{"id":2168,"date":"2021-04-30T20:22:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T20:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2168"},"modified":"2021-10-07T01:01:03","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T01:01:03","slug":"ftv-rock-n-roll-bep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2168","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Rock ‘n’ Roll BEP"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Vaults:\u00a0 Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll BEP<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My mother loved music so our house was always awash with records by The Kingston Trio, Burl Ives, Percy Faith, and a mixture of light classical favorites she played on our hi-fi record player\/radio.\u00a0 There is a \u2018that is a story for another day\u2019 asterisk in the mention of that old piece of furniture.\u00a0 Suffice to say there is a long and colorful history in that topic.\u00a0 I got my start borrowing and collecting records in earnest when I got interested in playing the drums in the mid-1960s.\u00a0 My personal Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll history, if you will, began with The Beatles, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Dave Clark Five, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, and any number of one hit wonders who put out a record (like The Music Explosion, The Electric Prunes, and The Strawberry Alarm Clock among many others).\u00a0 By the time Elvis Presley made his \u2018comeback\u2019 with his fabled 1968 TV special, he was, in my mind, already a relic of the distant past.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I never could cotton to people who pegged Elvis for, more or less, inventing Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll.\u00a0 In one episode of the iconic TV sitcom about a fictional radio station, <\/span>WKRP in Cincinnati <\/span><\/i>(still one of my favorite shows of all time), Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hessman) is hired to host a TV dance show.\u00a0 To separate his radio and TV lives, he invents a new, sequin-attired, disco-guy persona (Rip Tide).\u00a0 When \u2018Rip\u2019 begins enjoying the perks a little too much, Johnny talks smack about \u2018Rip\u2019 on his regular radio gig.\u00a0 The line between the two personalities begins to blur and Johnny beats himself up for making what he considers to be the worst mistake an old pro DJ like himself could make.\u00a0 His sin?\u00a0 Dr. Johnny makes a \u2018Rip\u2019 mistake by wrongly attributing <\/span>Blue Suede Shoes<\/span><\/i> to Elvis.\u00a0 He quickly realizes his error and corrects his faux pas (for you <\/span>Jeopardy <\/span><\/i>fans, the correct question would have been, \u201c<\/span>Who is Carl Perkins, Alex.\u201d<\/span><\/i>) but fears he has now announced to the world that Dr. Johnny Fever is in a permanent nosedive toward irrelevance.\u00a0 I thought of this episode immediately when I hit the chapter about Elvis in James Miller\u2019s book <\/span>Flowers in the Dustbin – The Rise of Rock and Roll 1947-1977 <\/span><\/i>(Simon and Schuster – 1999).\u00a0 When this episode of <\/span>WKRP <\/span><\/i>aired\u00a0 on 2-7-1981 (officially titled <\/span>Dr. Fever and Mr. Tide: Part 2<\/span><\/i>), I realized I had been playing rock music for fifteen years, but really did not understand where it came from.\u00a0 There had to be something BEP (Before Elvis Presly) and it only took me forty years beyond this episode of <\/span>WKRP<\/span><\/i> to find some answers in Miller\u2019s book.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0James Miller\u2019s book covers a thirty year span, but for our purposes, we will start with Elvis returning from his hitch in the Army in March of 1960 and work backwards.\u00a0 To understand how Elvis was crowned The King, we have to examine what was going on in the world of music circa 1960.\u00a0 Oddly enough, we need to anchor our backwards trip through time with another pop music giant of 1960;\u00a0 Old Blue Eyes himself.\u00a0 Yep, Frank Sinatra.\u00a0 Frank was no lover of Elvis or Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll. \u00a0 A few years earlier, Sinatra described Presley in less than glowing terms:\u00a0 \u201cHis kind of music is deplorable, a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac!\u201d\u00a0 Some would say Frank had the same effect on the Bobby Socksers two decades earlier, but let us not make that jump in time here.\u00a0 In 1957, Sinatra took on the whole R\u2019n\u2019R scene:\u00a0 \u201cIt fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in your people.\u00a0 It is sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons.\u201d\u00a0 Personal opinions aside, the 1960 Sinatra found himself at the tail end of a disastrous period.