To my Minnehaha Academy Classmates:
Larry Carlson responded to my letter with a myriad of great questions. I thought I would respond and then send it to the whole group.
- Here are his questions.
- What do you mean by “transformational?” Songs which truly changed history?
- In your view, what did they change? Pop music? The teen culture? American history? World history? Musical composition? Song structure? Popular dancing? The society at large? American psychology? The mores and ethics of the time? The music business? The movie business? Marketing? All of the above? What else?
- Was this era something more than the pop-music bridge from the 40’s to the 60’s? Was the 60’s the 50’s gone awry? (Suppose I will have to read your book, huh.)
- Does transformational equal significant? Important? In what ways.
- Were the changes for the good? In what ways?
- Will this era of pop music go the way of the music of the 30’s 40’s? By that I mean that we, children of the 50’s, barely remember the pop songs of WWII, and almost nothing that went before. Will Gen X and Gen Y have nothing but vague recollections of Fats Domino and Buddy Holly? And will even those artists be forgotten by the Millenials?
- What keeps this era from being “disposable” and disposed of?
Larry.
Well, as some of you know, I have written a book on the music of the 50’s, I just haven’t figured out yet how I am going to get it published. I have some possibilities but nothing has yet clicked. But I can share some conclusions that I drew in answering Larry’s questions. A basic question comes in why did the music change in the 1950’s, then how did it change, and finally was this change a good thing or not?
The basic theme of my research came from a line in the book by David Halberstam where he made the shocking assertion, “Elvis Presley changed the beat of America.” I would come to disagree with the statement in the sense that it was not just Elvis, but Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash, Bill Haley, the Everly Brothers, etc. and hundreds of others who changed the beat of America. Now we could spend a lot of time defining that beat, but certainly it had to do with music, with American history, with world history, with movies, with dancing, with psychology, with mores and ethics, all of the above.
In the book I identify ten specific influences which caused this changing of the beat.
*The movement of African American music, R & B, from segregated “race music” to mainstream.
*Massive changes in family life, from rural to suburban, from one breadwinner to two, from teens as soldiers and workers to a specific teen culture, centered around high school, from public transportation to the automobile as being the center of family life.
*The explosion of radio listenership. Until 1955 most teenagers hardly listened to the radio, pop music was not our thing, but suddenly rock and roll radio became predominant, KDWB and WDGY. It was also the radio which broken down segregated music, teens could listen to any music they wished, including African American music. The disc jockey became the most influential people on radio.
*Folk music. Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Leadbelly brought folk music to American consciousness during the early 40’s. A revival of folk music in the late 50’s was highly influential in the changing of the beat, led by the Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, Joan Baez, and set the stage for Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and many others.
*Music Entrepreneurs. Sam Phillips once said, If I could find a white man who could sing black music, I could make a million dollars. Then one day Elvis walked into his studio in Memphis and the rest of history. Several others producers, such as Ahmet Ertegun and Berry Gordy (Motown) changed the music industry.
*Civil Rights. Martin Luther King led the movement against the Jim Crow south, as well as the musicians who broke through the color barrier, Chuck Berry, Nat King Cole, Little Richard, Ray Charles, etc. A folk song named “We Shall Overcome” became the heart music of the movement.
*New songwriters. The Brill Building in New York gathered together an entire stable of songwriters who wrote most of the songs for the later 50’s and early 60’s. Jerry Leibner and Mike Stoller wrote most of the music for Elvis, Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus wrote for Elvis, Dion and the Drifters, and Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote everything for Dionne Warwick. What made Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly so revolutionary is that they wrote their own music.
*Television. When Elvis appeared on Ed Sullivan Show, 84% of the TV sets in America were tuned in. Later when Ricky Nelson sang his first rock and roll song on the Ozzie and Harriet Show, it sold almost a million copies overnight. No program was more influential than American Bandstand in heralding a new day in music.
*Gospel Music. Most of the leading artists of the 50’s had gospel music background. Elvis loved the Blackwood Brothers, even auditioned for one of their groups, but failed. Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Clyde McPhatter, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Brook Benton, Little Anthony, all came out of gospel music. Sam Cooke was the lead singer in perhaps the greatest gospel group of all time, the Soul Stirrers, recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
*Technology. From the juke box to the new 33, 45 and 78 records, to the transistor radio, to the highly influential electric guitar, pioneered by the late, great Les Paul and Chet Atkins, everything changed. The big bands were no longer needed, the electric guitar is virtually a portable band, all you need is a drummer.
