American American American

Popular

American

Popular Popular

American American American

Popular Popular Popular

American

Popular Popular Popular Popular

American

Popular Music Popular Popular Music Popular Music

Larry Starr & Christopher Waterman
Copyright © 2003, 2007 by 

Oxford University Press, Inc.

This condensation of AMERICAN 

POPULAR MUSIC: FROM 

MINSTRELSY TO MP3 is a 

condensation of the book 

originally published in English 

in 2006 and is offered in this 

condensation by arrangement 

with Oxford University Press, Inc.

Larry Starr is Professor of Music 

at the University of Washington. 

His previous publications include 

The Dickinson Songs of Aaron 

Copland (2002), A Union of 

Diversities: Style in the Music of 

Charles Ives (1992), and articles 

in American Music, Perspectives 

of New Music, Musical Quarterly, 

and Journal of Popular Music 

Studies. Christopher Waterman

is Dean of the School of Arts and 

Architecture at the University 

of California, Los Angeles. His 

previous publications include Jùjú: 

A Social History and Ethnography 

of an African Popular Music (1990) 

and articles in Ethnomusicology 

and Music Educator’s Journal.

Clockwise from top: 

Bob Dylan and Joan 

Baez on the road; 

Diana Ross sings to 

thousands; Louis 

Armstrong and his 

trumpet; DJ Jazzy Jeff 

spins records; ‘NSync 

in concert; Elvis 

Presley sings and acts. 
American Popular Music

Larry Starr & Christopher Waterman
	 	 Introduction..............................................................................................	 	3

Chapter 1: 	 Streams of Tradition: The Sources of Popular Music......................... 	6

Chapter 2: 	 Popular Music: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries .............	 	12

	 	 An Early Pop Songwriter: Stephen Foster...........................................	 	19

Chapter 3: 	 Popular Jazz and Swing: America’s Original Art Form......................	 	20

Chapter 4: Tin Pan Alley: Creating “Musical Standards” .....................................	 	26

Chapter 5: 	 Early Music of the American South: “Race Records” and

	 	 “Hillbilly Music” .......................................................................................	 	30

Chapter 6: 	 Rhythm & Blues: From Jump Blues to Doo-Wop.................................	 	34

	 	 Big Mama Thornton ................................................................................	 	39

	 	 James Brown and Aretha Franklin........................................................	 	40

	 	 Jazz Gallery .............................................................................................	 	44

Chapter 7: 	 Country Music: Songs of Tradition and Change ................................	 	56

	 Hank Williams .........................................................................................	 	61

Chapter 8: 	 Rock ’n’ roll : A Generation’s Identity ..................................................	 	62

	 Bob Dylan .................................................................................................	 	70

Chapter 9: 	 Music: The Business ................................................................................	 	72

	 	 Bill Haley and “Rock Around the Clock”..............................................	 	65

Chapter 10: 	Music Technology: Innovations and Controversies............................	 	76

	 The Electric Guitar..................................................................................	 	80

Chapter 11: 	 Hip-Hop: The “Rapper’s Delight” .........................................................	 	82

	 	 Prince ........................................................................................................	 	88

	 The Message ...........................................................................................	 	89

Chapter 12: 	World Music Collaborations: Crossing Cultural Boundaries............	 	90

	 	 Glossary ....................................................................................................	 	94

CONTENTS
3

Introduction

Popular music, like so much 

of American culture, reflects 

a kaleidoscope of contributions, a cross-fertilization of styles, 

and a blending of dreams. It could 

hardly be otherwise in this nation 

of immigrants. Arguably the United 

States is a perfect musical laboratory: take people from every corner of 

the globe, give them freedom to create. Distribute their effort: by sheet 

music, phonograph, radio — or, for 

the younger reader: by Blu-ray Disc, 

mp3, Internet stream.

And what results! European 

ballads recast with African polyrhythmic textures or blended with 

a Cuban-flavored habanera (boldfaced terms are defined in the glossary) or a more “refined” rumba. 

“Cold” bop. “Hot” jazz. “Acid” rock. 

“Gangsta” rap. We might speak less 

of a singular American popular music than of a constellation of mutually-enriching American popular 

“musics.” Elvis Presley borrows from 

African-American blues, and black 

Motown stars recast “white” pop. 

Ask Khmer-American rapper Prach 

Ly, also known as “praCh,” about 

American popular music and he’ll 

speak of growing up with Snoop 

Dog, Dr. Dre, Run DMC, and Public 

Enemy on the radio and of cutting 

his first album in his parents’ garage. 

Lacking a mixing board, Prach used 

a karaoke machine and sampled old 

Khmer Rouge propaganda speeches 

for his powerful musical condemnation of the Cambodian genocide.

We hope the pages that follow 

convey a sense of creative ferment, 

of artistic drive, and of how Americans, borrowing from diverse musical traditions, have made their own 

original contributions to humanity’s 

truly universal language. The reader 

will encounter here crooners and 

rappers, folkies and rockers, the 

“King,” a Prince, and the “Queen of 

Soul.” Explained here is the latest in 

musical technology, from the solidbody electric guitar to the lossless 

compression digital file. And readers will learn about the people who 

make the music, truly American in 

their stunning diversity. Theirs are 

perhaps the most wonderful stories 

of all.

Musicians gather around the great Louis Armstrong, seated at the piano. 

Armstrong grew up in New Orleans in the early part of the 20th century and 

gave the world a lasting legacy — jazz. 
4

Consider the African-American 

child, born in 1901 and living in a 

poor New Orleans neighborhood. 

At the age of seven, with his mother 

and sister in poverty, he found work 

with a family of junk dealers — Russian Jewish immigrants nearly as 

poor as his own family. “They were 

always warm and kind to me,” he 

later would write — indeed, as one 

scholar later put it, they “virtually 

adopted him.” The boy would ride 

the junk wagon and blow a small tin 

horn to attract potential customers.

As he later wrote:

One day when I was on the wagon 

with Morris Karnovsky ... we 

passed a pawn shop which had 

in its window — an old tarnished 

beat up “B” Flat cornet. It cost 

only $5. Morris advanced me $2 

on my salary. Then I put aside 50 

cents each week from my small 

pay — finally the cornet was paid 

in full. Boy, was I a happy kid.

That boy’s name was Louis Armstrong. He would give the world 

jazz.

American popular music is the 

sound of countless Louis Armstrongs sharing the music in their 

souls. It spans a matchless range of 

human experience, from matters 

of the heart — Sinatra bemoaning 

a lost love “in the wee small hours 

of the morning” — to the political 

protest of Country Joe and the Fish 

performing the “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ 

to Die Rag.” Some tunes propel 

Louis Armstrong in a 1931 photo
5

couples to the dance floor, there to 

twist or jitterbug, hustle or tango. 

Songwriters depict their muses so 

vividly we can almost believe them 

real: the Beach Boys’ Caroline perhaps, Chuck Berry’s Maybellene, 

Bob Dylan’s “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” or Rickie Lee Jones’s “Chuck E.” 

And sometimes what resonates is 

not the girl in the song, but the one 

with whom you first heard it, a long 

time ago. 

“Without music, life would be a 

mistake,” the German philosopher 

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. Here 

you will meet many visionaries who 

would agree.

—Michael Jay Friedman

Clockwise from upper left: 

A couple whirls across the dance 

floor of Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, 

1953; Dancers “Twist” at New 

York’s Peppermint Lounge, 

1961; Crooner Frank Sinatra, 

1943; Singer-songwriter Rickie 

Lee Jones, 1999; Country Joe 

McDonald in the late 1990s.
6

C h a p T E r 1

The European-American Stream

Until the middle of the 

19th century, American 

popular music was almost 

entirely European in character. The 

cultural and linguistic dominance of 

the English meant that their music 

established early on a kind of “mainstream” around which other styles 

circulated.

At the time of the American 

Revolution, professional composers 

of popular songs in England drew 

heavily upon ballads. Originally an 

oral tradition, ballads were circulated on large sheets of paper called 

broadsides. While some broadside 

ballads were drawn from folk tradition, many were urban in origin 

and concerned with current events. 

In most cases only the words were 

provided, with an indication of a traditional melody to which they were 

to be sung. Balladmongers hawking 

the broadsides sang them on the 

streets. Composers of broadside 

ballads often added a catchy chorus, 

a repeated melody with fixed text 

inserted between verses.

The pleasure garden was the most 

important source of public entertainment in England between 1650 

and 1850. Large urban parks filled 

with tree-lined paths, the pleasure 

gardens provided an idyllic rural 

experience for an expanding urban 

audience. The pleasure gardens became one of the main venues for the 

dissemination of printed songs by 

professional composers. In the 1760s 

the first American pleasure gardens 

opened in Charleston, New York, 

and other cities.

The English ballad opera tradition was also popular in America 

during the early 19th century. Perhaps the best known is John Gay’s 

The Beggar’s Opera (1728). The main 

characters in ballad operas were 

common people, rather than the 

kings and queens of imported operas; the songs were familiar in form 

and content; and the lyrics were all 

in English rather than Italian.

The English folk ballad tradition 

thrived in America. In the early 

20th century folklorists were able 

to record dozens of versions of old 

English ballads in the United States. 

While today these songs are preserved mainly by folk music enthusiasts, the core of the tradition lives 

on in contemporary country and 

western music. The thin, nasalized 

tone known as the “high lonesome 

sound” continues today as a marker 

of southern white identity.

Every aspect of popular 

music today regarded as 

American has sprung from 

imported traditions. These 

source traditions may be 

classified into three broad 

“streams”: EuropeanAmerican music, AfricanAmerican music, and Latin 

American music. Each of 

these is made up of many 

styles of music, and each

 has profoundly influenced

 the others.

THE SOURCES OF

 POPULAR MUSIC

Streams of Tradition: 

C h a p T E r 1
7

Irish, Scottish, and Italian songs 

also influenced early American 

popular music. Copies of Thomas 

Moore’s multivolume collection of 

Irish Melodies were widely circulated in the United States, and Scottish songs such as “Auld Lang Syne” 

also enjoyed wide popularity. By the 

first decades of the 19th century, the 

Italian opera was also popular in 

the United States, and the bel canto 

style of operatic singing had a major 

effect on the development of popular 

singing.

Dance music was another important aspect of the European influence on American popular music. 

Until the late 19th century European-American dance was modeled on 

styles imported from England and 

the European continent. Country 

dances were popular. In the United 

States the country dance tradition 

developed into a plethora of urban 

and rural, elite and lower-class, 

black and white variants. It continues today in country and western 

line dances and in the contradances 

(folk dances performed in two lines 

with the partners facing each other) 

that form part of the modern folk 

music scene.

In addition to songs and dance 

music produced by professional 

composers, immigration brought 

a wide variety of European folk 

music to America. The mainstream 

of popular song and dance music 

was from early on surrounded by 

folk and popular styles brought by 

immigrants from other parts of 

Europe. The descendants of early 

A sampling of musical diversity (clockwise from left): 

“Polka King” Frank Yankovic; Klezmer-rock band 

Golem; Zydeco and other (often accordion-driven) 

Cajun stylings have profoundly influenced many kinds 

of American popular music.
8

Clockwise from left: Rhythm and blues singer 

Whitney Houston has sold an estimated 54 

million recordings; Bonnie Raitt is considered 

a master of the slide guitar; Bo Diddley 

helped pave the transition from blues to early 

rock ’n’ roll ; Buddy Holly died in a plane crash 

at age 22, but has been described as “the 

single most influential creative force in early 

rock ’n’ roll .”
9

French settlers in North America 

and the Caribbean maintained their 

own musical traditions. Millions 

of Irish and German immigrants 

came to the United States during 

the 19th century. Between 1880 and 

1910 an additional 17 million immigrants entered the United States. 

These successive waves of migration 

contributed to the diversity of musical life. European-derived musical 

styles such as Cajun fiddling, Jewish 

klezmer music, and the Polish polka 

have each contributed to mainstream popular music while maintaining a solid base in particular 

ethnic communities.

The African-American Stream

Not all immigrants came willingly. 

Between one and two million Africans were forcibly brought to the 

United States between the 17th and 

19th centuries. The areas of western 

and central Africa from which slaves 

were drawn were home to hundreds 

of distinct societies, languages, and 

musical traditions.

The genesis of African-American 

music in the United States involved 

two closely related processes. The 

first of these was syncretism, the selective blending of traditions derived 

from Africa and Europe. The second 

was the creation of institutions 

that became important centers of 

black musical life — the family, the 

church, the voluntary association, 

the school, and so on.

It is misleading to speak of “black 

music” as a homogeneous entity. 

African-American culture took different forms in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, 

Jamaica, and the United States, 

shaped in each by the particular 

mix of African and European source 

traditions, and by local social conditions. In the United States, people 

from the Senegambia region of West 

Africa appear to have made up a 

large part of the slave population. 

The banjo, an African-American 

invention, was developed from 

stringed instruments common in 

Senegambia; and certain aspects of 

blues singing are derived from the 

griot (praise singer) traditions of the 

West African savannah.

Certain features of African music 

form the core of African-American music and, by extension, of 

American popular music as a whole. 

Call-and-response forms, in which 

a lead singer and chorus alternate, 

are a hallmark of African-American 

musical traditions. In much African 

music-making repetition is regarded 

as an aesthetic strength, and many 

forms are constructed of short 

phrases that recur in a regular cycle. 

These short phrases are combined 

in various ways to produce music of 

great power and complexity. In African-American music such repeated 

patterns are often called riffs.

The aesthetic interest of much 

African music lies in the interlocking of multiple repeating patterns 

to form dense polyrhythmic 

textures (textures in which many 

rhythms are going on at the same 

time). This technique is evident in 

African-American styles such as 

funk music, particularly the work of 

James Brown, and the instrumental 

accompaniments for contemporary 

rap recordings. One common West 

African rhythm pattern has generated many variants in the Americas, including the “hambone” riff (a 

syncopated boogie rhythm, at times 

produced by a rhythmic knee and 

chest slapping motion) popularized 

during the rock ’n’ roll era by Bo 

Diddley, Johnny Otis, and Buddy 

Holly.

In contrast to the aesthetics of 

Western art music, in which a “clear” 

tone is the ideal, African singers and 

instrumentalists make use of a wide 

palette of timbres. Buzzing tones 

are created by attaching a rattling 

device to an instrument, and singers 

frequently use growling and humming effects, a technique that can 

also be heard in African-American 

genres such as blues, gospel, and 

jazz. In West African drumming 

traditions the lead drummer often 

plays the lowest-pitched drum in the 

group. This emphasis on low-pitched 

sounds may be a predecessor of the 

prominent role of the bass drum 

in Mississippi black fife-and-drum 

ensembles and of the “sonic boom 

bass” aesthetic in rap music.

The influence of African musical 

aesthetics and techniques on American popular music has been profound. Its history reveals both the 

creativity of black musicians and the 

persistence of racism in the music 

business and American society as a 

whole. In the early 20th century African-American ragtime and blues 

profoundly shaped the mainstream 

of American popular song. The “jazz 

age” of the 1920s and the “swing era” 

of the 1930s and 1940s involved the 

reworking of African-American 

dance music to appeal to a white 

middle-class audience.

Although country music is typically identified as a “white” style, 

some of its biggest stars have been 

black, and the styles of country 

musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Willie 

Nelson were strongly influenced 

by African-American music. One 

could cite many more examples of 

the influence of black music on the 

musical “mainstream” of America: 
10

1950s rock ’n’ roll was, in large 

part, rhythm & blues (R&B) music 

reworked for a predominantly white 

teen music market; the influence of 

1960s soul music, rooted in black 

gospel and R&B, is heard in the vocal 

style of practically every pop singer, 

from Bonnie Raitt and Whitney 

Houston to Bruce Springsteen and 

Michael Jackson; the virtuoso guitar 

style of heavy metal owes a large debt 

to the urban blues of Muddy Waters 

and Howlin’ Wolf; and rap music, 

based on African-derived musical 

and verbal traditions, continues to 

provide many white Americans with 

a vicarious experience of “listening 

in” on black urban culture.

We could say that, with every 

passing year, American popular 

music has moved closer to the core 

aesthetic values and techniques 

of African music. Yet this is misleading, for it directs attention 

away from the fact that African 

Americans are Americans, that the 

ancestors of black Americans arrived in the United States before the 

forebears of many white Americans. 

The complex history of interaction 

between European-American and 

African-American styles, musicians, 

and audiences demonstrates the absurdity of racism.

The Latin American Stream

As in the United States, musicians 

in Latin America developed a wide 

range of styles blending African 

music with the traditions of Europe. 

Caribbean, South American, and 

Mexican traditions have long influenced popular music in the United 

States.

The first Latin American style to 

have a major international impact 

was the Cuban habanera. The characteristic habanera rhythm (eight 

beat pattern divided 3–3–2) influenced late 19th-century ragtime 

music, and was an important part of 

what the great New Orleans pianist 

Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton called 

the “Latin tinge” in American jazz.

The next wave of Latin American 

influence on the music of the United 

States came from Argentina. The 

tango was influenced by the habanera, Italian and Spanish songs, and 

the songs of gauchos (cowboys). In 

the United States the ballroom version of the tango, a couple dance featuring close contact between partners and an insistent rhythm, was 

popularized around 1914 by dance 

stars Irene and Vernon Castle.

A subsequent Latin American 

musical influence was the rumba. 

The roots of the ballroom rumba 

style that became popular in the 

United States lie in 1920s Cuba. 

The rural son — a Cuban parallel 

of “country music” — moved to Havana, where it was played by professional dance bands. These musicians 

created a more exciting style by adding rhythms from the rumba, an urban street drumming style strongly 

rooted in African traditions.

Left: Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton called himself the “Originator of 

Jazz,” and some critics agree. Right: In a 50-year career, percussionist 

Tito Puente helped popularize mambo and other Latin jazz genres.
11

A “refined” version of rumba was 

introduced to the world by Don 

Azpiazú and his Havana Casino 

Orchestra. Azpiazú’s 1929 recording of “El Manicero” (“The Peanut 

Vendor”) became a huge international hit. Within a few months of 

its release many dance orchestras in 

the United States had recorded their 

own versions of the song. The rumba 

reached a height of popularity in 

the United States during the 1930s 

and was succeeded by a series of 

Cuban-based ballroom dance fads, 

including the mambo (1940s) and 

cha-cha-chá (1950s).

Variants of Cuban-based music 

in the United States ranged from 

the exciting blend of modern jazz 

and rumba pioneered by Machito 

and Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s to 

the tourist-oriented style performed 

by Desi Arnaz’s orchestra on the 

I Love Lucy television show. The 

1960s saw the emergence of salsa, 

a rumba-based style pioneered by 

Cuban and Puerto Rican migrants 

in New York City. The stars of salsa 

music include the great singer Celia 

Cruz and bandleader Tito Puente. In 

the 1980s Miami Sound Machine 

created a commercially successful 

blend of salsa and disco music, and 

“world beat” musicians such as Paul 

Simon and David Byrne began to 

experiment with traditional AfroCuban rhythms.

The Brazilian samba is another 

dance style strongly rooted in African music. The variant of samba 

that had the biggest influence in 

the United States was the carioca, 

a smooth style developed in Rio de 

Janeiro and boosted in the 1940s by 

Carmen Miranda, who appeared in 

a series of popular musical films. A 

cool, sophisticated style of Brazilian 

music called the bossa nova became 

popular in United States during the 

early 1960s, eventually spawning 

hit songs such as “The Girl from 

Ipanema” (1964).

Mexican music has long had a 

symbiotic relationship with styles 

north of the Rio Grande. At the 

end of the 19th century Mexican 

musicians visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago 

and later toured throughout the 

United States. The two best-known 

Mexican-derived styles today are 

conjunto acordeón (“accordion 

band”) music, played in northern 

Mexico and Texas; and mariachi 

(“marriage”) music, performed 

by ensembles made up of guitars, 

violins, and trumpets. Country and 

western music has been influenced 

by Mexican styles since at least the 

1930s. Mexican immigrants in California have also played an important 

role developing rock music. This 

continuing influence is exemplified by Ritchie Valens’s 1959 hit “La 

Bamba,” based on a folk tune from 

Veracruz; the mixture of salsa and 

guitar-based rock music developed 

in the late 1960s by guitarist Carlos 

Santana; recordings of traditional 

Mexican songs by Linda Ronstadt; 

and the hard-rocking style of the Los 

Angeles-based band Los Lobos.

Left: Part of the original poster advertising guitarist Carlos Santana’s December 

1968 “Live at the Fillmore” concert. Right: Santana successfully fuses rock, 

blues, jazz fusion, and salsa elements in his distinctive sound.
12

The Minstrel Show

The minstrel show, the first 

form of musical and theatrical entertainment to be 

regarded by European audiences as 

distinctively American in character, 

featured mainly white performers who blackened their skin and 

carried out parodies of AfricanAmerican music, dance, dress, and 

dialect. Today blackface minstrelsy 

is regarded with embarrassment or 

anger. Yet there is reason to believe 

that its common interpretation as an 

expression of racism oversimplifies 

the diverse meanings it represented. 

In any case, it would be difficult to 

understand American popular music without some knowledge of the 

minstrel show.

The minstrel show emerged from 

working-class neighborhoods where 

interracial interaction was common. 

Early blackface performers were the 

first expression of a distinctively 

American popular culture, in which 

working-class white youth expressed 

their sense of marginalization 

through an identification with African-American cultural forms. This 

does not mean that minstrelsy was 

not a projection of white racism, but 

its meanings were neither fixed nor 

unambiguous.

Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-

60), a white actor born into a poor 

family in New York City’s Seventh 

Ward, demonstrated the potential 

popularity of minstrelsy with the 

song “Jim Crow” (1829), the first international American song hit. Rice 

sang this song in blackface while 

imitating a dance step called the 

“cakewalk,” an Africanized version 

of the European quadrille. 

Soon after Rice introduced “Jim 

Crow” to New York in 1832, there 

was a veritable explosion of blackface performance in venues ranging 

from theaters to saloons, the latter 

often patronized by a racially mixed 

audience. Black and mixed-race performers were on view in most of the 

local “dives” that featured minstrel 

performances. The musical and linguistic heritage of early minstrelsy 

was just as mixed as its audience and 

practitioners. The most likely inspiration for “Jim Crow” was not an 

African-American song but an Irish 

folk tune subsequently transformed 

into an English stage song. 

“Daddy” Rice’s Jim Crow character spoke and sang in a dialect based 

on white rural characters (such as 

the Kentucky rifleman Davy Crockett) and partly on the variety of black 

and Creole dialects heard by Rice 

as a youngster growing up by the 

Popular music both shaped 

and reflected American 

culture throughout the 19th 

and early 20th centuries. 

This period saw the birth of 

minstrelsy, the first distinctively 

American form of popular 

culture, the rise of the modern 

music industry, and rapid 

audience expansion, not least 

because new technologies 

enabled the dissemination of 

music to a national audience. 

Some of the song and dance 

music styles that emerged 

would influence profoundly 

U.S. popular music 

throughout the 20th century.

19TH And EARLy 20TH

CEnTURIES

Popular Music:

C h a p T E r 2
13

Seventh Ward docks.

Come, listen all you gals and 

boys, I’se just from Tuckyhoe

I’m goin to sing a little song, My 

name’s Jim Crow

Weel about and turn about and 

do jis so

Eb’ry time I weel about I jump 

Jim Crow

The Jim Crow character used this 

hybrid dialect — neither black nor 

white but something in between 

— to make fun of pretentious politicians and social elites, introducing 

a satirical subtext that Rice’s highclass targets found threatening.

From the 1840s through the 1880s 

blackface became the predominant 

genre of popular culture in the United States. As the genre was transformed into the more formally organized “minstrel show,” much of its 

original subversive quality was lost. 

The 19th-century minstrel show displayed many of the themes that will 

concern us throughout this survey. 

