1. MUSI 2007 W12 1958-1964

2. Some rock-centric histories of popular music call the period 1958-1964 “the in-between years.” Why might they do that? In-between what and what? If you don’t take rock as your central focus, however, there were a lot of important developments and innovations during this period. One of the most important was the appearance of soul music, which gets its own lecture later in the course. This lecture starts out by looking at various factors that feed into the loss of momentum seen in the first wave of R+R. Then we move on to look at what was happening in other styles during the same period.

3. R+R downturn factor #1: In or around 1958, many important figures of early R+R dropped out of the public eye: Little Richard went gospel in 1957, Elvis was drafted into the army in 1958, Jerry Lee Lewis suffered from his 13-year-old-cousin- marrying scandal in 1958, Alan Freed began to be bogged down in legal difficulties in 1958, Chuck Berry went to jail in 1959, and also in 1959 The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly all died in the same plane crash. R+R downturn factor #2: In the mid-1950s, independent radio stations began to be squeezed out by the new Top-40 stations. These had a very different programming strategy, and also tended to be owned by national chains (discuss the history of nationwide radio from the mid-40s to the mid-50s).

4. R+R downturn factor #3: The payola hearings. In the mid- 1950s, independent record companies began to eat into the market dominance of the majors. In 1957, for example, 40 out of 70 Top-10 singles were from indie labels. ASCAP and the major labels began to exert any kind of pressure they could against the indies. One aspect of this was lobbying the U.S. federal government to investigate the suspected use of payola by indie labels to get radio play. Although in reality payola was likely as common among major label promoters as among indies, the investigation leaned heavily on DJs who played R+R and R+B records. Hearings were held in 1960 and several DJs suffered, most notably Alan Freed, whose career was effectively ended by the incident.

5. R+R downturn factor #4: Teen idols. By the late 1950s, TPA-style producers were promoting rock-style pop stars who came to be called teen idols. This helped to dilute the cultural force of R+R, since the line between underground and mainstream artists became more blurred. Teen idols were invariably young and cute. Often they were inexperienced performers with comparatively weak voices and mild personas when compared to the first-generation rock and rollers. They were usually accompanied by studio musicians rather than by bands of their own. Overhead: Frankie Avalon Interestingly, they were very often Italian, or otherwise Mediterranean looking. From a marketing perspective, why might this be? Audio: Frankie Avalon “Venus” (1959).

6. The final factor to consider, and closely related to the teen idols, was the cover phenomenon of circa-1956. Many of the teen idol records were versions of recently- successful R+B records by black artists. Often, almost as soon as the original record began to rise in the charts, a white teen idol version would appear and the original would decline in sales. The best-known example was Pat Boone, who on several occasions pre-empted records by Little Richard. Listen to this example and ask: what changes have been made to the original in the teen idol version? What effect might a proliferation of this kind of material have on the culture of early rock and roll? Audio: Little Richard “Tutti Frutti” (1956). Audio: Pat Boone “Tutti Frutti” (1956). Now we can leave the rock-centric viewpoint and look at some other things that were happening during this time...

7. The Brill Building is physically close to TPA, and was a centre for music publishers since the 1930s. In the late 1950s the songwriters working there became associated with a distinct sound that was notably pop, but unlike most teen idol music, had deep and subtle influences from R+B, R+R, and Latin music. This trend was strongest around 1959-1964. Like the phrase Tin Pan Alley, “Brill Building” describes a style and an attitude which reached beyond those who literally worked in that building. For the most part, Brill Building material managed to appeal to both a mainstream pop audience and to aficionados of R+R and R+B. As the soul style developed, Brill Building artists also managed to participate in that style and to be accepted by soul fans. Some key songwriters in this style included: Gerry Goffin & Carol King; Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil; Neil Sedaka & Howard Greenfield; Burt Bacharach & Hal David, and Neil Diamond.

8. We’re going to hear Brill Building style music as examples in two topics: Phil Spector and Girl Groups. Before the early 1960s, record producers were almost always employees of record labels, and were never celebrities in their own right. Nowadays, however, we are used to the idea that producers usually freelance (i.e., work on contract to many different labels), and are often considered celebrity artists with their own distinctive styles. A key to this change was for the industry and market to recognize that it isn’t a song which becomes a hit: it’s a particular recording. The song is one factor, but equally important are performance and production. Producers don’t just mechanically record a performance, but help to construct it and also shape the sound through their choices about how to record. Similarly, producers can make decisions about which songs to record in the first place, and in some cases even co-write the songs.

9. The first person to become famous as this kind of producer was Phil Spector. So he is important both because he established the idea that the producer can be a freelance celebrity artist, but also because he helped innovate a few specific musical styles. Spector was a child prodigy from New York, who had success very young in the Brill Building sector of pop writing and recording. In 1961 he became a freelance producer and co- founded a record label. He was a millionaire in his early 20s, and Tom Wolfe called him “the first tycoon of teen.” Spector very much subscribed to the Brill Building philosophy of making high-quality pop. He said at one point that he wanted to create “three-minute symphonies for the kids.”

