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Bill Kelso
Origins of American Music : A Visual, Oral and Historical Account
I was thinking that if some of our classmates like music, they might be interested in taking a visual tour of America’s musical traditions and the cities that created those traditions. In fact this musical tour might interest our class for several reasons.
Where Musical Genres Originated
First of all, as mentioned in an earlier post, there are three way to view music. If you are a musician, you may be interested in the melody or rhythm of a particular song. A second alternative is to study the evolution of the different musical genres and to analyze how one genre of music is different from other forms. A third alternative is to study the history of music because it tells you a lot about how the various ethnic and racial groups dealt with the obstacles they faced in coming to America.
As we shall soon see, if we want to pursue our second approach to music which is the study of different music genres. we have to recognize that different forms of music have a historical link to particular cities. The various genres of American music are unusual in that they primarily originated in the south in the first half of the 20th century. For instance, while Jazz originated in New Orleans, the Blues developed in the Delta region of Mississippi, R&B as well as Rock and Roll were created in Memphis and Country music emerged in Nashville Tennessee.
In the latter part of that century the northern city of Chicago also played an important role in enhancing and even transforming America’s unique form of music called the blues, while the southern part of the Bronx created yet another brand new genre of music which today is called Hip Hop and Rap music. To fully understand the evolution of American music, it can be helpful to take a musical tour of the cities that did so much to shape popular culture.
A Second Reason to Learn about America's Musical Heritage
Besides visualizing a look at the origins of American music, a second reason for learning about the urban origins of American music is that it may interest our classmates who want to hear different types of bands. I got this latter idea from a conversation I had several years ago with our very congenial and affable classmate Bonnie DeAngelis who also shares an interest in popular music. When we happened to exchange Christmas greetings at that time, Bonnie mentioned that she and her son had gone on a cruise that featured a battle of different bands.
When I read Bonnie’s letter, I thought what a great way to listen to different forms of music. However, the drawback of this approach is that it was unclear how often the cruise line would repeat its unique cruise with its unusual form of entertainment.
An alternative is to pay a visit to a city like Memphis, Nashville or New Orleans in which music is a major part of its urban DNA. In these cities there are distinct musical districts with numerous musical clubs playing great music every night of the week. Beside seeing where different forms of American music originated, visiting these cities is an excellent way to entertain yourself.
In case you had an interest in learning a little about American history as well as hearing great music, I thought we could maybe take a quick visual tour of the cities and streets that gave us so many distinct musical styles.
Five Major Musical Cities in America
Below is a list of major cities that created American music, their streets & famous musical arenas. If you want to learn more about American music it is worth a visit to 1) Northwest Mississippi and highway 60, the so called Blues highway, 2) Memphis and Beale Street, 3) Nashville and Broadway, 4) New Orleans and Bourbon Street and 5) the South Bronx and Sedgwick Street.
1.North west Mississippi, Home of the Blues
Clarksdale and Highway 60 Almost Exclusively Blues Night Clubs
The Club Hollywood
2. Memphis Home of Rhythm & Blues & Rock and Roll
Beale Street A Diverse array of Musical Clubs
3. Nashville Home of Country Music
Broadway Today there are Night Clubs with every form of Music
Ryman Auditorium Nashville is becoming the musical capitol of the US.
4. New Orleans Home of Dixieland Jazz
Bourbon Street Primairly Jazz Night Clubs
Preservation Hall
5. South Bronx Home of Rap & Hip Hop Culture
Sedgwick Street Not Much of a Night Club Scence
At times there are large block parties
However as we shall see Rhythm and Blues is the outlier when it comes to the origins of this distinctive form of American Music. In contrast to Jazz, the Blues and Country, Rhythm and Blues originated in three distinct locations, one of which is in Memphis, and the other two are Motown in Detroit, and Atlantic Records in New York.
Of the above options, this post will concentrate on just two areas; the area of Northwest Mississippi which is the birthplace of the Blues and second the unique city of Memphis which is one of the birthplaces of Rhythm and Blues as well as the Home of Rockand Roll. While previously we posted material on different forms of Jazz and Doo Wop music, in this post we can analyze more recent forms of music that were popular from the late 1950s through the early 70s. The city of Memphis is a good place to visit.Of all the cities in America, no city has a richer musical history than Memphis.
Before visiting the home of Elvis Presley and the origins of Rock and Roll, let’s start by visiting the Delta region of Mississippi and examine the rise of the Blues followed by the later development of Rhythm and Blues in the city of Memphis. We will then finish our initial musical tour by studying how Sam Philips of Sun Records which is also in Memphis encouraged Elvis Presley and later Jerry Lee Lewis to develop rockabilly, a new form of music that fused the country songs of Nashville with the rhythms of black music. As we shall see Beale Street, which is the musical heart of Memphis, is where Elvis hung out as a young boy listening to different tyles of music. It is also the area where he learned to fuse different musical styles together to create the new genre of music we today call Rock and Roll.
