3/29/2023 0 Comments Thinking rock free version![]() ![]() Instead of having songs written for them, and using studio musicians, now they were writing their own lyrics and music. Now there's the idea of the self-contained band. In the 60s, you had all these amazing new British bands: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, etc. Young British kids were listening to American rock 'n' roll and R&B and are forming their own bands. So now, instead of a basic two-minute love song, you could have songs about just about anything. Folk brought in greater lyrical content to rock 'n' roll. Mothers and fathers could breathe a sigh of relief as their kids listened to Brenda Lee and Neil Sedaka - "safe" white teen idols with glowing white teeth.īy the mid-60s, things started percolating, young people started to listen to folk music a bit more, people like Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez and later, Bob Dylan. In 1959 or 1960, it seemed like rock 'n' roll almost disappeared. His record company and radio stations weren't supporting his music any more. Jerry Lee Lewis got in trouble for marrying his 13-year old cousin and was ostracized. When he did come back, he was a little bit out of step and wasn't quite the same. Elvis Presley went into the military for a while and wasn't making music. There was a terrible plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. A lot of things happened sort of simultaneously. Rock 'n' roll sort of calmed down at the end of the 50s. It was a moral panic about sexuality and race mixing. When you're rocking and rolling, can't hear your mama call." That was brand new in the American experience and it freaked a lot of people out. To have young, teenage white girls in America screaming to someone like Little Richard as he's singing "Good Golly Miss Molly, you sure like to ball. There's a long ugly history in America over the fear of race mixing and of lynching black men because of their perceived desire for white women. Suburban moms and dads are freaked out about their daughters hanging out with young black men listening to sexualized music. One of the moral panics associated with the first wave of rock 'n' roll was the fear of race mixing - that young black and white kids would get together over this music that had a rhythmic, primitive, sensuous beat. It very quickly got co-opted by white musicians as well, and it became, and pretty much has been ever since, a white phenomenon - rock 'n' roll. It was originally done by black musicians, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. Then you add bass and drums, and suddenly you've got something new. If you look at basic rock 'n' roll, the fundamental formula is basically African American blues with a little more speed and electricity. Rock 'n' roll is not just an American invitation, but it's an African American invention. The first one was the mid to late 50s when rock 'n' roll was first sort of invented. Usually that new thing in culture is associated with young people and perceived threats to its cultural identity.įor a while there were about 10-year cycles of moral panics. Stanley Cohen said this was an example of moral panic - where respectable adult society is freaked out by something new in culture. They had fights, and the British media glommed onto that and probably made it scarier than it actually was. They had rumbles with the rockers, the subculture that was into early American rock 'n' roll, whereas the mods were into more cutting edge R&B and the new British rock 'n' roll. Stanley Cohen, a sociologist and criminologist, coined the term "moral panics." He used it when he was talking about the mods and the rockers, (two youth subcultures) in England in the early 60s. There's been this association that music, whether it's jazz or rock 'n' roll, it has an element of danger, and a little bit of coolness that's associated with that danger, which has created moral panics. In part II we'll talk about the 1970s - 1990s. The following, in his own words, covers the decades of the 1950s - 1960s. Steve Williams, associate professor of sociology, gives us an abridged history of rock 'n' roll and its association with social climates and social movements. ![]()
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