would get them a recording contract,
because they'd been having a hard time getting a recording contract.
Chet Adkins, for as much of a fan, an advocate of the Everly Brothers as he was,
couldn't get them a deal at RCA.
And so, Rose get's them signed to Cadence Records in New York City, and
that's who they record with for the balance of the 1950s.
They're harmony singing, that two part sort of high harmony singing that they do,
the Everly Brothers Phil and Don, is extremely influential, and
really is their trademark.
John Lennon and Paul McCarthy imitate the Everly Brothers very, very often, and
not just at the beginning of their careers, but whenever they're singing
together, there's a certain amount of Phil and Don going on with John and Paul.
Simon and Garfunkel, when they first started out in the business actually had
a single that made the charts in the late 1950s under the name Tom and Jerry.
And for all intents and purposes,
they were a kind of Everly Brothers imitation act.
Of course, we'll come back in a couple of weeks to Simon and Garfunkel and
how they went from that in the late 1950s, and reemerged in 1965 or 1964 or
1965, with what they were doing.
But anyway, Everly Brothers is extremely important and influential.
Some important songs from their late 1950s,
Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Suzie, All I have to Do is Dream.
All I have to Do is Dream is a beautiful example of their harmony singing,
the two guys together.
And then in the 60s and when they shifted to another label, Cathy's Clown.
A number one hit in 1960 and When Will I Be Loved form 1960 a number 8 hit which
actually was covered by Linda Ronstadt back in the 1970s since she actually got,
I think her version of it got to number 2 then.
Anyway, the Everly Brothers are very very important to add a kind of a.
They sort of form the link between late 1950s rockabilly and
the period beginning up the Beatles, all through that period from 60 through 63.
Of course Ricky Nelson, well I promise to say a little bit more about Ricky Nelson
because we talked about him in context of TV.
As I said before, he was on the cast of the Ozzie and Harriett Show.
He was in fact the real son of Ozzie and Harriett,
who were really married in real life.
And when Elvis first started to become famous in 56, 57,
he being on the show, bragged to his girlfriend to try to impress her,
that he was going to be making a record too, just like Elvis.
And she said, that's great.
I'm going to love to hear that.
Then he went home and said, Dad I need a little bit of help.
And it turned out Ozzie Nelson as I mentioned before was a band later.
He was way connected inside Los Angeles and the music business.
Let's face it, he had a hit television show that he was the master mind of.
And so he hooked it all up for his son and
got him into the studio with some good musicians, some good song writers.
And it wasn't long before Ricky Nelson was producing some pretty good records.
Doing a pretty good job, it wasn't that he was untalented like I sort of cast
dispersions on some of the teen idols, Ricky Nelson really had talent.
And so, if you want to hear an early instance of Ricky Nelson,
Believe What you Say is number four hit from 1958.
Is a pretty good example.
Many of the songs were written by a classic rockabilly songwriting duo called
Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, who also had their own rock and roll trio that they
made recordings that didn't sell nearly as well as these Ricky Nelson records.
He used a lot of the same musicians that Elvis used, Nashville musicians that Elvis
used during his sessions, including a guitarist named James Burton who was
a legendary rockabilly guitar player who later ended up playing with Elvis
during the Las Vegas years and oftentimes Elvis concert posters from that period,
the later 60s, early 70s would say Elvis Presley featuring James Burton.
James Burton sort of cut his teeth on those Ricky Nelson recordings.
The last person we should talk about with regard to rockabilly popsters is
Roy Orbison.
I mentioned last week that Roy was originally signed to Sun Records, but
he didn't really have much big success Ooby Dooby maybe that kind of thing.
But then his career really took off when he signed to Monument Records,
starting with Only the Lonely, a number two hit in 1960, and
extending to Pretty Woman, which was a number one hit for him in 1964.
Roy, a singer-songwriter who had an interesting sort of vocal approach,
that sometimes approached a kind of almost operatic vocal quality.
In Only the Lonely, there's what we might call in classical music,
a kind of cadenza very near the end, where he goes up into a high falsetto,
the music stops and he does a kind of a flourish [INAUDIBLE] which is really
unlike anything anybody else was doing in pop music at the time.
And, of course, he was extremely influential, in a lot of musicians came
after him, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, people like that.
So, that's the story with the Rockabilly Popsters as they take
the transition from what we might think of as the end of the first wave of rock and
roll, the end of the 50s.
And taken into this era that is sort of more controlled
by the grownups in the room.
They soften the rockabilly sound but are still able to have some
pretty convincing hits and some fantastic success.
So let's turn now to Southern California and
consider the origins and the first successes of surf music.
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