\u00a0 His three year, $3 million contract with ABC TV had produced a failed weekly show and a series of specials that flopped as badly as <\/span>The Frank Sinatra Show<\/span><\/i> had.\u00a0 When Elvis mustered out of the Army in 1960, Frank\u2019s longtime associate Sammy Cahn suggested they get Elvis as a guest star on the next special as a way to boost Frank\u2019s ratings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Elvis\u2019s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, held up Sinatra\u2019s production team demanding an unheard of $125,000 fee and 400 free tickets for the taping (done at a nightclub in Miami where Frank was performing).\u00a0 Getting his Rat Pack buddies involved (Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis, Jr) ballooned the payroll and even a show ending duet with Elvis did not help Frank as much as it did the future King.\u00a0 Cahn commented, \u201cYou should make in a year what Frank is losing on this show,\u201d and as Miller described it from Presley\u2019s perspective, \u201cIt was an exercise in musical humiliation,\u201d\u00a0 No matter, Elvis was back in the States and back to his Army interrupted career with a little jump start from Sinatra.\u00a0 The music he recorded at his next session even sounded more like Sinatra\u2019s fare.\u00a0 Miller\u2019s summation of Elvis in 1960 matches up pretty well with what I remember about him from my earliest musical memories:\u00a0 \u201cIf Elvis was the King, then this new music must be a part of his Kingdom.\u00a0 But if <\/span>Are You Lonesome Tonight? <\/span><\/i>And <\/span>It\u2019s Now or Never<\/span><\/i> were now to be regarded as rock and roll, one might well wonder what, if anything, distinguished Presley\u2019s new music from old-fashioned pop.\u00a0 In 1960, an honest answer might have been:\u00a0 very little.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With the post-Army Elvis now on his way to becoming the jump suit, big belt, and shades wearing \u2018Graceland\u2019 – \u2018Las Vegas\u2019 Elvis, we can now begin our step back in time.\u00a0 Back to the time \u2018BEP\u2019 so we can seek the true roots of Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll.\u00a0 Yes, Elvis fans, his younger self did have a good deal to do with the birth of R\u2019n\u2019R, but it was more of a transitional role.\u00a0 There were a slew of artists who became famous by taking the \u2018grit\u2019 out of African-American sourced R\u2019n\u2019R.\u00a0 The Pat Boones, Rickie Nelsons, Frankie Avalones, and Bobby Darins sold pale imitations of Black Rhythm and Blues via the radio stations that did not cater to the regular R&B population.\u00a0 Hearing Pat Boone\u2019s more grammatically correct <\/span>Ain\u2019t That A Shame <\/span><\/i>(the aspiring English teacher in Boone could not go with Fats Domino\u2019s original title <\/span>Ain\u2019t It A Shame<\/span><\/i>) is a case in point.\u00a0 Was it fair to the original artists to have their songs redone for white America? \u00a0 Yes and no.\u00a0 At a club in New Orleans, Fats heard Boone was in the audience and called him up to the bandstand.\u00a0 Boone later recalled, \u201cHe said to the crowd, \u2018I want you all to know something.\u00a0 You see this ring?\u2019\u00a0 He had a big diamond ring on every one of his fingers, and he said, \u2018This man bought me this ring with this song,\u2019 and the two of us sang <\/span>Ain\u2019t That A Shame<\/span><\/i> together.\u201d\u00a0 The baton was being passed from the middle runners in the race to the artists who would pass it onto the musicians my generation learned from, but they were not the originators of R\u2019n\u2019R.\u00a0 At least Elvis\u2019s earliest efforts retained some of the grit (and grits) of the music he heard during his southern upbringing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Not all the transitional artists lived in the white bread Pat Boone – Ricky Nelson world.\u00a0 Berry Gordy took his love for music and found a formula that would eventually be known as the Motown Sound.\u00a0 After a failed attempt at running a record store devoted to jazz, Gordy got a\u00a0 better paying job working on a Ford assembly line.\u00a0 There, as he attached chrome to the passing car bodies, he occupied his mind writing pop songs, one of which eventually put him in touch with Jackie Wilson.\u00a0 The legendary songwriters Leiber and Stroller (who were white and made a living writing music that sounded ethnically black) did not get what Gordy was trying to do:\u00a0 \u201cWe said, \u2018Man, those are white teenage stories.\u00a0 What does that have to do with black culture?\u2019\u201d In the fall of 1958, Gordy and Wilson hit gold with the song that would become Wilson\u2019s signature tune, <\/span>Lonely Teardrops<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The song turned Jackie Wilson into the first black teen idol and paved the way for an entire roster of Motown artists like Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, David Ruffin, and Martha Reeves.