I am doing a project for school to research about the 50’s. I have come to the 50’s music category and I need to find out how the rock n roll music in the 50’s influenced people’s lives. I’ve googled and googled but I can’t find anything. Help?
Ray Charles started Rock ‘n’ Roll which had its roots in R&B and Blues music. It influenced people lives in the same way the music you listen to influences yours. It was new attitude in music and harder sound than that of swing and big band jazz more driving wild rhythms than the blues or country music of the time.
It was music to dance to or sing along or even make a statement with groups such as the Kingston Trio. You had people like Little Richard and Chuck Berry putting on very risque shows for the times. Hip gyrations and wailing was like committing a sin. It was a liberation of music and of a generation that would go on to define the 60s counterculture movement.
Almost all popular songs of the period were about sex (but then most songs are). But the censors forced the singers and song writers to be creative in how they sang about it. Roll With Me Henry, was a very big Etta James hit that was changed to Dance With Me Henry when it was covered for white audience because it was deemed unseemly to sing about "rolling" with anyone. Pat Boone covered many popular songs toning down their sexually charged tone and beat for older white audiences.
Think Twice version X by Jackie Wilson and Lavern Baker is an example of an underground hit that shows people of the time could be just as filthy as today’s musicians with swear and such but it wasn’t the norm as it is today. And it was one of the first "hits" to have cursing and sexual phrases in it. Even Cole Porter a Broadway legend wrote very risque songs using a lot of puns and play on words to talk about sex without talking about it. Song like "Let’s Misbehave" and "Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)" are now standards in the American song book.
Then of course you had women like Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin breaking the mold for women by playing rockin’ rebellious guitar at a time when girls mostly sang sweet weepy love songs about boys. Songs like Fujiyama Mama (with is references to drinking beating up men) and and Bang Bang (with its hard rockin’ boot knockin’ drums) allowed women to play with the big boys like Elvis and Carl Perkins.
For the time being overtly sexual was so shunned upon that to have the musicians play fast loud piano and guitar moaning, and shouting, and shaking there hips and legs revolutionized the way people thought about music.
Also the 50s was when TV really took off and people all over the country were able to see the same performance and so you had the new way of marketing music to the masses on a bigger scale than ever before. With shows like American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show everyone could see band like Buddy Holly and the Crickets and so it was another avenue for music makers to sell their wares. And so we saw the influence of teen buying power on music for the first time in a large way. For it was teenagers who made Elvis a legend. And because of the success Elvis recorded not just Rock ‘n’ Roll but country, and Gospel to appeal to other audiences, making him and rock ‘n’ roll more acceptable to more people. To this day musicians will often work in many genres of music in the hopes of selling more records.
That doesn’t even scratch the surface of how singer and song writers like Roy Orbison and Carole King influenced other musicians like The Beatles, or The Stones, or Heart all the way up to bands like Green Day and singer like Sarah McLachlan etc. In the 50’s it was Jazz and Blues and that gave birth to Rock ‘n’ Roll, which led to Rock and Punk, Metal, New Wave, Grunge, you name it. It is where all the roots of today’s popular music are buried. From hip-hop to country they all owe something to what happened in the 50s music scene.
April 11th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Watch Pleasantville. Rock n roll turned people’s cookie cutter lives into something raw and uncontrollable. The younger generation was given a voice.
It’s an awesome topic. Keep looking, you’re bound to find a lot of good information. Try going into the specifics, like the technology and price of putting record players into cars for the first time or the way 50’s rockers dressed.
References :
April 11th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Parents often said that rock ‘n’ roll music was evil. Their children attended hops often where they were sure would be crass language and maybe drinking. Then there were the shameless musicians strutting on stage during live televised concert performances at local T.V. stations. In some ways the 1950’s was the beginning of a mass rebellion that would span across the following decades. Nowadays there are new classifications of music that would make the typical ‘Cleaver’ family cringe. It started a common fad among teenagers to talk about what rock ‘n’ roll star you liked best, then what style of hair made mother flip out, what clothes you wore, what clothes you went without, to what drugs you were using, to how many different drugs you were using, and finally what is most high tech. From there, other music categories were born involving the use of newer ways to play, record and distribute. The invention of synthesizers began a 1970’s movement known as disco, then the popular techno of the 80’s. Some would say that music is still work of the devil and the root of evil brainwashing campaigns to riot and enrage society’s youth, but most find it a creative outlet both to create and listen to. I believe the 1950’s rock ‘n’ roll era has proven to influence a majority of good in everyday life.
