Music
History Through…
…Music
Following World War II, technological innovations, such as the introduction of the light, durable, and inexpensive 45-rpm record by RCA Victor in 1948, made it easy for teens to create their own music collections. The invention of the transistor in 1947 led to the development of portable transistor radios and an explosion in the number of car radios, from six million in 1946 to 40 million in 1959.
Television helped transform teen culture into a national culture. In 1957, Dick Clark persuaded ABC to include American Bandstand in its network lineup. Running Monday to Friday from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, the show not only spotlighted new forms of dancing, it also showcased many African American recording artists and remained one of television’s only integrated programs until the mid-1960s. Television’s most popular dance show, it brought rock ‘n’ roll and the latest fashions in dance and dress to millions of teenagers.
But rock ‘n’ roll generated extraordinary anger. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called it “a corrupting impulse,” and in Hartford, Connecticut, Dr. Francis J. Braceland described rock ‘n’ roll as “a communicable disease, with music appealing to adolescent insecurity and driving teenagers to do outlandish things.” Between 1955 and 1958 there were numerous crusades to ban rock ‘n’ roll from the airwaves. Meanwhile, executives with the major record companies sought to smooth the jagged edges of rock ‘n’ roll. Sexually explicit songs were “covered”—rewritten and rerecorded by white performers. The major record companies publicized a series of “kleen” teen idols, beginning with Tommy Sands in 1957.
Most of the criticism of rock ‘n’ roll focused on Elvis Presley, who more than any other artist most fully fused country music with rhythm and blues. In his first record, he gave the rhythm-and-blues song “That’s All Right Mama” a country feel and the country classic “Blue Moon over Kentucky” a rhythm-and-blues swing. It was a unique exhibition of genius. In addition, Presley exuded sexuality. When he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, network executives instructed cameramen to avoid shots of Elvis’s suggestive physical movements. Finally, Presley upset segregationists by performing “race music.” Head of Sun Records, Sam Phillips, had once claimed, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a million dollars.” Presley was that white man.
Within five years, the first phase in the history of rock ‘n’ roll was over. Elvis Presley was inducted into the army. Buddy Holly and Richie Valens died in a plane crash; and Chuck Berry was jailed on charges of transporting a minor across interstate lines for immoral purposes. Meanwhile, disc jockey Alan Freed was fired from WABC in the midst of a payola scandal; Little Richard’s religious conversion led him to stop performing; and Jerry Lee Lewis was in disgrace following his marriage to a thirteen-year-old cousin. Despite these shocks, youth music was not completely absorbed into mainstream culture. By the end of the decade, a new phase in the history of rock ‘n’ roll had begun, with the rise of the Girl Groups, the Motown sound, and surfer music.
More than half a century after its advent, rock ‘n’ roll remains the distinctive and dominant form of youthful musical expression. Its persistence is not an accident. Rock ‘n’ roll emerged as a solution to the psychological and emotional frustrations of the teenager. Prolonged schooling, delayed marriage, and postponed entry into adult careers made rock culture increasingly appealing as a visceral form of cultural rebellion. It offered an expressive outlet for all the pent-up energy, sexuality, and individualism that teens experienced. Indeed, now that the category of youth extends far beyond the teenage years, encompassing both children as young as eight and young adults into their late twenties and early thirties, the appeal of rock and roll has broadened, even as its forms fragmented.
Lyric A
…Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today. . .
—“What’s Going On,” Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye, Renaldo Benson, 1971
Lyric B
…Yeah, my blood’s so mad
Feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth
It knows no regulation
Hand full of senators don’t pass
legislation
And marches alone can’t bring
integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world
Is just too frustratin’. . .
—“Eve of Destruction,” P.F. Sloan, 1965
Hidden History
How Did Rock ‘n’ Roll Become White?
The first members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke, James Brown, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Ray Charles. Six were black, five were whites.
At its birth, rock ‘n’ roll was multiracial.
This would continue. During their early years, the Beatles covered the Marvelettes’ “Please, Mr. Postman” and the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout.” (Beatles’ version of “Please Mr. Postman” and “Twist and Shout.”)
Indeed, in 1963, Billboard magazine stopped publishing separate pop and R&B charts since there was so little difference in the songs on the charts.
Yet in 1970, when Jimi Hendrix died, an obituary described him as “a black man in the alien world of rock.”
Music became more segregated by race, with funk, disco, reggae, and hip hop largely associated with African American musicians and rock with white musicians. MTV had been on the air for nearly two years before it played the first music video by a black performer: Michael Jackson’s video “Billie Jean,” in 1983.
Early rock ‘n’ roll was remarkably inclusive. It included doo wop, surfer music, rockabilly, soul, and Motown. Rock, however, refers to something much more specific: As blues-inflected guitar music with a strong beat played by white musicians.
Film
As the 1960s began, few would have guessed that the decade would be one of the most socially conscious and stylistically innovative in Hollywood’s history. Among the most popular films at the decade’s start were Doris Day romantic comedies like That Touch of Mink (1962) and epic blockbusters like The Longest Day (1962), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Cleopatra (1963). Yet, as the decade progressed, Hollywood radically shifted focus and began to produce an increasing number of anti-establishment films, laced with social commentary, directed at the growing youth market.
By the early 1960s, an estimated eighty percent of the film-going population was between the ages of 16 and 25. At first, the major studios largely ignored this audience, leaving it the hands of smaller studios like American International Pictures, which produced a string of cheaply made horror movies, beach blanket movies—like Bikini Beach (1964) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)—and motorcycle gang pictures—like The Wild Angels (1966).
Two films released in 1967—Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate—awoke Hollywood to the size and influence of the youth audience. Bonnie and Clyde, the story of two depression era bank robbers, was advertised with the slogan: “They’re young, they’re in love, they kill people.” Inspired by such French New Wave pictures as Breathless (1960), the film aroused intense controversy for romanticizing gangsters and transforming them into social rebels. A celebration of youthful rebellion also appeared in The Graduate, which was the third-highest grossing film up until this time. In this film, a young college graduate rejects a hypocritical society and the traditional values of his parents—and the promise of a career in “plastics”—and finds salvation in love.
A number of most influential films of the late ’60s and early ’70s sought to revise older film genres—like the war film, the crime film, and the western—and rewrite Hollywood’s earlier versions of American history from a more critical perspective.
Three major war films—Little Big Man, Patton, and M*A*S*H— reexamined the nineteenth-century Indian wars, World War II, and the Korean War in light of America’s experience in Vietnam. The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) offered radical reappraisals of the mythology of the American frontier. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) revised and enhanced the gangster genre by transforming it into a critical commentary on an immigrant family’s pursuit of the American dream.
During the 1960s, popular movies began to take a more critical look at U.S. history and society, celebrating outlaws (like Bonnie and Clyde, two Texas bank robbers) and non-conformists (like the character played by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate).
Click the links to access the trailers for The Graduate, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Cleopatra. That Touch of Mink, Wild Angels, and and the Wild Bunch are displayed above in that order.