The Origin Of "The Fifties"

[2jakes]

I am epically, epically glad that I wasn't. The world you boys dribble your nostalgia over offers nothing to me.

....Oh, and you guys missed out on a hell of a lot of good music. To say nothing of radio, movies, books, theatre, sports, and social movements.

"Au contraire”--- as long as we have you to enlightened us on what we’ve missed
....everything will be copacetic!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Undoubtedly that's a huge factor. There are one hell of a lot of folks out there who aren't really much interested in music but who own a Beatles album or two, PInk Floyd's The Wall and some Led Zeppelin for no reason other than "they're among the top ten albums ever", because these infernal 'best of' lists keep saying they are.... Most of them had a few decent tunes. but the sheer level of artificial credibility some acts enjoy just mystifies me. I mean.... Zeppelin? Really?

What galls me about all those "10/50/100 best **** ever" lists is the presumptuousness of assuming that "ever" means "within the cultural memory of whatever goatee-stroking nose-picker came up with the list."

The first album I ever bought was a 1942 78rpm collection of sides by the Benny Goodman Sextet featuring the late, miraculous Charlie Christian -- the only person I've ever thought had any business playing an electric guitar. Christian was a gigantic talent -- there had been nothing like him in popular music up till that time, and there has never been anyone like him since. Modern guitar buffs would be astounded at how good he was, and that's not even mentioning how good the rest of the group was. That album came out on LP after the war, on CD in the '80s, and is still in print today. Why isn't it on any of those lists?

Musical illiterates should not be writing about music, and historical illiterates should not be writing about musical history.

 

[Stearmen]

The King of Rock and Roll is and always will be Buddy Holly. Wrote, played, sang.

The other guy had a pretty face and a great voice, but I'll take Peggy Sue over Clam Bake any day.

Oh, but for the crummy heater on that bus...

Here is the man Elvis called The King Of Rock & Roll!

 

[Stearmen]

One of the great things about the 50s and 60s that is missing today was all the different genres you could hear on the top 40 stations. Tis disappeared by the 80s, such a shame!

 

[Stearmen]

 

[Stearmen]

 

[Stearmen]

 

[Edward]

I wonder if there are plagiarism issues involved with the Harry Potter wizards' attempts to mingle with the ordinary folks.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a similar great story ("Trouble with the Natives", 1951) about alien diplomats trying to deal with the human residents of an English village, using language and customs that the aliens learned from listening to the BBC.

Copyright doesn't protect an idea, only the expression of the idea. I've not read that particular Clarke story, but it doesn't sound like there's any more similarity than the basic 'hiding among us' idea, so I highly doubt there's anything to worry about there.

The song is "I Wanna Be Your Man". The Stones wanted to write their own stuff early on, but were having composers' block, and during a concert or some other event where the two bands were hanging out, John and Paul went off into a corner, wrote the tune, and handed it to the Stones, giving them their first hit record. It was good enough of a song John and Paul gave it to Ringo for his token vocal.

That's the one.

The Stones version as recorded may have had more "stones" (and that's debatable, the Beatles' version rocks, in fact), but what was the greater achievement - taking someone else's work and interpreting it, or creating it in the first place?

The Beatles showed the Stones how it was done, not the other way round.

I think that's an achievement.

That's the big question, and that's my point all along. Writing a great song is undeniably a talent, but being able to take a song and reinterpret it in such a way as it becomes "yours" is an equal talent in my opinion. Both different (if related) skills.

Course, the biggest leg-up the scousers gave the Beatles was George Harrison advising the guy at Decaa that turned down the Beatles to sign the Stones....

What galls me about all those "10/50/100 best **** ever" lists is the presumptuousness of assuming that "ever" means "within the cultural memory of whatever goatee-stroking nose-picker came up with the list."

I'm not much of a one for any sort of competition in art.... but yeah, the idea that you can pick ten best albums and claim somehow that it's an objective list is absurd.






Especially if the Ramones aren't on that list.

The first album I ever bought was a 1942 78rpm collection of sides by the Benny Goodman Sextet featuring the late, miraculous Charlie Christian -- the only person I've ever thought had any business playing an electric guitar. Christian was a gigantic talent -- there had been nothing like him in popular music up till that time, and there has never been anyone like him since. Modern guitar buffs would be astounded at how good he was, and that's not even mentioning how good the rest of the group was. That album came out on LP after the war, on CD in the '80s, and is still in print today. Why isn't it on any of those lists?

Same curse as anything else: fashion.

 

[Fading Fast]

Anecdotally, from my personal interaction with Millennials (nice tautology, huh), I've noticed that many of them have more respect for Classic Rock than their own music or the pop / rock stuff from the later '70s and '80s. On many occasions, I've been told by a Millennial that "The Stones, The Who, etc." are their favorite, were so much better than today's music, etc.

One, this is not after I've extolled the virtues of Classic Rock - I don't do that as I don't want to come off as "that guy -" the fifty year old who goes on and on about how great "his" music was - so it seemed to me genuine. Also, while not universal - some Millennials that I've met aren't into Classic Rock and they do like today's music, etc. - I haven't encountered any that love the late '70s / '80s music.

