Roots of Rock: R&B, C&W, Pop
One question to keep in the back of your mind while reading these posts is: why *do* I like rock and roll? What is it about this style of music that appeals to me?
To discuss the roots of rock, we have to get into Pop music, Rhythm & Blues, and Country & Western, and also the general culture of the 1950s.
Let's start with the 1950s: In the United States, this decade is often looked back upon as a time of stability and well-being, when a decent path through life was clear (go to college, marry, own a home, own a car, take vacations, and enjoy the new invention of the Tele-Vision set). Of course, this only generally applied to one segment of the population, but we'll get into that a little later in this post.
Part of the reason that the 1950s were viewed like this has to do with the decades prior: the 1929 stock market crash and depression made the 1930s a decade of financial hardships and bleak outlook, and in the late 1930s war started breaking out around the world, first in 1937 in the Pacific with the Second Sino-Japanese War, and then in Europe in 1939.*
* There is debate about which military actions to include in the beginnings of WWII, I'm just putting in the ones I've come across most commonly.
With the United States' full entry into the war after Pearl Harbor in 1941, this war became truly global. From 1941 - 1945, World War 2 became the most destructive war the world had ever known, with between 40 - 70 million people perishing.
The post-war period was a bit of calm, but unsettled, with the beginning of the cold war between the US and Russia, and a "police action" in Korea from 1950-1953. But following the armistice agreement in 1953, the United States returned to a period of peace and prosperity. At least, if you were Caucasian.
If you were a person of color living in the 1950s, the picture was much less rosy. Even though the Supreme Court ruled (in Brown vs Board of Education) that "separate but equal" was unconstitutional, racial segregation was still rampant. Because of this, the musical styles of the time were quite separate as well.
Pop music
The music style of "mainstream" society (i.e., white suburbia) was Pop (which was an evolution of Tin Pan Alley songs), which was generally comprised of pretty and simple melodies, mostly moderate to slow tempos (although there were faster tunes that seemed more bouncy and cute), and innocent boy-girl lyrics. Essentially a non-offensive, pleasant, and comfortable style, reflective of the relative serenity of mainstream 1950s society.
Audio examples:
- Theresa Brewer - Music, Music, Music - a medium fast tempo "cute" type of song.
- The Weavers - Goodnight Irene - a medium tempo "sweet" song.
- Rosemary Clooney - Hey There - a medium slow tempo show tune, from The Pajama Game.
- Nat King Cole - Too Young - a slow tempo song, a rarity in this era because it spoke directly to the youth, and also because Nat King Cole was one of the few rare black artists to achieve success in Pop.
Subcultures
In most mainstream historical society studies, there are cultures that are not included in the "mainstream society" reports. They are often called subcultures, although that name implies a particular viewpoint. Certainly for the groups in the "subcultures", the cultural environment is anything but "sub". Just keep that in mind as we use textbook style definitions of subcultures. The two main musical genres from subcultures that we are going to investigate are Rhythm & Blues, and Country & Western.
Rhythm & Blues
In the African-American culture of the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, the main musical styles were jazz (not to be confused with the big band era of the 1940s, which is also a form of jazz), gospel, and Rhythm & Blues (R&B). R&B has a different meaning today, but in these eras leading up to Rock and Roll, the R&B style would more likely be recognized as Blues style.
Specifically, the 12-bar blues style (note - "bars" today can be associated with rap verses, but in general music lingo, it has to do with the subdivision of a musical phrase. I have a bit of an explanation at the end of this post, feel free to try and read that before continuing if the musical terminology seems confusing. Anyway, while there were (and still are) 8-bar blues and 16-bar blues, this 12-bar blues style has become a very standard and basic form, and heavily influenced Rock and Roll forms to this day.
The 12-bar blues is broken into three "phrases" of 4-bars each. Before I get to the specifics, we should be familiar with the term key.
In a key, there are certain chords that occur when you combine notes from that key together. For instance, in the key of C Major, the chord built off of the first note of the scale (C), is called a C Major Chord. The chord built off of the fourth note of the scale (F) is called an F Major Chord, and the chord built off of the fifth note of the scale (G) is, unsurprisingly, called a G Major Chord. Typically, in music theory, we shorten all of this using roman numerals: I for the chord built on the first note of the scale, IV for the chord built on the fourth note of the scale, and, unsurprisingly, V for the chord built on the fifth note of the scale. (remember roman numerals? I = 1, II = 2, III = 3, IV = 4, V = 5, VI = 6, VII = 7, etc...).