Minstrelsy arose during the 1830s 

as an expression of a predominantly 

white urban youth culture, which 

sought to express its independence 

by appropriating black style. As minstrelsy became a mass phenomenon 

in the decades just before and after 

the American Civil War, its form became routinized, and its portrayal of 

black characters more rigidly stereotyped. This basic pattern, in which a 

new genre of music arises within a 

marginalized community and then 

moves into the mainstream of mass 

popular culture, in the process losing much of its original rebellious 

energy, will be encountered many 

times in this book.

Minstrel shows featured white 

people wearing blackface, or even 

African Americans. They often 

depicted blacks in an unflattering 

light. By the turn of the 20th 

century, minstrelsy had largely died 

out, replaced by vaudeville.
14

Clockwise from top left: Late 

19th and early 20th century 

vaudeville shows combined a 

variety of acts, including classical 

and popular musical performers 

along with comedians, dancers, 

trained animals and other acts. 

The format declined in popularity 

with the rise of the motion 

picture; Scott Joplin, a leading 

composer of ragtime music; John 

Philip Sousa was the leading 

composer and conductor of 

American military marches; the 

“Elmira Cornet Band,” Thirtythird Regiment, of the New York 

State Volunteers, July 1861.
15

Dance Music and Brass Bands

From the beginning, American popular music has been closely bound 

up with dance. The earliest examples 

of published dance music were modeled on styles popular in England. 

Until the early 20th century, social 

dancing among white Americans 

was dominated by offshoots of the 

country dance tradition and by 

dances such as the waltz, mazurka, 

schottische, and polka, performed 

by couples. The adoption of country 

dances by the urban elite was an aspect of a common romantic fascination with rural themes.

The typical setting for dancing 

among the upper classes was the 

ball, organized around pre-selected 

music played by an orchestra to 

accompany a specific sequence of 

dances, overseen by a dance master, who called out the movements. 

Ballroom dancing focused more 

on uniformity and restraint than 

improvisation or the expression of 

emotion. However, as the 19th century progressed, there was a shift 

away from formal dances toward an 

increased emphasis on couple dancing. By the end of the century, the 

waltz had become the ultimate symbol of sophistication and romance.

Throughout the 19th century 

there was a continual feedback between urban “high-class” and rural 

“low-class” dance styles. Urban 

professional musicians arranged folk 

dances for mass consumption, and 

some of the popular songs published 

by big New York City music companies were adopted into rural dance 

traditions. The diversity of American popular dance was reinforced by 

waves of immigrants from different 

parts of Europe. And the mass influence of African-American dance 

— which began in the 1830s with the 

cakewalk steps performed by white 

minstrels — intensified, becoming 

the dominant force in American 

popular dance during the first few 

decades of the 20th century.

From the Civil War through the 

1910s, brass band concerts were 

one of the most important musical 

aspects of American life. Although 

military bands had been around 

since the birth of the United States, 

they spread rapidly during and after 

the Civil War (1861-65). While a 

number of these regimental bands 

continued to flourish after the war, 

many decommissioned musicians 

formed bands in their home communities. By 1889 there were over 10,000 

brass bands in the United States. 

The brass-band movement drew 

energy from the interaction of patriotism and popular culture, and 

from the growing force of Ameri-

“March King” John Philip Sousa, center, leads the United States Marine Corps band.
16

can nationalism. The lion’s share 

of a band’s repertoire consisted of 

patriotic marches. Brass bands are 

associated with national holidays, 

and their music holds a special significance for those who have served 

in the armed forces. Many bands 

also played arrangements of the 

popular sheet music hits of the day. 

This ability to move between patriotic music and the popular styles 

reinforced the brass band’s role as a 

community institution.

The most popular bandleader 

from the 1890s through World War 

I was John Philip Sousa (1854-1932). 

Sousa conducted the U.S. Marine 

Band and later formed a “commercial” concert band. This band made 

two dozen hit phonograph recordings between 1895 and 1918. Sousa 

toured constantly, and the appearance of his band created a sensation that could only be surpassed 

by a presidential “whistlestop” 

tour. (These were named for the 

campaign tours of presidents and 

other political candidates — made 

by rail, they often included the 

“whistlestops,” small stations the 

train normally would bypass unless 

signaled to stop.) Sousa was one 

of the first musicians to negotiate 

royalty payments with publishers, 

and an important advocate of copyright reform.

The Birth of Tin Pan Alley

By the end of the 19th century, the 

American music publishing business had become centered in New 

York City. The established publishers, who had made their fortunes 

in classical music and genteel parlor 

songs, were, from around 1885 on, 

challenged by smaller companies 

specializing in the more exciting 

popular songs performed in dance 

halls, beer gardens, and theaters.

These new publishing firms 

— many of them founded by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe — had offices along a stretch 

of Manhattan’s 28th Street that 

became known as “Tin Pan Alley,” 

a term that evoked the clanging 

sound of many pianos simultaneously playing songs in a variety of 

keys and tempos. The 1890s saw the 

rise of the modern American music 

business, an industry that aimed to 

provide “hits” for an expanding urban mass market. For the first time, 

a single song could sell more than a 

million copies. 

By the turn of the century vaudeville, a popular theatrical form descended from music hall shows and 

minstrelsy, had become the most 

important medium for popularizing Tin Pan Alley songs. Vaudeville 

shows consisted of a series of performances — singers, acrobats, comedians, jugglers, dancers, animal acts, 

and so on. Every city had at least one 

vaudeville theater.

Tin Pan Alley songs dominated 

the American music industry for 

almost 70 years. The romantic parlor song remained popular, as did 

“Irish” and waltz songs. Plantation 

songs, descended from the minstrel 

song tradition, were also popular. 

One of the best-known and most 

successful composers of plantation 

songs was James A. Bland (1854-

1911), the first commercially successful black songwriter. Bland 

wrote some 700 songs and became 

popular in Europe. In stylistic terms, 

Bland’s songs are similar to those of 

his white contemporaries. Although 

Bland has been criticized by some 

later observers for pandering to 

white misconceptions about blacks 

and lionized by others for his supposed championing of “authentic” 

African-American music, the real 

situation is more complex. Bland, 

the product of a comfortable middle-class home, was determined to 

achieve the same level of economic 

success as his white contemporaries. 

Like many other black musicians 

who sought access to mass markets, 

he had to work through the imagery 

of blackness already established in 

mainstream popular music.

One of many sheet music publishing 

houses lining New York City’s West 

28th Street (“Tin Pan Alley”) between 

1885 and the mid-20th century. 

The street possibly acquired its 

nickname because some likened the 

clashing sound of many pianos playing 

different tunes to that of a child 

banging on a tin pan.
17

Cover art for the original program of “Oklahoma!,” 

the seminal Broadway musical that marked the 

first collaboration between the composer Richard 

Rogers and lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II .

A performance of George Gershwin’s “American 

folk opera” Porgy and Bess (1935). An American 

classic, the work fuses jazz and blues elements into 

an operatic form.

Top: Sheet music 

cover for “Alexander’s 

Ragtime Band,” 

(1911) the composer 

Irving Berlin’s first 

big hit. Right: The 

artist Jay Campbell 

Phillips depicted, 

often stereotypically, 

southern African 

Americans, including 

the banjo strumming 

example depicted 

here.
18

The Ragtime Craze, 1896–1918

This same period saw the intensification of African-American musical 

influence, a trend best represented 

by ragtime. Ragtime emerged in the 

1880s, its popularity peaking in the 

decade after the turn of the century. 

In some regards the ragtime craze 

was a descendant of minstrelsy, but 

the ragtime style also represented 

a more intimate engagement with 

African-American musical techniques and values, due to the increasing involvement of black songwriters and performers in the music 

industry.

The word “ragtime” derives from 

the African-American term “to rag,” 

meaning to enliven a piece of music 

by shifting melodic accents onto 

the offbeats (a technique known as 

syncopation). This technique has 

the effect of intensifying the beat 

and creating rhythmic momentum. 

The basic patterns of ragtime music 

were transferred from the banjo, 

a stringed instrument developed 

by slave musicians from African 

prototypes. Ragtime was also influenced by Latin American rhythms 

such as the Cuban habanera and by 

marching band music. During the 

height of its popularity, from the 

late 1890s until the end of World 

War I, ragtime music was played by 

every imaginable type of ensemble: 

dance bands, brass bands, country 

string bands, symphony orchestras, 

banjo and mandolin ensembles, and, 

in the classic ragtime style, by solo 

pianists.

The growing market for ragtime 

songs at the turn of the century 

suggests a continuation of the white 

fascination with African-American 

music first evinced in minstrelsy. 

Tin Pan Alley composers simply 

added syncopated rhythms and ersatz black dialects to spice up bland 

popular tunes. The idea was to create 

songs novel enough to stimulate the 

audience’s interest but not so radical 

that they required a great deal of 

work on the listener’s part. Just as 

the songs performed by blackface 

minstrels were European in style, 

most popular ragtime songs were 

march-style songs with “irregular” 

rhythms added for effect.

Some young white Americans 

associated themselves with ragtime to rebel against the cultural 

conservatism of their parents and 

other authority figures, a pattern 

that became even more prominent 

during the jazz age of the 1920s and 

the rock ’n’ roll era of the 1950s. 

Ragtime is an interesting example 

of the complex crosscurrents of 

American musical history: rooted 

in the mastery of European musical 

forms by talented black musicians, 

the style circulated across boundaries of race, class, region, and generation and was put to different uses by 

various communities.

Irving Berlin entertaining Women’s 

Army Corps members during the 

Second World War.
19

S

tephen Collins Foster (1826-64) is the first 

important composer of American popular song 

and the first American to make his living as a 

full-time professional songwriter. His earliest musical 

experiences growing up on the western frontier near 

Pittsburgh were dominated by the sentimental song 

tradition, considered a mark of gentility by upwardly 

mobile Americans. Foster also incorporated into his 

work the various song styles popular in mid-century 

America: ballads, Italian light opera, Irish and German 

songs, and minstrel songs. Foster was a master at 

creating simple but compelling combinations of melody 

and text, later referred to as “hooks.” His compositions 

were heard everywhere: in saloons, theaters, variety 

shows, and band concerts. His biggest hit, “Old Folks at 

Home,” sold 100,000 sheet music copies in 1851. This is 

equal to a million-seller today. Some of Foster’s songs 

became part of American oral tradition, passed from 

generation to generation.

Foster’s success as a “hit maker” depended on the 

public’s ability to read the arrangements of his songs 

published on sheet music and in songbooks. During this 

period, people often performed music in 

their homes. The piano remained a center 

of domestic music-making in the United 

States until the 1920s, when commercial 

radio was introduced.

Foster’s life ended in obscurity and 

poverty at the age of 37. His first success, 

“Oh! Susanna,” was sold to a music 

publisher for $100. The publisher made 

thousands of dollars from the worldwide 

hit, but no more money went to Foster. 

This was a typical situation, for the law 

covered the rights of music firms but not 

those of the composers of songs.

Stephen Foster
20

C h a p T E r 3

Admittedly, the ability of 

youth to indulge in the 

sorts of up-to-date pastimes portrayed in Hollywood films 

and novels such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was strongly 

affected by their position in society 

— after all, not everyone could afford 

luxury automobiles, champagne, 

and top-flight dance orchestras. 

However, jazz’s attraction as a symbol of sensuality, freedom, and fun 

does appear to have transcended 

the boundaries of region, ethnicity, 

and class, creating a precedent for 

phenomena such as the swing era, 

rhythm & blues, and rock ’n’ roll .

Jazz, one of America’s original 

art forms, emerged in New Orleans, 

Louisiana, around 1900. New Orleans’s position as a gateway between 

the United States and the Caribbean, 

its socially stratified population, and 

its strong residues of colonial French 

culture, encouraged the formation 

of a hybrid musical culture unlike 

that in any other American city. 

Jazz emerged from the confluence of 

New Orleans’s diverse musical traditions, including ragtime, marching 

bands, the rhythms used in Mardi 

Gras and funerary processions, 

French and Italian opera, Caribbean 

and Mexican music, Tin Pan Alley 

songs, and African-American song 

traditions, both sacred (the spirituals) and secular (the blues).

The New Orleans-born cornetist and singer Louis Armstrong is 

commonly credited with establishing certain core features of jazz 

— particularly its rhythmic drive 

or swing and its emphasis on solo 

instrumental virtuosity. Armstrong 

also profoundly influenced the development of mainstream popular 

singing during the 1920s and 1930s. 

Armstrong emerged as an influential musician on the local scene in 

the years following World War I, 

and subsequently migrated to Chicago to join the band of his mentor 

King (Joe) Oliver, playing on what 

are regarded by many critics as the 

first real jazz records. 

In 1924 Armstrong joined 

Fletcher Henderson’s band in New 

York City, pushing the band in the 

direction of a hotter, more improvisatory style that helped to create the 

synthesis of jazz and ballroom dance 

music that would later be called 

swing. By the 1930s Armstrong was 

the best–known black musician in 

the world, as a result of his recordings and film and radio appearances. 

Armstrong’s approach was shaped 

by the aesthetics of early New Orleans jazz, in which the cornet or 

trumpet player usually held the rePopular Jazz and Swing:

AMERICA’S ORIgInAL

ART FORM

Jazz music was the anthem 

for the first well-defined 

American youth culture. 

Rebelling against the horrors 

of mechanized warfare and 

the straitlaced morality of 

the 19th century, millions 

of college-age Americans 

adopted jazz as a way to mark 

their difference from their 

parents’ generation. 
21

Clockwise from left: jazz stars 

have become national icons, even 

depicted on postage stamps; 

Members of the New Wave Jazz 

Band at the New Orleans Jazz 

and Heritage Festival; “America’s 

classical music” is inextricably linked 

to the African American experience. 

Here a student works on a Dr. 

Martin Luther King Day mural.

21
22

sponsibility of stating the melody of 

the song being played. Throughout 

his career Armstrong often spoke 

of the importance of maintaining 

a balance between improvisation 

(or “routining,” as he called it) and 

straightforward treatment of the 

melody. “Ain’t no sense in playing a 

hundred notes if one will do,” Armstrong is reported to have said on his 

70th birthday.

Dance Music in the “Jazz Age”

Although jazz was initially regarded 

by the music industry as a passing 

fad, its impact on the popular music 

mainstream represented an important cultural shift. A new subculture 

emerged from the white upper and 

middle classes, symbolized by the 

“jazz babies” or “flappers” (emancipated young women with short 

skirts and bobbed hair) and “jazzbos” or “sheiks” (young men whose 

cool yet sensual comportment was 

modeled on the film star Rudolph 

Valentino). This movement involved 

a blend of elements from “high 

culture” — the novels of F. Scott 

Fitzgerald, the paintings of Pablo 

Picasso, the plays of Eugene O’Neill 

— and from popular culture, particularly styles of music, dance, and 

speech modeled on black American 

prototypes. The idea of the jazz age 

was promoted by the mass media, 

especially by Hollywood.

Following on the heels of ragtime, the jazz craze represented the 

intensification of African-American 

influence on the musical tastes and 

buying habits of white Americans. 

While it did increase opportunities 

for some black musicians, the world 

of dance orchestras remained strictly segregated. African-American 

musicians appeared with increasing 

frequency in fancy downtown cabarets and hotel ballrooms (although 

they could enter these places only as 

employees, not customers). During 

the late 1920s white jazz fans began 

to frequent nightclubs in AfricanAmerican neighborhoods. In New 

York’s Harlem and the South Side of 

Chicago, these “black and tan” cabarets offered their predominantly 

white clientele an array of jazz music. Performing at Harlem’s famous 

Cotton Club, the great jazz pianist 

and composer Duke Ellington developed a style that he called “jungle 

music,” featuring dense textures and 

dark, growling timbres. 

“The King of Jazz”

The most successful dance band 

of the 1920s was the Ambassador 

Orchestra, led by Paul Whiteman. 

Whiteman’s role in the history of 

jazz is ambiguous. On the one hand, 

he promoted a watered-down, “safe” 

version of jazz to the public. On the 

other hand, Whiteman did make 

some important contributions, 

widening the market for jazz-based 

dance music (and paving the way 

for the Swing Era), hiring brilliant 

young jazz players and arrangers, 

and establishing a level of professionalism that was widely imitated 

by dance bands on both sides of 

the color line. He also defended jazz 

against its moral critics (whom he 

called “jazz-klanners”) and carried 

on aspects of the brilliant AfricanAmerican musician Jim Europe’s 

vision of a symphonic version of 

jazz. (The 1924 debut of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featured 

Whiteman’s band.)

The Ambassador Orchestra, 

which comprised only 10 players 

in 1920, had expanded to 19 by the 

end of the decade (five brass instruments, five reed instruments, four 

violins, and a five-piece rhythm section). In 1927 Whiteman began to 

hire some of the leading white jazz 

musicians of the time, including the 

brilliant cornetist Bix Beiderbecke 

and the Dorsey brothers (Jimmy and 

Tommy), who would later achieve 

success as bandleaders in the Swing 

Era. At concerts and dances he used 

a small “band-within-a-band,” made 

up of the best jazz musicians in 

his orchestra, to play “hot” music. 

Whiteman hired pioneering dance 

band arrangers — Ferde Grofé and 

Bill Challis — to craft his band’s 

“book” (library of music), and he 

helped to promote jazz-influenced 

crooners such as Bing Crosby. 

“The King of Swing”

Beginning in 1935, a new style of 

jazz-inspired music called “swing,” 

initially developed in the late 1920s 

by black dance bands in New York, 

Chicago, and Kansas City, transformed American popular music. 

The word “swing” (like “jazz,” 

“blues,” and “rock ’n’ roll ”) derives 

from African-American English. 

First used as a verb for the fluid, 

“rocking” rhythmic momentum created by well-played music, the term 

was used by extension to refer to an 

emotional state characterized by a 

sense of freedom, vitality, and enjoyment. References to “swing” and 

“swinging” are common in the titles 

and lyrics of jazz records made during the 1920s and early 1930s.

Swing music provides us with 

a window onto the cultural values 

and social changes of the New Deal 

era. The basic ethos of swing music 

was one of unfettered enjoyment, 

“swinging,” “having a ball.” The au-
Clockwise from left: Jazz composer, 

pianist, and bandleader Duke 

Ellington; the band leader Paul 

Whiteman popularized a less 

improvised, more “respectable” 

form of jazz; trumpeter John Birks 

“Dizzy” Gillespie pioneered bebop 

and Afro-Cuban jazz.

23
24

dience for swing spanned the social 

boundaries that separated ethnic 

groups, natives and immigrants, 

southerners and northerners, city 

dwellers and country folk, the working class, the expanding middle 

class, and progressive members of 

the educated elite.

For the swing era, the mythic 

“founding moment” occurred 

in the summer of 1935, when a 

dance band led by a young jazz 

clarinetist named Benny Goodman 

(1909–1986) embarked on a tour of 

California. Goodman was not only 

a skilled jazz improviser but also a 

strict disciplinarian, insisting that 

his musicians play their parts with 

From left: The composer, lyricist, and pianist Eubie Blake (seated) performed his distinctive mix of ragtime, jazz, and 

popular music well into his nineties. Louis Armstrong said of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931): “Lots of cats tried to 

play like Bix; ain’t none of them play like him yet.” Frank Sinatra (left) and Bing Crosby, considered by many the two finest 

“crooners.”

 Left: Bandleader Guy Lombardo’s (1902 – 1977) popular New 

Year’s Eve telecasts became a national tradition. Right: The Dorsey 

brothers, Tommy, on trombone, left, and Jimmy, alto saxophone, 

right, each led influential bands. Their 1950s television show Stage 

Show helped introduce Elvis Presley to a national audience.
25

perfect precision. The Goodman 

band’s appearances on the national 

Let’s Dance radio broadcasts and its 

hot syncopated style built a sizable 

following.

In a seeming echo of the hype 

surrounding Paul Whiteman’s public image, the press crowned Benny 

Goodman the “King of Swing.” 

However, there are several big differences between the so-called 

kings of jazz and swing. While 

Whiteman remained a classical 

musician all his life, Goodman was 

in fact a fine (if often under-rated) 

improviser who studied jazz closely. 

While Whiteman’s band played 

syncopated ballroom dance music 

in a style that borrowed its name 

from jazz, Goodman’s really was a 

jazz band, performing music closely 

modeled on the innovations of African-American musicians, composers, and arrangers. And while Paul 

Whiteman’s dance orchestras of the 

1920s never included musicians of 

color, Goodman was the first prominent white bandleader to hire black 

players, beginning with the pianist 

Teddy Wilson in 1936 and followed 

by the brilliant young electric guitarist Charlie Christian, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and trumpeter 

Cootie Williams.

Although big bands relied heavily 

on arrangements of popular Tin Pan 

Alley songs, the blues—with its 12-

bar structure, three-chord pattern, 

blue notes, and call-and-response 

patterns—also remained a mainstay 

of swing music. Of all the big bands, 

the one most closely associated with 

the blues tradition was led by the 

jazz pianist William “Count” Basie 

(1904–84). Basie, born in New Jersey, gained much of his early experience as a player and bandleader in 

Kansas City, Missouri. During the 

1920s and early 1930s black dance 

bands in Kansas City had developed 

their own distinctive approach to 

playing hot dance music. Kansas 

City-style was more closely linked 

to the country blues tradition than 

the style of the New York bands, 

and it relied more heavily upon riffs 

(repeated patterns). One important 

influence on the rhythmic conception of the K.C. bands was the boogie-woogie blues piano tradition, in 

which the pianist typically plays a 

repeated pattern with his left hand, 

down in the low range of the piano, 

while improvising polyrhythmic 

patterns in his right hand.

Another prominent swing 

era band was the Duke Ellington 

Orchestra, led by Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899–1974), 

widely regarded as one of the most 

important American musicians of 

the 20th century. Ellington was an 

experimenter. He devised unusual 

musical forms, combined instruments in unusual ways, and created 

complex, distinctive tone colors.

A third leading swing band was 

that of Glenn Miller (1904–1944). 

From 1939 until 1942 the Miller 

Orchestra was the most popular 

dance band in the world, breaking 

record sales and concert attendance 

records. Miller developed a peppy, 

clean-sounding style that appealed 

to small-town midwestern people 

as well as to the big-city, East and 

West Coast constituency that had 

previously sustained swing music. 

In terms of sheer popular success, 

the Miller band marked the apex of 

the swing era, racking up 23 Number-One recordings in a little under 

four years.

Neither jazz nor its far-reaching 

influence on American music and 

culture ended in the 1930s, however. Swing, also known as big band 

music, grew out of and was strongly 

influenced by jazz. Beyond swing, 

every succeeding generation of musicians has defined its own style of 

jazz, responding to and challenging 

the aural legacy that began in New 

Orleans. Bebop, cool jazz, fusion 

jazz, soul jazz, and acid jazz are just a 

few of the varieties that have grown 

from the original tree of sound.
26

C h a p T E r 4

The American “Musical Standard”

During the 1920s and 1930s, 

composers and lyricists 

fused earlier song structures to produce a verse-refrain form 

which, in the hands of more inventive composers, allowed for all sorts 

of interesting variations. While the 

verse came to be regarded as mere 

introduction, the refrain, the part 

that is usually considered “the song,” 

typically comprised four sections of 

equal length, in the pattern A B B A.

• The A section presents the main 

melody, the basic pattern of the 

lyrics, and a set of chord changes to 

support them.

• The music of the A section is then 

repeated with new lyrics; often 

some slight melodic changes will 

be introduced, making this A, i.e., 

a variation of A.

• The B section, or “bridge,” is then 

introduced. The bridge presents 

new material — a new melody, 

chord changes, and lyrics.

• Finally, the A melody and chord 

changes are repeated with new 

lyrics and sometimes with further 

melodic alterations or with an addition called a “tag,” producing an 

A, a second variation of A.