Hence, something is pulling them to the '60s / early '70s classic rock period and they are skipping the '70s / 80s stuff. It could argue that there really was something "better," more artistically / musically special about that period than what came later.

Again, the above is all anecdotal, but it caught me by surprise as I started to notice it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What's more encouraging to me are the millennials I've met, in person or online -- and in my capacity as a broadcast historian, I hear from a lot of them by email -- who are willing to move beyond "rock" entirely. There are millennials who are taking up 1920s and 1930s style popular jazz, both for listening and for playing -- not because they're trying to be ironic, but because it's something that they've discovered for themselves, not by reading the published received wisdom of the Boomerscenti, but by poking around random corners of the internet.

And most encouraging of all, the days when this music was the province of old white men sitting in musty cellars obsessing over matrix numbers are long over -- a very considerable number of these musical millennials are women, many of whom first got interested in the music after seeing a 2008 animated film called "Sita Sings The Blues," which had a musical soundtrack made up entirely of Annette Hanshaw records.

These kids will listen to their current stuff -- and they'll listen to their parents' Boomer stuff. But they aren't limiting themselves to that. They couldn't care less about the whole insular "music of our generation, man" idea -- they'll listen to anything and everything that they like the sound of. I was both pleased and astonished when I discovered that, of all people, the 1930s vocalist Chick Bullock has a strong internet following among this crowd. If there is a single justification for the existance of Yoo Toob, that would be it. Hope for the future.

 

[BlueTrain]

So help me, I'm listening to music as fast as I can and I don't think I'll ever hear it all, even the good stuff. But my interests are broad, to be sure. If I'm remembering correctly, the first record, a 45 rpm, was "Rockin' Robin," and I'm trying to remember what was on the flip side. Was it Caravan? The most recent purchase was a CD of Slavko Avesenik, who died last year. I told you my tastes have broadened (and that's not all). I'm even on the verge of pre-ordering a CD from someone who is basically a street musician, although trained, and who has somehow managed to produce two albums.

Recordings only go back so far, you know, and popular music didn't begin with Edison. So we'll never really know what we missed out by being born too late. There's only so much good music, meaning good recordings of good music, from before the war, same as for motion pictures, the recordings and films being in bad shape. But there's enough and besides, many pre-war performers were still going strong well after we were born, even if we've never heard of them.

A rather remarkable thing, surprising or not, is how popular American music of all sorts is popular in other places. I imagine part of the reason is that lots of American soldiers, all young men, were stationed overseas in the 1940s through to the present. There was also some importing of music because of that but not nearly so much. Elvis did "Wooden Heart," new words to a very old traditional German song, probably because he was stationed in Germany. But I just find it funny to run across something described as rockabilly on a Swiss music album. You wouldn't think such stuff would have traveled all that far but it did. I wonder who coined that term. Undoubtedly pop musicians and singers have their influences but ultimately they have to develop their own style instead of trying to do a certain kind of music. They define the music, not the other way round. Then someone else, maybe a musicologist, gives it a name.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the most fascinating things I've ever heard is an NBC radio series from 1934 called "Folk Music Of The South." Produced by WRVA in Richmond, this program was exactly what the title says -- live presentations of pre-Civil War era Southern folk music performed by people who had actually performed it, or heard it performed, before the Civil War. The musicians are very old at this pont, but hearing the surviving broadcasts from this series is as close as you can get to traveling in time.

There was an intense interest in preserving 19th Century music during the 1930s, and radio programs like this were just the tip of that iceberg. Ethnomusicologists with portable recording equipment traveled the entire country during the Depression under the auspicies of the WPA recording and preserving the music of the past, as played by people who remembered it when it was current. Some of these recordings have been commercially released on such labels as Folkways, and are well worth seeking out.

 

[BlueTrain]

I have heard some of that music and while fascinating and undeniably "authentic," it can be, well, difficult to listen to, if you don't happen to like that sort of stuff. But much old music was hardly folk music, however you might define the term. It was written by professional songwriters; Tin Pan Alley stuff. Sometimes a song that is popular back in the hills had a surprising origin, too. "Amazing Grace" is a staple gospel song for every tiny little church in the wildwood but it was written by an English sea captain, who also wrote "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," sung to the same tune the old German national anthem uses.

At the same time, much well-written music, both popular and orchestral (which can be popular, too, I suppose) has its roots in real folk music, both in the country and in Europe.

I have also heard contemporary recordings of old music played on old instruments and at tempos we aren't used to hearing and the effects can be startling. Just imagine "The Star Spangled Banner" played at a different tempo.

If I ever die, and I'm hoping there might be an exception in my case, there are two songs I'd like played at my funeral: the first is "To be a Pilgrim," which is from the hymnal. The other is "Dixie."

