American popular music
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Music of the United States |
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American popular music (also referred to as "American Pop") is
American popular music is incredibly diverse, with styles including
American popular musical styles have had a significant influence on
Early popular music
American folk singer
The first popular music published for private consumption in America came from Ireland in 1808 with
The first extremely popular minstrel song was "Jump Jim Crow" by Thomas "Daddy" Rice, which was first performed in 1832 and was a sensation in London when Rice performed it there in 1836. Rice used a dance that he copied from a stable boy with a tune adopted from an Irish jig. Popular white performers of minstrel music included George Washington Dixon and Joel Sweeney whose tunes followed Scottish and Irish melodies.[11] The African elements included the use of the banjo, believed to derive from West African string instruments, and accented and additive rhythms.[2] Beginning in 1843 the Virginia Minstrels became the first group to popularize the minstrel show format, and by 1850 minstrel shows had spread across the entire United States.[11]
Many of the songs of the minstrel shows are still remembered today, especially those by
The minstrel show marked the beginning of a long tradition of African-American music being appropriated for popular audiences, and was the first distinctly American form of music to find international acclaim, in the mid-19th century. As Donald Clarke has noted, minstrel shows contained "essentially black music, while the most successful acts were white, so that songs and dances of black origin were imitated by white performers and then taken up by black performers, who thus to some extent ended up imitating themselves". Clarke attributes the use of blackface to a desire for white Americans to glorify the brutal existence of both free and slave blacks by depicting them as happy and carefree individuals, best suited to plantation life and the performance of simple, joyous songs that easily appealed to white audiences.[5] It was only during the
Blackface minstrel shows remained popular throughout the last part of the 19th century, only gradually dying out near the beginning of the 20th century. During that time, a form of lavish and elaborate theater called the extravaganza arose, beginning with Charles M. Barras' The Black Crook.[6] Extravaganzas were criticized by the newspapers and churches of the day because the shows were considered sexually titillating, with women singing bawdy songs dressed in nearly transparent clothing. David Ewen described this as the beginning of the "long and active careers in sex exploitation" of American musical theater and popular song.[7] Later, extravaganzas took elements of burlesque performances, which were satiric and parodic productions that were very popular at the end of the 19th century.[8]
Like the extravaganza and the burlesque, the variety show was a comic and ribald production, popular from the middle to the end of the 19th century, at which time it had evolved into
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was an area on and surrounding West 28th Street.[14] in New York City, which became the major center for music publishing by the mid-1890s. The songwriters of this era wrote formulaic songs, many of them sentimental ballads.[11] During this era, a sense of national consciousness was developing, as the United States became a formidable world power, especially after the Spanish–American War. The increased availability and efficiency of railroads and the postal service helped disseminate ideas, including popular songs.[citation needed]
Some of the most notable publishers of Tin Pan Alley included
In addition to the popular, mainstream ballads and other clean-cut songs, some Tin Pan Alley publishers focused on rough and risqué. Coon songs were another important part of Tin Pan Alley, derived from the watered-down songs of the minstrel show with the "verve and electricity" brought by the "assimilation of the ragtime rhythm".[13] The first popular coon songs were "The Dandy Coon's Parade" by Joseph P. Skelly in 1880 and "New Coon in Town", introduced in 1883 by J.S. Putnam, and these were followed by a wave of coon shouters like Ernest Hogan and May Irwin.[4][14] Famous black composers of coon songs included Bert Williams, George W. Johnson and Irving Jones [15] . [4] Additionally the first time the word "rag" appears in sheet music is in reference to the instrumental accompaniment in Ernest Hogan's 1896 song "All Coons Look Alike to Me", showing a connection between the two genres.[4]
Broadway
The early 20th century also saw the growth of