Listeners familiar with this form 

might typically expect that an A 

section should at some point be followed by a contrasting section with 

different chords, words, and melody 

(the bridge), and that the performance would likely end with the 

A section heard again. Composers, 

singers, and arrangers — the individuals whose choice of key, tempo, 

instrumental accompaniment, and 

so on matched a given singer’s vocal strengths to a particular song 

— became adept at fulfilling these 

expectations while introducing 

just enough unexpected variation 

to keep the listener’s attention. The 

best Tin Pan Alley composers could 

work creatively within these structural limitations.

Tin Pan Alley songs did not, 

by and large, deal directly with 

the troubling issues of their times; 

popular songs and the musical plays 

and films in which they appeared instead typically aimed to help people 

escape the pressures of daily life. 

Both in lyrical content and performance style, the Tin Pan Alley song 

explored the ideal of romantic love. 

Unlike the old European ballads — 

in which the action of characters was 

often narrated from a vantage point 

outside the singer’s own experience 

— the first-person lyrics characteristic of Tin Pan Alley songs (suggested 

in such song titles as “What’ll I Do?,” 

Tin Pan Alley:

CREATIng 

“MUSIC STAndARdS”

During the 1920s and 1930s 

professional tunesmiths, 

working within a set of forms 

inherited from 19th-century 

popular music and influenced 

by the craze for ragtime and 

jazz music, wrote some of 

the period’s most influential 

and commercially successful 

songs. These composers, 

many of them Jewish 

immigrants, found in music an 

industry comparatively free of 

the social prejudice that often 

blocked their advancement 

in other fields. Their efforts 

yielded many standards, songs 

that have remained in active 

circulation until this day.
27

“Why Do I Love You?,” “I Get A Kick 

Out of You,” and “Somebody Loves 

Me”) allowed the listener to identify 

his or her personal experience more 

directly with that of the singer. Tin 

Pan Alley songwriters by and large 

adopted a down-to-earth manner 

of speech, as in songs like “Jeepers 

Creepers, Where’d You Get Those 

Peepers?,” that suggested that any 

working stiff could experience the 

bliss of romantic love or, through the 

“torch song,” suffer the heartbreak of 

a romance gone sour.

The development of a singing style 

called crooning reinforced these 

links between popular music and 

personal experience. Listening to 

the early recordings of vaudeville 

performers such as Eddie Cantor or 

Al Jolson, whose exaggerated styles 

were developed for performances 

in large theaters, one feels that one 

is being “sung at” (sometimes even 

“shouted at”). A Bing Crosby or 

Fred Astaire recording, made after the introduction of the electric 

microphone in the mid-1920s, is an 

altogether different sort of musical 

experience, a private experience. The 

singer’s silky, gentle, nuanced voice 

invites you to share the most intimate 

of confidences; it speaks to you alone. 

Sometimes, the listener imaginatively enters the voice of the singer, and 

a kind of psychological fusion occurs 

between two individuals who will 

never actually meet face to face.

Giants of Tin Pan Alley

Jewish immigrants, particularly from 

central and eastern Europe, played a 

central role in the early 20th-century music business, as composers, 

lyricists, performers, publishers, and 

promoters. In vaudeville and then 

throughout the entertainment industry, they often encountered less 

anti-Semitism than was present in 

other established businesses. As a 

result, many, but by no means all of 

the era’s most successful songwriters 

were Jews.

Irving Berlin, born Israel, or Isadore Baline (1888-1989) arrived with 

his family on New York City’s Lower 

East Side at the age of four, a refugee 

from the Russian pogroms. He was 

on the streets by age eight, selling 

newspapers, and at 14 he left home 

for good. He worked as a guide for 

a blind street musician, as a saloon 

pianist, and as a singing waiter.

The song that first brought Berlin mass acclaim was “Alexander’s 

Ragtime Band,” published in 1911. 

It sold 1.5 million copies almost immediately. Like other Tin Pan Alley 

composers, Berlin wrote songs for 

the Broadway stage and for the new 

medium of sound film (he wrote 

music for 18 films). An Irving Berlin 

song, “Blue Skies,” was performed 

by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. The 

1942 film Holiday Inn introduced 

one of Berlin’s most successful songs, 

“White Christmas,” and music for 

the 1946 Broadway musical Annie 

Get Your Gun, composed by Berlin, 

probably included more hit songs 

Left to right: Eddie 

Cantor was a favorite 

of Broadway, radio, 

and early television 

audiences. Originally 

a secretary, Ethel 

Merman (1908–

1984), transitioned 

first to vaudeville 

then debuted on 

Broadway in the 

Gershwin brothers 

musical Girl Crazy

(1930), which also 

marked the debut of 

Ginger Rogers. 
Left: George Gershwin penned classical and jazz 

standards and, with his brother, the lyricist Ira Gershwin, 

many of the tunes that today comprise “The Great 

American Songbook.” Right: Composer Richard Rodgers, 

seated, with lyricist partner Lorenz Hart. After Hart’s 

death, Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II would create a 

second string of smash hit Broadway musicals, including 

the revolutionary Oklahoma!

28

Left: Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire 

dance to “Begin the Beguine,” a 

1938 hit recorded by the clarinetist 

Artie Shaw and His Orchestra and 

written by Cole Porter, right, whose 

sophisticated rhythms and complex 

musical forms marked him as one of 

America’s leading songwriters.
29

than any other show (“They Say It’s 

Wonderful,” “The Girl That I Marry,” 

“Doin’ What Comes Naturally,” and 

“There’s No Business Like Show 

Business,” among others). Berlin was 

the most prolific and consistent of 

Tin Pan Alley composers, with an 

active songwriting career spanning 

almost 60 years.

The career and achievements 

of George Gershwin, born Jacob 

Gershowitz (1898-1937), the son of 

an immigrant leatherworker, are 

unique. At the time of his tragically 

early death at the age of 38 (from a 

brain tumor), he was already world 

famous, and to this day he remains 

probably the most widely known of 

American composers. Alone among 

his many distinguished Tin Pan 

Alley contemporaries, Gershwin 

sought and achieved success in the 

world of concert music (“Rhapsody 

in Blue,” “An American in Paris”) as 

well as popular music. Together with 

his brother the lyricist Ira Gershwin, 

George composed scores of Tin Pan 

Alley classics, including standards 

like “I Got Rhythm,” “Fascinating 

Rhythm,” and “Oh, Lady Be Good!”

Both Gershwin’s popular songs 

and his “classical” works demonstrate a sophisticated incorporation 

of stylistic devices derived from African-American sources — such as 

syncopated rhythms and blue notes 

— that far surpasses the rather superficial use of such devices in most 

other white American music of the 

time. Gershwin’s greatest composition, Porgy and Bess (1935), which 

he called an “American folk opera,” 

represents his most thoroughgoing synthesis of European classical, 

mainstream popular, and AfricanAmerican stylistic influences — a 

synthesis that remains his own but 

that also celebrates the wide diversity of American culture.

Cole Porter (1891-1964) was 

born into a wealthy Indiana family 

and studied classical music at Yale, 

Harvard, and the Schola Cantorum 

in Paris. His lasting contributions 

to the “American songbook” include 

“Night and Day,” “I Get a Kick Out 

of You,” and “I’ve Got You Under My 

Skin.” Richard Rogers (1902-1979), 

who produced many of the period’s 

finest songs in collaboration with 

lyricists Lorenz Hart (1895-1943) 

and Oscar Hammerstein II, was the 

college-educated son of a doctor and 

a pianist. Among his hits were “Isn’t 

It Romantic” and “Blue Moon.”

The songs written by these 

men and a few others represent an 

achievement in terms of both quality 

and quantity that appears extraordinary to this day. Many of their finest 

efforts fed the long-standing and 

mutually beneficial relationship between Tin Pan Alley and the nearby 

Broadway theaters, which enjoyed 

great success featuring musical revues and “Follies” which, with their 

sequences of diverse skits, songs, 

dances, and performers, were an obvious successor to vaudeville. Berlin, 

Porter, the Gershwin brothers, Rodgers and Hart, and other prominent 

songwriters of this period all wrote 

the scores to Broadway shows.

Popular song both reflected 

and helped to shape the profound 

changes in American society during 

the 1920s and 1930s: the intermixing of high and low cultures, the 

adoption of new technologies and 

expansion of corporate capitalism, 

the increasingly intimate interaction 

of white and black cultures during 

a period of virulent racism, and the 

emergence of a truly national popular culture. These songs no longer 

dominate popular taste as they used 

to. Nonetheless, they continue to 

be rediscovered by new generations 

of musicians and listeners. Tin Pan 

Alley and the singing style known 

as crooning were important (if often 

unrecognized) influences on rhythm 

& blues and rock ’n’ roll during the 

1950s and 1960s. Many Tin Pan Alley songs are still used by contemporary jazz musicians as a basis for 

improvising. Current pop stars still 

perform them — for example, Elvis 

Costello’s recording of “My Funny 

Valentine” (composed by Richard 

Rodgers and Lorenz Hart), Willie 

Nelson’s version of “Blue Skies” (Irving Berlin), Bono’s duet with Frank 

Sinatra on “I’ve Got You Under My 

Skin” (Cole Porter), and the Smashing Pumpkins’ revival of “My Blue 

Heaven” in 1996. In the early 1990s 

the veteran crooner Tony Bennett 

appeared on MTV’s Unplugged series, finding a new audience among 

fans of “alternative” music, who 

valued the combination of emotional intensity and sophistication 

in Bennett’s style and in many of the 

old standard songs themselves.
30

C h a p T E r 5

Although a clear distinction was drawn between race music and hillbilly 

music — each of which comprised 

dozens of specific styles — the two 

had a number of important features 

in common. Both bodies of music 

originated mainly in the American 

South and were rooted in longstanding folk music traditions. As 

they entered the mass marketplace, 

both blended these older rural musical styles with aspects of national 

popular culture, including the minstrel show, vaudeville, and the musical forms, poetic themes, and performance styles of Tin Pan Alley pop. 

Race music and hillbilly music both 

grew out of the music industry’s efforts to develop alternative markets 

during a national decline in record 

sales and were disseminated across 

the country by new media — including electric recording, radio, and 

sound film — and by the process of 

urban migration, which affected the 

lives of millions of rural Americans 

during the 1920s and 1930s. And 

both bodies of music provided the 

basis for forms of popular music that 

emerged after World War II (rhythm 

& blues, country and western, and 

rock ’n’ roll ), extending their appeal 

across regional and, in the end, international boundaries.

Race Records

The music industry’s discovery of 

black music (and southern music in 

general) can be traced to a set of recordings made in 1920, featuring the 

black vaudeville performer Mamie 

Smith (1883-1946). Perry Bradford, a 

successful black songwriter and music store owner, brought Smith to the 

attention of the Okeh Record Company. A record that featured Smith 

performing two of Bradford’s songs 

was released in July 1920, and although Okeh made no special effort 

to promote it, sales were unexpectEarly Music of the American South:

“RACE RECORdS” And 

“HILLbILLy MUSIC”

The terms race and hillbilly were 

used by the American music 

industry from the early 1920s 

until the late 1940s to classify 

and advertise southern music. 

“Race records” were recordings 

of performances by AfricanAmerican musicians produced 

mainly for sale to AfricanAmerican listeners. “Hillbilly” or 

“old-time” music, on the other 

hand, was performed by, and 

mainly intended for sale to, 

southern whites. Although there 

were some exceptions, the music 

industry in general reflected 

patterns of segregation more 

widespread in American society. 

Paradoxically, these records were 

also one of the main means by 

which music flowed across the 

boundaries of race.

Blues singer Stavin’ Chain on guitar, 

Lafayette, Louisiana, 1934. His name 

may refer to the chain encircling 

often black prisoners’ ankles as they 

labored in deep South chain gangs.
edly high. Smith reentered the studio two months later and recorded 

“Crazy Blues,” backed with the song 

“It’s Right Here for You (If You Don’t 

Get It ... ‘Tain’t No Fault of Mine).” 

Okeh advertised “Crazy Blues” in 

black communities and sold an astounding 75,000 copies within one 

month (at that time, 5,000 sales of 

a given recording allowed a record 

company to recoup its production 

costs, meaning that any further 

record sales were almost all profit). 

Mamie Smith’s records were soon 

available at music stores, drugstores, 

furniture stores, and other outlets in 

northern and midwestern cities, and 

throughout the Deep South.

The promotional catchphrase “race 

music” was first applied by Ralph 

Peer (1892-1960), a Missouri-born 

talent scout for Okeh Records who 

had worked as an assistant on Mamie Smith’s first recording sessions. 

Although it might sound derogatory 

today, the term “race” was used in 

a positive sense in urban AfricanAmerican communities during the 

1920s and was an early example 

of black nationalism; an individual 

who wanted to express pride in his 

heritage might refer to himself as 

“a race man.” The term was soon 

picked up by other companies and 

was also widely used by the black 

press. The performances released 

on race records included a variety of 

musical styles — blues, jazz, gospel 

choirs, vocal quartets, string bands, 

and jug-and-washboard bands — as 

well as oral performances such as 

sermons, stories, and comic routines. Not all recordings featuring 

African-American artists were automatically classified as race records. 

For example, recordings by black 

dance orchestras or jazz bands with 

a substantial white audience were 

31

Among the most 

popular blues vocalists 

of the 1920s and 

1930s, Bessie Smith 

(1894–1937) influenced 

profoundly subsequent 

generations of jazz 

singers. 
32

listed in the mainstream pop record 

catalogs. A few records by AfricanAmerican artists even found their 

way into the hillbilly catalogs.

The emergence of race records 

set a pattern that has been repeated 

many times in the history of American popular music, in which talented entrepreneurs, often connected 

with small, independent record 

labels, take the lead in exploring and 

promoting music outside the commercial mainstream. 

The 1920s also saw the emergence 

of African-American-owned record 

companies. The first of these was 

Black Swan, founded in 1921 in New 

York by Harry Pace. In announcing 

the new company, Pace stated that 

it intended to meet “a legitimate 

and growing demand” among the 12 

million people of African descent in 

the United States. 

By 1927 a total of some 500 race 

records were being issued every 

year. Throughout the 1920s African 

Americans bought as many as 10 

million blues and gospel recordings a year, almost one per person, 

an astonishingly high figure when 

compared with the mainstream 

record market, especially considering that many black people lived in 

poverty. Many young people in these 

communities thus grew up with the 

sound of a phonograph as part of 

their everyday experience. Migrants 

from rural communities who had 

relocated to urban centers returned 

periodically, bringing with them 

the latest hit records and creating a 

continual flow of musical styles and 

tastes between city and country.

It is clear that the music business did not create race music or its 

intended audience out of thin air. It 

would be more accurate to say that 

the basis for an African-American 

audience already existed and the 

companies, hungry for new markets, 

moved to exploit (and in some cases 

to shape) this sense of a distinctive 

black identity. This process in turn 

helped to create a truly national 

African-American musical culture 

— for the first time, people living 

in New York City, Gary (Indiana), 

Jackson (Mississippi), and Los Angeles could hear the same phonograph 

records at around the same time. It 

was during this period that the first 

generation of national black music 

stars emerged, including Bessie 

Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and 

Robert Johnson.

Early Country Music: 

Hillbilly Records

“Hillbilly music,” later rechristened 

“country and western music” or 

simply “country music,” developed 

mainly out of the folk songs, ballads, 

and dance music of immigrants from 

the British Isles. The first generation 

of hillbilly recording artists was also 

familiar with the sentimental songs 

of Tin Pan Alley, and this material became an important part of the 

country music repertoire, alongside 

the older Anglo-American ballads 

and square dance tunes.

Interestingly, it was the race record market, established in the early 

1920s, that led to the first country 

music recordings. The first commercially successful hillbilly record, 

featuring a north Georgia musician 

named Fiddlin’ John Carson, was 

made by Okeh Records in 1923 

Left: A concert marks the 75th anniversary of the 1927 “Bristol 

Sessions,” when record producer Ralph Peer recorded Appalachian 

region “hillbilly music” artists, among them Jimmie Rodgers and the 

Carter Family. Right: The “Texas Troubadour” Ernest Dale Tubb 

helped launch the honky-tonk style of country music.
33

during a recording expedition to 

Atlanta. This field trip, led by Ralph 

Peer and a local record store owner 

named Polk Brockman, was actually 

aimed at locating new material for 

the race record market. 

The new medium of radio was 

in fact crucial to the rapid growth 

of the hillbilly music market. In 

1920 the first commercial radio 

station in the United States (KDKA 

in Pittsburgh) began broadcasting, 

and by 1922 there were more than 

500 stations nationwide, including 

89 in the South. Many farmers and 

working-class people who could not 

afford to buy new phonograph records were able to purchase a radio 

on a monthly installment plan and 

thereby gain access to a wide range 

of programming. 

Most hillbilly musicians of the 

1920s and 1930s did not start out 

as full-time professional musicians. 

The country music historian Bill C. 

Malone has noted that the majority 

worked as textile mill workers, coal 

miners, farmers, railroad men, cowboys, carpenters, wagoners, painters, common laborers, barbers, and 

even an occasional lawyer, doctor, 

or preacher. One important exception to this rule was Vernon Dalhart 

(1883-1948), a Texas-born former 

light-opera singer who recorded the 

first big country music hit. Dalhart’s 

recording career, which had begun 

in 1916, had started to wane, and he 

talked the Victor Company into letting him record a hillbilly number, 

in an effort to cash in on the genre’s 

growing popularity. In 1924 Dalhart 

recorded two songs: “Wreck of the 

Old 97,” a ballad about a train crash 

in Virginia, and “The Prisoner’s 

Song,” a sentimental amalgam of 

preexisting song fragments best 

known for the line “If I had the 

wings of an angel, over these prison 

walls I would fly.” This was the first 

big hillbilly hit, a million-seller that 

contributed to the success of the 

fledgling country music industry. 

Two of the most popular acts of 

early country music were the Carter 

Family and Jimmie Rodgers. The 

Carter Family, born in the isolated 

foothills of the Clinch Mountains 

of Virginia, are regarded as one of 

the most important groups in the 

history of country music. The leader 

of the trio was A. P. “Doc” Carter 

(1891-1960), who collected and arranged the folk songs that formed the 

inspiration for much of the group’s 

repertoire; he also sang bass. His 

wife, Sara (1899-1979), sang most of 

the lead vocal parts and played autoharp or guitar. Sister-in-law Maybelle 

(1909-78) sang harmony, played steel 

guitar and autoharp, and developed 

an influential guitar style, which 

involved playing the melody on the 

bass strings while brushing the upper 

strings on the off-beats for rhythm.

The Carter Family were not professional musicians when their recording career started in 1927 — as 

Sara put it when she was asked what 

they did after the Bristol session, 

“Why, we went home and planted 

the corn.” The Carters’ image, borne 

out in radio appearances and interviews, was one of quiet conservatism; their stage shows were simple 

and straightforward, and they generally avoided the vaudeville circuit 

and promotional tours.

If the Carter Family’s public image and musical repertoire evoked 

the country church and the family 

fireside, Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933) 

was the quintessential rambler, a 

footloose man who carried home 

in his heart but drank deeply of the 

changing world around him. He was 

the most versatile, progressive, and 

widely influential of all the early 

country recording artists. The exrailroad brakeman from Meridian, 

Mississippi, celebrated the allure of 

the open road and chronicled the 

lives of men who forsook the benefits of a settled existence: ramblers, 

hobos, gamblers, convicts, cowboys, 

railway men, and feckless lovers. His 

influence can be seen in the public 

images of Hank Williams, Waylon 

Jennings, Willie Nelson, and almost 

every contemporary male country 

music star.

Both race and hillbilly music 

represent a process of hybridization between southern folk music 

and Tin Pan Alley pop. The singers 

may stand at some distance from 

the rural origins evoked by their 

songs, yet are able to perform in 

a style respectful of those origins. 

Finally, many of the recordings are 

early examples of a phenomenon 

that will become more important as 

we move on through the history of 

American popular music: the crossover hit, that is, a record that moves 

from its origins in a local culture or 

marginal market to garner a larger 

and more diverse audience via the 

mass media.
34

C h a p T E r 6

The top R&B recordings of 

the late 1940s and early 

1950s included swing-influenced “jump bands,” Tin Pan 

Alley-style love songs performed 

by crooners, various styles of urban 

blues, and gospel-influenced vocal 

harmony groups. The reappearance 

of small independent record labels 

provided an outlet for performers 

who were ignored by major record 

companies. The development of 

portable tape recorders made record producers and studio owners 

out of entrepreneurs who could not 

previously have afforded the equipment necessary to produce master 

recordings. They visited nightclubs 

to find new talent, hustled copies 

of their records to local record store 

owners, and attempted to interest a 

major label in a particular recording 

or artist with crossover potential. By 

1951 there were over 100 independent labels slugging it out for a piece 

of the R&B market. 

Jump Blues 

Jump blues, the first commercially 

successful category of rhythm & 

blues, flourished during and just 

after World War II. During the war, 

as shortages made it more difficult to 

maintain a lucrative touring schedule, 

the leaders of some big bands were 

forced to downsize. They formed 

smaller combos, generally made up 

of a rhythm section and horn players. These jump bands specialized in 

hard-swinging, boogie-woogie-based 

party music, spiced with humorous 

lyrics and wild stage performances.

The most successful and influential jump band was the Tympany 

Five, led by Louis Jordan, who began 

making recordings for Decca Records in 1939. Jordan was tremendously popular with black listeners 

and able to build an extensive white 

audience during and after the war.

Jordan’s first big hit, “G.I. Jive,” 

reached Number One on Billboard’s 

“Harlem Hit Parade,” as the R&B 

chart was labeled in the earlier 

1940s, held the top spot on the pop 

music charts for two weeks, and sold 

over a million copies. From 1945 

through 1948 Jordan, working with 

a white record producer named Milt 

Gabler, recorded a string of crossover 

hits, including “Caldonia,” “Stone 

Cold Dead in the Market,” and “Ain’t 

Nobody Here but Us Chickens.” The 

popularity of the Tympany Five was 

reinforced by a series of films featuring the band. These short musical 

features were rented to individual 

movie theaters and shown as a promotional device a few days before the 

Rhythm & Blues:

R&B, as the “rhythm and 

blues” genre came to be 

known, was a loose cluster 

of styles, rooted in southern 

folk traditions and shaped by 

the experience of returning 

military personnel and 

hundreds of thousands of 

black Americans who had 

migrated to urban centers 

such as New York, Chicago, 

Detroit, and Los Angeles 

during and just after

 World War II.

FROM JUMP bLUES TO

dOO-WOP
35

band was due to hit town. Jordan’s 

films, like his records, were popular 

in white as well as black movie theaters, even in the Deep South. However, the fact that his music appealed 

to an interracial audience should not 

lead us to assume that Jordan’s career 

was unaffected by racism. 

As R&B artists like Jordan began 

to attract a more diverse audience, 

the separation between white and 

black fans was maintained in various 

ways. Sometimes white R&B fans 

sat in the balcony of a segregated 

theater or dance hall, watching the 

black dancers below in order to pick 

up the latest steps. At other times a 

rope was stretched across the middle of the dance floor to “maintain 

order.” Then, as at other times, the 

circulation of popular music across 

racial boundaries did not necessarily 

signify an amelioration of racism in 

everyday life.

Blues Crooners

If jump bands represented the hot 

end of the R&B spectrum, the cool 

end was dominated by a blend of 

blues and pop singing sometimes 

called the blues crooner style. The 

roots of this urbane approach to the 

blues reached back to a series of race 

recordings (records made by and 

for African Americans, including 

especially those who had joined the 

“Great Migration” to northern cities 

but wished to enjoy the Southernflavored African-American music 

they had grown up with) made in 

the late 1920s and 1930s by pianist 

Leroy Carr and guitarist Scrapper 

Blackwell. Carr developed a smooth, 

laid-back approach to blues singing 

that contrasted sharply with the 

rough-edged rural blues recordings 

of Charley Patton and Blind Lemon 

Jefferson, and he attracted a national 

black audience. The late 1930s jazz 

recordings of the King Cole Trio, 

with its instrumentation of piano, 

bass, and guitar, were a more immediate influence on postwar blues 

crooners, although Cole’s later recordings took him well into the pop 

mainstream.