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The Origins of the Blues
Of the many forms of Black music that arose in the 20th century, the Blues was unique in that it originated in the Delta region of north Mississippi. This was the original home of the cotton plantations during slavery. When slavery ended many former slaves worked as sharecropper in those same field until finally around 1950s the picking of cotton was automated and done by machines.
During the early 20th century, the sharecroppers developed the Blues to describe their poor working conditions.. Their music tried to recount the hardships they encountered picking cotton in a harsh and oppressive segregated society. While the Blues originated in northern Mississippi, most of the blues singers have today migrated to Memphis to play on Beale Street. If you watch the following video by Marc Cohen, you can see one of the last spots to hear the Blues in Mississippi besides the city of Clarksdale is the club called Hollywood. It is a small run-down place in northern Mississippi that often attracts some incredible musical performers Periodically you can also hear good blues in Clarksdale but it is pretty much a hit or miss occasion as to the quality of the musicians as the best Blues artists have moved to Memphis.
Finally if you are interested in American history, it may interest you to know that many slave plantations have been turned into motels where you spend a night in a former slave’s cabin, complete with a minibar
The following video is worth viewing as it shows the 1) birth of the Blues in Mississippi, and the 2) Growth of Rock and Roll with Elvis and Sun Recording Studio
Marc Cohen Walking in Memphis
The following videos also gives you a good insight as to why Mississippi was the home of the cotton plantations. It also historically explains how poorly the sharecroppers were paid which lead the residents of the Delta to create the Blues.
Listening to the Blues today in Mississippi
A Blues Club in Clarksdale Mississippi
A Contemporary View of North West Mississippi
The Home of the Blues
A Historical View of North West Mississippi
History of the Delta
Despite its ancient history, today the Blues is very controversial in the black community. First of all, in the history of the Blues, the music developed because the musician Robert Johnson, the originator of Blues, allegedly sold his soul to the Devil in return for learning how to play the guitar. As a result, many black churches argue that the Blues is Devil’s music and discourage its congregation from listening to the Blues.
Secondly, more recent musicians like James Brown and Rappers reject the music as they don’t want to dwell on the limitations of black history. They also reject what many feel is a fatalistic attitude towards their plight as African Americans, an attitude that Soul Music has tried to rectify.
Finaly, many black musicians think the music is too bland. It basically started out as one musician playing an acoustic guitar with limited instrumentation. As black musicians began to migrate up highway 60, which is known as the Blues Highway, at first to Memphis and later during the 20s to Chicago, they tried to make the music more sophisticated by expanding the number of instruments playing the music as well as enlivening the Blues by emphasizing the rhythm and tempo of the music. In place of the acoustic guitar, Blues musicians began playing the electric guitar, which has a more percussion tone to it which enhanced the overall sound of the music.
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The Origins of Rhythm and Blues
When many of the Blues musicians returned to Memphis, and settled in Memphis they created a second form of African American music that we today call the Rhythm and Blues. While the Blues had existed since the turn of the 20th century, the development of Rhythm and Blues in America began in the late 1950s.
R&B is an unusual Name for a Genre of Music
In many ways the development of R&B is unusual in that its very name, Rhythm and Blues, combines an attitudes towards life (The Blues) with one of the four main components of Music (Rhythm). To get a feel for how R&B had increased the tempo and rhythmic nature of black music, compare the following two videos.
As Sam and Dave, who are two of the earliest R&B singers, follow the Blues singer Howling Wolf, you can see how their stress on Rhythm overwhelms any Blues elements in their music. And that video is more revealing when you realize that the Blues music of Howling Wolf in England has some elements of R&B already mixed in with his traditional Blues’ sound.
Howling Wolf Blues Singer
Sam and Dave Singing
With Sam and Dave you also want sway to the beat and the dance steps of the music, two elements that remade the Blues into the Rhythms and Blues. The opening scene of the video with its stress on the drummer and his pounding beat tells you right away this is going to be a very different musical experience from that of the Blues. In a nice touch, notice how Sam bops his head towards the end of the video with every beat of the song “I’m coming,” magnifying the rhythmic nature of the song. At the end of this song you also have another great example of African American singers copying the shout and answer tradition of black gospel music. As the above songs comes to an end, Sam and Dave constantly shout and respond to one another’s rendition of their popular tune.
