Rock and Roll is Dead, Long Live Rock by Peter Reum

There is no doubt that music has changed radically since the dawn of Rock and Roll. Though as a musical style, it began as a marriage of country and rhythm and blues, at some point, the music changed into a multi-headed monster that couldn't be contained in any particular category. When it all started, what we now call Roots Music was just music. There were local scenes and record labels all over the country. I remember Glen Campbell playing with his uncle's band in Northern New Mexico.

 Glen Campbell with his Uncle Dick Bills 1958 in Albuquerque New Mexico

Local scenes were the center of the action for independent  and regional labels. Every region had bands that were well known in their part of the country but did not break nationally. In New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, St. Louis, and other areas around the country, rock and roll established itself as the radio favorite of teenagers, and national programs like Bandstand were televised as well. I first heard Rock and Roll in the mid Fifties, and remember clearly seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show. The medium of television was still in its infancy as far as popular music went. There was a show called Your Hit Parade that presented the top selling recordings each week. As Rock and Roll came to dominate the charts, the middle aged singers on Your Hit Parade sounded more and more ridiculous.

Your Hit Parade Singers 1957

Elvis on the Dorsey Show-1956

The power of radio and television to break hits regionally and nationally was nearly  indomitable. If your record didn't get picked up on the radio station that played hits targeted at teenagers, it was doomed to be a "stiff," as many of the disc jockeys called records that did not chart. Certain disc jockeys became major players in the determination of who had hits in a given area. Play for pay was the unspoken way of getting a hit. The radio station payola scandal of 1958 nearly destroyed Dick Clark, and did destroy Alan Freed. Whether this was genuine or not, the perception was that records should rise or fall on their own merit, and this illusion  continued well into the Seventies.

Regional styles also developed. Chicago had Electric Blues. Memphis had Delta Blues. New Orleans developed a style with Boogie Woogie pianists that also had quirky voices. In many cases, it was hard to tell whether a given artist was Caucasian or African American. I developed a love of rhythm and blues that continued into the Sixties and Seventies. In some ways, local scenes came to be key to records breaking regionally and nationally. The period when Elvis was in the Army from 1959 to 1961 was a time when things appeared to quiet down. Chuck Berry was in jail, Buddy Holly had died, Elvis was in Germany, and people like Frankie Avalon and Fabian appeared to be mainstream America's choices for replacements. The Four Seasons and The Beach Boys emerged in 1962, and Rock and Roll began to stage a comeback. Motown began to have national significance, and the people in the folk music movement began to think about how to electrify.

The Beach Boys Early 1962

The Four Seasons 1963

What really began to make a major change in how things were charted in Billboard and Cashbox was the incursion of the so-called major labels into Rock and Roll. RCA had bought Elvis's contract from Sun, but oddly enough Capitol, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and Decca did not enter into recording Rock and Roll in a big way until 1962. The Four Seasons, The Supremes, The Miracles, The Beach Boys, and many other groups began to dominate the charts. Strangely enough, it was not unusual for Frank Sinatra and Mitch Miller to place alongside teen music artists. Teen music artists began to make appearances regularly on network television programs. The Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan's variety program was a record in ratings to that date. Groups like the Dave Clark 5, The Who, and The Animals from the UK began to appear as well. Shindig and Hullabaloo were watched, as was a new program by Dick Clark called Where the Action Is.

Where The Action Is Logo

Shindig Screen Images 1964

The Righteous Brothers on Shindig 1964

By 1965, teen music had evolved into Art. Popular singers began to cover songs that were written by Lennon and McCartney, Brian Wilson, Mann and Weil, King and Goffin, Smokey Robinson, and Bob Dylan, Dylan's music, along with The Byrds, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, became entwined in the Civil Rights Movement, and protest music became a source of social change and non-conformity in universities and colleges across the country. For a major part of the Sixties, the charts reflected an integrated country long before civil rights were accepted as being the law of the land. Elvis had fallen into a series of formula movies with music that were rapidly erasing him from the charts. For many years, the only place one could see him was in the movies. Rock and Roll began to be called Rock Music, and there was the advent of Rock Stars. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones became the triumvirate of Rock. Motown and Stax began to look inward and made music for African Americans a major focus of their music. The unity that was the Billboard Chart began to be less important, and FM album rock began to be the money format. Radio stations specialized in market niches, and the rise of Rock as an Art Form with its own language and Rock Criticism began. Innocence, if any, was gone, and taking its place was the institutionalized  Rebel. In its self-consciousness, Rock Stars' self-indulgence made Rock itself a self-parody.The era of the Rock Casualty had begun.

Text Copyright 2013 by Peter Reum-All Rights Reserved