The most successful blues 

crooner of the late 1940s and early 

1950s was a soft-spoken Texas-born 

pianist and singer named Charles 

Brown. Brown, who studied classical piano as a child, moved to Los 

Angeles in 1943 and joined Johnny 

Moore’s Three Blazers, a small 

combo that played pop songs for 

all-white parties in Hollywood and 

a more blues-oriented repertoire 

in the black nightclubs along L.A.’s 

Central Avenue. His smooth, sensitive, somewhat forlorn vocal style 

attracted attention, and he began 

to develop a national reputation 

Saxophonist Louis Jordan, 

“The King of the Jukebox,” 

enjoyed “cross-over” 

appeal from the R&B 

“race” charts to the largely 

white-dominated pop 

music scene of the 1940s. 

R&B, urban blues, and 

early rock ’n’ roll artists, all 

built upon Jordan’s work.
36

with the release of “Drifting Blues.” 

In 1948 Brown left to form his own 

quartet and had a Number One R&B 

hit the following year with “Trouble 

Blues.” Over the next three years he 

recorded 10 Top 10 hits for Aladdin 

Records and became one of the most 

popular R&B singers nationwide. A 

handsome, dapper, gracious man, 

Brown projected an image of ease 

and sophistication. His repertoire 

— which included blues, pop songs, 

and semiclassical numbers such as 

the Warsaw Concerto — suggested 

a man in touch with his roots but 

not constrained by them. Brown 

was never able to break through to 

the pop charts — Columbia Records 

offered him a solo contract in 1947, 

but he turned it down out of loyalty 

to his bandmates. But he was rediscovered by a new generation of R&B 

fans in the 1980s and went on to 

develop a successful international 

touring career, culminating in a 

Grammy nomination.

Chicago Electric Blues

A very different urban blues tradition of the postwar era, Chicago 

electric blues, derived more directly 

from the Mississippi Delta tradition 

of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Chicago was the terminus of the 

Illinois Central railroad line, which 

ran up through the Midwest from 

the Mississippi Delta. Although 

Chicago’s black neighborhoods were 

well established before World War 

II, they grew particularly rapidly 

during the 1940s, as millions of rural migrants came north in search of 

employment in the city’s industrial 

plants, railroad shops, and slaughterhouses. The South Side’s nightclubs were the center of a lively black 

music scene that rivaled New York’s 

Harlem and L.A.’s Central Avenue. 

The musical taste of black Chicagoans, many of them recent migrants 

from the Deep South, tended toward 

rougher, grittier styles, closely linked 

to African-American folk traditions 

but also reflective of their new, urban orientation.

Chicago electric blues was a response to these demands. It could 

be argued that the rural blues tradition had almost completely died 

out as a commercial phenomenon 

by the time of World War II, as the 

urbanizing black audience sought 

out more cosmopolitan forms of 

entertainment. From this point of 

view, the mid-1930s recordings of 

Robert Johnson represent the final 

flowering of the Delta blues. However, the old Delta blues style didn’t 

really die out; it emerged in a reinvigorated, electronically amplified 

form. The career of Muddy Waters 

(McKinley Morganfield) exemplifies these developments. Waters was 

“discovered” in the Mississippi Delta 

by the folk music scholars John and 

Alan Lomax, who recorded him 

in the late 1930s for the Library of 

Congress. In 1943 he moved to Chicago and found work in a paper mill, 

while continuing to work as a musician at nightclubs and parties. In 

response to the noisy crowds, and to 

the demand for dance music, Waters 

soon switched from the acoustic to 

the electric guitar (1944) and eventually expanded his group to include 

a second electric guitar, piano, bass, 

amplified harmonica, and drum 

set. During the late 1940s and early 

1950s he was the most popular blues 

musician in Chicago, with a sizeable 

following among black listeners nationwide.

Like many of the great Mississippi 

guitarists, Waters was a master of 

bottleneck slide guitar technique. 

He used his guitar to create a 

rock-steady, churning rhythm, interspersed with blues licks, which 

were counterpoised with his voice 

in a kind of musical conversation. 

The electric guitar, which could be 

used to create dense, buzzing tone 

colors (by using distortion) and 

long sustained notes that sounded 

like screaming or crying (by employing feedback), was the perfect 

tool for extending the Mississippi 

blues guitar tradition. Waters’s singing style — rough, growling, moaning, and intensely emotional — was 

also rooted in the Delta blues. And 

the songs he sang were based on 

themes long central to the tradition: on the one hand, loneliness, 

frustration, and misfortune, and on 

the other, independence and sexual 

braggadocio.

The leading artist of the 1950s 

Chicago blues scene, Muddy 

Waters influenced artists in genres 

ranging from rhythm-and-blues to 

country, from folk to jazz. The Rolling 

Stones reportedly took their name 

from Waters’ 1948 “Rollin’ Stone” 

recording.
37

Doo-Wop

Another important thread in the 

tapestry of postwar rhythm & blues 

was vocal harmony groups. (Although this tradition is today sometimes called “doo-wop,” the earliest 

performers did not use this term.) 

During the postwar era, young singers trained in the black church began to record secular material. Many 

of these vocal groups were made up 

of secondary school kids from the 

black neighborhoods of cities such 

as New York and Washington, D.C., 

and interviews with the singers 

indicate that these groups served 

a number of functions: a means of 

musical expression, an alternative or 

adjunct to urban gangs, and a route 

to popularity. Few members of these 

groups initially saw singing as a way 

to make a living; this perception 

changed rapidly after the first vocal 

R&B groups achieved commercial 

success.

The vocal harmony group most 

responsible for moving away from 

the pop-oriented sound of the Mills 

Brothers and creating a new, harderedged sound more closely linked to 

black gospel music, was the Dominoes, led by vocal coach Billy Ward, 

a strict disciplinarian and savvy 

entrepreneur. In 1950 Ward started 

rehearsing with a number of his 

most promising students and a 17-

year old tenor singer named Clyde 

McPhatter, whom he hired away 

from a gospel group. The Dominoes’ 

first big hit was “Sixty Minute Man.” 

But it was the Dominoes’ next big 

hit, “Have Mercy Baby,” that pushed 

vocal-group R&B firmly in the 

direction of a harder-edged, more 

explicitly emotional sound. “Have 

Mercy Baby” was the first record to 

combine the 12-bar blues form and 

Left to Right: The Flamingos, a popular 1950s doo-wop 

group. Billy Ward and the Dominoes, a top R&B group of 

that decade, launched the career of Jackie Wilson. Its hits 

included “Sixty Minute Man.”
38

the driving beat of dance-oriented 

rhythm & blues with the intensely 

emotional flavor of black gospel 

singing. The song’s commercial 

success was due to the passionate 

performance of Clyde McPhatter. 

McPhatter, the son of a Baptist 

preacher and a church organist, 

was like many other R&B musicians 

insofar as the black church played 

a major role in shaping his musical 

sensibility. While in formal terms 

“Have Mercy Baby” is a 12-bar blues, 

it is essentially a gospel performance 

dressed up in R&B clothing. With a 

few changes in the lyrics, McPhatter’s performance would have been 

perfectly at home in a black Baptist 

church anywhere in America.

To be sure, this mixing of church 

music with popular music was 

controversial in some quarters, and 

McPhatter and later gospel-based 

R&B singers faced occasional opposition from some church leaders. 

But in retrospect the postwar confluence of the sacred and secular 

aspects of black music, and its commercial exploitation by the music 

business, seem inevitable. Although 

it did not appear on the pop music 

charts, “Have Mercy Baby” attracted 

an audience among many white 

teenagers, who were drawn by its 

rocking beat and emotional directness. In addition, the Dominoes 

were featured on some of the earliest 

rock ’n’ roll tours, which typically 

attracted a racially mixed audience. 

Although McPhatter soon left the 

Dominoes to form a new group 

called the Drifters, the impact of his 

rendition of “Have Mercy Baby” was 

profound and lasting — the record is 

a direct predecessor of the soul music movement of the 1960s, and of 

the recordings of Ray Charles, James 

Brown, and Aretha Franklin.

Doo-wop quartet The Delroys.
39

The daughter of a Baptist minister, Big Mama 

Thornton began her career as a singer, 

drummer, harmonica player, and comic on the 

black vaudeville circuit. Her imposing physique and 

sometimes malevolent personality helped to ensure her 

survival in the rough-and-tumble world of con artists 

and gangsters.

In the early 1950s Thornton arrived in Los 

Angeles and began working with Johnny Otis, a Greek 

American who was a major force in the R&B 

scene. Looking for material for Big Mama 

to record, Otis consulted two white college 

kids who had been pestering him to use some 

of their songs. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller 

composed a song that they felt suited her style: 

“Hound Dog.” The combination of Leiber and 

Stoller’s humorous country-tinged lyric, Johnny 

Otis’s drumming, and Thornton’s powerful, 

raspy singing produced one of the top-selling 

R&B records of 1953. 

Most people today know “Hound Dog” 

through Elvis Presley’s version of the song. If 

you are familiar only with Presley’s version, the 

original recording may come as a revelation. 

From the very first phrase Thornton lays 

claim to the song. Her deep, commanding 

voice, reprimanding a ne’er-do-well lover, 

projects a stark image of female power rarely 

expressed in popular music of the 1950s. The 

lyrical bluntness is reinforced by the musical 

accompaniment, which includes a bluesy Deltastyle electric guitar, a simple drum part played 

mainly on the tom-toms, and hand clapping. 

The tempo is relaxed, and the performance 

energetic but loose. The song‘s basic form is a 

12-bar blues, but the band adds a few extra 

beats here and there in response to Thornton’s 

phrasing, another feature that links this urban 

recording to the country blues. The final touch, with 

the all-male band howling and barking in response to 

Big Mama’s commands, reinforces the record’s humor 

and its informality.

Big Mama Thornton
40

Among many significant artists whose names became 

linked with “soul music” in the 1960s, James Brown and 

Aretha Franklin stand out as exceptionally popular 

performers with multidecade careers; in fact, they are 

the top two rhythm-blues artists of this entire time 

period. Both brought experience with gospel singing to 

bear upon their performance of secular material. They 

each developed an intense, flamboyant, gritty, and 

highly individual approach to the singing of pop music.

JaMES BrOWN

I

f Ray Charles employed “soul” as an avenue of 

approach to diverse material, James Brown revealed 

different tendencies from the beginning. His first 

record, “Please, Please, Please” (1956), is indicative: 

while the song is in the format of a 1950s R&B ballad, 

Brown’s vocal clings to repetitions of individual words 

so that sometimes the activity of an entire strophe 

will center around the syncopated, violently accented 

reiterations of a single syllable. The result is startling 

and hypnotic. Like a secular version of a transfixed 

preacher, Brown leaves traditional notions of grammar 

and meaning behind in an effort to convey a heightened 

emotional condition. Later, Brown would leave the 

structures of 1950s R&B far behind and abandon 

chord changes entirely in many pieces. By the later 

1960s a characteristic Brown tune like “There Was a 

Time” offered music focused on the play of rhythm 

and timbre. While the singer does tell a story, the 

vocal melody is little more than informal reiterations 

of a small number of brief, formulaic pitch shapes; the 

harmony is completely static, with the instrumental 

parts reduced to repeating riffs or held chords. But 

this description does the song scant justice — when 

performed by Brown its effect is mesmerizing. Brown’s 

fully developed version of soul is a music of exquisitely 

focused intensity, devoted to demonstrating that “less 

is more.”

In the politically charged “Say It Loud — I’m 

Black and I’m Proud,” which reached Number One on 

the R&B charts in 1968, Brown pares his vocal down 

to highly rhythmic speech. Although the term would 

not be in use for at least a decade, “Say It Loud — I’m 

Black and I’m Proud” is for all intents and purposes 

a “rap” number, a striking anticipation of important 

black music to come. In the wake of the urban folk 

movement of the early 1960s, in which white singers 

presented themselves as spokespeople for the political 

and social concerns of their generation, Brown led 

black musicians in assuming a comparable role for 

the black community. Soul musicians came to be 

seen as essential contributors to — and articulators of 

— African-American life and experience.

From the late 1960s through the disco music 

of the 1970s, from the beginnings of rap on through 

the flowering of hip-hop in the 1990s, no other single 

musician has proven to be as influential on the sound 

and style of black music as James Brown. His repetitive, 

riff-based instrumental style, which elevated rhythm 

far above harmony as the primary source of interest, 

provided the foundation on which most dance-oriented 

music of the period is based.

Brown’s focus on rhythm and timbre demonstrates 

his strong conceptual links with African music styles. 

The minimizing or elimination of chord changes and 

the consequent de-emphasis of harmony makes Brown’s 

music seem, both in conception and in actual sound, 

a lot less “Western” in orientation than a good deal of 

the African-American music that preceded it. On the 

one hand, this quality resonated with many aspects 

James Brown and 

Aretha Franklin
41

James Brown
42

of African-American culture in the late 1960s and 

the 1970s, when there was a marked concern with the 

awareness of African “roots.” On the other hand, one 

could argue that the acceptance and wide influence of 

the “non-Western” aspects of Brown’s music provided a 

foundation for the recent explosion of interest in world 

music of many sorts.

arETha FraNKLIN

L

ike Ray Charles and James Brown, Aretha 

Franklin underwent a long period of 

“apprenticeship” before she achieved her 

breakthrough as a pop star in 1967. After a less than 

stellar career at Columbia Records, from 1960 to 

1966, she went over to Atlantic Records, where Ahmet 

Ertegun and Jerry Wexler encouraged her to record 

strong material well suited to her spectacular voice 

and engaged stellar and empathetic musicians to back 

her up. The rest, as they say, is history. Beginning with 

“I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” in 1967, 

Franklin produced an extraordinary stream of hit 

records over a five-year period that included 13 millionsellers and 13 Top 10 pop hits. Although the later 

1970s and early 1980s witnessed a decline in Franklin’s 

status as a top hit maker, she was never absent from the 

charts, and the mid-1980s brought her a resurgence of 

popularity. As of 1994 Franklin was still a presence on 

the charts.

Franklin grew up with gospel music; her father 

was the pastor for a large Baptist congregation in 

Detroit. Franklin’s first recordings were as a gospel 

singer, at the age of 14, and she occasionally returned 

to recording gospel music in the midst of her career as 

a pop singer — most spectacularly with the live album 

Amazing Grace (1972), which was recorded in a church. 

Amazing Grace introduced legions of pop music fans 

to the power of gospel music. The album was a Top 10 

bestseller and the most successful album of Franklin’s 

entire career; it sold over two million copies.

What is most important about Aretha Franklin 

is the overwhelming power and intensity of her vocal 

delivery. Into a pop culture that identified female 

singers with gentility, docility, and sentimentality, her 

voice blew huge gusts of fresh air. When she demanded 

“respect” or exhorted her audience to “think about 

what you’re trying to do to me,” the strength of her 

interpretations moved her songs beyond the traditional 

realm of personal relationships into the larger political 

and social spheres. Especially in the context of the late 

1960s, with the civil rights and black power movements 

at their heights, and the movement for women’s 

empowerment stirring, it was difficult not to hear largescale ramifications in the records of this extraordinary 

African-American woman. Although Aretha Franklin 

did not become an overtly political figure, she made 

strong political and social statements through the 

character of her performances.

Franklin was not only a vocal interpreter on her 

records but also a major player in many aspects of 

their sound and production. She wrote or co-wrote 

a significant portion of her repertoire. Franklin is a 

powerful keyboard player; her piano is heard to great 

advantage on many of her recordings. And she also 

provided vocal arrangements, colored by the call and 

response of the gospel traditions in which she was 

raised.

Franklin symbolized female empowerment not 

only in the sound of her records but also in the process 

of making them. By the time she recorded a tune called 

“Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” in 1985, she was 

telling a story that had been true of her for a long time. 

In the 1960s female empowerment was something new 

and important in pop music. And neither its novelty 

nor its importance was lost on the rising generation 

of female singer-songwriters, such as Laura Nyro and 

Joni Mitchell, whose ascent to prominence began 

directly in the wake of Aretha Franklin’s conquest of 

the pop charts.
43

Aretha Franklin
During the swing era, jazz artists stood at 

the forefront of American popular music. In 

subsequent decades, genres from rock to 

country to hip-hop mostly supplanted jazz in this 

role. But jazz continued to influence other forms 

of American music, even as it branched out in 

new directions. Bee-bop, acid, fusion, and other 

styles appealed to smaller and more specialized 

— but equally enthusiastic — audiences. The 

photographs here portray a number of postswing jazz giants, artists of unsurpassed creativity, 

sophistication, and talent.

Grammy-Award winning 

jazz singer Cassandra 

Wilson at the Avo 

Session in Basel, 

Switzerland, in 2006.

44

Jazz Gallery
45
46

Pulitzer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis, a 

contemporary champion of “traditional” jazz.
47

“Hard bop” drummer Art 

Blakey played with many of 

his era’s leading jazz stars, and 

founded the Jazz Messengers.
48

Saxophonist Ornette Coleman 

initiated the “free jazz” style, 

which abandoned fixed harmonic 

patterns to permit greater 

improvisation.
49

A protégé of Miles Davis, 

pianist Herbie Hancock led 

a number of seminal jazzrock fusion groups.

Thelonious Monk, one of 

the most inventive pianists 

of any musical genre, 

helped usher in the bebop 

revolution in the 1940s.
50

Known as “Bird,” Charlie 

Parker was the principal genius 

stimulating the chromatically and 

rhythmically complex bebop style.

“First Lady of Song” Ella Fitzgerald 

was the most popular female jazz 

singer in the United States for 

more than half a century. 
51
52

The supremely 

creative John Coltrane 

explored the limits 

of bop and free jazz 

improvisation.
53

Successful and 

critically-acclaimed 

guitarist Pat 

Metheny has been 

touring for the last 

30 years, playing 

120-140 concerts 

each year.
54

Clockwise from above: Trumpeter Miles 

Davis stood at the forefront of multiple jazz 

revolutions, from 1950s “cool jazz” to 1970s 

jazz-rock-funk fusion. Trumpeter-vocalist 

Chet Baker battled drug addiction, but his 

distinctively sad tone was unduplicated. Stan 

Getz pioneered the West Coast “cool jazz” 

style and later introduced U.S. audiences to 

the Brazilian-inflected Bossa Nova.
55

Lester “Prez” Young was 

famous for performing 

with jazz greats Billie 

Holiday and Count Basie 

and for playing his tenor 

saxophone at an angle.
56

C h a p T E r 7

Early country music records 

provide us with a stereoscopic image of tradition in 

a period of rapid change: on the one 

hand, ballads and love songs, images 

of the good old days, family, hearth 

and home; and on the other, tales 

of broken love, distance from loved 

ones, and restless movement from 

town to town. 

Country and western music 

mushroomed in popularity after 

World War II. Although the South 

remained a lucrative area for touring 

performers, the wartime migration 

of millions of white southerners 

meant that huge and enthusiastic 

audiences for country and western 

music had also been established in 

the cities and towns of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and California. The postwar era saw the rapid 

spread of country music programming on radio, and by 1949 over 

650 radio stations were making live 

broadcasts of country performers. 

In 1950 — when Capitol Records 

became the first major company to 

set up its country music operation in 

Nashville, Tennessee — it was estimated that country music accounted 

for fully one-third of all record sales 

nationwide.

In some ways, the range of country music styles during the postwar 

era resembles contemporaneous 

developments in rhythm & blues. 

There were country crooners, who 

specialized in a smooth, pop-oriented style; bluegrass musicians, who 

focused on the adaptation of traditional southern music in a package 

suitable to the times; and honkytonk musicians, who performed in a 

hard-edged, electronically amplified 

style, and wrote songs about the trials and tribulations of migrants to 

the city and about gender roles and 

male/female relationships during a 

period of intense social change.

While some musicians sought to 

move country music onto the mainstream pop charts, others reached 

back into the musical traditions of 

the American South, refurbishing 

old styles to fit new circumstances. 

Country Music:

“You wouldn’t read my letter if I wrote you

You asked me not to call you on the phone

But there’s something I’m wanting to tell you

So I wrote it in the words of this song ...”

Honky-Tonk singer Hank Thompson, “The Wild Side of Life”

Country music has always 

been about the relationship 

between the countryside and 

the city, home and migration, 

the past and the present.

 This is not surprising if we 

consider the main audience 

for this music during the 

1920s: rural people whose 

way of life was being 

radically transformed by the 

mechanization of agriculture 

and changes in the American 

economy, and migrants who 

left home to find jobs and 

establish new lives in the city. 

SOngS OF TRAdITIOn 

And CHAngE
57

While this “neotraditionalist” impulse took many forms, the most 

influential was probably the rise of 

bluegrass music, a style rooted in 

the venerable southern string band 

tradition. The pioneer of bluegrass 

music was Bill Monroe (1911-97), 

born in Kentucky. Monroe started 

playing music at a young age and 

was influenced by his uncle (a country fiddler) and by a black musician 

and railroad worker named Arnold 

Schulz, whose influence can be seen 

in the distinctive bluesy quality of 

Monroe’s music; the interaction 

between white and black styles has 

long been an important aspect of 

country music. In 1935 Bill formed 

a duet with his brother, Charlie. The 

Monroe Brothers played throughout the southeastern United States, 

creating a sensation with their vocal 

harmonies and virtuoso fiddle and 

guitar playing. In 1938 Bill started 

his own group, the Blue Grass Boys, 

and the following year joined the 

cast of the Grand Ole Opry (a hugely 

popular country music radio program. Its regular “member” artists 

were widely acknowledged as the 

genre’s elite. Since 1974 it has been 

broadcast from the Grand Ole Opry 

House, a 4,400 seat venue outside 

Nashville, Tennessee).

A third major direction in postwar country and western music is 

represented by honky-tonk — sometimes called “hard country” — a 

style that conveyed the sound and 

ethos of the roadside bar or juke 

joint. During the Great Depression 

the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma 

provided a lucrative (and rare) source 

of steady, well-paid work, attracting 

thousands of men from the American Southwest and farther afield. 

When Prohibition was repealed in 

1933, the formerly illegal drinking 

establishments frequented by these 

men multiplied and became a major 

source of employment for country and western musicians. These 

honky-tonks, as the people who frequented them called them, provided 

relief, in the form of drinking and 

dancing, from the daily pressures of 

work on the oilfields. By the postwar 

period thousands of these rowdy 

nightspots were sprinkled across the 

American Southwest and beyond.

Singer, songwriter, mandolin player 

Bill Monroe was the founder of 

bluegrass country music.
58

Country and western music 

was crucial to the profitability of 

honky-tonks. Many of them featured colorfully glowing jukeboxes, 

the mechanical record players that 

had grown rapidly in popularity 

during and after World War II. In 

adjusting to the honky-tonk milieu, 

country musicians made a number 

of changes in their performance 

practice. First, many of the old-time 

songs about family and the church 

seemed out of place in the new setting. Musicians began to compose 

songs about aspects of life directly 

relevant to many of their listeners: 

family instability, the unpredictability of male-female relationships, the 

attractions and dangers of alcohol, 

and the importance of enjoying the 

present. When the rural past was 

referred to, it was usually through a 

veil of nostalgia and longing. Honkytonk vocal styles were often directly 

emotional, making use of “cracks” 

in the voice and stylistic features 

from black music, such as melisma 

and blue notes. Country musicians 

adapted traditional instruments 

and playing techniques to the rowdy 

atmosphere of the juke joint. The 

typical instrumentation of a honkytonk band included a fiddle, a steel 

guitar, a “takeoff” (lead) guitar, a 

string bass, and a piano. The guitars 

were electronically amplified, and 

the musicians played with a percussive, insistent beat (sometimes 

called “sock rhythm”) well suited to 

dancing.

