"Tutti Frutti"
Artist - Little Richard
Little Richard is one of rock and roll's icons, and a persistent reminder that rock and roll's roots are firmly planted in African American traditions. He brought to rock the uninhibited performance traditions of country and Vaudeville blues, the frenetic energy of sanctified gospel music, the falsetto shouts of the field holler, and the rhythmic drive of boogie-woogie.
Richard Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, to a profoundly religious family. He heard primarily gospel music in the home and began singing with his family's group, the Penniman Singers, as well as the Tiny Tots Gospel Quartet, when he was only a child. At age fifteen he left home to join a traveling minstrel show, where he was exposed to a broader variety of black music. It is not clear if he had already mastered boogie-woogie piano, or if he picked it up later in his career.
Little Richard won a talent competition in Atlanta in 1951, which ultimately led to a contract with RCA Victor. The label tried to mold him into a smooth R&B singer like Roy Brown, a popular black artist of the day, but his records in this style sold poorly. Further efforts might have yielded better results, but his father was murdered in 1952 and he had to return to Macon to support his family. Richard was washing dishes in a bus station and playing in local clubs when he encountered Bill Wright, a flamboyant blues singer from New Orleans. Wright was a dramatic performer who wore his hair in a high pompadour style and wore eyeliner and vibrant costumes on stage. Obviously, he made an impression on the younger musician!
Richard continued pursuing a recording career, and a demo tape eventually landed him a contract with Specialty Records. The label was looking for singers that could fuse gospel and rhythm and blues, a synthesis that had catapulted Ray Charles to stardom. When he got into the studio Richard tried a few slow blues tunes, but producer Bumps Blackwell was unimpressed. He suggested (as was then common) that they retire to a bar to get a few drinks. Richard was compelled to entertain the few patrons present at the bar and he launched into one of his crowd-pleasers, an up-tempo, twelve-bar blues over a boogie-woogie bass line with raunchy lyrics. Blackwell heard what he had been looking for and rushed his artist back to the studio. Richard was unable to come up with sufficiently clean lyrics for the song, but the producer was unwilling to scratch the session. He called in Dorothy LaBastrie, a local songwriter, who quickly turned "Tutti frutti good booty" into "Tutti frutti oh rootie," and drafted the rest of the lyrics on the spot.
Little Richard quickly became one of rock and roll's most successful performers; he enjoyed a string of hit records, appeared in several movies, and was a popular concert draw. An airplane related scare and moral qualms about his sexuality led him to renounce rock and roll in 1957 to become a preacher. However, he returned to rock and roll in the early 1960s.
Also see: Clara Ward, Ray Charles, Bill Wright, Lloyd Price, Louis Jordan, Roy Brown
Must Haves:
- "The Girl Can't
- "Help It"
- "Lucille"
- "Good Golly Miss Molly"
- "Ready Teddy"
- "Rip it Up"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
"Can the Circle Be Unbroken"
Artist - The Carter Family
Country music as a commercial entity began with the Carter Family, and their descendants—both actual and artistic—are still influential today. The Carter Family hailed from the Clinch region in Virginia. A. P. Carter learned to play the fiddle in his youth, and absorbed the traditional, old-time music of the region which, due to its relative isolation, was largely comprised of English folk songs that were not greatly influenced by other types of American popular music. A. P. also sang with a gospel quartet, but wanderlust struck, and he traveled for a time before returning to Virginia, where he met his wife Sara. She was also musical, playing the autoharp and singing in a group. After they were married in 1915 A. P. and Sara began performing at dances, church socials, and other local events. Eventually Sara's cousin Maybelle, a superb guitar player, joined them, and they performed as the Carter Family.
Ralph Peer, a distributor for Victor Records, recorded the first "country music" record —two sides by Fiddlin' John Carson, a local fiddle champion—at the request of Polk Brockman, who owned a record shop in Atlanta. To Peer's astonishment, Brockman sold the entire lot of five hundred records in a few days. The event convinced Victor executives that there was a market for "old-time" music. The label sent Peer to major cities in the south to find new acts, and at his first stop in Bristol, Tennessee, he got wind of the Carter Family. Their first records sold well, and he signed them to a long-term contract in 1928.
The Carter Family quickly became national stars. They recorded a number of local favorites that are now considered the core repertoire of country and folk music, including "Keep on the Sunny Side," "Wabash Cannonball," and "Wildwood Flower." They also performed white gospel songs, including "Can the Circle Be Unbroken." They were popular both before and after the Depression, but eventually broke up in 1943.