Foreign operas were popular among the upper-class throughout the 19th century, while other styles of musical theater included operettas, ballad operas and the opera pouffe. The English operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were particularly popular, while American compositions had trouble finding an audience. George M. Cohan was the first notable American composer of musical theater, and the first to move away from the operetta, and is also notable for using the language of the vernacular in his work. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, black playwrights, composers and musicians were having a profound effect on musical theater, beginning with the works of Will Marion Cook, James Reese Europe and James P. Johnson; the first major hit black musical was Shuffle Along in 1921.[16]
Imported operettas and domestic productions by both whites like Cohan and blacks like Cook, Europe and Johnson all had a formative influence on Broadway. Composers like Gershwin, Porter and Kern made comedic musical theater into a national pastime, with a feel that was distinctly American and not dependent on European models. Most of these individuals were Jewish, with Cole Porter the only major exception; they were the descendants of 19th century immigrants fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, settled most influentially in various neighborhoods in New York City.[17] Many of the early musicals were influenced by black music, showing elements of early jazz, such as In Dahomey; the Jewish composers of these works may have seen connections between the traditional African-American blue notes and their own folk Jewish music.[17]
Broadway songs were recorded around the turn of the century, but did not become widely popular outside their theatrical context until much later. Jerome Kern's "They Didn't Believe Me" was an early song that became popular nationwide. Kern's later innovations included a more believable plot than the rather shapeless stories built around songs of earlier works, beginning with Show Boat in 1927. George Gershwin was perhaps the most influential composer on Broadway, beginning with "Swanee" in 1919 and later works for jazz and orchestras. His most enduring composition may be the opera Porgy and Bess, a story about two blacks, which Gershwin intended as a sort of "folk opera", a creation of a new style of American musical theater based on American idioms.[18]
Ragtime
Ragtime was a style of dance music based around the piano, using syncopated rhythms and chromaticisms;[19] the genre's most well-known performer and composer was undoubtedly Scott Joplin. Donald Clarke considers ragtime the culmination of coon songs, used first in minstrel shows and then vaudeville, and the result of the rhythms of minstrelsy percolating into the mainstream; he also suggests that ragtime's distinctive sound may have come from an attempt to imitate the African-American banjo using the keyboard.[20] According to musical historian, Elijah Wald, ragtime constitutes the first true pop genre in America, as earlier American music such as minstrel show music was distinguished by its association with blackface and comedy, rather than by having any unique style or sound.[18]
Due to the essentially African-American nature of ragtime, it is most commonly considered the first style of American popular music to be truly black music; ragtime brought syncopation and a more authentic black sound to popular music. Popular ragtime songs were notated and sold as sheet music, but the general style was played more informally across the nation; these amateur performers played a more free-flowing form of ragtime that eventually became a major formative influence on jazz.[21]
Early recorded popular music
Blues had been around a long time before it became a part of the first explosion of recorded popular music in American history. This came in the 1920s, when classic female blues singers like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith grew very popular; the first hit of this field was Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues". These urban blues singers changed the idea of popular music from being simple songs that could be easily performed by anyone to works primarily associated with an individual singer. Performers like Sophie Tucker, known for "Some of These Days", became closely associated with their hits, making their individualized interpretations just as important as the song itself.[23]
At the same time, record companies such as
Popular jazz (1920–1935) and swing (1935–1947)
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Paul Whiteman was the most popular bandleader of the 1920s, and claimed for himself the title "The King of Jazz." Despite his hiring many of the other best white jazz musicians of the era, later generations of jazz lovers have often judged Whiteman's music to have little to do with real jazz. Nonetheless, his notion of combining jazz with elaborate orchestrations has been returned to repeatedly by composers and arrangers of later decades.[citation needed]
Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra.