When today’s musicians talk 

about playing “good old country 

music,” they are most often referring to the postwar honky-tonk style 

rather than to the rural folk music of 

the South. Honky-tonk stars such as 

Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, Lefty 

Frizzell, Hank Snow, George Jones, 

and Webb Pierce dominated the 

country and western charts during 

the early and mid-1950s. Although 

their fortunes declined after the 

emergence of rock ’n’ roll , honkytonk music remains the heart and 

soul of modern country music.

In the 1960s, many of the younger 

country artists at this time, while 

not directly embracing the rockabilly styles of Elvis Presley or Buddy 

Holly, wanted to update the sound of 

their honky-tonk roots. They opted 

for a newly sophisticated approach 

to the vocal presentation and instrumental arrangement of country 

music, a highly influential approach 

that came to be known as “countrypolitan,” a fusion of “country” and 

“cosmopolitan.” Nashville was at 

the center of this development, and 

the style was also often called the 

“Nashville sound.”

Patsy Cline (1932-63) began her 

career as a hit maker in 1957 with 

her recording of “Walkin’ After 

Midnight,” which was successful 

on both the country and the pop 

charts. Her two big hits of 1961, “I 

Fall to Pieces” and “Crazy,” reflected 

a particular kind of sensibility: they 

were ballads of broad appeal, in no 

sense “teen” records, performed by 

Cline in a manner that, while sophisticated in phrasing and articulation, had sufficient hints of rural and 

bluesy inflections to show where her 

roots lay. The crooning background 

voices gave these records a pop 

sheen, while the high-register piano 

remained evocative of the honkytonk origins of this type of music. 

Cline continued to be a significant 

presence on both country and pop 

charts until her premature death in 

a plane crash in early 1963.

The records made by rock’n’roller 

Elvis Presley from 1960 on (after 

he returned from a tour of duty in 

the army) reflected an increasingly 

Roy Acuff, the “King of Country Music,” with the Smokey Mountain Boys in 1943 

at Nashville, Tennessee’s famous Grand Ole Opry.
59

Bottom left: Hank Snow is credited with launching Elvis 

Presley’s career at the Grand Old Opry in 1954. 

Bottom right: Charley Pride is one of the Top 20 best-selling 

country artists of all-time.

Top left: Pasty Cline 

is said to be the 

most popular female 

country singer in 

recording history. Her 

song “Crazy” is still 

heard on jukeboxes 

throughout the U.S.

Top right: Jim 

Reeves’ popularity 

transcended national 

boundaries.
60

eclectic set of influences, but the 

Nashville sound is especially prominent among them. Good illustrations 

of this would be his 1961 hit “Can’t 

Help Falling in Love” and his 1965 

recording of “Crying in the Chapel,” 

originally a country hit in 1953.

It might seem surprising that the 

Nashville sound’s influence extended into rhythm & blues in the early 

1960s, but given the constant interchanges between white and black 

musicians throughout the history of 

American popular music, this really 

shouldn’t strike us as unexpected. 

Two hits by Solomon Burke, “Just 

Out of Reach (Of My Two Open 

Arms)” and “Cry to Me,” sound for 

all the world like country records 

performed by a black vocalist, and 

a large number of similar-sounding 

records were made in the wake of 

their success, by Burke and by other 

artists associated with rhythm & 

blues. By the later 1960s the career 

of Charley Pride — an African 

American who set out to appeal 

principally to the country audience 

— was in full swing; by 1983 Pride 

had racked up an astonishing 29 

Number-One country hits, thus 

illustrating once again how colorblind music and its audiences really 

can be some of the time. Notable in 

more recent years were a 1994 album 

entitled Rhythm Country and Blues, 

which paired R&B and country audiences for duets, and Burke’s 2006 

album, entitled simply Nashville 

— the U.S. city most associated with 

country music.

During the 1970s, country music 

became a huge business, reaching 

out to young and middle-class listeners while at the same time reinforcing its traditional southern and 

white working-class audience base. 

In 1974 the Grand Ole Opry moved 

from the run-down Nashville theater where it had been broadcasting 

since 1941 into a multimillion-dollar facility, complete with a 110-acre 

theme park called “Opryland.” The 

generally conservative mood of the 

country — reflected in Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over George 

McGovern in the 1972 presidential 

election — reinforced country’s 

popularity among the American 

middle class.

Since that time, country music 

has continued to grow in popularity and influence. It remains both a 

significant cultural force and a large, 

profitable industry. The traditional 

approach represented by the Nashville sound continues to produce 

dozens of hits and artists yearly, 

and for many Americans the Nashville sound is country music. At the 

same, a range of styles that are usually lumped together, for marketing 

purposes, as “alt country” (alternative) provide a rich variety of sounds 

and approaches to music-making 

while maintaining their ties to the 

country tradition. 

Piano player Floyd Cramer’s signature style has been described as a “a 

lonesome, cowboy sound.” 
61

Hank Williams (1923-53) was the most 

significant country music figure to emerge 

during the post-World War II period. In the 

course of his brief career, Williams wrote and sang 

many songs that were enormously popular with country 

audiences; between 1947 and 1953 he amassed 36 Top 

10 records on the country charts, including “Lovesick 

Blues,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Jambalaya (on the Bayou),” 

and “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” All of these hits — along 

with many other Williams songs — have remained 

country favorites and are established genre “standards.” 

In addition, his songs were successfully covered by 

contemporary mainstream pop artists, thus 

demonstrating the wide-ranging appeal of the 

new country material.

Hank Williams reinvigorated for the 

postwar country audience the enduring myth of 

the hard-living, hard-loving rambler. Williams’s 

life tracked that image so closely that one might 

believe — erroneously — that promoters had 

custom-designed a suitable biography: born 

into crushing poverty in Alabama, this son of 

a sharecropper learned to make his way at an 

early age by performing on the street, learning 

from a black street singer named Rufe “Tee-Tot” 

Payne. By the time he was 16, Williams had 

his own local radio show; shortly thereafter he 

formed a band and began touring throughout 

Alabama. Enormous success came by the 

time Williams was in his mid-20s, but it did 

not come without problems. By 1952 he was 

divorced, had been fired from the Grand Ole 

Opry (for numerous failures to appear), and was 

seriously dependent on alcohol and painkilling 

drugs. He was dead on New Year’s Day 1953 at 

29, having suffered a heart attack in the back of 

his car en route to a performance.

Williams affirmed the importance of religious 

traditions in country music by recording some gospel 

material. However, the fact that he recorded his sacred 

tunes under a pseudonym, rather than under his own 

name, ties him more closely to the practices of black 

secular singers than to those of most white artists.

Hank Williams
62

The advent of rock ’n’ roll 

music in the mid-1950s 

brought enormous changes 

to American popular music, changes whose impact is still being felt. 

Styles that had remained on the 

margins of pop music began to infiltrate and eventually dominate the 

center. Rhythm & blues and country 

music recordings were no longer 

directed to specialized and regionalized markets; they began to be heard 

on mainstream pop radio, and many 

could be purchased in music stores 

nationwide.

The emergence of rock ’n’ roll 

was an event of great cultural significance. But several issues demand 

our attention: first, rock ’n’ roll was 

neither a “new,” nor indeed even a 

single musical style ; second, the 

rock ’n’ roll era does not mark the 

first time that music was written 

specifically to appeal to young people; third, rock ’n’ roll was certainly 

not the first American music to fuse 

black and white popular styles.

The new audience was dominated 

by the so-called baby boom generation born immediately following 

World War II. It was a much younger 

target group than ever before, a large 

audience that shared specific characteristics of group cultural identity. 

These were kids growing up in the 

1950s, a period of relative economic 

stability and prosperity marked by a 

return to socially and politically conservative ways. This was also the first 

generation to grow up with television; this new mass medium proved 

a force of incalculable influence.

The term “rock ’n’ roll ” was first 

used for commercial and generational purposes by disc jockey Alan 

Freed. In the early 1950s Freed discovered that increasing numbers of 

young white kids were listening to 

and requesting the rhythm & blues 

records he played on his nighttime 

program in Cleveland — records he 

began to call “rock ’n’ roll .” Freed 

Rock ’n’ roll :

C h a p T E r 8

The rise of rock ’n’ roll in 

the mid-1950s transformed 

the landscape of American 

popular music, further 

cementing the popularity 

of southern-derived styles 

ultimately derived from the 

blues and country music, and 

transforming the teenager 

into both a marketing concept 

and a cultural icon. Rock ’n’ 

roll records were played for 

dances at inner-city, primarily 

black, public schools, for 

parties at predominantly white 

suburban private schools, and 

for socials in rural settings 

catering to young people. If 

you were young in the 1950s 

in the United Statess, no 

matter where you lived, no 

matter what your race or class, 

rock ’n’ roll was your music.

New York disc jockey Alan Freed 

coined the phrase “Rock ’n’ Roll.”

A gEnERATIOn’S IdEnTITy 
63

promoted concert tours featuring 

black artists, playing to a young, racially mixed audience, and promoted 

them as “rock ’n’ roll revues.” The 

term “rock ’n’ roll ” itself was derived 

from the many references to “rockin’” and “rollin’” found in rhythm & 

blues songs and on race records.

The purchase of rock ’n’ roll records by kids in the 1950s proved a 

way of asserting their generational 

identity through rebellion against 

adult standards and restrictions. 

Thus the experience of growing up 

with rock ’n’ roll music became a 

defining characteristic of the baby 

boom generation. So it is not surprising that the music catered to this 

age group, which by the late 1950s 

had its own distinctive culture and 

its associated rituals: school and 

vacation (represented in songs such 

as “School Day” and “Summertime 

Blues”), fashions (“Black Denim 

Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” 

and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini”), social dancing (“At the Hop” and “Save the 

Last Dance for Me”), and courtship 

(“Teen-Age Crush,” “Puppy Love,” “A 

Teenager in Love,” and “Poor Little 

Fool”). Some rock ’n’ roll songs — for 

example, “Roll Over Beethoven” and 

“Rock’n’Roll Is Here to Stay” — announced themselves as emblems of 

a new aesthetic and cultural order, 

dominated by the tastes and aspirations of youth.

Rhythm & Blues

Three prominent African Americans 

represent the rhythm & blues-based 

side of rock ’n’ roll . Chuck Berry 

was a songwriter/performer who addressed his songs to teenage America 

(white and black) in the 1950s; Little 

Richard cultivated a deliberately outrageous performance style that appealed on the basis of its strangeness, 

novelty, and sexual ambiguity; and 

Fats Domino’s work embodied the 

continuity of rhythm & blues with 

rock ’n’ roll . Domino was the earliest 

of the three to become an established 

performer, but all three crossed over 

to mainstream success within the 

first few months following the massive success of the white rocker Bill 

Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.” 

The biggest rock ’n’ roll star to 

come from the country side of the 

music world was Elvis Presley. In 

1955, RCA Victor, a major label, set 

about trying to turn the “hillbilly 

cat” into a mainstream performer 

without compromising the strength 

of his appeal to teenagers. They 

succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Although Presley’s television 

performances were denounced by 

authorities as vulgar, the shows 

Left : Chuck Berry broke racial barriers with tunes such as “Johnny B. Goode” 

and “Maybellene.” Center: Little Richard is known for his piano stylings and 

exuberant vocals in “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” and other classics. 

Right: Fats Domino’s hits include “Blueberry Hill” and “Ain’t That a Shame.”
64

were attended by hordes of screaming young fans and admired on the 

screen by millions. And Presley’s 

records racked up astronomical 

sales from 1956 on into the early 

1960s, establishing him as the biggest-selling solo artist of rock ’n’ roll 

, and then as the biggest-selling solo 

recording artist of any period and 

style—a title he still holds at the beginning of the 21st century!

Presley’s extraordinary popularity established rock ’n’ roll as an unprecedented mass-market phenomenon. His reputation as a performer 

and recording artist endured up to 

his death in 1977 at the age of 42 

— and continues beyond the grave. 

Presley made fine records at many 

points throughout his career, but his 

principal importance rests upon his 

achievements during the early years 

of rock ’n’ roll . In 1956 Presley cut 

a handful of records that changed 

the musical world for himself and 

for those around him, and the unbridled exuberance of his live performances during that era became 

the model for every kid who wanted 

to move mountains by strumming a 

guitar, shaking his hips, and lifting 

his voice.

Rock ’n’ roll Women

The 1950s was an inauspicious 

time to be seen as a rebellious and 

empowered young woman. The 

rebellious, empowered young men 

of early rock ’n’ roll proved controversial enough, and most teenagers 

were happy admiring them from a 

safe distance. The pioneering female 

rocker Wanda Jackson, for instance, 

recorded a number of classic singles 

and enjoyed the encouragement and 

mentoring of Elvis Presley himself 

— but none of her records became 

hits. The post-World War II ideal of 

domestic femininity proved to be 

powerful and provoked no widespread challenges until the 1960s.

By 1960 America was at last 

ready to embrace a young female 

recording artist with a feisty public 

image, and the teenage Brenda Lee, 

who became known as “Little Miss 

Dynamite,” was there to fill the bill 

with engaging rock ’n’ roll songs 

like “Sweet Nothin’s” and “Rockin’ 

Around the Christmas Tree.” Lee 

also recorded a large proportion of 

slow, sentimental love songs.

The 1960s: Rock ’n’ roll ’s Second 

Generation

Few eras in American history have 

been as controversial as the 1960s, 

a period marked by the civil rights 

movement, the Vietnam War, and 

the assassinations of President John 

F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin 

Luther King Jr. Popular music played 

an incontestable role in defining the 

character and spirit of the 1960s. 

The baby boom generation played a 

vital role in the political and cultural 

events of this period, and the boomers were a generation identified with 

rock ’n’ roll .

Three important trends emerged 

in the early 1960s. A new kind of 

social dancing, inspired by “The 

Twist,” gave rock ’n’ roll music a 

distinctive set of movements and 

social customs. Members of the first 

generation to grow up with rock ’n’ 

roll began to assume positions of 

shaping power in the music industry. And new stylistic possibilities 

for rock ’n’ roll began to emerge out 

of California, spearheaded by the 

Beach Boys.

Brian Wilson formed the Beach 

Boys in Hawthorne, California, 

in 1961. The band was achieving 

national chart hits within a year. 

Wilson was the first self-conscious 

second-generation rock ’n’ roll er. 

He explicitly acknowledged his 

reliance on, and reverence for, his 

predecessors in the rock ’n’ roll 

field, by covering and quoting from 

their records. At the same time, he 

carved out distinctive new ground, 

by deliberately moving the lyrics and 

the music of his own songs beyond 

the territory carved out by his predecessors, into novel areas that were 

of particular meaning to him, to his 

time, and to his place in America. 

If we were to conceptualize a 

defining model for the career of a 

self-sustaining, trend-setting rock 

group of the 1960s, it would look 

something like this:

• Start out by demonstrating a 

mastery of the basic early rock ’n’ 

roll ballad and uptempo styles;

• Create original material based on, 

and extending, those styles;

According to Rolling Stone Magazine, 

Wanda Jackson was “the first to bring 

a woman’s intuition” to rock ’n’ roll. 
65

“I’ll Never Stand in 

Your Way” (1953) is 

Elvis Presley’s first 

known recording. The 

“King of Rock ’n’ Roll” 

holds records for the 

most Top Forty and 

Top Ten hits, the most 

consecutive #1 hits, and 

the most weeks at #1.

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• Eventually branch out totally 

beyond the traditional forms, 

sounds, and lyric content of rock 

’n’ roll to create something truly 

different and unique.

The reference point that most 

people would use for constructing 

a model like this would probably be 

the Beatles. But the group that first 

established this model, and did so 

with outstanding success, was the 

Beach Boys. The Beach Boys were 

in fact a clear, and stated, model for 

the Beatles, especially during the remarkably productive and innovative 

years (for both groups) of 1965-67.

Motown

The music of the 1960s includes a remarkable spectrum of styles and influences. In Detroit, Berry Gordy Jr. 

was creating his own songwriting/

producing/marketing organization. 

Motown was named after the “Motor town,” Detroit, the automobile 

production capital of America. It 

came to be one of the most stunning 

African-American business success 

stories. The intensity and duration 

of Motown’s commercial success 

reflected the distinctive dual thrust 

of Gordy’s vision.

First, he was determined to keep 

all of the creative and financial 

aspects of the business under African-American control. This worked 

because Gordy had an uncanny 

ability to surround himself with 

first-rate musical talent in all aspects 

of the record-making process, and 

to maintain the loyalty of his musicians for substantial periods of time. 

It also worked because Gordy had a 

shrewd head for business as well as 

for music, and this leads us to the 

second element of his visionary plan. 

Motown’s music was not directed 

primarily at black audiences. Gordy 

sought to make an African-American pop music addressed to the widest possible listening public. 

It is almost as if Gordy launched 

his enterprise as a kind of counteroffensive against the expropriation of 

African-American music and the 

exploitation of African-American 

musicians that had been as much a 

part of the early history of rock ’n’ 

roll as it had been of other periods 

in the development of American 

popular music. And the unique genius of Gordy was the ability to create a black music aimed right at the 

commercial mainstream that never 

evoked the feeling, or provoked the 

charge, of having sold out. With 

few exceptions, Motown recordings 

avoided direct evocations of earlier 

rhythm & blues forms and styles; 12-

bar blues patterns are strikingly rare, 

as are the typical devices of doo-wop 

or anything suggestive of the 1950s 

sounds of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, 

or Little Richard. Yet a generalized 

Left: Founding Beach Boys (l. to 

r.) Mike Love, Al Jardine, Brian 

Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Carl 

Wilson became known for their 

close vocal harmonies. Right: 

Berry Gordy founded Motown 

Records. With his unmatched 

ability to discern popular taste, 

he launched the careers of 

many popular music giants.
blues or gospel manner remained a 

defining characteristic of Motown’s 

performers; sometimes it could be 

very subtle, as is often the case with 

William “Smokey” Robinson, and 

sometimes much more overt, as is 

the case with Martha Reeves. This 

proved sufficient to give a definite 

African-American slant to the popstructured, pop-flavored songs that 

were characteristic of Motown.

Ray Charles and Soul Music

Even as Berry Gordy’s Motown 

recordings defined one stream 

of 1960s popular music, another 

hugely talented artist was defining the path that would lead to the 

“soul” music that appeared later that 

decade. Ray Charles was a constant 

presence on the rhythm & blues 

charts during the 1950s, but major 

crossover success eluded him until 

1959. Charles was never interested 

in being typecast as a rock ’n’ roll er, 

and he never consciously addressed 

his recordings to the teen market. 

As soon as he established himself as 

a mass-market artist with the bluesbased and gospel-drenched “What’d 

I Say,” in 1959, he sought new worlds 

to conquer; his next record was a 

highly individual cover of Hank 

Snow’s 1950 hit “I’m Movin’ On,” 

one of the biggest country records 

of all time. Within a year, Charles 

had achieved his first Number One 

pop hit with his version of the old 

Tin Pan Alley standard “Georgia on 

My Mind.”

Charles was not the first artist 

to assay many different genres of 

American popular music, and he 

was only one of many to achieve 

crossover success. What is it then 

that made his career so distinctive, 

that made him such a universally admired pop musician — by audiences, 

critics, and other musicians — that 

the appellation “genius” has clung to 

his name for decades?

Part of it is the astounding range 

of talents Charles cultivated. He was 

a fine song-writer, having written 

many of his early rhythm & blues 

hits, including classics of the genre 

like “I’ve Got a Woman” and “Hallelujah I Love Her So.” He was a 

highly skilled arranger, as well as an 

exceptionally fine keyboard player 

who was fluent in jazz as well as 

mainstream pop idioms. And above 

all he was an outstanding vocalist, 

with a timbre so distinctive as to be 

instantly recognizable and an expressive intensity that, once heard, is 

difficult to forget. But this still is not 

the whole story. Charles’s most characteristic recordings are not only 

distinguished, individual statements 

but also unique and encompassing 

statements about American popular 

music style.

Although the term “soul music” 

would not enter the common vocabulary until the later 1960s, it is 

clearly soul music that Ray Charles 

was pioneering in his gospel-blues 

synthesis of the 1950s. He is now 

widely acknowledged as the first 

important soul artist, and his work 

proved an incalculable influence 

on James Brown, Aretha Franklin, 

Curtis Mayfield, Otis Redding, Sly 

Stone, and innumerable others. 

When Charles went on to record 

Tin Pan Alley and country material in the 1960s, far from leaving 

his soul stylings behind, he brought 

them along to help him forge new, 

wider-ranging, and arguably even 

braver combinations of styles.

Ray Charles was a 

Grammy-winning singer 

who blended gospel and 

blues in heartfelt ballads 

like “Georgia On My Mind.”

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The Counterculture and 

Psychedelic Rock

The explosive entrance of folk rock 

into the wide arena of American 

popular culture coincided with 

the development of increasingly 

innovative approaches to rock ’n’ 

roll itself. This was a period of increasing political restlessness and 

ferment in the United States. The 

youth audience for pop culture was 

directly implicated in the politics 

of the Vietnam War, as all young 

American men between the ages of 

18 and 26 were eligible to be drafted 

into the armed forces. In addition, a 

significant number of young people 

were involved with the many organizations, demonstrations, and legal 

initiatives that characterized the 

civil rights movement.

During the late 1960s an “alternative” rock music scene established 

itself in San Francisco. The city had 

long been a center for artistic communities and subcultures, including the “beat” literary movement of 

the 1950s, a lively urban folk music 

scene, and a highly visible and vocal 

gay community. “Psychedelic rock” 

encompassed a variety of styles and 

musical influences, including folk 

rock, blues, “hard rock,” Latin music, 

and Indian classical music. In geographical terms, San Francisco’s psychedelic music scene was focused on 

the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, 

center of the hippie movement.

Jefferson Airplane was the first 

nationally successful band to emerge 

out of the San Francisco psychedelic 

scene. Along with the Quicksilver 

Messenger Service and the Grateful 

Dead, Jefferson Airplane was one 

of the original triumvirate of San 

Francisco “acid rock” bands, playing at the Matrix Club (center of the 

San Francisco alternative nightclub 

scene), larger concert venues such as 

the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore, 

and at communal outdoor events 

such as happenings and be-ins. The 

Airplane’s 1967 LP Surrealistic Pillow sold over one million copies. The 

biggest celebrity in the group was 

vocalist Grace Slick (b. 1939), who 

was the most important female musician on the San Francisco scene.

Grace Slick’s only serious competition as queen of the San Francisco 

rock scene came from Janis Joplin 

(1943-70), the most successful white 

blues singer of the 1960s. Joplin 

came to San Francisco in the mid1960s and joined a band called Big 

Brother and the Holding Company. 

Their appearance at the Monterey 

Pop Festival in 1967 led to a contract 

with Columbia Records, eager to 

cash in on RCA’s success with Jefferson Airplane, and on the growing 

national audience for acid rock. Big 

Brother’s 1968 album Cheap Thrill 

reached Number One on the pop 

charts. Joplin’s full-tilt singing style 

and directness of expression were 

inspired by blues singers such as 

Bessie Smith and by the R&B recordings of Big Mama Thornton. 