The legacies of the Carter Family are many. When A. P. had exhausted his repertoire he traveled the mountains in Virginia and Tennessee with guitarist Leslie Riddle, collecting folk songs from older residents; these efforts probably preserved a number of songs that would otherwise have been lost. Maybelle Carter's idiosyncratic style of alternating between picking the melody line of a song and strumming the chords is the foundation of bluegrass guitar technique. After the Carter Family dissolved Maybelle formed a new group, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, with her daughters Anita, Helen, and June. Anita and June went on to successful solo careers, the latter with her husband, Johnny Cash. A. P. and Sara's daughter Janelle founded the Carter Family Memorial Music Center in Virginia, a rural arts organization devoted to the preservation of old-time and bluegrass music and rural dance styles.
Also see: The Hutchinson Family Singers, Charles Tindley, Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers
Must Haves:
- "Wildwood Flower"
- "Wabash Cannonball"
- "Keep on the Sunny Side"
- "John Hardy was a Desperate Little Man"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
- Bob Dylan
- Doc Watson
- Roy Acuff
- Woody Guthrie
- Joan Baez
"Heartbreak Hotel"
Artist - Elvis Presley
"Heartbreak Hotel" is one of first singles Elvis Presley recorded after RCA purchased his Sun Records contract from Sam Phillips. Presley wrote almost none of his own songs; he was presented with a selection of songs by professional songwriters, and chose material he thought would be suitable. Sometimes he and his band would try out songs and choose those that stimulated ideas.
"Heartbreak Hotel" was written by Thomas Durden and Mae Boren Axton (the latter was the mother of singer/songwriter Hoyt Axton). RCA executives weren't displeased with the resulting record, but were afraid to release it because the song didn't sound like Elvis's earlier material, nor was it like anything else on the radio at the time. Slow, depressing, and filled with unfamiliar vocal mordents and influences, it also made heavy use of echo and reverb. In an attempt to duplicate the acoustic resonance of Elvis's Sun records, recording engineer Bob Ferris built an echo chamber in the studio's hallway, and the resulting sound was quite live. Fortunately, RCA decided to release the disc. Though it climbed the charts more slowly than some of his Sun sides, "Heartbreak Hotel" eventually reached number one on both the pop and country charts, and stayed there for eighteen weeks. It was also Elvis's first gold record.
Elvis's move to RCA Victor drastically changed his career. His new manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was aggressive in seeking out new opportunities for his artist. He used RCA's reputation and contacts to arrange larger tours, film cameos, and television performances. Once Elvis appeared on television his stardom was almost inevitable. This was, in part, the result of his physicality—not just the much-condemned hip-swiveling, but also his charismatic stage presence—and his cooler than cool appearance, but the exposure also brought his music to a broad cross-section of the United States. It is estimated that one in three Americans saw at least one of Presley's three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Fans and scholars disagree about the impact of the RCA move on Elvis's music. Many of the songs he recorded after 1957 had less energy and drive than his Sun sides, and they were, on the whole, less influenced by rhythm and blues. While the record company is often blamed, Elvis very much wanted mainstream success and approval. His idol was Dean Martin, and songs like "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight" reflect his ambition to sound more like Martin and other top singers of the day. Like those artists, he also performed material influenced by contemporary music "fads," like the bossa nova ("Bossa Nova Baby") and Hawaiian music ("Rock-a-hula Luau"). However, he also recorded some of his biggest rock and roll hits, like "Jailhouse Rock" and "I Got Stung," at RCA.
Also see: Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Bill Monroe, Mario Lanza, Otis Blackwell
Must Haves:
- "Surrender"
- "Devil in Disguise"
- "Suspicious Minds"
- "I Got Stung"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
- Tom Jones
- Engelbert Humperdinck
- Neil Diamond
- Bobby Vinton
"Rock and Roll Music"
Artist - Chuck Berry
Even fifty years on, Chuck Berry remains one of rock and roll's greatest lyricists. Some have called him an "eternal teenager," as he was able to capture the thoughts and attitudes of his core audience, even though most were white teenagers. He was also an attentive professional who understood the popular music market far better than did most record executives of the time. Berry recognized that young people, both black and white, had different experiences than their parents, and they spoke about them using a different language. As he put it, "All in all it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues." For example, there are many popular songs about school; most are nostalgic evocations of youth framed around the schoolhouse. None address school from a young person's perspective. Berry's "School Days," on the other hand, talks about studying hard, mean teachers, finding a seat in the lunchroom, harassment from other students, and the glorious hour when one can finally "lay your burden down."
Berry's ability to think to the market was not his only contribution to rock and roll, however. He is also known as the "poet laureate of rock and roll," a nickname that acknowledges his skill as a songwriter. A good student in school, poetry was one of Berry's favorite subjects, and t is clear that he had read a great deal and absorbed a lot of information about poetic construction. His lyrics display great variety (more so than his music; he recycled several of his hits by fitting them with new lyrics), and his imaginative use of rhymes, alliteration, and meter give shape and momentum to his songs. Note the difference between the chorus and the verses in this song. Not only are the choruses six bars longer than the verses, but the rhythm of the lyrics is different: each line of the verses implies a shuffle feel, an impression created by using more syllables at the beginning of each line than at the end. Also, the rhyme scheme of the chorus is abbbbc. The word "music," and the end of the first line is never rhymed, nor is "dance with me" at the end of the last; all of the rhymes pile up in the middle. In the verse, however, the last word of every line rhymes.
