Middle Tennessee State University United States in the 1970s Questions a. List the title of the piece (it must be written in the 1950s) b. List the America

Middle Tennessee State University United States in the 1970s Questions a. List the title of the piece (it must be written in the 1950s)
b. List the American who wrote and/or performed it
c. Briefly describe the connection of this musical work to a racial, social, or economic issue IN THE UNITED STATES in the 1950s.

a. List the title of the piece (it must be written in the 1960s)
b. List the American who wrote and/or performed it
c. Briefly describe the connection of this musical work to U.S. racial, social, or economic issue IN THE UNITED STATES in the 1960s.

a. List the title of the piece (it must be written in the 1970s)
b. List the American who wrote and/or performed it
c. Briefly describe the connection of this musical work to U.S. racial, social, or economic issues IN THE UNITED STATES the 1970s American Music in the 20th Century
33
Chapter 4
Music in the United States
in the 1950s
Background: The United States in the 1950s
In 1950 in the US
– Average annual income =
$3,200
– Average purchase price of a house = $8,400
– A year’s tuition at Harvard =
$600
– Average price of a car =
$1,500
– A gallon of gas =
18 cents
– A loaf of bread =
12 cents
Even though immigration into the US significantly declined during the 1950s, the
population of the United States still grew by 25 million citizens (from 150 million to
175 million). This is because about 50 million American babies were born in the
1950s (today’s “baby boomer” generation).
During this time, American inventors and visionaries continued to impact social
change in enormous ways:
– Electric guitar (invented by Les Paul; mass-produced by Leo Fender, 1950)—major impact
on music in and after this era
– The first credit card (Schneider—Diner’s Card, 1950)
– Super glue (Coover & Joyner, 1951)
– Power steering (Davis, 1951)
– First video tape recorder (Ginsberg, 1951)—did not impact music until the 1970s
– First diet soft drink (“No-Cal” ginger ale, 1952)
– Hydrogen bomb (Teller, 1952)
– Automotive Safety Airbag (Hetrick, 1952)
– “Black box” flight recorder (Warren, 1953)
– Portable Transistor radio (Texas Instruments, 1953)—did not impact commercial music until
Japanese solid-state electronics made it more affordable in the mid-1960s
– “The Pill” contraceptive (Pincus, 1954)
– Solar cell (Chaplin/Fuller/Pearson, 1954)
– Radar Gun (Brown, 1954)
– McDonald’s founded (Kroc, 1954)
– Tetracycline antibiotic (Duggar, 1955)
– Fiber optic cable (Curtiss, 1955)
– Polio vaccine (Salk, 1955)
– Liquid Paper correction fluid (Graham, 1956)
– First computer harddisk (IBM, 1956—5MB [$10,000 per megabyte] as big as 2 refrigerators)
– US Interstate Highway system begins to be built (1956)
– Computer modem (AT&T, 1958)—did not impact music until the 1980s
– Laser (Gould, 1958)
– Integrated circuit (Kilby & Noyce, 1958)
– First domestic jet airline service begins (National Airlines using Boeing 707 aircraft, 1958)
– Microchip (Kilby & Noyce, 1959)—did not impact music until the 1960s
– Pacemaker internal heart pump (Greatbatch, 1959)
– First copy machine (Xerox, 1959)
– Barbie Doll (Mattel, 1959)
American Music in the 20th Century
Chapter 4: Music in the US in the 1950s
34
Unemployment and inflation were low, and wages were comparatively high, giving
middle-class families more money to spend on an ever-growing number of
consumer goods and suburban homes. As a result, the gross national product (GNP)
of the US grew from $200 million to over $500 million per year. In addition, two new
states in two new strategic “frontiers” were added to the United States in 1959:
Alaska (directly across from the Soviet Union) and Hawaii (in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean, approx. halfway between the US and the southeast coast of China).
The US was now the major political, military and economic power of the “free
world,” led by President Dwight Eisenhower1 (2 terms, 1953-61) after his service
as the Supreme Commander of the victorious Allied Forces in Europe during World
War II. America suddenly found itself in a tense strategic “Cold War”2 against the
Soviet Union (USSR3), which was intent on spreading its brand of communism
around the world. In an effort to halt this proliferation in eastern Asia after China
declared itself a communist nation in 1949, the US once again put its armed forces
into active combat from 1950-53 in a United Nations military intervention in the
civil war between South and North Korea.4 In October 1957, the Russians put their
unmanned Sputnik I spacecraft into orbit as the first artificial Earth satellite, which
started a “Space Race” between the US and USSR that intensified the Cold War due
to the new possibilities for surveillance and space-based weaponry. America
responded by launching the unmanned Explorer I in Earth orbit in January 1958.5
During this time, fears about the influence of Russian espionage on US citizens and
institutions gave rise to a period of political paranoia in the 1950s known as the
“Red Scare”, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin, who without proof
accused many actors, writers, artists, musicians, educators, union activists, and
opposing politicians of being communists or communist sympathizers.