In the 1920s, the music performed by these artists was extremely popular with the public and was typically labeled as jazz. Today, however, this music is disparaged and labeled as "sweet music" by jazz purists. The music that people consider today as "jazz" tended to be played by minorities. In the 1920s and early 1930s, however, the majority of people listened to what we would call today "sweet music" and hardcore jazz was categorized as "hot music" or "race music."[citation needed]
The largest and most influential recording label of the time, The Victor Talking Machine (RCA Victor after 1928) was a restraining influence on the development of "sweet jazz" until the departure of Eddie King in October 1926. King was well known as an authoritarian who would not permit drinking on the job or severe departure from the written music, unless within solos acceptable by popular music standards of the time. This irritated many Victor jazz artists, including famed trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke. Sudhalter, in Lost Chords, cites an example of a 1927 recording by the Goldkette Orchestra in which musicians were allowed considerable freedom, and remarks "What, one wonders, would this performance have been if Eddie King had been in charge, and not the more liberal Nat Shilkret. Since the Victor ledgers show no less than five recording sessions in January and February 1926, when King actually conducted Goldkette's Orchestra, comparison between the approach of Goldkette and King is readily available.[citation needed]
An early genre of American pop music was the
Blues diversification and popularization
In addition to the popular jazz and swing music listened to by mainstream America, there were a number of other genres that were popular among certain groups of people—e.g., minorities or rural audiences. Beginning in the 1920s and accelerating greatly in the 1940s, the blues began rapidly diversifying into a broad spectrum of new styles. These included an uptempo, energetic style called
Country music is primarily a fusion of African-American blues and spirituals with
Rhythm and blues (R&B) is a style that arose in the 1930s and 1940s, a rhythmic and uptempo form of blues with more complex instrumentation. Author Amiri Baraka described early R&B as "huge rhythm units smashing away behind screaming blues singers (who) had to shout to be heard above the clanging and strumming of the various electrified instruments and the churning rhythm sections.[31]. R&B was recorded during this period, but not extensively, and it was not widely promoted by record companies that felt it was not suited for most audiences, especially middle-class whites, because of the suggestive lyrics and driving rhythms.[32] Bandleaders like Louis Jordan innovated the sound of early R&B. Jordan's band featured a small horn section and prominent rhythm instrumentation and used songs with bluesy lyrical themes. By the end of the 1940s, he had produced nineteen major hits, and helped pave the way for contemporaries including Wynonie Harris, John Lee Hooker and Roy Milton.[citation needed]
Christian spirituals and rural blues music were the origin of what is now known as gospel music. Beginning in about the 1920s, African-American churches featured early gospel in the form of worshipers proclaiming their religious devotion (testifying) in an improvised, often musical manner. Modern gospel began with the work of composers, most importantly Thomas A. Dorsey, who "(composed) songs based on familiar spirituals and hymns, fused to blues and jazz rhythms".[33] From these early 20th-century churches, gospel music spread across the country. It remained associated almost entirely with African-American churches, and usually featured a choir along with one or more virtuoso soloists.[citation needed]
Rock and roll is a kind of popular music, developed primarily out of country, blues and R&B. Easily the single most popular style of music worldwide,
1950s and 1960s
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The middle of the 20th century saw a number of very important changes in American popular music. The field of pop music developed tremendously during this period, as the increasingly low price of recorded music stimulated demand and greater profits for the record industry. As a result, music marketing became more and more prominent, resulting in a number of mainstream pop stars whose popularity was previously unheard of. Many of the first such stars were Italian-American crooners like
The era of the modern teen pop star, however, began in the 1960s. American pop musical examples from the 1960s include
Rock and roll first entered mainstream popular music through a style called
R&B remained extremely popular during the 1950s among black audiences, but the style was not considered appropriate for whites, or respectable middle-class blacks, because of its suggestive nature. Many popular R&B songs instead were performed by white musicians like Pat Boone, in a more palatable, mainstream style, and turned into pop hits.[39] By the end of the 1950s, however, there was a wave of popular black blues-rock and country-influenced R&B performers gaining unprecedented fame among white listeners; these included Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.[40] Over time, producers in the R&B field gradually turned to more rock-based acts like Little Richard and Fats Domino.[27]
Doo wop is a kind of vocal harmony music performed by groups who became popular in the 1950s.