One important characteristic of Berry's songwriting style is the means by which he succinctly captures the essence of situation. Many of his songs tell a story, but unlike most ballads, they do so in a compressed fashion. The words and images that are employed let us fill in details we are never given. For example, the last verse of "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" begins, "Two three count/with nobody on." Most American listeners can divine that we are not only talking about baseball, but a particular moment in a baseball game—the player's last chance for a hit that will win the game for his team. It takes more words to describe the situation than Berry uses to evoke it!
Also see: Louis Jordan, Willie Dixon, Nat King Cole, Langston Hughes
Must Haves:
- "Roll Over Beethoven"
- "No Particular Place to Go"
- "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man"
- "Memphis Tennessee"
- "Nadine"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
"That'll Be the Day"
Artist - The Crickets
Buddy Holly was one of the first rock and roll singers to be influenced by rock and roll. Raised in musical family, he learned to play fiddle at young age and had mastered guitar, banjo, and mandolin by the time he was fifteen. He played in duet with his childhood friend Bob Montgomery; Bob & Buddy enjoyed some success playing a blend of bluegrass and Western swing they called Western bop. Holly's life changed when he heard Elvis Presley on the radio. Holly, who sought out African American music on the AM radio stations of southern Texas, recognized Presley's fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. Bob & Buddy added an upright bass player and a drummer to their act and began crafting rock and roll songs; a few months later, after opening for Bill Haley and the Comets, Holly was offered a contract by the prestigious Decca label. Though he recorded a few singles, none were issued.
Holly and his band worked with Norman Petty, an independent record producer, to make a demo of their most promising songs. One was "That'll Be the Day," which had been rejected by Decca. An executive at Coral Records liked the song, but there was a problem: Coral was a subsidiary of Decca, and the label's executives still didn't believe the song was worth releasing. After some legal maneuvering the disc was released on Brunswick, another Decca subsidiary, but because he was still constrained by the terms of his solo contract, Holly's name did not appear on the record; the song was attributed to the Crickets. "That'll Be the Day" was the first of a string of seven top forty hits for Holly and the Crickets that would have assuredly continued if the singer had not died tragically in 1959.
Despite his short career, Buddy Holly was an influential force in early rock and roll. Holly was one of the first white artists to record mostly his own material, and he was allowed great creative freedom by his record label. Instead of reporting to the Decca or Coral studios when he and the Crickets were ready to cut a new disc, they worked wherever they wished and presented Decca with the masters, which gave the band more freedom to experiment, as is evident from their recordings. Their hit records make sophisticated use of instruments like the celesta and temple blocks, sound colors never before associated with rock and roll. Holly wrote in a variety of forms and styles with equal authority; many of his biggest hits were ballads and romantic pop songs, but he was also capable of penning thoughtful and introspective lyrics. One barometer of the progressive nature of his songwriting is that a number of B-sides and miscellaneous tracks were covered in the 1960s and 1970s by other artists, and none sounded dated.
Holly also anticipated a number of rock's future trends. The Crickets' performance of "Oh Boy" on the Ed Sullivan Show yields not only a raspy vocal tone and full-throated yowl that anticipated emulation of African American vocal techniques favored by British invasion bands, but also aggressive, thrashing guitar that predates heavy metal by two decades.
Also see: Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Clyde McPhatter, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams
Must Haves:
- "Peggy Sue"
- "Everyday"
- "Rave On"
- "Not Fade Away"
- "Maybe Baby"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
- John Lennon and Paul McCartney
- Eric Clapton
- Graham Nash and the Hollies (named in tribute)
- Elvis Costello
"Great Balls of Fire"
Artist - Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis grew up in Farriday, Louisiana, in a very conservative religious family; his cousin is the television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Lewis learned to play piano on an instrument that his parents literally mortgaged the farm to buy; such was the investment that he was forced to share lessons and practice time with Swaggart and another cousin, country music impresario Mickey Gilley. Lewis learned about boogie-woogie and the blues by listening at the back door of Haney's Big House, a roadhouse owned by his uncle that catered to an African American clientele. Combining these sounds with the classical and gospel music sanctioned by his parents, Lewis forged an idiosyncratic playing style.