On the positive side, in 1954 the US Supreme Court made the landmark Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka decision that said “separate but equal” racial
segregation policies are unconstitutional. The following year, in a seminal event of
the US Civil Rights Movement, a 42-year old African-American woman named Rosa
Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a
1 Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was the 34th President of the Unites States [1953-61], and a
Five-Star General in the US Army during World War II (responsible for the planning and supervising
the successful Allied invasions of France and Germany from the Western Front in 1944-45).
A “Cold War” is when countries are in a state of political hostility characterized by threats,
propaganda and political posturing, but their armies are not directly fighting each other—although
they may be involved in opposing military actions on other foreign soil.
2
3
USSR stands for “Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics” (“Soviet Union” for short).
The Korean War ended as a stalemate with an armistice (cease-fire) that was signed by both
opposing generals on the ground, but not by any government leaders—so technically, the Korean
War never ended officially. US soldiers have been part of the peace-keeping patrols at this border
ever since. Recently, the current leader of North Korea (Kim Jong-un) has been threatening to resume
the war against South Korea, so tensions have been growing again in that region.
4
5
Manned space flight did not happen until the 1960s (see Chapter 5).
American Music in the 20th Century
Chapter 4: Music in the US in the 1950s
white passenger, which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott by the black community
that lasted over a year, and ended only when the Supreme Court declared that
segregated buses even at the state or city level are unconstitutional.
All of these changes and challenges to American society are reflected in the music of
this decade.
Important Technological Changes in the 1950s That Affected Music
• 1950: The invention of the electric guitar and the reverb amplifier had a massive impact
on many emerging styles of music.
• 1950: Record companies adopted new standards with vast improvements in sound quality
that led to mass adoption of 12-inch long-playing record (LP) technology—22 1/2
minutes per side. This became the preferred format for adult and classical music.
• 1950: Record companies phased out the old-style 78-rpm records in favor of the new small
“45 RPM” large-holed record—4 minutes per side. This became the preferred format for
young people’s music, which was sold on double-sided “singles”.
• 1951: Master recording onto reel-to-reel magnetic tape became the new standard,
opening up the possibility of “overdubbing” by using multiple tracks. This was taken to new
heights by guitarist-inventor Les Paul in such songs as the jazz standard “How High The
Moon” (1951).
• 1953: The invention of the transistor radio (which was portable/compact and ran on
small batteries) made radio broadcasts of AM radio stations accessible anywhere for the first
time—but this did not become affordable and of widespread use until the 1960s
• 1954: Record companies now provided stereo recording equipment in major studios.
• 1956: Stereo recordings on LP became widely available.
• 1956: NBC announced that their Chicago affiliate is the first color TV station in the nation—
did not have widespread commercial use or impact on music distribution until 1965
• By this time, American television in large-city antenna markets had three major networks:
ABC, CBS, and NBC. For most Americans, news, political information, and exposure to new
ideas and music came through this medium.
• Throughout the 1950s, there were 4 major US record labels: RCA, Columbia, Capitol,
and Decca. Until the later 1950s, these major labels were producing only pop, light jazz,
mainstream country & western, and classical albums—everything else had to find its way to
listeners on small independent record labels.
***
American Music in the 1950s
In the 1950s, mainstream jazz and pop styles hit their pinnacles, only to be ousted
by the rise of rhythm & blues, gospel, rock & roll and new kinds of country music
and jazz. These were musical reflections of the social changes coming from 1) the
Civil Rights movement, 2) young people fighting for new ways to express
themselves, and 3) technology offering new ways to get all those messages across.
On another front, completely different highly-experimental approaches to music
came at the hands of several American art-music composers.
35
American Music in the 20th Century
Chapter 4: Music in the US in the 1950s
36
American Roots Music c1950-59
“The Blues” Continues Its Popularity and Influence
Throughout the 1950s, many of the great blues singers of the 1940s continued to
thrive in popularity, and a new breed of “electric” blues artists emerged. The blues
also continued to impact a variety of new styles such as rhythm & blues, rock & roll,
country, and pop (see “American Popular Music,” below).