Left: The Jefferson Airplane in 1966. Right: Janis Joplin. 
69

Jimi Hendrix, the Guitar Hero 

The 1960s saw the rise of a new 

generation of electric guitarists 

who functioned as cultural heroes 

for their young fans. Their achievements were built on the shoulders 

of previous generations of electric 

guitar virtuosos — Les Paul, whose 

innovative tinkering with electronic 

technology inspired a new generation of amplifier tweakers; T-Bone 

Walker, who introduced the electric guitar to R&B music in the late 

1940s; urban blues musicians such 

as Muddy Waters and B. B. King, 

whose raw sound and emotional directness inspired rock guitarists; and 

early masters of rock ’n’ roll guitar, 

including Chuck Berry and Buddy 

Holly. Beginning in the mid-1960s, 

the new guitarists — including Jimi 

Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, 

Jeff Beck, and the Beatles’ George 

Harrison — took these influences 

and pushed them farther than ever 

before in terms of technique, sheer 

volume, and improvisational brilliance.

Jimi Hendrix was the most 

original, inventive, and influential 

guitarist of the rock era, and the 

most prominent African-American 

rock musician of the late 1960s. His 

early experience as a guitarist was 

gained touring with rhythm & blues 

bands. In 1966 he moved to London, 

where he joined up with two English 

musicians, bassist Noel Redding and 

drummer Mitch Mitchell, forming a band called the Jimi Hendrix 

Experience. The Experience was 

first seen in America in 1967 at the 

Monterey Pop Festival, where Hendrix stunned the audience with his 

flamboyant performance style. This 

sort of guitar-focused showmanship, 

soon to become commonplace at 

rock concerts, was not unrelated to 

the wild stage antics of some rhythm 

& blues performers. 

Rock ’n’ roll Will Never Die?

During the 1970s, the music industry created a number of rock genres, 

designed to appeal to the widest 

possible demographic and promoted 

on Top 40 radio and television. Musicians as diverse as Led Zeppelin; 

Stevie Wonder; Elton John; Carole 

King; Pink Floyd; Paul Simon; Neil 

Diamond; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; 

the Rolling Stones; Frank Zappa 

and the Mothers of Invention; and 

Santana were promoted by record 

companies under the general heading of rock music. By the mid-1980s, 

the rocker Bruce Springsteen found 

a large audience. Springsteen’s songs 

reflected his working-class origins 

and sympathies, relating the stories 

of still young but aging men and 

women with dead end jobs (or no 

jobs at all), who were looking for romance and excitement in the face of 

repeated disappointments. Springsteen performed with his E Street 

Band, and their music was characterized by a strong, roots-rock sound 

that emphasized Springsteen’s connections to 1950s and 1960s music. 

The band even included a saxophone 

— virtually an anachronism in the 

pop music of this period — to mark 

the link with the rhythm & blues and 

rock ’n’ roll of earlier eras.

Purists insist that rock music 

is past its prime. The times have 

changed, and so has the spirit of the 

times. Many others insist just as fervently that rock continues alive and 

healthy today, and many will agree 

that it is hard to argue with their evidence. The profusion of forms and 

genres that can be called, in one way 

or another, rock music, is astounding. One Web site lists 32 varieties 

of rock music. Punk, thrash, metal, 

grunge, country rock, and glam 

rock, to name just a few, have all 

developed out of the rock ’n’ roll tradition that began in the 1950s. They 

continue to be played and heard and, 

just as significantly, to provide the 

stimulus for new forms and styles 

of popular music in America and 

around the world.

Guitarist Jim Hendrix fused elements 

of rock, soul, blues, and jazz.
70

Beginning in the early 1950s a genre of popular 

music called “urban folk” began to appear 

on the pop charts. Artists like the Weavers 

and their leader Pete Seeger, and, a few years later, 

the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary mated 

political protest themes and an urban intellectual 

sensibility to a musical style inspired by rural folk 

music. Urban folk continued to flourish during the early 

days of rock ’n’ roll and into the 1960s. But by 1967 

electric instruments and drums had joined Peter, Paul, 

and Mary’s acoustic guitars, and the well-known folk 

group was in the pop Top 10 singing “I Dig Rock’n’Roll 

Music”! The individual responsible for this shift was 

the man who had written their biggest acoustic hit, 

“Blowin’ in the Wind.” He was also the man who, 

virtually single-handedly, dragged urban folk music 

into the modern era of rock. His name 

was Bob Dylan.

Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman) 

first established himself as an acoustic 

singer-songwriter in New York City’s 

urban folk scene. The early 1960s 

was a period of explosive growth for 

acoustic urban folk music. The baby 

boomers were reaching college age, 

demonstrating increasing cultural and 

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan playing the harmonica and 

acoustic guitar in 1963. In 2006, he was 

still touring and performing.
71

political interests and awareness, and they represented 

an expanding audience for traditionally based folk 

music and for newly composed “broadsides” on the 

issues of the day (such as the Cold War with the Soviet 

Union, the testing and stockpiling of nuclear arms, and 

racial bigotry). 

Dylan’s contemporaries included gifted performers 

such as Joan Baez and Judy Collins, and talented 

songwriters such as Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs. But 

Dylan stood out early for the remarkable quality of 

his original songs, which reflected a strong gift for 

poetic imagery and metaphor and a searing intensity 

of feeling, sometimes moderated by a quirky sense 

of irony, and for his rough-hewn performance style, 

combining aggressive vocal, guitar, and harmonica and 

demonstrating affinities to rural models in blues and 

earlier country music. 

In addition to writing impressive topical songs 

like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Dylan distinguished himself 

as a composer of more intimate but highly original 

songs about human relationships. The year 1965 was 

pivotal in Dylan’s career; he moved from being the most 

distinctive songwriter among American urban folk 

artists to being an epochal influence on the entirety of 

American popular culture.

Early in 1965 Dylan released his fifth album, 

Bringing It All Back Home, in which acoustic numbers 

shared space with songs using electric guitar and 

drums. The album featured several songs that carried 

Dylan’s flair for intense and unusual poetic imagery 

into the realm of the surreal. One such song, “Mr. 

Tambourine Man,” was covered by the fledgling 

California rock group the Byrds; their version of “Mr. 

Tambourine Man” soared to Number One in June 

1965, thus becoming the first landmark folk-rock hit. 

The lesson was not lost on Dylan, who returned to the 

recording studio early in the summer with a rock band 

to cut his own breakthrough single, “Like a Rolling 

Stone.” This six-minute, epic pop single certified that 

a sea change was taking place in American popular 

culture. 

By the mid-1960s changes within rock ’n’ roll 

were in the wind. But Dylan’s electric style and 

other manifestations of folk rock had the effect of 

an enormous injection of growth hormones into the 

pop music scene. Suddenly, it was all right for rock ’n’ 

roll to be as “adult” as its baby boomer audience was 

now becoming, and rock ’n’ roll abruptly grew up into 

rock. Pop records on serious subjects, with political 

and poetical lyrics, sprang up everywhere; before long, 

this impulse carried over into the making of ambitious 

concept albums. The later 1960s flowered into a period 

of intense and remarkable innovation and creativity in 

pop music. 

Despite the popularity of “Like a Rolling Stone” 

and a few singles that followed, Dylan never really 

established himself as primarily a “singles artist.” 

Rather, he was the first important representative of 

another pop phenomenon: the rock musician whose 

career was sustained essentially by albums. Although 

his influence was at its peak in the 1960s, Dylan 

has continued to be a widely admired and closely 

followed artist into the new century. Never content 

to be pigeonholed or to fall into a predictable role as 

elder statesman for any movement or musical style, 

Dylan has over the course of his career produced a 

distinctive, heterogeneous, and erratic output of albums 

that represent a singular testament to the spirit of pop 

music invention. Among these albums may be found 

examples of country rock (Nashville Skyline, 1969), 

what would later be termed Christian rock (Slow Train 

Coming, 1979), and even latter-day forays back into 

traditional acoustic folk material (Good as I Been to 

You, 1992)—along with many examples of the folk-rock 

approach that initially sealed his place in the pantheon 

of American music. No Direction Home (2005), an 

Emmy-award documentary directed by Martin 

Scorsese, chronicles the evolution of Dylan’s career, one 

that remains productive, with Dylan still touring and 

recording tirelessly, and challenging his audiences to 

guess what his next move might be.
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C h a p T E r 9

THE bUSInESS

Music:

The music business shapes 

both the production of 

popular music and the 

means by which it is transmitted to 

the consumer. From the 19th century until the 1920s, sheet music was 

the principal means of disseminating 

popular songs to a mass audience. 

This process typically involved a 

complex network of people and institutions: the composer and lyricist 

who wrote a song; the publishing 

company that bought the rights to 

it; song pluggers, who promoted the 

song in stores and convinced big stars 

to incorporate it into their acts; the 

stars themselves, who often worked 

in shows that toured along a circuit 

of theaters controlled by yet other organizations; and so on, right down to 

the consumer, who bought the sheet 

music and performed it at home.

The rise of radio, recording, and 

movies as the primary means for 

popularizing music added many 

layers of complexity to this process. 

Today hundreds of people will have 

a hand in producing the music you 

listen to. In mainstream pop music, 

the composer and lyricist are still 

important; the songs they write are 

reworked to complement a particular performer’s strengths by an arranger, who decides which instruments to use to accompany them, 

what key the song should be in, how 

many times it should be repeated, 

and a host of other details. The A&R 

(artists and repertoire) personnel 

of a record company seek out talent, often visiting nightclubs and 

rehearsals to hear new groups. The 

producer of a record plays several 

roles: convincing the board of directors of a record company to back a 

particular project, shaping the development of new “talent,” and often 

intervening directly in the recording 

process. Engineers work in the studio, making hundreds of important 

decisions about the balance between 

voice and instruments, the use of effects such as echo and reverb, and 

other factors that shape the overall 

“sound” of a record. The publicity 

department plans the advertising 

campaign, and the public relations 

department handles interactions 

with the press.

The emergence of rock ’n’ roll in 

the 1950s illustrates how this model 

adapted to changes in technology, 

popular taste, and the emergence 

of an increasingly influential youth 

culture. The overall vitality of the 

American economy after World 

War II helped push the entertainment industry’s profits to new levels. 

Sales of record players and radios 

expanded significantly after the war. 

To understand the history 

of American popular music, 

we need to learn about 

the workings of the music 

business. The production 

of popular music typically 

involves the work of many 

individuals performing 

different roles.
73

Total annual record sales in the 

United States rose from $191 million in 1951 to $514 million in 1959. 

This expansion was accompanied by 

a gradual diversification of mainstream popular taste, and by the 

reemergence of independent record 

companies, whose predecessors had 

been wiped out 20 years before by 

the Great Depression. Most of these 

smaller companies — established by 

entrepreneurs in New York and Los 

Angeles, and in secondary centers 

such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans 

— specialized in rhythm & blues 

and country and western recordings, which had begun to attract a 

national mass audience. This process 

was viewed with a mixture of interest and alarm by the directors of the 

“majors” (large record companies 

such as RCA Victor, Capitol, Mercury, Columbia, MGM, and Decca), 

which still specialized mainly in the 

music of Tin Pan Alley, performed 

by crooners. A few of the majors 

— for example, Decca, which had 

already made millions from the sale 

of R&B and country records — did 

manage to produce some early rock 

’n’ roll hits. Other large record companies took a couple of years to react 

to the emergence of rock ’n’ roll . 

RCA Victor, for example, scored 

a Number One hit in 1956 with 

Kay Starr’s rendition of “Rock and 

Roll Waltz” (a song that described 

a teenager watching her parents 

try to dance to the new music, accompanied by music more akin to a 

ballroom waltz than to rock ’n’ roll ). 

But RCA also signed the rockabilly 

singer Elvis Presley and set to work 

transforming him into a Hollywood 

matinee idol and rock ’n’ roll ’s first 

bonafide superstar.

The sales charts published in industry periodicals like Billboard and 

Cashbox during the 1950s chronicle 

changes in popular taste, the role of 

the indies in channeling previously 

marginal types of music into the pop 

mainstream, and the emergence of a 

new teenage market. The charts also 

reveal a complex pattern of competition among musical styles. As an 

example, let’s have a look at the Billboard charts for July 9, 1955, when 

Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock 

around the Clock” became the first 

rock ’n’ roll hit to reach the Number 

One position on the “Best Sellers 

in Stores” chart. This event is cited 

by rock historians as a revolutionary event, the beginning of a new 

era in American popular culture. 

However, two very different recordings, reminiscent of earlier styles of 

popular music, held the Number 

One positions on the jukebox and 

radio airplay charts on July 9 — the 

Latin American ballroom dance hit 

“Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom 

White,” by Perez Prado and His 

Orchestra, and “Learning the Blues,” 

performed by the former big-band 

crooner Frank Sinatra with the accompaniment of Nelson Riddle and 

His Orchestra. And lest we assume 

that this contrast in styles represented a titanic struggle between 

small and large record companies, 

it should be noted that all three of 

the records were released by majors 

(Decca, RCA Victor, and Capitol, 

respectively).

The record that pushed “Rock 

Around the Clock” out of the Number One position two months later 

was “The Yellow Rose of Texas” (a 

19th-century minstrel song), performed in a deliberately old-fashioned singalong style by the Mitch 

Miller Singers. Miller was the powerful director of the A&R (artists 

and repertoire) department at Columbia Records, and in that role had 

helped to establish the careers of pop 

crooners such as Doris Day, Tony 

Bennett, and Frankie Laine. He was 

also an arch-enemy of rock ’n’ roll 

music and of its increasing influence 

on AM radio programming, which 

he derided as being geared to “the 

eight- to 14-year-olds, to the preshave crowd that make up 12 percent of the country’s population and 

zero percent of its buying power.” It 

is not hard to understand Miller’s 

anger over the domination of radio 

by Top 40 playlists — predetermined 

lists of records by a limited number 

of artists, often backed up by bribes 

from record company officials to 

radio station personnel. One could 

see the free-form FM broadcasts of 

the late 1960s and the rise of alternative stations in the 1980s and 1990s 

— where disc jockeys were free to 

play eclectic and often challenging 

music —as similar reactions against 

the playlist concept. But his refusal 

to recognize the teenage market 

was nothing if not short-sighted. A 

1958 survey of the purchasing patterns of the 19 million teenagers in 

the United States showed that they 

spent a total of nine billion dollars 

a year and strongly influenced their 

parents’ choices of everything from 

toothpaste and canned food to automobiles and phonographs. And, 

of course, they bought millions and 

millions of records.

Production and Promotion of 

Popular Music

Before music hits the stores and 

airwaves, business agents, video 

producers, graphic artists, copy 

editors, record stores, stage hands, 
74

truck drivers, T-shirt companies, 

and the companies that produce 

musical hardware — often owned by 

the same corporations that produce 

the recordings — play vital roles in 

the production and promotion of 

popular music today. It is hard to 

know where to draw the boundaries of an industry that has extended 

itself into so many aspects of commerce and culture.

In addition, many of the roles 

described above have become intermingled in complex ways. A person 

like Quincy Jones, for example, is a 

performer, a song-writer, an arranger, a producer (who makes lots of 

engineering decisions), and a record 

label executive. And the wider availability of digital recording equipment means that some performers 

may also act as their own arranger, 

producer, and engineer (Stevie Wonder and Prince are good examples of 

this kind of collapsing of roles).

Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher who wrote in the 1940s 

and 1950s, powerfully criticized 

the effects of capitalism and industrialization on popular music. He 

suggested that the music industry 

promotes the illusion that we are all 

highly independent individuals defined by our personal tastes — ”I’m 

a country music fan,” “You’re a metalhead.” In fact, Adorno argued, the 

industry manipulates the notion of 

personal taste to sucker us into buying its products. Emotional identification with the wealthy superstars 

portrayed on television and in film 

— the “Lifestyles of the Rich and 

Famous” syndrome — is, in Adorno’s view, a poor substitute for the 

humane and ethical social relations 

that typify healthy communities.

In some ways Adorno was right: 

Americans are probably less individualistic than they like to think, 

and it is often true that record 

companies con us into buying the 

latest thing on the basis of tiny differences in musical style, rather like 

the little design changes that mark 

off different kinds of automobiles or 

mp3 players or tennis shoes. And it 

is true that the private experience 

of listening over headphones — like 

the experience of driving alone in an 

automobile with the windows rolled 

up — can isolate people from one 

another.

But there’s more to it than that. 

Just ask anyone who’s worked in 

the music business and developed 

an ulcer trying to predict what the 

next trend will be. Compared to 

other industries that produce consumer products, the music business 

is quite unpredictable. Today, only 

about one out of eight recordings 

makes a profit. One platinum record 

— something like Michael Jackson’s 

Thriller, Madonna’s Like a Virgin, 

Nirvana’s Nevermind, or Dr. Dre’s 

The Chronic — must compensate for 

literally hundreds of unprofitable records made by unknown musicians 

or faded stars. As record company 

executives seek to guarantee their 

profits by producing variations on 

“the same old thing,” they also nervously eye the margins to spot and 

take advantage of the latest trends.

The relationship between the 

“majors” — large record companies 

with lots of capital and power — and 

the “indies” — small independent 

labels operating in marginal markets 

— has been an important factor 

in the development of American 

popular music. In most cases, the 

majors have played a conservative 

role, seeking to ensure profits by 

producing predictable (some would 

say “bland”) music for a large middle-class audience. The indies, run 

by entrepreneurs, have often had to 

be more daring, searching out new 

talent, creating specialized niches, 

and feeding new styles into the musical mainstream. It is mostly these 

small labels that initially popularized blues, country music, rhythm & 

blues, rock ’n’ roll , funk, soul music, 

reggae, punk rock, rap, grunge, 

worldbeat, and other “alternative” 

styles. In some cases, indie labels 

have grown large and powerful; one 

example of this is Atlantic Records, 

which began as a small R&B label in 

the late 1940s and grew into a multimillion-dollar corporation.

Today, the relationship between 

indies and majors has been extended 

over the globe — five corporations 

(only one of them actually based in 

the United States) now control at 

least 75 percent of the world’s legal 

trade in commercially recorded 

music. Each of these transnational 

corporations has bought up many 

smaller labels, using them as incubators for new talent, a system reminiscent of the relationship between 

major and minor league baseball 

teams.

This consolidation will not likely 

be the end of the story. With the rise 

of the mp3 and other digital formats 

— developments discussed in chapter 10 — and of Internet and personal digital device distribution models, 

the music business will continue to 

evolve. One constant will remain: 

listeners will continue to seek out 

and enjoy their favorite tunes.
75

Bill Haley would seem an unlikely candidate for 

the first big rock ’n’ roll star, but in the early 

1950s this leader of obscure western swing 

groups was seeking a style that would capture the 

enthusiasm of the growing audience of young listeners 

and dancers. He dropped his cowboy image, changed 

the name of his accompanying group to the Comets, 

and in 1953 wrote and recorded a song, “Crazy, Man, 

Crazy,” that offered a reasonable emulation of danceoriented black rhythm & blues music. The record rose 

as high as Number 12 on the pop charts.

Bill Haley and the Comets recorded cover versions 

of rhythm & blues hits in the mid-1950s, notably 

“Shake, Rattle, and Roll” and “See You Later, Alligator.” 

But they attained their unique status in pop music 

history when “Rock Around the Clock” became, in 

1955, the first rock ’n’ roll record to be a Number One 

pop hit. It stayed in the top spot for eight consecutive 

weeks during the summer of 1955 and eventually sold 

over 22 million copies worldwide.

“Rock Around the Clock” was actually recorded 

in 1954 and was not a big hit when first released. But 

the record was prominently featured in the opening 

credits of the 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle and quickly 

achieved massive popularity. Bill Haley’s claim to have 

“invented” rock ’n’ roll deserves as little credibility as 

Paul Whiteman’s claim a generation earlier to be the 

“King of Jazz.” But Haley proved to be an important 

popularizer of previously marginalized musical sounds 

and ideas, and he paved the way for the widespread 

acceptance of more creative artists.

”Rock Around the Clock” demonstrated the 

unprecedented success that a white group with a 

country background could achieve playing a 12-bar 

blues song driven by the sounds of electric guitar, 

bass, and drums. It proved a portent of the enormous 

changes that were about to overtake American popular 

music and opened the floodgates for artists like Elvis 

Presley, Carl Perkins, and Buddy Holly. “Rock Around 

the Clock” also helped prepare a receptive mass 

audience for the sounds of rhythm & blues, and for 

black artists building on the rhythm & blues tradition. 

While the song was still at the top of the pop chart in 

1955, Chuck Berry’s trailblazing “Maybellene” made 

its appearance on the same chart, and before long was 

itself in the Top 10.

Bill Haley and

“Rock Around the Clock”
76

C h a p T E r 1 0

InnOvATIOnS And 

COnTROvERSIES

Music Technology: 

Although we tend to associate the word “technology” with novelty and change, 

older technologies often take on important value as tokens of an earlier 

time. Old forms of musical hardware 

and software — music boxes, player 

pianos, phonographs, sheet music, 

78s, 45s, and LPs — become the 

basis for subcultures made up of 

avid collectors. In some cases, older 

music technologies are regarded as 

superior to the new. Some contemporary musicians make a point of 

using analog rather than digital recording technology. Musicians who 

prefer analog recording say that it 

is “warmer,” “richer-sounding,” and 

“more human.”

Sometimes the rejection of electronic technology functions as an 

emblem of “authenticity,” as, for 

example, in MTV’s Unplugged series, where rockers like Eric Clapton 

demonstrate their “real” musical 

ability by playing on acoustic instruments. However, there are also many 

examples of technologies being used 

in ways that encourage active involvement, including the manipulation of multiple record turntables 

by hip-hop DJs and the increasing 

popularity of karaoke singalong 

machines and computer software in 

American nightclubs and homes. 

Digital Technology and 

Popular Music

During the 1980s, new technologies 

— including digital tape recorders, 

compact discs, synthesizers, samplers, and sequencers — became central to popular music. These devices 

were the fruit of a long history of 

interactions between the electronics 

and music industries and between 

individual inventors and musicians.

Analog recording transforms the 

energy of sound waves into physical 

imprints or into electronic waveforms that follow the shape of the 

sound waves themselves. Digital recording, on the other hand, samples 

the sound waves and breaks them 

down into a stream of numbers. A 

device called an “analog-to-digital 

converter” does the conversion. To 

play back the music, the stream of 

numbers is converted back to an 

analog wave by a “digital-to-analog 

converter” (DAC). The analog wave 

produced by the DAC is amplified 

and fed to speakers to produce the 

sound.

Synthesizers that allow musicians 

to create musical sounds began to 

appear on rock records during the 

early 1970s, but their history begins 

earlier. One important predecessor 

of the synthesizer was the theremin, 

From the heyday of printed 

sheet music in the 19th 

century through the rise 

of the phonograph record, 

network radio, and sound 

film in the 1920s, up to 

the present era of digital 

recording, computerized 

sampling, and Internet-based 

radio, technology has shaped 

popular music and has helped 

disseminate it to more and 

more people.
77

a sound generator that used electronic oscillators to produce sound.

Another important stage in the 

interaction between scientific invention and musical technology was 

the Hammond organ, introduced in 

1935. The sound of the Hammond 

B-3 organ was common on jazz, 

R&B, and rock records. The player 

could alter the timbre of the organ 

through control devices called “tone 

bars,” and a variety of rhythm patterns and percussive effects were 

added later.

The 1980s saw the introduction 

of the first completely digital synthesizers capable of playing dozens 

of “voices” at the same time. The 

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital 

Interface) specification, introduced 

in 1983, allowed synthesizers built 

by different manufacturers to be 

connected with and communicate 

with one another. Digital samplers 

were capable of storing both prerecorded and synthesized sounds. 

Digital sequencers record musical 

data rather than sound and allow 

the creation of repeated sound sequences (loops), the manipulation 

of rhythmic grooves, and the transmission of recorded data from one 

program or device to another. Drum 

machines rely on “drum pads” that 

can be struck and activated by the 

performer.

Digital technology has given musicians the ability to create complex 

128-voice textures, to create sophisticated synthesized sounds that exist nowhere in nature, and to sample 

and manipulate any sound source, 

creating sound loops that can be 

controlled with great precision. 

