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The 1950s
When Rock & Roll exploded on the world in the mid Fifties
with the successive thunderclaps of Bill
Haley, Elvis Presley and
Little Richard, it all seemed to come from nowhere. Rock &
Roll started, like the universe itself, with a big bang - or
perhaps a rapid succession of big bangs, followed by a lot of
smaller ones. Or so it seemed.
Rock & Roll was, in fact, a music with a long history - or
rather, several parallel histories, for it was the result of years
of foundation work in the worlds of country music, blues, gospel,
bluegrass, swing, rhythm & blues (R&B), Doo-Wop and jazz.
None of these forms became Rock & Roll, but each played some
part in the process from which Rock & Roll was distilled.
When the fermentation was complete, Rock & Roll was greeted
in the US with fear and trepidation by racial and religious
segregationists, political opportunists, self-appointed arbiters
of public morality and the previously ultra-complacent old-guard
of the record industry. In Britain, similar claptrap spouted from
predictable mouths, culminating in May 1958 with the public
pillorying of Jerry Lee Lewis. British band-leader Ted Heath said;
"I don't think the Rock & Roll craze will come to
Britain. You see, it is primarily for a coloured population. I
can't ever see it becoming a real craze" . . .
By the time Heath had said that - in May 1956 - he was already
wrong and the 'craze' had arrived. Bill Haley and The Comets
already had six British chart entries, Lonnie Donegan had two hits
to his credit, and on the very day that Heath's prophecy was
published, Elvis Presley first entered the British Top 20 with
Heartbreak Hotel. A week later Carl Perkins was in the chart too,
shortly followed by Frankie Lymon and The
Teenagers, Fats Domino,
Gene Vincent and The Platters.
The invasion of American Rock & Roll irrevocably changed
the lives of many British teenagers of the 1950s and the first
British artists specifically promoted as Rock & Rollers began
to appear. By 1959 there were as many British rockers vying for
success as there were American originators.
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The 1960s
The Sixties saw a revolution in popular music. In a few short
years interest switched from singles to albums, from mono to
stereo and from dance music to move the body to cerebral music to
please the intellect. New styles emerged out of old ones - Girl
Group pop, beat music, folk-rock, country-rock, acid-rock, soul -
and the spirit of Rock & Roll was re-enlivened by four young
self-taught beat musicians from Liverpool, England.
Yet the decade began with little hint of the upheaval to come.
Rock & Roll had reached a low creative ebb by 1960, not least
because several of the original purveyors were missing in action:
Chuck Berry was in jail for abducting a minor; Jerry Lee Lewis was
in disgrace after marrying his 13-year-old cousin;
Little Richard had renounced Rock & Roll for religion; Buddy Holly was dead,
and Elvis Presley was serving his National Service with the US
Army in Germany.
In the USA, more young girls than ever before were buying
records and a new musical subculture was to emerge, based on the
tastes, fantasies and hormones of Little Miss America. Teenage
magazines appeared, packed with fan gossip, love stories and
exclusive interviews with the new, male, teen idols. Meanwhile, a
sharp black businessman named Berry Gordy Jr put the city of
Detroit on the music map with a string of small record labels that
were soon amalgamated into one huge corporation called Motown.
Britain seemed like the most unlikely place for a musical
revolution, and British teenagers had traditionally looked to
America for excitement - on record, on television and in the
cinema. But the real impetus for British rock music came not from
these infatuations (and imitations), but from the Skiffle boom of
the late 50s. Skiffle was do-it-yourself music at its simplest:
the 'authentic' line-up was guitar (three chords would suffice),
washboard and thimbles (percussion) and a tea-chest with a strung
broom handle (bass).
Guitar sales rose phenomenally and a new British pop music
began to develop - especially in provincial cities such as
Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle where one-time Skiffle outfits
were evolving naturally into Rock & Roll groups. In 1961 it
was estimated that around 350 groups were operating in Liverpool
alone, and it was almost inevitable that one of these would rise
to the top eventually. What nobody could have foreseen was what an
effect The Beatles would have on rock music around the world . . .
The success of The Beatles
revitalised the music scene as never
before. Literally thousands of groups were formed in the aftermath
of Beatlemania, and between 1964 and 1966 home-grown British beat
music swamped Britain, and the world. The Fab Four effectively put
America back in touch with its own rock heritage, reviving the
dynamism of Rock & Roll and breathing new life into
half-forgotten styles. As in Britain, they sparked off a massive
explosion of new groups - an explosion which was further enhanced
by the 'British Invasion' of other innovative groups from the UK.
As the music world entered the late Sixties, many of the
changes set in motion earlier in the decade ultimately came to
fruition. Popular music became more socially aware, more
experimental, and musicians attained a degree of artistic control
over their music that would have been unthinkable a short ten
years before. Perhaps most significantly - thanks especially to
the efforts of Bob Dylan, The Beatles
and The Rolling Stones -
rock music was coming to be seen as an instrument of change.
The late Sixties were a time of great social and political
upheaval, a time when traditional values were being questioned or
discarded altogether. A new spirit of affluence and optimism
engendered a liberal atmosphere whish the youth of the Western
world could embrace and exploit (albeit with the inevitable clash
with authority, in the shape of parents, laws and governments).
Popular music underwent a change which was both a reflection
and an essential ingredient of the social revolution. A whirl of
psychedelic noise ushered in the 'Summer of Love' and as word
spread there was a sudden migration of young people to the
Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. By 1966 the area was a
thriving artistic community and also boasted two of the most
influential radio stations - KSAN and KMPX - which were
forerunners of the FM radio boom.
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 Music
in the 1950s
Music
in the 1960s
Music
in the 1970s
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in the 1980s
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One-Hit
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