The above video also explains why R&B music became so popular. While an audience may be prone to sit and listen to the Blues, they are likely to want to dance and sway to R&B. The pounding beat and rhythm of Sam and Dave also explains why so many teenagers in our era found Rhythm and Blues so exciting and preferred it to the more mellow tunes of their parents. If you wanted to be slightly rebellious in the 1960s, and periodically reject the conformity of a middle class life, what better way than to listen to and even dance to singers like Sam and Dave rather than crooners like Perry Como or Rosemary Clooney,
However, as soon as the Blues went so far to give equal billing or even preeminence to Rhythm many of its fans felt that the emotive or blues side of the music had been too severely diminished. If we have time later, we will try to show how Soul Music tried to redress this problem with Rhythm and Blues so that the soulful nature of Black Music became the dominant and significant partner in R&B music.
As African American music evolved, there was an initial focus on the despondent nature of life or the blues which in turn was followed by a deemphasis on the emotional nature of the music and a stress on rhythm which eventually elicited a “soulful” backlash. In simpler terms, the 1) Blues evolved into 2) Rhythm and Blues which precipitate a musical reaction which led to the creation of 3) Soul Music an intense and very personal form of music.
The Important Role played by Stax Studio
The creation of Rhythm and Blues’ stars like Sam and Dave owes its existence to two unusual siblings, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton who owned a record shop in Memphis called Stax. While both of the owners of Stax Studios were white they both loved black music. In a major contribution to the creation of a distinctive American musical culture, Jim and Estelle decided to start recording various black artists in the area creating in the process Rhythm and Blues. This development in Memphis coincided with the rise of Motown in Detroit and Atlantic Records in New York.
While Motown was noticed for its silky smooth sound, the Stax label was notable for its more edgy and daring music. Besides Sam and Dave, Stax records was famous for Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Booker T and the MGs and Issac Hayes.
Video of Stax Music
Ironically enough, when Stax sent its artists out on tour, many of them did not want to perform along with Sam and Dave, who always ended up stealing the show.
Otis Redding, who was originally from Georgia, has some relevance for people from California as his most famous song was about sitting next to the bay in the city of San Francisco. While we mentioned that R&B generally tended to downplay people’s emotional state, Otis Reding was something of a holdover from the earlier Blues period. If you listen carefully to the lyrics of this song, it is a despairing song in which a person has lost both a sense of direction or hope for the future. Or as he puts it, “I have nothing to live for, nothing comes my way.”
Video of Otis Redding Singing By the Dock of the Bay
While Otis Redding and Sam and Dave were initially the major stars of Stax, when Otis Redding died in a plane crash, Issac Hayes became the leader of the group. He quickly redirected the songs of the studio and R&B music from a fatalistic resignation to an image of black accomplishment.
For instance, Issac Hayes quickly became famous for his theme song for the movie Shaft. Shaft represented a symbol of black masculinity and sexuality that had been lacking in the music of the Delta. In contrast to the fatalistic mood of resignation of much Blues music as well as that of Otis Redding, Stax under Hayes leadership developed a more edgy version of R&B that stressed the empowerment and strength of black men.
Besides rejecting the depressing view of Blues music, Stax also distinguished itself from Motown’s version of R&B which stressed love songs. While not neglecting broken relationship in their music, Stax in its later years also dealt with social issues like drug use and gang violence. Similarly Stax, under Issac Hayes’ guidance, developed a more assertive version of black life than that of the Delta region in which the black community overcame any sense of the Blues by resolving its own internal problems.
Theme song from the Movie Shaft
The following video, a trailer from the movie Shaft, is a very raw film clip tha has an over abundance of the F word, the S word and the N word. But if you want to get a feel for the often contentious political climate in the country around 1971, this movie explains the new assertiveness of studios like Stax under Issac Hayes.
Trailer for the original Movie Shaft
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The Origins of Rock and Roll
But the contribution of the city of Memphis to American music was not confined to just the Blues and R&B. Of all the cities that played a part in creating America’s unique music, none rivals Memphis for its shear creativity. By the early 1950s besides fostering the Blues and R&B, it also helped spawn a whole new genre of music that we today call Rock and Roll.
The City of Memphis
To gain an overview of what Memphis is like, watch the following video of Memphis. In particular pay attention to Beale Street, the street where Elvis hung out as a teenager and got the idea of combining country music with that of Rhythm and Blues.
Video of Memphis
To appreciate why Rock and Roll originated in Memphis we have to realize that the city lies between Nashville in the east, which is the home of country music and northern Mississippi in the south which is the home of the Blues. In addition, many of the residents of Memphis were members of poor Scotch Irish families who had fled the Appalachian hill country of Kentucky and Tennessee looking for work.
For members of Scotch Irish families, country music was the music of their ethnic heritage. Unfortunately, most Americans looked down at the Scotch Irish and derisively called their music “Hillbilly” music, the music of the Scotch Irish from the Hills of Appalachia.