With compact, highly portable, and 

increasingly affordable music equipment and software, a recording studio can be set up anywhere. As the 

individual musician gains more and 

more control over the production of 

a complete musical recording, distinctions between the composer, the 

performer, and the producer sometimes melt down entirely.

At each stage in the development 

of popular music, new technologies 

have opened up creative possibilities 

for musicians, creating a wider range 

of choices for consumers. We are accustomed to thinking of technology 

as an agent of change. In some cases, 

however, the new digital technologies have allowed musicians to excavate the musical past. The techno 

musician Moby did precisely this 

on his bestselling 1999 album Play, 

when he sampled segments of performances by Georgia Sea Islands 

singer Bessie Jones, among others.

In the 21st century, technology 

continues to affect how popular music is made, recorded, reproduced, 

marketed to, and enjoyed by listeners. A new standard for digital music making was introduced in 1992 

with the Alesis ADAT. The core 

of the ADAT system was an eighttrack digital synthesizer/recorder 

that could expand to 128 tracks by 

adding additional units. This meant 

that a consumer could set up a basic 

Left: Musician Nick Haworth and the alternative rock 

band “La Rocca” record their debut album at the Napster 

live studio, Aug. 2, 2006, in Los Angeles.

Right: Napster promotional stickers.
78

home studio at relatively small expense, while professionals could use 

the same technology to build highly 

sophisticated digital sound facilities.

The 1990s also saw the introduction of music software programs 

such as Pro-Tools, running on 

personal computers. This software 

allowed recording engineers and 

musicians to gain more control over 

every parameter of musical sound, 

including not only pitch and tempo 

but also the quality of a singer’s 

voice or an instrumentalist’s timbre. One complaint voiced against 

ProTools and similar software by 

some musicians is that it allows the 

correction of musical errors, including the substitution of individual 

notes and phrases and the alteration 

of a musician’s sonic identity. From 

this perspective, “imperfection” is a 

necessary part of music as a form of 

human expression. 

The Internet 

It can be argued that the most profound transformations in popular 

music have been catalyzed by the 

Internet. In musical terms, the most 

influential new medium associated 

with the Internet is MP3, which allows sound files to be compressed to 

as little as one-12th of their original 

size. Let’s assume that you would 

like to download a four-minute track 

of music from a Web site featuring 

original music. In its uncompressed, 

digitally encoded form, this track 

would require 40 megabytes of data. 

With MP3 compression, this file 

can be squeezed down to only four 

megabytes, while still retaining the 

sound quality of a CD.

The once controversial peer-to-peer file trading service Napster spurred 

debate about copyright infringement. Napster is now back in business as a legal, 

pay-per-song music-download site.

Consumers listening to music or a podcast on an Apple Video iPod pose a 

challenge to traditional broadcasters.
79

The introduction of MP3 technology spurred a series of bitter 

struggles between entertainment 

corporations and small-scale entrepreneurs, echoing past conflicts 

between major and indie record labels, though on an even larger scale. 

In 1997 a firm called MP3.com was 

founded by Michael Robertson, who 

started by making 3,000 songs available for free downloading over the 

Internet. By the year 2000 MP3.com 

had become by far the most successful music site on the World Wide 

Web, with over 10 million registered 

members. As with digital sampling, 

this new way of disseminating musical materials raised a host of thorny 

legal problems, centered on the issue 

of copyright. While MP3 files are 

not inherently illegal, the practice 

of digitally reproducing music from 

a copyrighted compact disc and 

giving it away for free without the 

artist’s or record company’s permission arguably is illegal.

Personal Listening Devices 

The development of new personal 

listening devices came hand-inhand with the rise of file-sharing on 

the Internet. In 2001 Apple Computer introduced the iPod player, which 

could store up to 1,000 CD-quality 

songs on its internal hard drive. The 

iPod and other MP3 players have 

come to dominate the market for 

portable listening devices because 

they provide the listener with the 

ability to build a unique library of 

music. The ability of the iPod to 

“shuffle” music has not only exerted 

an influence on personal listening 

habits but also provided a metaphor 

for the contemporary state of consumer culture.

Studies of the intimate relationship between the iPod and its users 

suggest that for many listeners the 

device functions as an aural prosthetic, an extension of the ears and 

musical mind and a point of connection to wider circuits for the circulation of digital information. Through 

these portable devices, consumers 

of popular music are connected to 

a global entertainment matrix that 

includes home computers, the Internet, music download services, and 

new services that are beginning to 

supplant the traditional functions of 

broadcasting. The rise of “podcasting” — a method of online audio 

distribution in which digital sound 

files are uploaded to a Web site, and 

listeners can automatically load files 

onto a portable player as become 

available — has some cultural observers forecasting the demise of 

radio.

Controversies 

There is no way to provide the final 

word on the rapidly shifting landscape of music technology. The fact 

that digital technology allows the 

content of a recording to be liberated from its physical medium creates controversy. Earlier recording 

technologies involve a process of 

“translation” from one medium to 

another: analog recording, for example, translates sound waves in the 

air into physical impressions on the 

surface of a disc or arrangements of 

iron oxide molecules on a magnetic 

tape. But digital recording involves 

the translation of musical sound 

into pure information, encoded 

in streams of ones and zeros. This 

means that music can be transmitted, reproduced, and manipulated 

in a “virtual” form, free of the constraints of any particular technology. This development has raised 

questions that will no doubt shape 

the course of American popular 

music for years to come: What does 

it mean when a consumer licenses 

the right to use the contents of an 

album, rather than buying a single 

copy of it in a store? How can copyright be enforced — indeed, what is 

the meaning of the term “copyright” 

— when thousands of consumers 

can download the same piece of music simultaneously over the Internet? 

How will the transformation of 

music into pure information affect 

musicians and consumers? If “Video 

Killed the Radio Star” — to cite the 

first song promoted on MTV — will 

the Internet kill the CD store? What 

will the music industry of tomorrow 

look like?
80

I

t is impossible to conjure up a mental image of 

Chuck Berry without an electric guitar in his 

hands. One of rock ’n’ roll ’s most significant effects 

on popular music was its elevation of the electric 

guitar to a position of centrality. The development of 

the electric guitar is a good example of the complex 

relationship between technological developments and 

changing musical styles. Up through the end of World 

War II, the guitar was found mainly in popular music 

that originated in the South, and in various “exotic” 

genres (Hawaiian and Latin American guitar records 

were quite popular in the 1920s and 1930s). Because 

of its low volume, the acoustic guitar was difficult to 

use in large dance bands. In 1931 the Electro String 

Instrument Company introduced the first electric 

guitars. By the mid-1930s the Gibson Company had 

introduced a hollow-body guitar with a new type of 

pickup — a magnetic plate or coil which, attached to 

the body of the guitar, converts the physical vibrations 

of its strings into patterns of electric energy. 

The solid-body electric guitar was developed 

after World War II and first used in rhythm & blues, 

blues, and country bands. The first commercially 

produced solid-body electric guitar was the Fender 

Broadcaster (soon renamed the Telecaster). Released 

in 1948, it featured two electronic pickups, knobs to 

control volume and tone, and a switch that allowed 

the two pickups to be used singly or together, allowing 

the player to create a palette of different sounds. In 

1954 Fender released the Stratocaster, the first guitar 

The Electric Guitar

Left: Sampling the wares at the 

Guitar Center store in Los Angeles.

Right: Pop star Madonna playing 

electric guitar on her “Drowned 

World Tour” in Berlin, 2001.
81

with three pickups, and the first with a “whammy bar” 

or “vibrato bar,” a metal rod attached to the guitar’s 

bridge that allowed the player to bend pitches with his 

right as well as his left hand. Fender’s most successful 

competitor, the Gibson Company, released a solid-body 

guitar in 1952, christening it the Les Paul in honor 

of the guitarist who helped to popularize the new 

instrument.

Why are electric guitars such objects of 

fascination for musicians and fans alike? Like any 

influential technology, the guitar’s impact is complex. 

To begin with, the instrument came into the popular 

mainstream with a somewhat dubious reputation 

— medieval Europeans had associated stringed 

instruments with the Devil — and the guitar also was 

associated with the music of marginalized regions. 

Many mainstream press put-downs of young 1950s rock 

’n’ roll ers ridiculed the guitar, suggesting that it was 

an instrument that anyone could play. But the electric 

guitar became a symbol of the energetic diversity 

elbowing its way into the mainstream of American 

popular music. This feeling of excess and invasion 

was reinforced by the development of portable tube 

amplifiers, which provided a dense, sizzling, and very 

loud sound, augmented by special effects devices such 

as wah-wah pedals and “fuzz boxes.” Over time, the 

guitar has acquired an aura of danger and excitement.

Clockwise from upper left: 

Bruce Springsteen and Chuck 

Berry at the Rock and Roll Hall 

of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, 

1995. Country and pop star 

Willie Nelson has recorded 

hundreds of top-selling singles 

in his 50-year long career. 

Electric guitar inventor Les 

Paul plays B.B. King’s blues 

guitar “Lucille” at a 2003 jam 

session.
82

C h a p T E r 1 1

THE “RAPPER’SdELIgHT”

Hip-Hop:

Rap draws on African musical and verbal traditions. Its deep continuities with African-American music include an emphasis on rhythmic momentum and 

creativity; a preference for complex 

tone colors and dense textures; a 

keen appreciation of improvisational 

skill (in words and music); and an 

incorporative, innovative approach 

to musical technologies. 

Much rap music does constitute a 

cultural response to historic oppression and racism, a system for communication among black communities throughout the United States 

(“black America’s CNN,” as rapper 

Chuck D once put it), and a source 

of insight into the values, perceptions, and conditions of people living in America’s beleaguered urban 

communities. And finally, although 

rap music’s origins and inspirations 

flow from black culture, the genre’s 

audience has become decidedly multiracial, multicultural, and transnational. As rap has been transformed 

from a local phenomenon located 

in a few neighborhoods in New 

York City, to a multimillion-dollar 

industry and a global cultural phenomenon, it has grown ever more 

complex and multifaceted.

Rap initially emerged during 

the 1970s as one part of a cultural 

complex called hip-hop. Hip-hop 

culture, forged by African-American 

and Caribbean-American youth in 

New York City, included distinctive 

styles of visual art (graffiti), dance 

(an acrobatic solo style called breakdancing and an energetic couple 

dance called the freak), music, dress, 

and speech. Hip-hop was at first a local phenomenon, centered in certain 

neighborhoods in the Bronx, the 

most economically disadvantaged 

area of New York City. 

The young adults who pioneered 

hip-hop styles such as breakdancing 

and rap music at nightclubs, block 

parties, and in city parks often belonged to informal social groups 

called “crews” or “posses,” each 

associated with a particular neighborhood or block. It is important to 

understand that hip-hop culture began as an expression of local identities. Even today’s multiplatinum rap 

recordings, marketed worldwide, 

are filled with inside references to 

particular neighborhoods, features 

of the urban landscape, and social 

groups and networks.

If hip-hop music was a rejection of mainstream dance music by 

young black and Puerto Rican listeners, it was also profoundly shaped by 

the techniques of disco DJs. The 

first hip-hop celebrities — Kool 

Of all genres of popular 

music, none has spurred 

more vigorous public debate 

than rap music. Rap has 

been characterized as a 

vital link in the centuriesold chain of cultural and 

musical connections between 

Africa and the Americas; 

as the authentic voice of an 

oppressed urban underclass; 

and as a form that exploits 

long-standing stereotypes of 

black people. In fact, each of 

these perspectives tells us 

something about the history 

and significance of rap music.
83

Herc (Clive Campbell), Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler), and 

Afrika Bambaataa (Kevin Donovan) 

— were DJs who began their careers 

in the mid-1970s, spinning records 

at neighborhood block parties, gym 

dances, and dance clubs, and in public spaces such as community centers and parks. These three young 

men — and dozens of lesser-known 

DJs scattered throughout the Bronx, 

Harlem, and other areas of New York 

City and New Jersey — developed 

their personal styles within a grid of 

fierce competition for celebrity and 

neighborhood pride. 

The disco DJ’s technique of “mixing” between two turntables to 

create smooth transitions between 

records was first adapted to the hiphop aesthetic by Kool Herc, who had 

migrated from Kingston, Jamaica, to 

New York City at the age of 12. Herc 

noticed that the young dancers in his 

audiences responded most energetically during the so-called breaks on 

funk and salsa records, brief sections 

where the melody was stripped away 

to feature the rhythm section. Herc 

responded by isolating the breaks 

of certain popular records — such 

as James Brown’s “Get on the Good 

Foot” — and mixing them into 

the middle of other dance records. 

These rhythmic sound collages 

came to be known as “breakbeat” 

music, a term subsequently transferred to “breakdancing,” acrobatic 

solo performances improvised by 

the young “B-boys” who attended 

hip-hop dances.

Another innovation helped to 

shape the sound and sensibility of 

early hip-hop: the transformation 

of the turntable from a medium 

for playing back recorded sound 

into a playable musical instrument. 

Sometime in the mid-1970s Kool 

Herc began to put two copies of 

the same record on his turntables. 

Switching back and forth between 

the turntables, Herc found that he 

could “backspin” one disc (i.e., turn 

it backward, or counterclockwise, 

with his hand) while the other continued to play over the loudspeakers. 

This allowed him to repeat a given 

break over and over, by switching 

back and forth between the two 

discs and backspinning to the beginning of the break. This technique 

DJ Kool speaks at a 2006 news 

conference to launch “Hip-Hop Won’t 

Stop: The Beat, The Rhymes, The 

Life,” at the Smithsonian’s National 

Museum of American History. 
84

Right and Far Right: Future 

DJs practice “scratching,” the 

art of manipulating a turntable 

needle along an LP record.

Grandmaster Flash, center rear, and 

the Furious Five after being inducted 

into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame during 

ceremonies in New York, 2007.
85

Hip-hop artist Paco of Waterloo, Iowa, shows off some of his 

break dancing moves to high school students. 

Afrika Bambaataa at a 2006 news conference describing a 

Smithsonian Institution project that will trace hip-hop from 

its origins in the 1970s to its status today.
86

was refined by Grandmaster Flash, 

who adopted the mixing techniques 

of disco DJs, particularly their use 

of headphones to synchronize the 

tempos of recordings and to create 

smooth transitions from one dance 

groove to the next. Using headphones, Flash could more precisely 

pinpoint the beginning of a break 

by listening to the sound of the 

disc being turned backward on the 

turntable. Flash spent many hours 

practicing this technique and gained 

local fame for his ability to “punch 

in” brief, machine gun–like segments of sound.

A new technique called “scratching” was developed by Flash’s young 

protégé, Theodore, who broke away 

and formed his own hip-hop crew at 

the tender age of 13. In 1978 Theodore debuted a new technique that 

quickly spread through the community of DJs. While practicing 

backspinning in his room, Theodore 

began to pay closer attention to the 

sounds created in his headphones 

as he turned the disc counterclockwise. He soon discovered that this 

technique yielded scratchy, percussive sound effects, which could be 

punched in to the dance groove. 

At first Theodore wasn’t sure how 

people would react:

The Third Avenue Ballroom was 

packed, and I figured I might as well 

give it a try. So, I put on two copies 

of [James Brown’s] “Sex Machine” 

and started scratching up one. The 

crowd loved it... they went wild.

The distinctive sound of scratching became an important part of 

the sonic palette of hip-hop music 

— even in the 1990s, after digital 

sampling had largely displaced 

turntables as a means of creating the 

musical textures and grooves on rap 

records, producers frequently used 

these sounds as a way of signaling 

a connection to the “old school” origins of hip-hop.

Although all DJs used microphones to make announcements, 

Kool Herc was also one of the first 

DJs to recite rhyming phrases over 

the “breakbeats” produced on his 

turntables. Some of Herc’s “raps” 

were based on a tradition of verbal performance called “toasting,” 

a form of poetic storytelling with 

roots in the trickster tales of West 

Africa. The trickster — a sly character whose main goal in life is to 

defy authority and upset the normal 

order of things — became a common figure in the storytelling traditions of black slaves in the United 

States, where he took on additional 

significance as a symbol of cultural 

survival and covert resistance. After the Civil War the figure of the 

trickster was in part supplanted by 

more aggressive male figures, the focus of long, semi-improvised poetic 

stories called “toasts.” The toasting 

tradition frequently focused on 

“bad men,” hard, merciless bandits 

and spurned lovers who vanquished 

their enemies, sometimes by virtue 

of their wits, but more often through 

physical violence.

Although the toasting tradition 

had largely disappeared from black 

communities by the 1970s, it took 

root in prisons, where black inmates found that the old narrative 

form suited their life experiences 

and present circumstances. One of 

the main sources for the rhymes 

composed by early hip-hop DJs in 

the Bronx was the album Hustler’s 

Convention (1973) by Jala Uridin, 

leader of a group of militant exconvicts known as the Last Poets. 

Hustler’s Convention was a compelling portrait of “the life” — the urban 

underworld of gamblers, pimps, and 

hustlers — through prison toasts 

with titles like “Sentenced to the 

Chair.” The record, featuring musical accompaniment by an all-star 

lineup of funk, soul, and jazz musicians, became enormously popular 

in the Bronx and inspired Kool Herc 

and other DJs to compose their own 

rhymes. Soon DJs were recruiting 

members of their posses to serve 

as verbal performers, or “MCs” (an 

abbreviation of the term “master of 

ceremonies”). MCs played an important role in controlling crowd 

behavior at the increasingly large 

dances where DJs performed and 

soon became more important celebrities than the DJs themselves. If DJs 

are the predecessors of today’s rap 

producers — responsible for shaping 

musical texture and groove — MCs 

are the ancestors of contemporary 

rappers.

Until 1979 hip-hop music remained primarily a local phenomenon. The first indication of the 

genre’s broader commercial potential was the 12-inch dance single 

“Rapper’s Delight,” recorded by the 

Sugarhill Gang, a crew based in Harlem. This record, which popularized 

the use of the term “rapper” as an 

equivalent for MC, established Sugar Hill Records — a black-owned independent label based in New Jersey 

— as the predominant institutional 

force in rap music during the early 

1980s. The recording recycled the 

rhythm section track from Chic’s 

“Good Times,” played in the studio 

by session musicians usually hired 

by Sugar Hill to back R&B singers. 

The three rappers — Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright, Guy “Master 

Gee” O’Brien, and Henry “Big Bank 
87

Hank” Jackson — recited a rapid-fire 

succession of rhymes, typical of the 

performances of MCs at hip-hop 

dances.

Well it’s on-n-on-n-on-on-n-on

The beat don’t stop until the break 

of dawn

I said M-A-S, T-E-R, a G with a 

double E

I said I go by the unforgettable name

Of the man they call the Master Gee

Well, my name is known all over the 

world

By all the foxy ladies and the pretty 

girls

I’m goin’ down in history

As the baddest rapper there could 

ever be.

The text of “Rapper’s Delight” 

alternates the braggadocio of the 

three MCs with descriptions of 

dance movements, exhortations to 

the audience, and humorous stories 

and references. One particularly 

memorable segment describes the 

consternation of a guest who is 

served rotting food by his friend’s 

mother, seeks a polite way to refuse 

it, and finally escapes by crashing 

through the apartment door. The 

record reached Number Four on the 

R&B chart and Number 36 on the 

pop chart and introduced hip-hop 

to millions of people throughout the 

United States and abroad. The unexpected success of “Rapper’s Delight” 

ushered in a series of million-selling 

12-inch singles by New York rappers, including Kurtis Blow’s “The 

Breaks,” “Planet Rock,” by Afrika 

Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, 

and “The Message,” by Grandmaster 

Flash and the Furious Five.

The tradition of socially engaged 

rap received its strongest new impetus from the New York-based group 

Public Enemy. Founded in 1982, 

Public Enemy was organized around 

a core set of members who met as 

college students, drawn together 

by their interest in hiphop culture 

and political activism. The standard 

hip-hop configuration of two MCs 

— Chuck D (a.k.a. Carlton Ridenhour, b. 1960) and Flavor Flav (William Drayton, b. 1959) — plus a DJ 

— Terminator X (Norman Lee Rogers, b. 1966) — was augmented by a 

“Minister of Information” (Professor 

Griff, a.k.a. Richard Griffin) and 

by the Security of the First World 

(S1W), a cohort of dancers who 

dressed in paramilitary uniforms, 

carried Uzi submachine guns, and 

performed martial arts–inspired 

choreography.

The release of Public Enemy’s 

second album in 1988 — It Takes 

a Nation of Millions to Hold Us 

Back — was a breakthrough event 

for rap music. The album fused 

the trenchant social and political 

analyses of Chuck D — delivered in 

a deep, authoritative voice — with 

the streetwise interjections of his 

sidekick Flavor Flav, who wore comical glasses and an oversized clock 

around his neck. Their complex 

verbal interplay was situated within 

a dense, multilayered sonic web created by the group’s production team, 

the Bomb Squad (Hank Shocklee, 

Keith Shocklee, and Eric “Vietnam” 

Sadler). Tracks like “Countdown to 

Armageddon” (an apocalyptic opening instrumental track, taped at a 

live concert in London), “Don’t Believe the Hype” (a critique of whitedominated mass media), and “Party 

for Your Right to Fight” (a parody of 

the Beastie Boys’ hit “Fight for Your 

Right (to Party),” from the previous year) turned the technology of 

digital sampling to new artistic purposes and insisted in effect that rap 

music continue to engage with the 

real-life conditions of urban black 

communities.

During the 1990s, a number 

of important rap artists achieved 

mainstream success, among them 

M.C. Hammer (Stanley Kirk Burrell, 

b. 1962), whose Please Hammer 

Don’t Hurt ‘Em, held the Number 

One position for 21 weeks and sold 

over 10 million copies, becoming the 

bestselling rap album of all time, and 

the white rapper Vanilla Ice (Robert 

Van Winkle, b. 1968). Regional 

hip-hop dialects emerged, notably 

in southern California, where a 

smoother, more laid-back style of 

rapping gained traction.

Today, rap music and hip-hop 

culture continue to influence and 

inspire musicians and audiences 

around the world.
One of the first things that strikes one about 

Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958) 

is his productivity. Between 1982 and 1992 

he placed nine albums in the Top 10. During the same 

decade he placed 26 singles in the Top 40. Over the 

course of his career, he has sold almost 40 million 

recordings. More importantly, he is one of the most 

talented musicians ever to achieve mass commercial 

success.

Prince’s recorded output reflects a wide range of 

inspirations, from funk and guitar-based rock ’n’ roll to 

urban folk music, new wave, and psychedelic rock. He 

has from the beginning sought to exert equally tight 

control over his music and the business of creating and 

distributing that music. Prince owns his own studio 

and produces his own recordings; plays most of the 

instruments on his albums; and struggled to wrest 

control of his music from Warner Brothers. By the late 

1990s he was releasing music exclusively on his own 

label, through his Web site, and via his direct-selling 

telephone hotline.

Descriptions of Prince’s personality in the popular 

press present a series of opposed images: he is portrayed 

as a flower child and as a dictator; a male chauvinist 

who can form close personal relationships only with 

women; an intensely private person and a shrewd selfpromoter; a satyr and a steadfastly pious man. 

Prince’s British biographer Barney Hoskyns 

christened Prince “the Imp of the Perverse,” referring to 

his apparent delight in confounding the expectations of 

his audience. As a celebrity, Prince occupies a middle 

ground between the hermitlike reclusiveness of Michael 

Jackson and the exuberant exhibitionism of Madonna. 