The 1950s saw a number of brief fads that went on to have a great impact on future styles of music. Performers such as
Country: Nashville Sound
Beginning in the late 1920s, a distinctive style first called "old-timey" or "hillbilly" music began to be broadcast and recorded in the rural South and Midwest; early artists included the Carter Family, Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers, and Jimmie Rodgers. The performance and dissemination of this music was regional at first, but the population shifts caused by World War II spread it more widely. After the war, there was increased interest in specialty styles, including what had been known as race and hillbilly music; these styles were renamed to rhythm and blues and country and western, respectively.[46] Major labels had some success promoting two kinds of country acts: Southern
The Nashville sound was a popular kind of country music that arose in the 1950s, a fusion of popular
Throughout the 1950s, the most popular kind of country music was the Nashville Sound, which was a slick and pop-oriented style. Many musicians preferred a rougher sound, leading to the development of the
Soul
Soul music is a combination of R&B and gospel that began in the late 1950s in the United States. Soul music is characterized by its use of gospel techniques with a greater emphasis on vocalists, and the use of secular themes. The 1950s recordings of
The
In Memphis,
1960s rock
Among the first of the major new rock genres of the 1960s was surf, pioneered by Californian Dick Dale. Surf was largely instrumental and guitar-based rock with a distorted and twanging sound, and was associated with the Southern California surfing-based youth culture. Dale had worked with Leo Fender, developing the "Showman amplifier and... the reverberation unit that would give surf music its distinctively fuzzy sound".[52]
Inspired by the lyrical focus of surf, if not the musical basis,
The counterculture was a youth movement that included political activism, especially in opposition to the Vietnam War, and the promotion of various
Folk-rock drew on the sporadic mainstream success of groups like the
Psychedelic rock was a hard, driving kind of guitar-based rock, closely associated with the city of San Francisco, California. Though Jefferson Airplane was the only psychedelic San Francisco band to have a major national hit, with 1967's "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", the Grateful Dead, a folk, country and bluegrass-flavored jam band, "embodied all the elements of the San Francisco scene and came... to represent the counterculture to the rest of the country"; the Grateful Dead also became known for introducing the counterculture, and the rest of the country, to the ideas of people like Timothy Leary, especially the use of hallucinogenic drugs including LSD for spiritual and philosophical purposes.[56]
1970s and 1980s
Following the turbulent political, social and musical changes of the 1960s and early 1970s, rock music diversified. What was formerly known as rock and roll, a reasonably discrete style of music, had evolved into a catchall category called simply rock music, an umbrella term which would eventually include diverse styles like heavy metal music, punk rock and, sometimes even hip hop music. During the 1970s, however, most of these styles were not part of mainstream music, and were evolving in the underground music scene.[citation needed]
The early 1970s saw a wave of singer-songwriters who drew on the introspective, deeply emotional and personal lyrics of 1960s folk-rock. They included
The early 1970s saw the rise of a new style of country music that was as rough and hard-edged, and which quickly became the most popular form of country. This was outlaw country, a style that included such mainstream stars as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.[59] Outlaw country was very rock-oriented, and had lyrics that focused on the criminal, especially drug and alcohol-related, antics of its performers, who grew their hair long, wore denim and leather and looked like hippies in contrast to the clean-cut country singers that were pushing the Nashville sound.[60]
By the mid-1970s,
1970s funk and soul
In the early 1970s, soul music was influenced by psychedelic rock and other styles. The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like
By the end of the 1970s, Philly soul, funk, rock and most other genres were dominated by disco-inflected tracks. During this period, funk bands like
1980s pop
By the 1960s, the term rhythm and blues had no longer been in wide use; instead, terms such as soul music were used to describe popular music by black artists. In the 1980s, however, rhythm and blues came back into use, most often in the form of R&B, a usage that has continued to the present. Contemporary R&B arose when sultry funk singers like
By the end of the 1980s, pop-rock largely consisted of the radio-friendly glam metal bands, who used images derived from the British glam movement with macho lyrics and attitudes, accompanied by hard rock music and heavy metal virtuosic soloing. Bands from this era included many British groups like Def Leppard, as well as heavy metal-influenced American bands Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi and Van Halen.[63]