\u00a0 They became stars, Gordy became very wealthy (and moved on to Hollywood), but they were all standing on the shoulders of those who pioneered the gritty sound of R\u2019n\u2019R.\u00a0 By finding a formula that appealed to a broader audience than those who bought earlier Rhythm & Blues records, Gordy sold a lot of records and kick started a lot of careers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The aforementioned Carl Perkins started out as just another of the \u2018honky-tonk\u2019 artists who filled dance floors with songs about fast living and hard drinking.\u00a0 He got the bug to follow Elvis in a more R\u2019n\u2019R direction when his wife heard Elvis on the radio and told him \u201cCarl, that sounds like y\u2019all.\u201d\u00a0 Hearing the similarity in the \u2018Elvis sound\u2019 (his own Perkins Brothers Band employed electric lead guitar, acoustic rhythm guitar, and bass just like Elvis), he decided to visit the same record company Elvis recorded for, Sun Records.\u00a0 Sun was a mere seventy-five miles away from Perkin\u2019s Jackson, Tennessee home, but label owner Sam Phillips refused to see him. Phillips\u00a0 eventually caved when they wouldn\u2019t leave.\u00a0 Perkins said, \u201cSam later said he felt sorry for me.\u00a0 He said I looked like I would have died if he hadn\u2019t listened to me.\u00a0 And I just might have.\u201d\u00a0 Phillips felt Perkins had more of a hard core country sound than Elvis, so that is how Sun recorded his band.\u00a0 That is, until Perkins turned a honky-tonk encounter between a dancer and her partner\u2019s blue suede shoes into a hit R\u2019n\u2019R song.\u00a0 The change in direction for Carl was due.\u00a0 By the time Perkins began to record \u2018music with a beat\u2019, Phillips had sold Elvis\u2019s contract to a partnership between RCA records and Colonel Parker.\u00a0 The money kept Sun Records afloat while making Carl Perkins the heir apparent to become Sun Records\u2019 next rockabilly star.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were other things afoot in 1955 that helped transform the earliest forms of R\u2019n\u2019R into a new musical genre.\u00a0 No one can ignore the contributions of Chuck Berry and Richard Penniman.\u00a0 Berry fooled around with an old acoustic guitar, trying to copy licks he heard on the radio.\u00a0 After being released from prison (for armed robbery) in 1951 he finally got his first electric guitar.\u00a0 Finding it much easier to play, he sought out any opportunity he could find to perform music.\u00a0 Along the way, he injected the pop and country standards he was covering with his own signature style, one that would be copied by guitar players for decades to come.\u00a0 When Morris Levy, the owner of Chess Records in Chicago, first heard Chuck play, according to Berry, \u201cHe couldn\u2019t\u00a0 believe that a country tune (<\/span>Ida May<\/span><\/i>) could be written and sung by a black guy.\u00a0 He told me to \u2018give it a bigger beat\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Recorded on May 21, 1955, the retitled <\/span>Maybellene<\/span><\/i> (Levy said <\/span>Ida May<\/span><\/i> sounded \u2018corny\u2019 and got <\/span>Maybellene<\/span><\/i> off a cosmetic container he spotted in the studio), put Chuck Berry\u2019s wild career into high gear.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Pennimen\u2019s initial recording attempts were less successful than his producers at Specialty Records expected.\u00a0 His live shows with his band The Upsetters were dynamic, but what they got down on tape sounded listless.\u00a0 On a lunch break at a local tavern, the frustrated Little Richard hopped up on the bandstand and pounded his way through one of his concert songs.\u00a0 The soon to be familiar <\/span>Awop-bop-a-Loo-Mop<\/span><\/i> that would become his signature phrase was there, but the lyrics were too baudy to record.\u00a0 The producer, Robert \u2018Bumps\u2019 Blackwell brought in songwriter Dorothy La Bostrie to clean up the song and suddenly, Little Richard had a hit on his hands.\u00a0 Not bad for a song he had composed washing dishes in Macon, Georgia between tours.\u00a0 \u201cI dreamed I was going to be a star,\u201d he said and <\/span>Tutti Fruiti <\/span><\/i>was the song that would open doors.\u00a0 Had Pat Boone heard the original lyrics, maybe he would have passed on that one.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A little further back in the timeline, we find another unlikely pioneer of the Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll sound.\u00a0 His name was Bill Halley and he was a country crooner ( billed as the \u2018Ramblin\u2019 Yodeler\u2019 when he broke into show business in the late 1940s) before there R\u2019n\u2019R was even a recognized musical genre.