10. While most producers and record labels would tend to work on many projects at once, Spector usually worked on just one song until it was finished. He also set a new standard for centralized control: in many cases he would scout the talent, write or co-write the material, supervise every aspect of recording, and release the record on his own label. His production style was instantly recognizable, and came to be called the wall of sound. The wall of sound was created by: cramming many musicians and a wide variety of instruments into a small studio; extensively overdubbing; heavy use of compression and reverb; mixing to mono. The name is a little misleading because another crucial feature of Spector’s records was careful pacing – there would be periods of near silence, and long dramatic changes in texture and dynamics, which made the ‘wall of sound’ passages even more striking when they did arrive.

11. Another feature of Spector’s records is that they were sometimes quite long. We’ll see a consistent trend throughout the 1960s for artists to pull away from the three-minute pop song format, and Spector was one of the first to do this. Audio: The Righteous Brothers (produced by Phil Spector) “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” 1964. This record is an example of all the points made above about the wall of sound. Spector took three months to finish the recording, which was unheard of at the time (most artists would do several songs in a single session). The final version ran 3:46, which was too long for Top-40 radio. Rather than change it, Spector just printed 3:05 on the label. This record is also an example of the style that came to be called blue eyed soul.

12. Another style we need to look at, although its first wave of popularity was in the late 1940s and early 1950s, is doo wop. Doo wop began as a-cappella style (i.e., just voices without any instruments) in inner-city neighbourhoods in the northern U.S. It was especially strongly associated with the Boroughs of NYC, and with Philadelphia. The stereotypical doo-wop group was made up of teenage boys, usually black but also sometimes made up by people from other groups in the same neighbourhoods. Similar groups of girls also existed, but didn’t become as widely publicized until the late 1950s (to be discussed shortly). These groups were originally amateur and for self- entertainment, doing vocal arrangements of pop and R+B songs. In the late 1940s, some doo-wop groups were signed to independent record labels, and the style became very successful (often in a version backed-up by instruments).

13. Key features of the doo-wop style include... Use of vocables. Use of voices to imitate instruments. Stratification of the voices into distinct roles: lead voice (usually very high), medium-pitch voices often doing either riffs or ‘blow harmony,’ and a deep bass voice which sometimes sang bass lines and sometimes did solos. One thing we will be looking at in general is the ongoing association of pop music with the group vocal sound. Not only is this a typical thing (for pop genres to highlight group vocals), but different subgenres of pop can sometimes be distinguished by their particular variations on the group vocal sound (doo-wop is the first example we’ll be looking at, but there will be others). Audio: The Chords “Sh-Boom” (1954).

14. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were also many hit records by girl groups. In most respects the girl groups were simply female doo-wop groups. One key difference, though, is that the girl groups were very closely associated with a wall of sound production style, and often as well with Brill Building songs. Overhead: The Shangri-Las Some of the girl groups also challenged norms of femininity and ‘good behaviour.’ The Shangri-Las, for example, were marketed with a tough ‘bad girl’ image. Also, while girl group lyrics were usually about needing boyfriends, the visual image and sound of the girl groups sent a strong message of self- reliance and a self-enclosed girl culture which could be seen as empowering to some degree. Audio: The Shirelles “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” (1961).

15. The most popular new styles of the late 1940s and the 1950s tended to be centered on singers. However, instrumental music has also been an ongoing presence in popular culture. Throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and into the 1960s, an important subgenre of R+B was made up by instrumental dance records. And by the early 1960s, interesting things were happening with the sound of these records which we can see as a precursor of later developments in rock music. Audio: Booker T and the MGs “Green Onions” (1962). A track like this raises some interesting questions: Why did dance records tend to be instrumental? What is happening with the instruments here that we might see as a precursor of later rock developments? And why? Is there anything else about a track like this that marks it off as “dance music?”

16. The last thing we need to consider is the appearance of surf music. Between the end of W.W.II and the early 1960s, a whole subculture sprang up in southern California around surfing and hot rods. This spawned the genre of surf music, which had both instrumental and vocal substyles. Surf music began very much as an expression of experiences specific to members of that subculture. Audio: The Beach Boys “Surfin’ Safari” (1962). Question: What is it about these lyrics that makes them subculture-specific? Another question: how could we interpret the mass-market success of this music as contradicting a key assumption of TPA aesthetics? Also note: the Beach Boys were significant as well because they created another highly distinctive style of pop group vocal sound.

17. Surf music was also important because it extended many of the features of instrumental dance music we’ve already discussed. Audio: Dick Dale “Miserlou” (1962). Even though there are no words here, does this music somehow convey elements of the surfing experiences and of Californian geography? Several aspects of Dick Dale’s sound were significant not only because they reflected surfing culture, but because they helped influence later Californian experimental rock. Namely...

18. Volume: It seems like a simple thing, but it’s noteworthy that Dick Dale’s sound required the band to be loud. It became increasingly common in the mid-60s for rock bands to rely on volume to get their basic sound. Reverberation: Dale put his sound through a specialized electronic circuit designed to produce extreme reverb sounds. This is one of the earliest examples of a rock guitarist using outboard effects processors to get their sound. Collaboration with Leo Fender: To achieve both the points above, Dale worked closely with Leo Fender, who was an important California-based amplifier and guitar manufacturer. The process of designing special equipment to suit sonic experimentation became accelerated in general during the 1960s.

19. Besides these experiments with equipment, Dale used a wide variety of playing techniques to create new sounds on the electric guitar (especially tremolo picking). Finally, Dale often experimented with Middle-Eastern scales and melodies (in part because his father was Lebanese). This was probably one influence on the way later psychedelic musicians experimented with Middle-Eastern and Asian musical resources.