At my father's graveside service, there was a veteran's group that did a firing salute and a bugler who played taps. I had instructed the funeral director to ask him to play "reveille" right afterwards, to symbolize resurrection, and he did.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The only version of Star Spangled Banner I can handle is the one John Kiley used to play on the organ at Fenway Park. He ripped thru it in exactly forty-five seconds flat, and then it was time to play ball. Any other version sounds weird to me. At one of the radio stations where I used to work, we taped one of his performances off the network feed, put it on a cart, and used it as our sign-off for years.

Broadcast recordings reveal that the very first ballpark organist ever, Gladys Goodding at Ebbets Field, did a nice job on the anthem as well -- but she loses points with me for singing along with her organ playing in a trained operatic contralto. The effect is incongruous.

For some reason, Benny Goodman's 1938 swing version of "Loch Lomond" really bothered a lot of people in the South, and a number of stations there banned it. Perhaps Southern Scots are more hidebound in such matters than those of us up North.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The first album I ever bought was a 1942 78rpm collection of sides by the Benny Goodman Sextet featuring the late, miraculous Charlie Christian -- the only person I've ever thought had any business playing an electric guitar. Christian was a gigantic talent -- there had been nothing like him in popular music up till that time, and there has never been anyone like him since. Modern guitar buffs would be astounded at how good he was, and that's not even mentioning how good the rest of the group was. That album came out on LP after the war, on CD in the '80s, and is still in print today. Why isn't it on any of those lists?

Musical illiterates should not be writing about music, and historical illiterates should not be writing about musical history.

I think you're greatly underestimating the "modern" guitar picker and the respect they have for his/her influences. Every single player on any of those "best" lists rom the rock and roll era, guys like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck...all the way to Van Halen and the recently departed Prince, would cite Christian and guys like Django Reinhardt and Allen Reuss, not to mention the early blues players like Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly, etc...as the reason they picked up the guitar in the first place. Reinhardt is pretty well universally regarded as the most important and most influential guitar player in history. And then we could go on to the country/bluegrass pickers...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think you're greatly underestimating the "modern" guitar picker and the respect they have for his/her influences. Every single player on any of those "best" lists rom the rock and roll era, guys like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck...all the way to Van Halen and the recently departed Prince, would cite Christian and guys like Django Reinhardt and Allen Reuss, not to mention the early blues players like Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly, etc...as the reason they picked up the guitar in the first place. Reinhardt is pretty well universally regarded as the most important and most influential guitar player in history. And then we could go on to the country/bluegrass pickers...

Players are one thing -- most actual musicians tend to have a much broader scope than their non-performing fans do. People who write pinheaded listicles on the Internet are another thing entirely.

I am sort of miffed, though, that you make no mention there of Eddie Lang.

 

[BlueTrain]

It is interesting how guitar shows up in so many kinds of music, not to mention the fact that there are different kinds of guitars and all sort of related instruments like banjos and mandolins and even those have variations. So, one could say a guitar is a pretty basic instrument. It isn't terribly expensive, it's adaptable to different kinds of music and it's portable. I'm not sure what's in second place, perhaps the violin. Personally I like accordions and they come in a dozen variations, too.

I used to wonder if people who could play an instrument, such as a guitar, had a parent who played something. So one day, when I was at a big party outside of Charlottesville that had a little local band playing music, I asked them if any of their parents played anything. There were three or four of them, all playing strings, and none of them said yes. Another pet theory went down the drain. But I'll keep asking.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Players are one thing -- most actual musicians tend to have a much broader scope than their non-performing fans do. People who write pinheaded listicles on the Internet are another thing entirely.

That could be said of any topic. I remember a while back, some pinhead Yankees fans were making up their all-time Yankees team by position, and it came down to right field. After much discussion, they finally agreed that Paul O'Neill was the man.

I am sort of miffed, though, that you make no mention there of Eddie Lang.

So many great pickers, so little space on the page...

 

[LizzieMaine]

That could be said of any topic. I remember a while back, some pinhead Yankees fans were making up their all-time Yankees team by position, and it came down to right field. After much discussion, they finally agreed that Paul O'Neill was the man.

There's a large man named Ruth outside, he'd like a word with you....

 

[HudsonHawk]

It is interesting how guitar shows up in so many kinds of music, not to mention the fact that there are different kinds of guitars and all sort of related instruments like banjos and mandolins and even those have variations. So, one could say a guitar is a pretty basic instrument. It isn't terribly expensive, it's adaptable to different kinds of music and it's portable. I'm not sure what's in second place, perhaps the violin. Personally I like accordions and they come in a dozen variations, too.

I used to wonder if people who could play an instrument, such as a guitar, had a parent who played something. So one day, when I was at a big party outside of Charlottesville that had a little local band playing music, I asked them if any of their parents played anything. There were three or four of them, all playing strings, and none of them said yes. Another pet theory went down the drain. But I'll keep asking.

My mother played the piano, and she tried as best she could to get me to play. I wasn't interested, was more interested in fishing and playing baseball every waking second. Now, I wish I'd have learned to play. I picked up the guitar later in life, and have tried. In fact, I want my epitaph to read:

"He grilled a good steak, he was good with the glove and could occasionally hit a little, and he wasn't the worst guitar picker in the world"