At age fifteen Lewis was enrolled in a Texas bible college studying to become preacher, but he was expelled for playing boogie-woogie versions of hymns on the church organ. He married and took a succession of menial jobs, but dreamed of becoming a professional musician. When his uncle offered him work at Haney's Big House, Lewis jumped at the chance, and had soon abandoned his young wife for late nights playing piano and tending bar. He also auditioned for nearly every record label in Nashville, and the Grand Ole Opry, with no success.
One label that had not turned him down was Sun Records, as Sam Phillips had been on vacation when Lewis visited. When he returned Phillips approved of the demo recording Lewis had made at the studio, and invited him to record. He also started using Lewis as a studio pianist to back singers like Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.
Lewis's first Sun record, "Crazy Arms," sold well enough to get him a number of touring jobs. As a pianist Lewis was at a loss as to what he should do onstage; he couldn't very well dance (and wasn't good anyway) and emoting from the piano bench didn't seem very exciting. Eventually he adopted a flamboyant and percussive stage manner: he played standing up, jumped on the piano, pounded the keyboard with his feet, and did anything else that struck his fancy, so long as he wasn't far from the keyboard.
Phillips liked what he saw, and became convinced that Jerry Lee Lewis had the same kind of star power as Elvis Presley. He threw most of his label's promotional budget behind Lewis's follow-up, "Great Balls of Fire," a gamble that paid off handsomely when the song reached number two on the pop charts. "The Killer" (as Lewis is often called) enjoyed a few more hits before his career was rocked by scandal. While in the process of divorcing his first wife, Lewis married and impregnated his thirteen-year-old cousin. Lewis was on tour in Britain when the news broke, and the English press was scandalized. The fervor eventually spread to the United States, and brought Lewis's career to a halt. He continued to perform wherever he could, and after a decade he was redeemed with a new recording contract and a hit single on the country charts.
Also see: Moon Mullican, B. B. King, Ray Price, Hank Snow, Professor Longhair
Must Haves:
- "Breathless"
- "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"
- "Crazy Arms"
- "High School Confidential"
- "Ubangi Stomp"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
- John Fogerty
- Dr. John
- Huey "Piano" Smith
- Tom Jones
- Neil Young
- Elton John
"All I Have to Do is Dream"
Artist - The Everly Brothers
Don and Phil Everly were immersed in country and "roots" music from early in life; their parents and two uncles had a country and folk music group that was popular in the Midwest and parts of the south. The boys started singing with the act at the ages of eight and six, respectively.
By the 1940s the family had settled in Shenandoah, Iowa, where the boys' father Ike played several times daily on a local radio station. At that time most music heard on regional radio was performed live; the young Everly brothers occasionally sang with their father and filled in when other scheduled performers didn't show up. The Everly Family Show was the most popular in the Midwest in the early 1950s, but recordings were fast replacing live music on the radio. After several moves to potentially larger markets didn't yield jobs, the young brothers decided to pursue other options.
One day after high school graduation Don and Phil Everly set out for Nashville, Tennessee, with hopes of breaking into the country music recording industry. A family friend, Chet Atkins, was working as a session guitarist in Nashville, and through his contacts he got the boys a six month recording contract at Columbia Records. They recorded four tracks, but only one, "Keep On Lovin' Me," was even a modest success. To make ends meet Don became a songwriter for Acuff-Rose, the large country music publishing house founded by Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff.
In 1957 the brothers got word that Archie Bleyer, the owner of the small, independent Cadence label, was looking for new talent. He offered the duo "Bye Bye Love," written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. Thirty other artists had passed on the tune, but Bleyer still felt it could be a hit if given the right treatment. Don and Phil thought they knew what would work. Their family's travels had landed them in Chicago for a time, and they were familiar with urban blues and rhythm and blues; Don was a particularly fervent fan of Bo Diddley. The Everly brothers fused the aggressive, syncopated rhythm guitar of early Chicago blues with the close vocal harmonies and short, broken phrase structure of early country music in a way that sounded different from anything else in the marketplace. "Bye Bye Love" became a smash hit that rose to the top of the country, pop, and R&B charts.
Over the next several years the Everly Brothers put six more songs, including "All I Have to Do is Dream," in the country top ten and seven on the pop charts; all walked the line between the two styles. The brothers' fortunes faded somewhat after 1964, when the British invasion hit the United States, but they continued to make records until the early 1970s. Ironically, the new British acts sang harmonies that were modeled on those of the Everly Brothers, as did the folk rock artists emerging in California and New York. Even today, the Everly Brothers are recognized as the founding fathers of rock and roll vocal harmony.
Also see: The Carter Family, Les Paul and Mary Ford, The Louvin Brothers, Bo Diddley
Must Haves:
- "Bye Bye Love"
- "When Will I Be Loved"
- "Wake Up Little Susie"
- "Cathy's Clown"
Performers Influenced By This Artist:
- Simon and Garfunkel
- The Flying Burrito Brothers
- The Byrds
- Peter and Gordon