[On December
10, 1949, Antoine “Fats” Domino recorded “The Fat Man,” his first
recording at New Orleans’ legendary J&M
Recording Studios and one of the first rock ‘n roll recordings ever made.
So this week I’ll AmericanStudy 50s musical icons—share your own thoughts on
them and any other musical icons and moments for a hard-rocking weekend post!]
The origins of rock and roll in
America are significantly more cross-cultural, and most crucially more
multi-directional in their influences, than our dominant narratives of it
recognize.
To be sure, it’s virtually a
truism that early white rock pioneers like Elvis Presley learned—often, the
narrative goes, stole—many of their most popular songs and sounds from black
artists; rapper Eminem’s self-definition (from the song “Without Me”) as “the
worst thing since Elvis Presley / To do black music so selfishly / And use it
to get myself wealthy” exemplifies the widespread acceptance of this narrative.
And there’s no doubt that one of the moments that most explicitly established
Elvis as a pop cultural force, his 1956 performance of “Hound
Dog” on the Milton Berle Show,
fits this narrative very fully: the song had originally been recorded by
blues artist Big Mama Thornton in 1952, yet it was Elvis’s cover,
accompanied by his controversial pelvic gyrations on the show, that catapulted
both the song and Presley into the big time.
That’s already a sort of
cross-cultural influence, of course, although a mostly one-sided and thus less
than ideally communal one. But the specific details of “Hound Dog” reveal a
much more complicated and (to my mind) inspiring cross-cultural origin: the
song was written by Jerry
Leiber and Mike Stoller, a Jewish-American songwriting team that also
produced some of the decade’s biggest hits for African American artists,
including The Coasters’ 1958 #1 record “Yakety Yak,” Wilbert
Harrison’s 1959 #1 “Kansas
City,” and Ben E. King’s 1960 #1 “Stand By Me” (which
King co-wrote). By any measure, Leiber
and Stoller’s songs, as sung by these African American artists, helped
establish rock and roll as a central cultural presence—and in their mentoring
of a young (also Jewish-American) Phil
Spector, they likewise directly contributed to rock’s expanding success
over the subsequent decades.
There were of course many other
late 1950s artists and moments that likewise contributed to the explosion of
rock and roll, and I would similarly stress the multi- and often cross-cultural
aspects of the period: from African American pioneers such as Little Richard
(who came out of the Southern gospel tradition), Chuck Berry (who grew up
playing the Missouri blues), and Bo Diddley (a Chicago bluesman) to the three
artists killed in the tragic 1959 plane crash (Mexican American teen sensation
Ritchie Valens and Texans Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper), from the Detroit
“singing cowboy” Bill Haley (most famously of The Comets) to the Louisiana
rockabilly of Jerry Lee Lewis, these early rockers came out of every region and
tradition and profoundly influenced both each other’s work and the history of
American music and culture.
Rock and roll
has often been called a genuinely American form of music, and I would most certainly
agree: its cross-cultural origins exemplify the best of our national community
and conversations. Next 50s icon tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other musical icons or moments you’d highlight?
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