1950s expansion & 1960s transitions
Little Richard
With the 50s and the explosion of Rock and Roll and R&B and C&W styles, there are far too many artists of note to study (in fact, that's part of the follow up assignment for this discussion).
But we can try to start with Little Richard - he's a legend that made a name for himself with his nonsense lyrics and flamboyant personality and performance style. He lived a life in conflict - secular rock and superstardom in opposition to his strong faith. In fact, he twice left the limelight and a rock and roll career for life in the church. He was also conflicted about his sexual orientation. He has proclaimed that he was gay, and lived a gay lifestyle, but then renounced it and called it a sin in an interview near the end of this life. He came to prominence and stardom in the early to mid 1950s, but in 1957 he renounced show business and turned back to chruch, away from the stage.
But that's neither here nor there - what is important is the influence he had on rock and roll and performance styles. In 1962, on one of his come-back tours in the UK, he met up-and-coming groups The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and left an indelible impression on both of them. The lyrics for his songs are somewhat nonsensical - the original lyrics for Tutti Frutti were very explicit lyrics about gay sex, so the record company hired an outside songwriter to clean them up and make them palatable. This became the model for most of his other songs as well.
Have a look at the performance video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u-ihWoRC4w
Note - one of the things you'll notice in the Little Richard video above is that he is lip-syncing (NOT lip-singing, that's not the correct term), and the band is pantomiming playing along. For *most* 1950's *live* videos, you can see that the bands are not really playing. Or they may be playing, but that's not what we're hearing. This is a tradition that has continued for years, with pop superstars like Britney Spears or InSync or whomever else doing complicated dance moves and faking the audio. The more outlandish the moves, the harder it is to play and sing live, and sometimes it's impossible. Playing an instrument is hard enough, singing in tune and in time is hard enough, people spend their whole lives practicing to be able to do such things. Add in energetic dancing which takes all your energy and wind, and the case for lip-syncing is understood. An additional pressure is that many concert producers and promoters want the concert to sound perfect, exactly like the recording. For most artists, that's simply not possible without pre-recorded and produced tracks. Or, another tactic used in modern concert video productions is to film a real, live concert, and then re-record everything in a studio and replace the live concert audio with this new and cleaned up audio.
Songs you should know:
Tutti Fruitti
Rip It Up
Chuck Berry
That being said, I was able to find a live concert of Chuck Berry, another pioneer of rock and roll and master of the electric guitar. He influenced nearly everyone in rock and roll, and his iconic playing of Johnny B. Goode was probably his most famous work, and was covered in the 1980s movie "Back to the Future", although Maybellene was his breakout hit.
Have a read of this article before continuing: https://www.npr.org/2000/07/02/1076141/maybellene
Links to an external site.
Below is a link to the concert video, with each song and section listed by a timestamp. Please take the time to watch as much of it as you can. This was a man who could actually dance and play at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhoyMlX5avU
Links to an external site.
Link in case youtube doesn't work: Link.
Please use the youtube link instead of the backup link if at all possible.
0:20 - 1:03 band plays him in
1:03 - 1:24 Maybellene intro
1:24 - 3:47 "Maybellene"
4:15 - 4:46 Intro to the Blues <- watch this for sure.
4:47 - 9:02 "The Blues" (really titled "The Things I Used to Do")
9:23 - 9:56 Roll Over Beethoven into
9:57 - 14:16 "Roll Over Beethoven" (watch for his signature dance / playing moves in the middle)
14:17 - 14:41 Intro and "Olay! Olay!" with audience
14:42 - 18:13 "Memphis, Tennessee" 14:45 weird sound, 17:50 neck tapping
18:13 - 18:57 Memphis Tennesse back story, Riding along in my automobile intro
18:58 - 21:05 "Riding Along in my Automobile"
21:06 - 21:25 Speaking as much French as he can
21:26 - 24:04 "Promised Land" + segue to Johnny B Goode
24:05 - 27:09 "Johnny B. Goode"
Compare the sound of Johnny B. Goode at the end of the last video with this one here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKCt8ssC7cs&ab_channel=VisageClub80s
Links to an external site.
This was another example of the 1950s "dance while you lip-sync" technique. Can you hear and see the difference?
In late 1959, Chuck was arrested for violating the Mann Act, a law against transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes. Berry picked up a 14-year old girl, who had previously worked as a waitress and prostitute, and had her join his tour across several states. At the end of the tour, he put her to work at a hatcheck girl in his club in St. Louis. When she proved unreliable, he fired her. In retaliation, she filed a complaint with the police.
Chuck was arrested and convicted in a 1960 trial, whose verdict was overturned, only to be convicted in a second trial and sent to prison in 1962, and released in 1964.
Till his dying day, Chuck Berry denied having any relations with the girl. But he also denied having gone to prison until later in life as well. I've read several articles on the matter to see if I could find a better picture of what actually happened, and they each have a different interpretation. So I'll leave it at that. The video above is from 1965, after he had been released from prison.
Songs you should know from Chuck Berry:
Maybellene
Johnny B. Goode
Buddy Holly
Like Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly wrote most of his own material. This helped establish the trend for rock and roll going forward. Buddy, unlike other rock and rollers, had a more conservative lifestyle, without any of the drinking, drugs, or womanizing problems pioneered by Elvis and followed by many rock stars since. Buddy's appearance, lyrics, and musical styles reflected his clean living - he was much more uncomplicated in his lyrics and had a softer edge to his sound. He experimented with studio techniques like double-tracking ("Words of Love
Links to an external site."), and paid attention to other technical aspects of the recording process, often bringing in new sounds (like a Celeste, or having his drummer provide percussion by slapping his hand against his leg, both heard in "Everyday"). His instrumental lineup (with his band, The Crickets) of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, and drums would set the basic rock instrumentation for years to come.
Buddy Holly also had a vocal habit possibly derived from Elvis, called the "hiccup" style (more correctly "glottal stop"), where they would transform one syllable of lyric into at least two. Have a listen to Peggy Sue, or as Buddy sang it: "Pe-heggy Su-hue-ue-ue".
Everyday
That'll Be the Day
Peggy Sue
Buddy Holly had quite a lot of changes in 1958 - he got married, split from his manager, and arranged to start a new group with a new sound, and started a tour, and started recording new music. Following a concert in Clear Lake Iowa in Feb 1959, the plane that Buddy, guitarist Ritchie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" J.P. Richardson were on crashed, killing all aboard. An unreleased song from Buddy's recording sessions "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" was released posthumously, and in the 1971 hit "American Pie", by Don Mclean, he referenced this day as "the day the music died". Buddy Holly, his Crickets, and their short run would nevertheless influence many rock groups to come.