Black Gospel Hits the Mainstream
Out of the black Pentecostal “sanctified” Baptist church tradition, Gospel singer
Mahalia Jackson rose to national prominence. Her first recording, “Move On Up a
Little Higher” (1948) sold an astonishing 8 million copies. Through her uplifting
spirit and music performed live, on numerous recordings, and in film, she became
one of the great activists in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Gospel
music has a profound influence on the emerging style of Soul music, Rhythm &
Blues, and certain types of Rock & Roll (see “American Popular Music”, below).
Folk Music
By 1950, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger fell from commercial popularity, but
through their continued social activism they inspired a new generation of urban
folksingers to carry the torch (see “American Popular Music”, below)
***
American Popular Music of the 1950s
American Popular Songs of the ’50s
“Tin Pan Alley” standard popular songs hit their high point of popularity in the
1950s, as many of the great songwriters of the 1930s and ’40s continued their craft.
The greatest representative of this style was Frank Sinatra, who outlasted the bigbands and transformed that swinging sophistication into a long series of cool
orchestrally-arranged “concept albums” made between 1953 and 1960 with the
Nelson Riddle Orchestra. A “concept album” is an LP unified by a central idea or
theme such as his 1954 album Songs for Young Lovers, which features his iconic hit
“I Get a Kick Out of You”—a pop-jazz update of the 1934 Cole Porter tune:
Verse 1: (now swinging up-tempo)
I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all.
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?
Contrasting Bridge:
I get a kick every time I see
You standing there before me.
I get a kick though it’s clear to see
You obviously do not adore me.
Verse 2:
Some, they may go for cocaine.
I’m sure that if I took even one sniff
It would bore me terrifically, too.
Yet I get a kick out of you.
Verse 3:
I get no kick in a plane.
Flying too high with some gal in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do.
Yet I get a kick – um you give me a boot I get a kick out of you.
American Music in the 20th Century
Chapter 4: Music in the US in the 1950s
37
Other artists followed suit, such as Tony Bennett, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Nat
“King” Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughn, Della Reese, and Patti Page, which
helped make this the most popular kind of music in America before rock & roll.
Broadway and Movie “Musicals”
In the 1950s, musicals with singing and dancing were still the rage on Broadway and
in film, as represented by these productions that were done separately in staged and
movie versions:
• Damn Yankees (1955, by Richard Adler/Jerry Ross), a baseball-related love
story, featuring “You’ve Gotta Have Heart”.
• West Side Story (1957, by Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim), an intense
gang-related modernization of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, featuring
“America”, and the famous gang fight scene “Tonight”.6
• The Sound of Music (1959, by Rodgers and Hammerstein), a story of an
Austrian family struggling against the Nazis—starring Julie Andrews and
featuring “The Sound of Music” and “Climb Every Mountain.”
• Elvis Presley made 31 movie musicals between 1956 and 1969 in which he
sang and marketed songs from his upcoming record albums.
Country & Western, “Honky-Tonk”, and “Southern Gospel” Music
In the 1950s, while ballad singers such as Marty Robbins (“El Paso”, 1959) carried
on the “singing cowboy” tradition, and Western swing continued to thrive,
“Southern Gospel” (white Gospel) sung by small unaccompanied male ensembles
became popular with white Southern listeners. The Oak Ridge Boys were one of
the first to make this style famous in the mainstream, as they became country music
crossover artists.
Around the same time, a new generation of Country & Western singers became
known for “honky tonk” songs associated with barroom stories. The most famous
of these was the legendary Hank Williams, with such songs as “I’m So Lonesome I
Could Cry” (1949) and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” (1953). Before his death at age 29,
Williams wrote thirty-five Top Ten hits—eleven of which reached No. 1. Several of
his later songs such as “Hey, Good Lookin'” (1951) and “Jambalaya [On The
Bayou]” (1952) have a hard, driving country beat that was picked up by Johnny
Cash in such hits as “Folsom Prison Blues” (1955) and “I Walk The Line” (1956).
This sound had a strong influence on up-and-coming rock & roll pioneers including
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and many others.
William’s “Jambalaya” is a cross-section of country & western music and southernLouisiana zydeco7 elements, as can clearly be seen from it colorful Cajun-oriented
The soundtrack to the Broadway version of West Side Story was the number 1 album in popularity
for 2 straight years, and stayed in the top 10 of albums sold for 10 years.