\u00a0 Halley\u2019s repertoire began to change in 1951 when a producer convinced him to take a stab at recording one of Sam Phillips\u2019 barrelhouse blues called <\/span>Rocket 88.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The single flopped, but\u00a0 Halley found the song got a great reaction in the clubs, so he changed directions.\u00a0 With a new band of jazz schooled musicians, he recorded a hot version of a 1948 jump blues called <\/span>Rock the Joint.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>By 1953, Halley\u2019s producer had commissioned a sixty three year old Tin Pan Alley pro to write a new hit song.\u00a0 <\/span>(We\u2019re Gonna) Rock Around th<\/span><\/i>e <\/span>Clock<\/span><\/i> barely dented the <\/span>Billboard<\/span><\/i> pop charts but his follow up cover of Joe Turner\u2019s <\/span>Shake, Rattle and Roll<\/span><\/i> sold a million copies nationwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hollywood called next and the inclusion of <\/span>Rock Around the Clock <\/span><\/i>in a movie meant to symbolize the \u2018youthful mayhem and menace\u2019 (according to Miller) of the 1950s marked what many people remember as the advent of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll.\u00a0 It was loud and according to Miller, \u201cThe louder the sound, the more strongly it would connote power, aggression, and violence.\u00a0 Halley\u2019s band may sound quaint when compared with Led Zeppelin or the Sex Pistols;\u00a0 but heavy metal and punk both have their origins in the shock waves produced by the soundtrack of <\/span>Blackboard Jungle.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>When a young George Lucas picked <\/span>Rock Around the Clock<\/span><\/i> to open his movie <\/span>American Graffiti<\/span><\/i>, he knew it would take the audience back to what he remembered about that time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Halley marks the beginning of the road in terms of the popularization of Rock and Roll, but the true roots go back even further .\u00a0 It is hard to pin any one moment as the \u2018birth of Rock and Roll\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

The blues were first cultivated in the deep south and migrated to Chicago, Kansas City, and both coasts,\u00a0 The artists playing southern blues carried the roots of R\u2019n\u2019R with them.\u00a0 Leo Fender\u2019s pioneering work with the electric guitar also has a place in the mix.\u00a0 The ability to be heard in the noisy juke joints and clubs helped the music reach a larger audience.\u00a0 Artists recording R&B hits with a beat like Wynonie Harris (<\/span>Good Rockin\u2019 Tonight), <\/span><\/i>Joe Lutcher (<\/span>Rockin\u2019 Boogie<\/span><\/i>), Wild Bill Monroe (<\/span>We\u2019re Gonna Rock, We\u2019re Gonna Roll<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Rock and Roll<\/span><\/i>), and Jimmy Preston (<\/span>Rock the Joint<\/span><\/i>) gave the newly emerging music a name.\u00a0 Charts stopped calling it \u2018<\/span>Race Music\u2019<\/span><\/i> and not long after it had been rechristened \u2018<\/span>Rhythm & Blues\u2019<\/span><\/i>, the term \u2018<\/span>Rock and Roll\u2019 <\/span><\/i>appeared in the charts.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Playing the song <\/span>Kansas City<\/span><\/i> back in the early 1970s, I was unaware the song had been written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952.\u00a0 That two white, teenage record collectors (and fans of what was then called \u2018Negro dance music\u2019) could evoke the essence of early R\u2019n\u2019R pioneers in one song is kind of mind boggling.\u00a0 <\/span>Kansas City<\/span><\/i> quickly turned into a \u2018standard\u2019 (a tune played by just about every bar band in the world), but its historical significance was lost on me.\u00a0 Thanks to James Miller, I now have a better understanding of how songs like <\/span>Kansas City <\/span><\/i>and Rock and Roll as a new genre of music evolved in my lifetime.\u00a0 In order to go all the way back to the seeds that produced the first roots of the tree, it will take another future FTV and a lot more research.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Everyone has done KANSAS CITY – even The Beatles!\u00a0 That is why we call it a STANDARD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Vaults:\u00a0 Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll BEP   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My mother loved music so our house was always awash with records by The Kingston Trio, Burl Ives, Percy Faith, and a mixture of light classical favorites she played on our hi-fi record player\/radio.\u00a0 There is a \u2018that is a story for another day\u2019 asterisk in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}