The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock & Roll
In the late 1940s, the record industry began to promote these groups under the label “rhythm-and-blues,” a term invented by a white Billboard
John Seabrook • The Song Machine: How to Make a Hit
Little Richard reminded everyone, during his life, of the indignity he was forced to endure in comparison to Elvis. Never granted his rightful place in the history of rock and roll, he resented Elvis and he told the world about it, too. Little Richard’s prettiness was a transgression, and his profane and electric performances were provocative. He h
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
But removing the essentialism of songwriting from the rock equation radically alters the context of its social value. It becomes a solely performative art form, where the meaning of a song matters less than the person singing it. It becomes personality music, and the dominant qualities of Presley’s persona—his sexuality, his masculinity, his larger
... See moreChuck Klosterman • But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
There was virtually no way a man born in 1920 would (or could) share the same musical taste as his son born in 1955, even if they had identical personalities. That inherent dissonance gave rock music a distinctive, non-musical importance for a very long time.
Chuck Klosterman • But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
(Another view of Elvis, from Billboard magazine in 1958, stated, “In one aspect of America’s cultural life, integration has already taken place.”)
Rebecca Solnit • The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness
This was music that made people want to dance and freed them of the daily hassles of America’s segregated practices. It was music that expressed the full range of black life experiences.
Leonard Brown • John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music
historians and critics don’t care about 1950s bachelor pad music. They’ve constructed a historical perspective on the period that emphasizes the rise of rock, and that pushes everything else into the background.
Chuck Klosterman • But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
One could trace the equally strange trajectory that created rock and roll out of African and Scots-Irish musical traditions in the American South, then sent rock and roll around the world, so that a sound that had once been endemic to the South was intrinsic to dissent in Europe’s east. Or the ricocheting trajectory by which Thoreau, abolitionists,
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