Throughout his career, Prince has granted few press 

interviews yet has managed to keep himself in the 

limelight. The best example of his skill at manipulating 

the boundary between the public and the private is the 

film and soundtrack album Purple Rain (1984), which 

established him as a pop superstar. The album sold 

more than 13 million copies. The plot and characters 

of Purple Rain draw heavily on Prince’s life. The film 

concludes on an upbeat note as the Kid adopts one of 

his father’s compositions, incorporating a rhythm track 

created by members of his band, The Revolution, and 

creates the song “Purple Rain.”

It is not easy to draw boundaries between 

the fictional character, the celebrity persona, and 

the private individual. A major source of the film’s 

attraction for Prince’s fans lay in the idea that this 

was a tantalizing opportunity to catch a glimpse 

of the “man behind the curtain.” If Purple Rain is a 

film with confessional aspects, it is also a product 

of the sophisticated marketing strategies applied by 

entertainment corporations during the 1980s.

Prince

88
89

Performed by Grandmaster Flash and the 

Furious Five, “The Message” (1982) established 

an influential trend in rap: social realism. “The 

Message” is a grim portrait of life in New York City’s 

South Bronx section. On top of the stark, cold electronic 

groove Grandmaster Flash intones the rap’s hook:

It’s like a jungle sometimes, makes me

wonder how I keep from goin’ under

The sudden sound of glass shattering introduces 

a rhythmically complex and carefully articulated 

performance that alternates the smooth, slyly 

humorous style of Grandmaster Flash with the edgy, 

frustrated tone of MC Melle Mel:

Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge

I’m tryin’ not to lose my head

Ah huh huh huh huh

The two MCs time their performances with 

great precision, compressing and stretching the 

spaces between words, and creating polyrhythms 

against the steady musical pulse. 

The lyric alternates between the 

humorous wordplay typical of hiphop MC performances and images 

of desperation. The relationship 

between the grim reality of ghetto 

life and the tough-minded humor 

that is its antidote is summed up 

by Melle Mel’s humorless quasilaugh: “Ah huh huh huh huh.”The 

second half of “The Message” paints 

a chilling picture of the life of a child 

born into poverty in the South Bronx, 

followed by the sound of the Furious 

Five meeting on a street corner. A 

police car screeches up and officers 

emerge, barking orders at the young 

black men. “What are you, a gang?” 

one of the policemen shouts. “Nah, 

man, we’re with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 

Five.” Flash enters from one side to defend his friends: 

“Officer, officer, what’s the problem?” “You’re the 

problem,” the cop shouts back, “get in the car!” We hear 

the car driving away with the Furious Five in custody, 

arrested evidently for the crime of assembling on a 

street corner, and the track “fades to black.”

A whole stream of rap music can be traced from 

this gritty record, ranging from the political raps of 

KRS-One and Public Enemy to the “gangsta” style of 

Los Angeles MCs like N.W.A., Snoop Doggy Dogg, and 

2Pac Shakur. As the first gritty description of life in 

the nation’s urban ghettos of the 1980s to achieve wide 

commercial circulation, “The Message” established 

canons of realness and street credibility still vitally 

important to rap musicians and audiences.

“The Message”

Grandmaster Flash 

performs in New York 

in 2007. 
90

C h a p T E r 1 2

CROSSIng CULTURAL

bOUndARIES

World Music Collaborations: 

What, then, is world 

music? In a strictly 

musical sense, it is a 

pseudo-genre, taking into its sweep 

styles as diverse as African urban 

pop (juju), Pakistani dance club 

music (bhangara), Australian Aboriginal rock music (the band Yothu 

Yindi), and even the Bulgarian State 

Radio and Television Female Vocal 

Choir, whose 1987 release Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (The Mystery 

of the Bulgarian Voices) reached 

Number 165 on the Billboard album 

chart in 1988. Bestselling albums on 

Billboard’s world music chart have 

featured the Celtic group Clannad, 

Spanish flamenco music, Tibetan 

Buddhist chant, and diverse collaborations between American and 

English rock stars and musicians 

from Africa, Latin America, and 

South Asia.

By the 1990s collaborations between American and foreign musicians had become more common, 

spurred on the one hand by folk 

and alternative music fans’ search 

for a broader range of musical experiences, and on the other by the 

globalization of the music industry. 

Two interesting examples of this sort 

of transnational collaboration are the 

album Talking Timbuktu, which won 

the Grammy Award for Best World 

Music Recording in 1994, and a sampler album inspired by the film Dead 

Man Walking, which reached Number 61 on the album charts in 1996.

Talking Timbuktu was produced 

by the singer and guitarist Ry Cooder, whose career as a session musician and bandleader had already 

encompassed a wide array of styles, 

including blues, reggae, Tex-Mex 

music, urban folk song, Hawaiian 

guitar music, Dixieland jazz, and 

gospel music. The sound and sensibility of Talking Timbuktu are 

derived from the music of Ali Farka 

Touré, a guitarist and traditional 

praise singer (griot) from the West 

African nation of Mali.

During the 1980s the 

boundary between 

mainstream and marginal 

music became ever fuzzier, 

and pressures to expand the 

global market for American 

popular music and create 

new alternative genres 

and audiences within the 

American market grew 

ever stronger. One result 

of these processes was the 

emergence of a category 

called world music. The 

term was adopted in the late 

1980s by independent record 

label owners and concert 

promoters, entering the 

marketplace as a replacement 

for longer-standing categories 

such as “traditional music,” 

“international music,” and 

“ethnic music.”

Ali Farka Toure was born in Mali 

and is known as the most important 

interpreter of “African blues.”
91

Encountering a track like “Diaraby,” an American listener is likely 

to be struck by the music’s close 

affinities with the blues. This is no 

accident. To begin with, the blues 

styles of Mississippi, Texas, and 

other southern states were strongly 

influenced by the traditions of African slaves, many of whom came 

precisely from the Sahel region of 

West Africa, homeland of Ali Farka 

Touré’s people, the Bambara. The 

high-pitched, almost wailing sound 

of Touré’s singing; the percussive 

guitar patterns; and the use of song 

as a medium for social and personal 

commentary — all of these features 

represent an evolution of centuriesold links between the West African 

griot tradition and the blues created by black musicians in America’s 

Deep South. It turns out that Touré’s 

style was directly influenced by 

American blues musicians such as 

John Lee Hooker, whose records he 

discovered after his career was established in Africa.

Talking Timbuktu features contributions by the blues guitarist 

and fiddler Clarence “Gatemouth” 

Brown and various prominent session musicians. The result hews 

close to its African roots, with the 

American musicians playing in support of Touré. The lyric of the song is 

itself reminiscent of the bittersweet 

emotion of some American blues:

What is wrong my love? It is you 

I love

Your mother has told you not 

to marry me, because I have 

nothing. But I love you.

Your friends have told you not 

to marry me, because I have 

nothing. But I love you.

Your father has told you not 

to marry me, because I have 

nothing. But I love you.

What is wrong my love? It is you 

I love.

Do not be angry, do not cry, do 

not be sad because of love.

Clockwise from left: Pakistani Nusrat 

Fateh Ali Khan was considered a 

leading performer of Sufi devotional 

music. Indian students perform the 

Qawwali, the devotional music of 

the Sufis. The late blues musician, 

Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown plays 

the fiddle at the Newport Folk 

Festival in Rhode Island in 1996. 
92

Right: Hugh Masekela, 

from South Africa, 

performs during the New 

Orleans Jazz and Heritage 

Festival in 2004. Far right: 

Ry Cooder, an American 

guitarist, singer, and 

composer, performs in 

Madison Square Garden in 

New York in 2005.

From the mid-1950s until his death 

in 2003, legendary singer Johnny 

Cash wrote, produced, and sang 

an array of country, patriotic, and 

religious songs.
93

The sound and sensibility of “Diaraby” provide additional evidence of 

the deep links between African and 

American music. This is not music 

functioning as a universal language, 

but a conversation between two 

dialects of a complexly unified AfroAtlantic musical language.

The track “The Face of Love” is a 

different sort of collaboration, featuring the lead singer for the Seattlebased alternative rock band Pearl 

Jam, Eddie Vedder, and the great 

Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali 

Khan, and produced by Ry Cooder. 

Khan was a leading performer of 

qawwali, a genre of mystical singing practiced by Sufi Muslims in 

Pakistan and India. Qawwali singing 

is accompanied by a double-headed 

drum called the dholak and a portable keyboard instrument called 

the harmonium, which creates a 

continuous drone under the singing. 

In traditional settings the lead singer 

alternates stanzas of traditional 

poetic texts with spectacular and 

elaborate melodic improvisations, in 

an attempt to spiritually arouse his 

listeners and move them into emotional proximity with the Divine.

During the 1990s Nusrat Fateh 

Ali Khan became the first qawwali 

artist to command a large international following, owing to his performances at the annual WOMAD festivals curated by the rock star Peter 

Gabriel. Khan began to experiment 

with nontraditional instruments 

and to work with musicians outside 

the qawwali tradition, leading some 

critics to charge that the music had 

moved away from its spiritual roots. 

“All these albums are experiments,” 

Khan told the interviewer Ken Hunt 

in 1993. “There are some people who 

do not understand at all but just like 

my voice. I add new lyrics and modern instruments to attract the audience. This has been very successful.”

The 1996 film Dead Man Walking — the story of a nun’s attempt to 

redeem the soul of a convicted murderer on the verge of execution—was 

the first to foreground Khan’s contributions. Many reviews of Dead Man 

Walking stressed the contribution of 

Khan’s voice to the haunting, mystical, and spiritual atmosphere of the 

film. The song “The Face of Love” 

is based on a simple melody, sung 

first by Khan with lyrics in the Urdu 

language, and then with English lyrics by Pearl Jam’s lead singer Eddie 

Vedder:

Jeena kaisa Pyar bina [What is 

life without love] — 

Is Duniya Mein Aaye ho to [Now 

that you have come to this world] 

(2x)

Ek Duje se pyar karo [Love each 

other, one another]

Look in the eyes of the face of love

Look in her eyes, for there is peace

No, nothing dies within pure light

Only one hour of this pure love 

To last a life of 30 years

Only one hour, so calm and dark

This is not an example of music’s 

functioning as a universal language, 

for most members of the film’s 

American audience neither understood the words that Khan sang 

nor possessed any knowledge of the 

centuries-long history of Sufi mystical traditions. Nonetheless, it could 

be argued that this is a case where 

the well-meaning effort of artists to 

reach across cultural and musical 

boundaries does produce something 

like an aesthetic communion, a 

common purpose embodied in musical texture and poetry.

Khan’s appearance on the 

soundtrack of Dead Man Walking 

led to his being signed by the indie 

label American Recordings, managed by Rick Rubin, formerly the 

mastermind behind the rappers 

Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys. 

The American music industry’s market positioning of world music as yet 

another variant of alternative music 

is indicated by that label’s roster 

of artists, which included not only 

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan but also the 

“death metal” band Slayer, the rap 

artist Sir MixA-Lot, and the country 

music icon Johnny Cash.

Pearl Jam lead singer and guitarist 

Eddie Vedder performs in Mexico 

City in 2003.
94

a cappella Vocal singing 

that involves no instrumental 

accompaniment.

A&R Abbreviation for “artists 

and repertoire.” This is the 

department of a record company 

whose responsibility it is to discover 

and cultivate new musical talent, 

and to find material for the artists 

to perform — naturally, with an 

eye toward commercial potential. 

As many artists today write and 

record their own material, the latter 

function of A&R has atrophied to 

some extent.

arranger A person who adapts 

(or arranges) the melody and chords 

of a song to exploit the capabilities 

and instrumental resources of 

a particular musical ensemble. 

For example, a simple pop tune 

originally written for voice and 

piano may be arranged for a jazz 

“big band” with many horns and a 

rhythm section.

ballad A type of song consisting 

usually of verses set to a repeating 

melody (see strophic form) in which 

a story, often romantic, historic, or 

tragic, is sung in narrative fashion.

blue notes Expressive notes or 

scalar inflections found primarily 

in blues and jazz music. The blue 

notes derive from African musical 

practice; although they do not 

correspond exactly to the Western 

system of major and minor scales, 

it is helpful to imagine them as 

“flatter” or “lower” versions of the 

scale degrees to which they are 

related, and thus one speaks of 

“blue” thirds, fifths, and sevenths 

(see Chapter 5).

blues A genre of music 

originating principally from the 

field hollers and work songs of 

rural blacks in the southern United 

States during the latter half of 

the nineteenth century. Themes 

treated by blues lyrics included 

the oppressive conditions suffered 

by African Americans; love gone 

wrong; alienation; misery; and the 

supernatural. The lyrics are often 

obscured by a coded, metaphorical 

language. The music of the blues 

is rich in Africanisms and earthy 

rhythms. Originally an acoustic 

music, the blues moved to the urban 

North in the mid-twentieth century, 

becoming electrified in the process 

(see Chapters 5 and 7).

bridge A passage consisting of 

new, contrasting material that serves 

as a link between repeated sections 

of melodic material. A bridge is 

sometimes called a release (see 

discussion of Tin Pan Alley song 

form in Chapter 4).

cadence A melodic or harmonic 

event that signals the end of a 

musical line or section, or of the 

piece as a whole.

chord The simultaneous sounding 

of different pitches.

chorus A repeating section within 

a song consisting of a fixed melody 

and lyric that is repeated exactly 

each time that it occurs, typically 

following one or more verses.

coda The “tail end” of a musical 

composition, typically a brief 

passage after the last complete 

section that serves to bring the piece 

to its conclusion.

composer A person who creates 

a piece of music. Although the 

term may be, and often is, used to 

describe the creators of popular 

songs, it is more commonly applied 

to those who create more extended, 

formally notated works of music.

counterculture A subculture 

existing in opposition to and 

espousing values contrary to that 

of the dominant culture. The term 

is most often used to describe the 

values and lifestyle of some young 

people during the late 1960s and 

early 1970s (see Chapter 10).

counterpoint The sounding of 

two independent melodic lines or 

voices against one another.

dialect A regional speech variant; 

one may allude to regional musical 

“dialects” to describe stylistic 

variants of the same basic musical 

genre, as with Mississippi Delta 

blues or East Texas blues.

dissonance A harsh or grating 

sound. (The perception of 

dissonance is culturally conditioned. 

For example, the smaller intervals 

employed in certain Asian and 

Middle Eastern musics may sound 

“out of tune” and dissonant to 

Western ears; within their original 

context, however, they are regarded 

as perfectly consonant.)

distortion A buzzing, crunchy, 

or “fuzzy” tone color originally 

achieved by overdriving the vacuum 

tubes of a guitar amplifier. This effect 

can be simulated today by solid 

state and digital sound processors. 

Distortion is often heard in a hard 

rock or heavy metal context.

Glossary
95

DJ Disc jockey (deejay); one who 

plays recordings (as on a radio 

program).

feedback Technically, an outof-control sound oscillation that 

occurs when the output of a 

loudspeaker finds its way back into a 

microphone or electric instrument 

pickup and is reamplified, creating 

a sound loop that grows in intensity 

and continues until deliberately 

broken. Although feedback can 

be difficult to manage, it becomes 

a powerful expressive device in 

the hands of certain blues and 

rock musicians, most notably the 

guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Feedback can 

be recognized as a “screaming” or 

“crying” sound.

groove Term originally employed 

by jazz, rhythm & blues, and funk 

musicians to describe the channeled 

flow of swinging, “funky,” or “phat” 

rhythms.

habanera a slow, tango-like 

Cuban musical style, elements of 

which were integrated into jazz 

by New Orleans-based musicians 

including Jelly Roll Morton.

hook A “catchy” or otherwise 

memorable musical phrase or 

pattern.

lyricist A person who supplies a 

poetic text (lyrics) to a piece of vocal 

music; not necessarily the composer.

major refers to one of the two 

scale systems central to Western 

music (see minor); a major scale 

is arranged in the following order 

of whole- and half-step intervals: 

1-1-1⁄2-1-1-1-1⁄2. (This pattern is 

easy to see if one begins at the 

pitch C on the piano keyboard and 

plays the next seven white notes 

in succession, which yields the C 

major scale: CDEFGABC.) A song 

is said to be in a major tonality or 

key if it uses melodies and chords 

that are constructed from the major 

scale. Of course, a song may (and 

frequently does) “borrow” notes and 

chords from outside a particular 

major scale, and it may “modulate” 

or shift from key to key within the 

course of the song.

melisma One syllable of text 

spread out over many musical tones.

minor Refers to one of the two 

scale systems central to Western 

music (see major); a minor scale 

is arranged in the following order 

of whole- and half-step intervals: 

1-1⁄2-1-1-1⁄2-1-1. (This pattern 

represents the so-called natural 

minor scale, often found in blues 

and blues-based popular music; it 

is easy to see if one begins at the 

pitch A on the piano keyboard and 

plays the next seven white notes 

in succession, which yields the A 

minor scale: ABCDEFGA. The two 

other minor scales in common 

usage — the melodic minor and 

harmonic minor scales — have 

ascending and descending forms 

that differ somewhat from the 

natural minor scale.) A song is said 

to be in a minor tonality or key if 

it uses melodies and chords that 

are constructed from the minor 

scale. Of course, a song may (and 

frequently does) “borrow” notes and 

chords from outside a particular 

minor scale, and it may “modulate” 

or shift from key to key within the 

course of the song. In comparison 

to the major scale, the minor scale is 

often described as having a “sad” or 

“melancholy” sound.

MP3 A variant of the MPEG 

compression system, which allows 

sound files to be compressed to as 

little as one-twelfth of their original 

size.

payola The illegal and historically 

widespread practice of offering 

money or other inducements to a 

radio station or deejay in order to 

ensure the prominent airplay of a 

particular recording.

polyrhythm The simultaneous 

sounding of rhythms in two or 

more contrasting meters, such as 

three against two, or five against 

four. Polyrhythms are found in 

abundance in African and Asian 

musics and their derivatives.

producer A person engaged 

either by a recording artist or, 

more often, a record company, who 

directs and assists the recording 

process. The producer’s duties 

may include securing the services 

of session musicians; deciding on 

arrangements; making technical 

decisions; motivating the artist 

creatively; helping to realize the 

artistic vision in a commercially 

viable way; and not unimportantly, 

ensuring that the project comes 

in under budget. A good producer 

often develops a distinctive 

signature sound, and successful 

producers are always in great 

demand. They are often rewarded 

handsomely for their efforts, 

garnering a substantial share of a 

recording’s earnings, in addition to a 

commission.

R&B Rhythm & blues. An African 

American musical genre emerging 

after World War II. It consisted 

of a loose cluster of styles derived 

from black musical traditions, 

characterized by energetic and 

hard-swinging rhythms. At first 

performed exclusively by black 

musicians and aimed at black 

audiences, R&B came to replace the 

older category of “race records” (see 

Chapter 7).

ragtime A musical genre of 

African American origin, later 

exploited to great advantage by 

white performers, that emerged in 

the 1880s and became quite popular 
96

at the turn of the century. Ragtime 

is characterized by melodic accents 

that fall on “off” or weak beats; it is 

highly syncopated. Scott Joplin is 

the recognized master of this genre, 

having composed numerous rags for 

the piano (see Chapter 2).

refrain In the verse-refrain song, 

the refrain is the “main part” of the 

song, usually constructed in AABA 

or ABAC form (see discussion of Tin 

Pan Alley song form in Chapter 4).

release See bridge.

reverb Short for “reverberation”—

a prolongation of a sound by 

virtue of an ambient acoustical 

space created by hard, reflective 

surfaces. The sound bounces off 

these surfaces and recombines with 

the original sound, slightly delayed 

(reverb is measured in terms of 

seconds and fractions of seconds). 

Reverberation can occur naturally or 

be simulated either electronically or 

by digital sound processors.

riff A simple, repeating melodic 

idea or pattern that generates 

rhythmic momentum; typically 

played by the horns or the piano in 

a jazz ensemble, or by an electric 

guitar in a rock ’n’ roll context.

rockabilly A vigorous form 

of country and western music 

(“hillbilly” music) informed by the 

rhythms of black R&B and electric 

blues. It is exemplified by such 

artists as Carl Perkins and the young 

Elvis Presley.

rumba a ballroom dance of AfroCuban origin with a basic pattern 

featuring two quick sidesteps and 

one slow forward step per bar, and 

the syncopated, 4/4 time musical 

style associated with this dance.

sampling A digital recording 

process wherein a sound source 

is recorded or “sampled” with 

a microphone, converted into a 

stream of binary numbers that 

represent the profile of the sound, 

quantized, and stored in computer 

memory. The digitized sound 

sample may then be retrieved in any 

number of ways, including “virtual 

recording studio” programs for the 

computer, or by activating the sound 

from an electronic keyboard or 

drum machine.

scat singing A technique that 

involves the use of nonsense 

syllables as a vehicle for wordless 

vocal improvisation. It is most often 

found in a jazz context.

slap-back A distinctive short 

reverberation with few repetitions, 

often heard in the recordings of 

rockabilly artists, such as the Sun 

Records recordings of Elvis Presley.

soli (plural of solo) Band textures 

achieved by having a small group of 

players within the band play certain 

passages of music together. Soli 

playing contrasts with tutti sections, 

wherein the entire ensemble plays 

(see the discussion of swing bands in 

Chapter 3).

strophes Poetic stanzas; often, a 

pair of stanzas of alternating form 

that constitute the structure of a 

poem. These could become the verse 

and chorus of a strophic song.

strophic A song form that 

employs the same music for each 

poetic unit in the lyrics.

syncopation Rhythmic patterns 

in which the stresses occur on what 

are ordinarily weak beats, thus 

displacing or suspending the sense 

of metric regularity.

tempo Literally, “time” (from 

Italian). The rate at which a musical 

composition proceeds, regulated 

by the speed of the beat or pulse to 

which it is performed.

timbre The “tone color” or characteristic sound of an instrument or 

voice, determined by its frequency 

and overtone components. Timbre 

is the aspect of sound that allows us, 

for example, to differentiate between 

the sound of a violin and a flute 

when both instruments are playing 

the same pitch.

tonic Refers to the central or 

“home” pitch, or chord, of a musical 

piece — or sometimes of just a 

section of the piece.

tremolo The rapid reiteration of 

a single pitch to create a vibrating 

sound texture. This effect can be 

produced by acoustic instruments or 

by electronic means.

tutti Literally, “together” (from 

Italian). A passage in a musical piece 

wherein all the instruments of the 

ensemble (band or orchestra) are 

playing simultaneously.

verse In general usage, this term 

refers to a group of lines of poetic 

text, often rhyming, that usually 

exhibit regularly recurring metrical 

patterns. In the verse-refrain song, 

the verse refers to an introductory 

section that precedes the main 

body of the song, the refrain (see 

discussion of Tin Pan Alley song 

form in Chapter 4).

vibrato An expressive musical 

technique that involves minute 

wavering or fluctuation of a pitch.

waltz A dance in triple meter 

with a strong emphasis on the 

downbeat of each bar.
Credits: 

Cover Illustration elements: PhotoSpin, Inc.

All photos © AP Images except the following:

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7: (right, bottom) National Geographic/Getty Images.

13: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. 

14: (left, both) Library of Congress, Prints & 

Photographs Division.

14: (right, top) Getty Images.

14: (right, bottom) Music Division, The New York Public 

Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and 

Tilden Foundations.

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Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and 

Tilden Foundations.

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Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black 

Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and 

Tilden Foundations.

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York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, 

Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

24: (left, top) Getty Images. 

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30: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs 

Division.

35: Getty Images. 

37: (both) Getty Images.

38: Getty Images. 

39: Getty Images. 

50: Getty Images.

52: Getty Images.

55: Getty Images. 

64: Getty Images. 

66: (left) Getty Images.

Executive Editor: George Clack

Editor-in-Chief: Mildred Solá Neely

Managing Editor: Michael Jay Friedman

Editor: Alexandra Abboud

Art Director & Production: Min-Chih Yao

Photo Research: Ann Monroe Jacobs

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Bureau of International Information Programs

2008

http://www.america.gov