I know that most would probably disagree, but I think the movie musical "Dream Girls" is a very interesting portrayal of the evolution of music from the late 1950’s to mid 70’s.
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Scattered bits of info in my brain. Did a project about this in my senior year of high school.
April 11th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
easy Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash
Elvis influenced the beatles which changed music forever
Johnny Cash influenced RocknRoll and Country music like no other
they also represented rebeldy and freedom, people started to become open minded with Elvis’ music, dance style and clothes
and johnny’s lyrics made everyone view the world from different oint of view.
References :
April 11th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Ray Charles started Rock ‘n’ Roll which had its roots in R&B and Blues music. It influenced people lives in the same way the music you listen to influences yours. It was new attitude in music and harder sound than that of swing and big band jazz more driving wild rhythms than the blues or country music of the time.
It was music to dance to or sing along or even make a statement with groups such as the Kingston Trio. You had people like Little Richard and Chuck Berry putting on very risque shows for the times. Hip gyrations and wailing was like committing a sin. It was a liberation of music and of a generation that would go on to define the 60s counterculture movement.
Almost all popular songs of the period were about sex (but then most songs are). But the censors forced the singers and song writers to be creative in how they sang about it. Roll With Me Henry, was a very big Etta James hit that was changed to Dance With Me Henry when it was covered for white audience because it was deemed unseemly to sing about "rolling" with anyone. Pat Boone covered many popular songs toning down their sexually charged tone and beat for older white audiences.
Think Twice version X by Jackie Wilson and Lavern Baker is an example of an underground hit that shows people of the time could be just as filthy as today’s musicians with swear and such but it wasn’t the norm as it is today. And it was one of the first "hits" to have cursing and sexual phrases in it. Even Cole Porter a Broadway legend wrote very risque songs using a lot of puns and play on words to talk about sex without talking about it. Song like "Let’s Misbehave" and "Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)" are now standards in the American song book.
Then of course you had women like Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin breaking the mold for women by playing rockin’ rebellious guitar at a time when girls mostly sang sweet weepy love songs about boys. Songs like Fujiyama Mama (with is references to drinking beating up men) and and Bang Bang (with its hard rockin’ boot knockin’ drums) allowed women to play with the big boys like Elvis and Carl Perkins.
For the time being overtly sexual was so shunned upon that to have the musicians play fast loud piano and guitar moaning, and shouting, and shaking there hips and legs revolutionized the way people thought about music.
Also the 50s was when TV really took off and people all over the country were able to see the same performance and so you had the new way of marketing music to the masses on a bigger scale than ever before. With shows like American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show everyone could see band like Buddy Holly and the Crickets and so it was another avenue for music makers to sell their wares. And so we saw the influence of teen buying power on music for the first time in a large way. For it was teenagers who made Elvis a legend. And because of the success Elvis recorded not just Rock ‘n’ Roll but country, and Gospel to appeal to other audiences, making him and rock ‘n’ roll more acceptable to more people. To this day musicians will often work in many genres of music in the hopes of selling more records.
That doesn’t even scratch the surface of how singer and song writers like Roy Orbison and Carole King influenced other musicians like The Beatles, or The Stones, or Heart all the way up to bands like Green Day and singer like Sarah McLachlan etc. In the 50’s it was Jazz and Blues and that gave birth to Rock ‘n’ Roll, which led to Rock and Punk, Metal, New Wave, Grunge, you name it. It is where all the roots of today’s popular music are buried. From hip-hop to country they all owe something to what happened in the 50s music scene.
References :