The mid-1980s also saw Gospel music see its popularity peak. A new form of gospel had evolved, called Contemporary Christian music (CCM). CCM had been around since the late 1960s, and consisted of a pop/rock sound with slight religious lyrics. CCM had become the most popular form of gospel by the mid-1980s, especially with artists like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Kathy Troccoli. Amy Grant was the most popular CCM, and gospel, singer of the 1980s, and after experiencing unprecedented success in CCM, crossed over into mainstream pop in the 1980s and 1990s. Michael W. Smith also had considerable success in CCM before crossing over to a successful career in pop music as well. Grant would later produce CCM's first No. 1 pop hit ("Baby Baby"), and CCM's best-selling album (Heart in Motion).[citation needed]
In the 1980s, the country music charts were dominated by pop singers with only tangential influences from country music, a trend that has continued since. The 1980s saw a revival of honky-tonk-style country with the rise of people like
Birth of the underground
During the 1970s, a number of diverse styles emerged in stark contrast to mainstream American popular music. Though these genres were not largely popular in the sense of selling many records to mainstream audiences, they were examples of popular music, as opposed to
Hip hop
Rapping included greetings to friends and enemies, exhortations to dance and colorful, often humorous boasts. By the beginning of the 1980s, there had been popular hip-hop songs like "
Salsa
Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly
Salsa music always has a 4/4
Punk and alternative rock
Punk was a kind of rebellious rock music that began in the 1970s as a reaction against the popular music of the day – especially
]Hardcore punk was the response of American youths to the worldwide punk rock explosion of the late 1970s. Hardcore stripped punk rock and New Wave of its sometimes elitist and artsy tendencies, resulting in short, fast, and intense songs that spoke to disaffected youth. Hardcore exploded in the American metropolises of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston and most American cities had their own local scenes by the end of the 1980s.[70]
Heavy metal
Heavy metal is a form of music characterized by aggressive, driving rhythms and highly amplified distorted guitars, generally with grandiose lyrics and virtuosic instrumentation. Heavy metal is a development of blues, blues rock, rock and prog rock. Its origins lie in the British hard rock bands who between 1967 and 1974 took blues and rock and created a hybrid with a heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound. Most of the pioneers in the field, like Black Sabbath, were English, though many were inspired by American performers like Blue Cheer and Jimi Hendrix.[citation needed]
In the early 1970s, the first major American bands began appearing, like
1990s
Perhaps the most important change in the 1990s in American popular music was the rise of
2000s
By the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s pop music consisted mostly of a combination of pop-hip hop and R&B-tinged pop, including a number of boy bands. Notable female singers also cemented their status in American and worldwide popular music, such as
Hip hop/pop combination had also begun to dominate 2000s and early 2010s. In the early 2010s, prominent artists like
The predominant sound in 1990s country music was pop with only very limited elements of country. This includes many of the best-selling artists of the 1990s, like Clint Black, Shania Twain, Faith Hill and the first of these crossover stars, Garth Brooks.[75]
On the other hand a guitar revival took place and raised a new generation of alternative guitar bands often described as
International and social impact
American popular music has become extremely popular internationally. Rock, pop, hip hop, jazz, country and other styles have fans across the globe. The combination of parts of international and American popular music has been attempted between the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. However, the results of synthesis were for the most part unsuccessful.
Rock has had a formative influence on popular music, which had the effect of transforming "the very concept of what popular music" is.[78] while Charlie Gillett has argued that rock and roll "was the first popular genre to incorporate the relentless pulse and sheer volume of urban life into the music itself".[79]
The social impacts of American popular music have been felt both within the United States and abroad. Beginning as early as the extravaganzas of the late 19th century, American popular music has been criticized for being too sexually titillating and for encouraging violence, drug abuse and generally immoral behavior.[citation needed]
See also
- Blackface
- Rockabilly
- American Idol
- Christian pop culture
- British Invasion
- Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music
- Traditional pop
Notes
- ^ Garofalo is an example of starting with Tin Pan Alley, in a chapter that also contains the coverage of ragtime
- ^ Ewen is an example, covering national ballads and patriotic songs, folk music, songs of the Negro, minstrel show and its songs and extravaganza to vaudeville
- ^ Ewen, p. 69. Ewen claims Dan Emmett was a "popular-song composer", then goes on another, and even more significant, was his contemporary, Stephen Foster—America's first major composer, and one of the world's outstanding writers of songs.