All that was so that we could get to the 12-bar blues construction:
Phrase 1: 4 bars of the I chord (C Major if we're in the key of C)
Phrase 2: 2 bars of the IV chord (F Major), then 2 bars of the I chord (C Major again)
Phrase 3: 1 bar of the V chord (G Major), 1 bar of the IV chord (F Major), and then 2 bars of the I chord (C Major)
If you are a guitar or piano player, go ahead and try this out. It'll sound close-ish to a blues. What will really make it blues-y is if you use 7th chords (C7, F7, and G7). The construction of such chords, along with the fact that they use notes not in the basic Major key, are discussions beyond this class. But for a simple blues progression, you could have:
| Phrase 1 | C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
| Phrase 2 | F7 | F7 | C7 | C7 |
| Phrase 3 | G7 | F7 | C7 | C7 |
Or, if we're in a different key (in this case, the key of G, where the I(1) chord is G, the IV(4) is C, and the V(5) is D), possibly:
| Phrase 1 | G7 | G7 | G7 | G7 |
| Phrase 2 | C7 | C7 | G7 | G7 |
| Phrase 3 | D7 | C7 | G7 | G7 |
Blues Lyrics
In general, the lyrics form a couplet - two lines that rhyme. But we have three musical phrases! So the standard solution is to repeat the first line on phrase 2, when the chord underneath the vocalist changes. You can hear this really well in the Robert Johnson example below. The Bessie Smith example puts the IV chord in bars 2 and 4, and adds a few additional chords at the end of the 3rd phrase (a "turnaround"). This was actually recorded and popularized before the Robert Johnson piece, which had a simpler form.
Audio Examples:
- Bessie Smith - St. Louis Blues -1925, written by W.C. Handy, performed by Bessie Smith. Helped establish 12-bar format.
- Robert Johnson - Crossroads - 1936 or 1937, Delta Blues Style. Reworked and recorded by Cream in 1968
- Muddy Waters - Hoochie Coochie Man - 1954 - Urban blues, aka Chicago blues.
Country & Western
Another "subculture" that influence the roots of Rock was country and western - the music of the poorer whites in the South. An offshoot of folk, it added it's own western swing style, imported an electric Hawaiian steel guitar in 1931 (yes, 1931, not a typo), and had it's own timbre, or timbral style, specifically a nasal quality. Also, rather than singing a single note perfectly in tune, the performers would slide from pitch to pitch. Male performers would also yodel, essentially a controlled cracking of the voice, or rapid alternation between normal voice and falsetto.
Like R&B, Country and Western market was quite separate from the Pop market, with it's own performers, recording companies, and consumers. Occasionally, C&W songs and performers would break into Pop (much like todays country cross-over artists), but it was pretty rare.
Roy Rogers was probably one of the most famous C&W artists, singing and acting in The Roy Rogers Show with his horse "Trigger". You can find old episodes on youtube.
Audio Examples:
- Gene Autry - Back in the Saddle Again -1939, originally written by Ray Whitley for a film. Eventually became Gene's signature tune.
- Jimmie Rodgers - Blue Yodel No. 1 - aka T is for Texas, this is modeled on a 12-bar blues format, except he doesn't really stay within 4 bar phrases. Kind of all over the place with his form, but it is a live performance.
- Tex Ritter - Streets of Laredo - possibly written in 1910, it was covered by many an artist, and has become a folk standard. I recognize this song from a slightly altered comedy version performed in an episode of the TV show Boston Legal (Season 5, Happy Trails, broadcast in 2008).
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Musical Terminology
More specifically, if you are listening to a song, and are tapping your foot in a consistent and steady set of taps, you are tapping the "pulses" or "beats" of the music. These pulses or beats are generally organized into groups of 2, 3, or 4 - this is called a measure or bar. If you hear the lead singer of a band start a song with a "1-2-3-4", they are counting out a single bar, with the 1-2-3-4 being the individual pulses or beats. The speed of these pulses or beats is called tempo. Generally, if you are listening to music, you can hear some pulses seem stronger than others - in general, these are the downbeat, which is the beginning of each bar. As mentioned just above, most pop, rock, rap, country, etc... has pulses that are organized in groups of 2, 3, or 4. This is called the meter. Music is of course not constrained to these two meters - there is a lot of music out there in 5, 6, 7, 9, and other meters, but the vast vast vast majority of music in this course can be analyzed as having a meter of 2, 3, or 4.
Key
A key is a collection of notes that are determined by a set of rules to ensure they sound good together, in a very specific way. In the key of C Major, the notes in the key are (in ascending order): C D E F G A B and C again. In the key of B-flat Major (abbreviated Bb), we have the notes Bb C D Eb G A and Bb again. In the key of D Major, the notes would be D E F# G A B C# and D again (the # symbol is pronounced "sharp" in this context).
Please do not worry about the sharps and flats or even the specific notes in these examples, I'm just including to give some context. What you should take away from this is that there are specific notes in a specific key, and they are organized in a specific way.
Timbre
Pronounced "Tamber", this word is used as a reference to the qualities of a sound: is a voice "pinched" or "deep"? Is the sound "scratchy", "full", "thin", "harsh", or "mellow"? These are all words used to describe a sound's timbre.
There are two videos for you to watch here, detailing some of the above concepts.
First - a brief explanation of musical scales. NOTE: I realize that when I play the black keys on the virtual keyboard, it is very hard to see which key is being used. You might have to view in full screen.
Also - please keep track of any terms that are hard to understand in these videos - please pause the video on a difficult term, write it down, and then continue with the video. Question 5 is where you will let me know which terms were rough.