To gain more respect for their cultural heritage, many Scotch Irish, who had fled to the oil field of Texas seeking work, soon insisted that their music be called “Country Music” or the music of the Cowboys. Before long their efforts to enhance the status of their music paid off. While country music began as the music of the Scotch Irish it eventually became the music of working class as it was embraced by the workers of the oil fields of Texas, to the Coal Mines in East Virginia, to the Oakies in Southern California to the industrial plants in the heartland of America.
In growing up in Memphis, poor Scotch Irish kids from working class families like Elvis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, were thus familiar with the the country music of their families, a type of music which was part of their ethnic heritage. At the same time, they were introduced to the Blues of the Delta and the new sounds of R&B that originated in Memphis, a type of music that had undoubted appealed to these aspiring young musicians seeking to create a new type of sound. It is easy to understand how they absorbed all of these new styles of music as many of them spent an inordinate amount of time on Beale Street, the musical center of Memphis.
The Important Role Played by Sun Studios
But while individuals like Elvis were exposed to a variety of new musical styles, he as well as other young singers in the Memphis were eager to create something new. Fortunately for them there was a small struggling recording studio call Sun Studio which had reordered Blues stars like BB King, Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters but was willing to produce new forms of music. Sam Philips who was the owner of Sun Studios, was thus intrigued one day when a young kid named Elvis walked into his studio to record a song for his mother. What amazed Philips was that Elvis, a white guy who liked country music, often sounded like and danced like black artists. Because Philips was eager to expand his business, he quickly began to promote Elvis’ new style of music.
If Stax had Sam and Dave who could sing and dance circles around the other artists at that studio, Philips and Sun Records had Elvis who could likewise win over audiences with his equally exciting unique dance steps and music. Before you knew it, Sam Philips, who had a major impact on American culture, develop a whole stable of young singers who went on become major celebrities in America in the 1950s and 60s.
Where Rock and Roll Began
What is also remarkable about Sam Philips and Sun records is that he provided an opportunity for 5 young Scotch Irish kids from poor backgrounds to become incredibly famously and incredibly wealthy. Below is a very famous picture of what people called Philip’s million dollar quartet as one day all of Sun’s major stars except Roy Orbison happened to be in the studies. To kill some time they all began to sing together.
Elvis, Lewis, Perkins and Johnny Cash, 4 Scotch Irish Singers
The early videos of Philip’s famous singers, Presley, Perkins, Cash, Lewis and Orbison are also instructive in that easily demonstrate the influence of country music on these early Rock and Roll singers. As we shall see in a following post, when the above generation got older, the Rockabilly nature of Early Rock and Roll quickly disappeared. As Memphis was no longer the only city creating this new type of music, Rock and Roll went through a major change in orientation.
How Rock and Roll Music Began to develop Sub Genres
When Dick Clark’s Bandstand took off in the late 50’s and 60s in Philadelphia, Pop Rock replaced Rockabilly. In place of poor Scotch Irish kids from the south, Dick Clark promoted young Italian kids from South Phillip like Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell who dismissed the country influence of early Rock and Roll. This new sound was even called the Philadelphia sound.
By the 1980s there were so many new genres of Rock and Roll, that it was hard to find a common thread tying them all together. The Psychedelic Rock bands of San Francisco such as the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplanes sounded nothing like Dicks’ Clark’s proteges let alone the Rock and Roll artists from Memphis.
But before we later discuss these new developments in popular music, perhaps we should pause for a moment and just enjoy the great early Rock and Roll tunes that came out of Memphis. The following artists were responsible for the growth of rock and roll during out teenage years. We were lucky in that we lived during the fifties which were a golden age of American music that forever changed our country’s popular culture.
The Most Famous Rock & Roll Stars of the 50s
Elvis singing You ain't nothing but a Hound Dog
This video is also interesting because of its dueling guitars that occurs in the middle of the song.
Bruce Springsteen accompanies Roy Orbison on guitar
Roy Orbison singing Pretty woman
The unique piano playing by Lewis is also worth watching
Jerry Lee Lewis singing Great Balls of Fire
Cark Perkins singing Blue Suede Shoes
Finally besides listening to the above artists, we can complete our city tour of the Delta area and Memphis by visiting Elvis’ home Graceland. Whether you are visiting the living room, the listening room or the jungle room in his private residence, Elvis’ living quarters has attracted more music lovers than the famous Stax and Sun Recording Studios of Memphis.
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Graceland: The Home of Elvis
Video of Elvis’s Home Graceland
Comprehensive Tour of Graceland
Just in case you would like to listen to one more good tune before you stop reding this post, here is a one more song celebrating Memphis, one of the musical capitols of the US.
Video of Johnny Rivers singing about Memphis
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