Assignment 1-5 (Culture and Society: Interactions). Music 1945 - 1960

Carl Perkins wrote and recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1955 and the song was a huge success. It was a chart-topper for Perkins on the country and R&B charts, but it enjoyed even more success after Elvis Presley covered the song following Perkins’ nearly fatal car accident (Blue Suede Shoes 2006)




v 1954: Bill Harley and the comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock.” A teen anthem that is generally credited with making Rock n’ Roll, a worldwide phenomenon.
v 1952: Alan Fred visited a Cleveland record store and learned that R&B records were being snapped up by white teenagers. That was when he changed the name of his popular music show on a radio station program from “ Record Rendezvous” to “Moon Dog’s Rock ‘n’ Roll House Party,” and then began playing R&B tunes (The Straight Dope, 2004).

Jazz
· 1945: Bop hits with full force when the musicians union strike ended

at the end of 1944, and a lot of Bop gets recorded in 1945.
· 1946: Lenny Tristano arrives in New York City and takes Jazz into

more coolness and complexity
· 1948: Armstrong forms the first version of the Jazz All Stars with

Jack Teagarden on trombone, Barney Bigard on clarinet, Dick Carey

on piano, Sid Catlett on drums and Arvell Shaw on bass. Their music

fits in with New Orleans revival.
1949: Jerry Wexler, future partner of Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, persuaded his

current employer, Billboard, to change the term "Race Records" to "Rhythm and Blues."

The term was replaced occasionally by terms such as "Soul Music", but was currently in

vogue again
· 1950s: John Litweiler wrote the above passage in the opening to his book The Freedom

Principle, capturing the true essence of jazz - freedom. Jazz has come to be called the only true

American art form
· 1950s: It was ironically not always the free will of the artists to define the state of jazz, but

often the will of the recording industry corporations and media critics. For several times

throughout those eras, history of jazz music labels was forced upon the artists by which had a

real effect on the artists. Either the artist gets labelled in accordance with the music that he

plays, or the artist is forced to play a particularly popular imposed style in order to survive.

Free will was part of jazz, but its surface was marred by a heavy deterministic streak dictated

by stylistic considerations.
· 1950s: Musicians living at the end of the 1950's had seen three of the aforementioned stylistic

trends in jazz over the last decade and a half. Each of these trends came about as a series of

reactions based both on what the musicians were doing and what the record companies thought

the public wanted to hear. Out of the swing era came ``bebop'', out of bebop came ``cool jazz''

and from both emerged ``hard bop'' in the middle of the fifties. The three styles will be

considered in efforts to set up the revolution that was to begin in 1959.
· 1950s: Jazz bands that were once played began to close all across the country, when Americans

began to turn television as their entertainment.

Despite the shift in Jazz’s popularity, talented musicians continued to produce complex and

powerful music and took jazz in new directions.

*1954: Bill Harley and the comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock.” A teen anthem that is

generally credited with making Rock n’ Roll, a worldwide phenomenon.
* 1952: Alan Fred visited a Cleveland record store and learned that R&B records were being

snapped up by white teenagers. That was when he changed the name of his popular music

show on a radio station program from “ Record Rendezvous” to “Moon Dog’s Rock ‘n’ Roll

House Party,” and then began playing R&B tunes (The Straight Dope, 2004).

Reference

The Straight Dope (2004). Retrieved, January 28, 2008, from
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/92_0276.html.
Jazz (2007). History of Jazz time line. Retrieved, January 27, 2008 from
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/jazz1945.htm
Blue Suede Shoes (2006). A Rockability Session. Retrieved, January 27, 2008, from
http://www.google.com/musicl?lid=1vCrB3FK0WH&aid=_BMj0DFd17C