6
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Chapter 4: Music in the US in the 1950s
38
lyrics (for clarity, each line is followed below by a bracketed “translation” in
common English):
Verse 1:
Goodbye Joe me gotta go me oh my oh
[Bye Joe, I’ve got to go…]
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
[I’ve got to go pole a flat-bottomed pirogue boat down the shallow water of the bayou]
My Yvonne the sweetest one me oh my oh
[to see my sweet girlfriend, Yvonne]
Son of a gun we’ll have big fun on the bayou
[and we’re going to have lots of fun on the bayou]
Chorus:
Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and fillet gumbo
[I’m going to eat Jumbalaya (chicken-sausage-shrimp & rice), crawfish pot pie, and fish gumbo]
Cause tonight I’m gonna see my ma chère amio
[because tonight I’m going to see my dear lady friend]
Pick guitar fill fruit jar and be gay-o
[I’m going to play the guitar, drink liquor from a fruit jar, and be happy]
Son of a gun we’ll have big fun on the bayou
[We’ll have great fun tonight on the bayou]
Verse 2:
Thibadeaux, Fontainbleau the place is buzzin’
[the Fontainbleau park in Thibadeaux, Louisiana is buzzing with excitement]
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
[dozens of Yvonne’s relatives have come to see her there]
Dress in style and go hog wild me oh my oh
[we’ll all dress up and get pretty wild]
Son of a gun we’ll have big fun on the bayou
[We’ll have great fun tonight on the bayou]
Chorus: (as before)
Verse 3:
Settle down, far from town, get me a pirogue
[eventually we will get married, find a rural home, and I’ll buy my own bayou boat]
And I’ll catch all the fish in the bayou
[same]
Swap my mon to buy Yvonne what she need-o
[I’ll pay cash money to buy Yvonne the things she needs]
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou
[We’ll have great fun tonight on the bayou]
Chorus: (as before)
The American Folk Music Revival
Inspired by the social activism of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, a new generation
young urban folksingers began an “American Folk Music Revival” by writing and
singing folk songs about current socio-political issues at “hootnanny” sing-along
7 Zydeco music fuses Cajun, blues, and rhythm & blues styles, as created by native southern-Louisiana
Creoles of French, Spanish, and African descent (see Chapter 2 for its early roots).
American Music in the 20th Century
Chapter 4: Music in the US in the 1950s
gatherings, in small college-town coffee houses, and on recordings that began to hit
the pop charts by the late 1950s. The most prominent urban folk group at this time
was The Kingston Trio with such hits as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”
(1959, written by Pete Seeger), which has a sweet pacifist sound but delivers a
powerful message:
Verse 1:
Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
(Chorus) When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Verse 2:
Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?… Gone to young men everyone.
(Chorus) When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Verse 3:
Where have all the young men gone, long time passing?… Gone for soldiers everyone
(Chorus) When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Verse 4:
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?… Gone to graveyards everyone
(Chorus) When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Verse 5:
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?… Gone to flowers, everyone.
(Chorus) When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
During this era, Jamaican folk songs and calypso music were also being popularized
in the US by the American singer/social activist Harry Belafonte (“Day-O [Banana
Boat Song]”, 1956).
Jazz in the 1950s: “Cool” vs. “Hard Bop”
In the ’50s, a smoother and more serene style of “Cool Jazz” emerged on the West
Coast, as represented by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (“Take Five”, 1959).
Meanwhile, “Bebop” advocates were intensifying their approach by creating “Hard
Bop”, as represented by “Blue Train” (1957) featuring saxophonist John Coltrane.
Rhythm & Blues (“R&B”) and the “Electric Blues”
By 1945, African-American artists such a Louis Jordan were already implementing
elements that today are considered style traits of early “Rock and Roll”:
• 12-Bar Blues (I-IV-V) harmonic structure:
• Faster Tempo than the traditional blues
• Backbeat rhythm (accenting beats “2” and “4” in each measure)
39
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40
In the 1950s, the invention of the electric guitar and reverb amplifier by Les Paul
and Leo Fender, led to the new styles of “electric blues” and electric Rhythm &
Blues, exemplified by:
• B.B. King (electric blues): “3 O’Clock Blues” (1952)
• Howlin’ Wolf (R & B): “How Many More Years?” (1951)
• Ruth Brown (R & B): “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” (1953)
• Big Joe Turner (R & B): “Shake , Rattle and Roll” (1954)
• Muddy Waters (R & B): “I Got My Mojo Workin'” (1956)
In the early ’50s, R & B was rarely heard on large radio stations, but in a pioneering
move, a white disc jockey in Cleveland named Alan Freed began to play only Rhythm
& Blues records on his late night radio show in 1951. By 1954, his program went
national, moved to New York City, and took on a new name “The Rock & Roll
Show”—which coined a phrase that was free of any racial stereotype.
Early Rock & Roll Styles: Rockabilly…
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