- ^ Clarke, pp. 28–29. Clarke notes the song "Massa's in the Cold Ground" as a clear attempt to sentimentalize slavery, though he notes that many slaves must have loved their masters, on whom they depended for everything. Clarke also notes that songs like "Nelly Was a Lady" describe the black experience as ordinary human feelings; they are people as real as the characters in Shakespeare.
- ^ Ewen, p. 81. When Milly Cavendish stepped lightly in front of the footlights, wagged a provocative finger at the men in her audience, and sang in her high-pitched baby voice, "You Naughty, Naughty Men" – by T. Kennick and G. Bicknell—the American musical theater and the American popular song both started their long and active careers in sex exploitation.
- ^ Ewen, p. 94. Ewen claims New York was the music publishing center of the country by the 1890s, and says the ‘’publishers devised formulas by which songs could be produced with speed and dispatch... Songs were now to be produced from a serviceable matrix, and issued in large quantities: stereotypes for foreign songs, Negro songs, humorous ditties, and, most important of all, sentimental ballads.
- ^ Ewen, p. 101. Ewen is the source for both "Drill Ye Tarriers" and the nature of coon songs
- ^ Ewen, p. 101, and Clarke, p. 62. Ewen attributes "New Coon in Town" to Paul Allen, though Clarke attributes it to J. S. Putnam – both agree on the year, 1883
- ^ Clarke, pg. 95 Clarke dates the golden age as c. 1914–50
- ^ Clarke, pp. 56–57. Coon songs came out of minstrelsy, and were already established in vaudeville, when all this culminated in ragtime... ragtime may have begun with attempts to imitate the banjo on the keyboard.
- ^ Ferris, p. 228. Conceived as dance music, and long considered a kind of popular or vernacular music, jazz has become a sophisticated art form that has interacted in significant ways with the music of the concert hall.
- ^ Clarke, pp. 200–201. From 1935 until after the Second World War a jazz-oriented style was at the centre of popular music for the first time (and the last, so far), as opposed to merely giving it backbone.
- ^ Garofalo, p. 45. The ukulele and steel guitar were introduced to this country by the Hawaiian string bands that toured the country after Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1900.
- ^ Collins, p. 11. In addition, Collins notes that early pseudo-country musicians like Vernon Dalhart who had made their name recording 'country music songs' were not from the hills and hollows or plains and valleys. These recording stars sang both rural music and city music, and most knew more about Broadway than they did about hillbillies. Their rural image was often manufactured for the moment and the dollar. In contrast, Collins later explains, both the Carter Family and Rodgers had rural folk credibility that helped make Peer's recording session such an influential success; it was the Carter Family that was Ralk Peer's tie to the hills and hollows, to lost loves and found faith, but it took Jimmie Rodgers to connect the publisher with some of country music's other beloved symbols—trains and saloons, jail and the blues.
- ^ Broughton, Viv, and James Attlee. "Devil Stole the Beat" in the Rough Guide to World Music, Volume 2, p. 569: Its seminal figure was a piano player and ex-blues musician by the name of Thomas A. Dorsey (1899–1993), who began composing songs based on familiar spirituals and hymns fused to blues and jazz rhythms. (emphasis in original)
- ^ Garofalo, p. 72. The first pop vocalist to engender hysteria among his fans (rather than simple admiration or adoration) was an Italian American who refused to anglicize his name—Frank Sinatra, the "Sultan of Swoon".
- ^ Rolling Stone, pp. 99–100. Ward, Stokes and Tucker call cover versions the ants at the increasingly sumptuous rhythm-and-blues picnic.
- ^ Szatmary, pp. 69–70. Also a guitar enthusiast who had released a few undistinctive singles on his own label in 1960, Dale worked closely with Leo Fender, the manufacturer of the first mass-produced, solid-body electric guitar and the president of Fender Instruments, to improve the Showman amplifier and to develop the reverberation unit that would give surf music its distinctively fuzzy sound.