One influence not found in most books on the music of the fifties is my own take on this, being deeply involved in the church, is that the changing of the beat of music in the mid-50’s led directly to the changing of the beat of music and worship in the church in the 70’s. Today of the 1250 mega-churches in the country, those which are the most influential congregations in the culture, for instance Willow Creek and Saddleback, just about every one of them is using contemporary Christian music. (Eaglebrook, Wooddale, Prince of Peace, Hosanna, etc.) As one author stated, the reason we have contemporary Christian music is because of Elvis. I would again submit that it is because hundreds of artists in the 50’s that we have contemporary Christian music.
In the early 70’s it was Larry Norman, Love Song, Andrae Crouch, Children of the Day who transformed music from hymns and Gospel songs to those with a beat. The beat of Christian music changed forever in the 70’s, mostly by people who grew up in the 50’’s and were captured by the new music. Today denominations and non denominational churches which utilize contemporary Christian music are growing and thriving, those which hold onto traditional and organ-accompanied music are in decline.
Is all this good or bad? It is in the eye of the beholder. I think it is good, but it certainly is debatable. At the church where I work in West Des Moines, it is almost all music with a beat, we have grown from 12 to 12,000 in seventeen years, and lot of the growth is due to the changing of the beat for worship and music, six worship services on a weekend. And as for me, that beat gets through to me, it moves my Spirit, it is my heart music from the 50’s which now has biblical words. “Open the eyes of my heart Lord,” “Soon and Very Soon,” “Not To Us, But To Your Name,” “All Things Are Possible.”
As far as the changing of the beat of America in the 50’s has it been good or bad? So much of the music that came after the 50’s, hard rock, heavy metal, rap, etc, I think has been destructive. Most of the people in America, however, tend to listen these days to soft rock, pop rock, which is usually quite pleasant and uncontroversial, but youth culture often rallies around the most bizarre and problematic music. Maybe that is the nature of teens.
I am not sure that such artists as Elvis and Buddy Holly and Fats Domino will be much remembered by our children and grandchildren. It will be more an “aha” from those who study history, when they suddenly hear some music from the past they will realize what power it had. One of the reasons I wanted to write a book was to feature artists and songs which engaged and thrilled us when we were teens, and maybe some of them will be revived in the future.
To explain how some individual songs were transformational would be a much longer essay. For instance, Chuck Berry’s song School Days has a refrain in it which lives in history, “Hail, Hail rock and roll, deliver me from the days of old, Long live rock and roll, the beat of the drums, loud and bold” Elvis’s songs Don’t Be Cruel and Hound Dog became the best selling two sided record in history.
Ray Charles “What”d I Say,” is recognized as the beginning of soul music, also gospel response music. Bill Haley’s Rock around the Clock, which dramatically began the movie “Blackboard Jungle,” became the anthem for the movement. The Kingston Trio’s Tom Dooley was the launching pad of the folk revival. Lonnie Donegan, the great skiffle pioneer in England, mentor to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and his classic old spiritual song, Rock Island Land, thrilled generations.
Muddy Waters song “Rolling Stone” gave the name to a group, to a magazine, and to a legendary song by Bob Dylan, Ain’t That A Shame by Fats Domino was the first rhythm and blues song by an African American artist to become popular with white teens, That’s Alright Mama, a song by an obscure African American artist Arthur Crudup, was the song that launched Elvis Presley. Sam Cooke’s song “A Change Is Gonna Come,” is one of the most poignant songs in history on the changing of the beat. So it goes
.
Aside from historical significance, I just happen to love many of the songs of the 50’s. I believe 1955 to 1959 was the highpoint of American music, and was foundational for everything that has followed. It was an innocent time in many ways, songs were about dancing and love, not sex and drugs, baseball players did it right without steroids, we liked Ike and there was little of the political warfare or culture wars. Of course it was both the best of times, best of times for us, worst of times for minorities. But I like to believe that the changing of the beat of America through music led to a more humane, more equal, more just society, even though we have a long way to go.
If there are more comments or questions, I will try to respond. Thanks Larry.
Merv