- ^ Rolling Stone, p. 251. Though the Beach Boys' instrumental sound was often painfully thin, the floating vocals, with the Four Freshman-ish harmonies riding over a droned, propulsive burden ("inside outside, U.S.A." in "Surfin' U.S.A."; "rah, rah, rah, rah, sis boom bah" in "Be True to Your School") were rich, dense and unquestionably special.
- Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and "Chains" by The Cookies.
- ^ Garofalo, p. 218. The Grateful Dead combined the anticommercial tendencies of white middle-class youth with the mind-altering properties of lyseric acid diethylamide (LSD).
- ^ Garofalo, p. 448. Garofalo describes a sampler called Sub Pop 200 as an early anthology of the dark, brooding guitar-based sludge that came to be known as grunge.
- ^ Garofalo, p. 451. From (Glenn Branca's) group they learned to use unconventional tunings to bend otherwise standard pop songs completely out of shape, a trademark of Sonic Youth that, in Seattle, resonated as well as the dark side of their musical vision.
- ^ Szatmary, p. 285. Recording the songs that would become Nevermind, Nirvana added a melodic, Beatlesque element, which had shaped Cobain, Novoselic, and new drummer Dave Grohl.
- ^ Szatmary, p. 284. Grunge, growing in the Seattle offices of the independent Sub Pop Records, combined hardcore and metal to top the charts and help define the desperation of a generation.; in context, this presumably refers to Generation X, though that term is not specifically used.
- ^ Kershaw, p. 167, from the Rough Guide to World Music, Part Two, "Our Life Is Precisely a Song", p. 167. Kershaw specifically notes that North Korea was the only country in which he never heard country music
- ^ Ewen, p. 3. Of all the contributions made by Americans to world culture—automation and the assembly line, advertising, innumerable devices and gadgets, skyscrapers, supersalesmen, baseball, ketchup, mustard and hot dogs and hamburrgers—one, undeniably native has been taken to heart by the entire world. It is American popular music.
- ^ Garofalo, p. 94. Suffice it to say, lest we get lost in history, that the music that came to be called rock 'n' roll began in the 1950s as diverse and seldom heard segments of the population achieved a dominant voice in mainstream culture and transformed the very concept of what popular music was.
- ^ Gillett, p. i, quote from Garofalo, p. 4. Garofalo quotes Gillett as Rock and Roll (sic) was perhaps the first form of popular culture to celebrate without reservation characteristics of city life that had been among the most criticized.
References
- ^ Gilliland, John (1969). "Play A Simple Melody: American pop music in the early fifties" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries.
- OCLC 1023910337.
- ^ "Blackface Minstrelsy | American Experience | PBS". www.pbs.org. Archived from the original on December 12, 2023. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
- ^ OCLC 1058131066.
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- ^ a b Cockrell 1998, p. 179.
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- ^ a b c Cockrell 1998, p. 161.
- ^ Cockrell 1998, p. 180.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-61703-264-6.
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- ^ "The History of Tin Pan Alley". Sound American. Archived from the original on September 26, 2023. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
- ^ "American Music | Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project". Tinpanalley.nyc. Archived from the original on January 30, 2023. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
- ^ Jasen, David A. Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters 1880-1930. Routledge. p. 1895. Retrieved January 21, 2024.
- ^ "The Great American Songbook | Songs, Composers, & Foundation | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Archived from the original on July 26, 2023. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
- ^ "An Overview of Jewish Music". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
- ^ Wald 2011, p. 25.
- ^ "Robert Johnson Blues Foundation". Robert Johnson Blues Foundation. May 8, 2023. Archived from the original on September 27, 2023. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
- ^ a b Whitcomb, Ian. "The Coming of the Crooners". Sam Houston University. Archived from the original on June 7, 2010. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
- ^ "Fred Waring History". Penn State University Libraries. September 28, 2016. Archived from the original on October 8, 2023. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
- ISBN 0-205-13703-2.
- OCLC 31611854. Tape 3, side B.
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- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 22.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 44.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 6.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 11, track 5.
- ^ Gillett, p. 9; cited in Garofalo 1997, p. 74
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 9.
- ^ "Hank Williams". PBS' American Masters. Archived from the original on May 26, 2005. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 10.
- ^ "Nashville sound/Countrypolitan". Allmusic. Archived from the original on March 1, 2011. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, shows 15–17.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, shows 25–26.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 51.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 37.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, shows 41–43.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, shows 27–30.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, show 49.
- ^ Gilliland 1969, shows 35, 39.
- ProQuest 1194587.
- ^ Plasketes, George (October 1995). Cross Cultural Sessions: World Music Missionaries in American Popular Music. Popular Culture Association in the South. pp. 49–50.
- ISBN 0-688-18474-X., cited in Garofalo, pg. 76
- ISBN 0-922915-71-7.
- ISBN 0-312-11573-3.
- ISBN 1-57297-072-3.
- ISBN 0-13-648360-7.
- ISBN 0-697-12516-5.
- ISBN 0-205-13703-2.
- ISBN 0-285-62619-1.; cited in Garofalo
- ^ Gilliland, John (1969). "Play A Simple Melody: American pop music in the early fifties" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries.
- ISBN 1-55652-411-0.
- ISBN 0-03-059207-0., cited in Garofalo, pg. 95
- ISBN 0-292-71096-8.; cited in Garofalo
- ^ Marcus, Greil (June 24, 1993). "Is This the Woman Who Invented Rock and Roll?: The Deborah Chessler Story". Rolling Stone. p. 41.; cited in Garofalo
- ISBN 0-306-81018-2.
- ^ Palmer, Robert (April 19, 1990). "The Fifties". Rolling Stone. p. 48.; cited in Garofalo, pg. 95
- ISBN 0-394-73238-3. (chapter on "Soul", by Guralnick, Peter, pgs. 194–197)
- ISBN 0-671-54438-1.
- ISBN 1-85828-636-0.
- ^ "Nashville Sound". Roughstock's History of Country Music. Archived from the original on April 3, 2005. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
- ISBN 0-306-81007-7.
- ISBN 0-19-504043-0., cited in Garofalo, pg. 26
- ISBN 0-19-514838-X.
- ISBN 0-13-188790-4.
- ISBN 0-452-28065-6.
Further reading
- Bayles, Martha (1994). Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music. Free Press. ISBN 0-02-901962-1.
- Booth, Mark W. (1983). American Popular Music: A Reference Guide. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-21305-4.
- Ennis, Phillip H. (1992). The Seventh Stream: The Emergence of Rocknroll in American Popular Music. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6257-2.
- Hamm, Charles (1979). Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-01257-3.
- Joseph, Mark (2003). Faith, God, and Rock + Roll: From Bono to Jars of Clay: How People of Faith Are Transforming American Popular Music. Baker Books. ISBN 0-8010-6500-3.
- Joyner, David Lee (2002). American Popular Music. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-241424-3.
- Kenney, William Howland (2003). Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890–1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517177-2.
- Mahar, William J. (1998). Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06696-0.
- Pratt, Ray (1994). Rhythm and Resistance: The Political Uses of American Popular Music. Smithsonian Books. ISBN 1-56098-351-5.
- Rubin, Rachel; Jeffrey Melnick, eds. (2001). American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-268-2.
- Sanjek, Russell (1988). American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years: Volume III, from 1900 to 1984. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504311-1.
- Scheurer, Timothy E., ed. (1990). American Popular Music: Readings from the Popular Press: The Nineteenth Century and Tin Pan Alley. Bowling Green State University Popular Press. ISBN 0-87972-465-X.
- Scheurer, Timothy E., ed. (1990). American Popular Music Vol 2: The Age of Rock. Bowling Green University Popular Press. ISBN 0-87972-468-4.
- Starr, Larry; Christopher Alan Waterman (2002). American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510854-X.
- Vautier, Dominic (2000). Sex, Music & Bloomers: A Social History of American Popular Music. Abelard Press. ISBN 0-9677046-3-4.
- Wilder, Alec (1990). American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-501445-6.
External links
- Center for Popular Music at the Middle Tennessee State University
- Database of popular songs in American history
- Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh
- Popular Songs from the Civil War to the Cold War