I have an interesting theory, and I’ve never heard it before: Folk music ruined Rock and Roll.
Mind you, I love folk music. I am a folk artist. In fact, I love “folk rock”, the genre that was (somewhat) popularized by Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Jefferson Airplane, and others. But the fact remains: it killed it.
I grew up in the late 70’s. I was pretty much blacked out from popular music by my mom’s love of Country (which was probably passe at that point, yet it was before the resurgence that came in the 80’s). For some reason I think of Tony Orlando and Dawn and Don McLean, so there was a pretty wide range of form.
In high school, a friend turned me on to Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and Jethro Tull–all part of the folk-rock movement–which was my introduction to what now is termed Classic Rock. I’m trying to place the Psychodelic movement…or come up with good examples…but I believe folk entered the mainstream at about the same time that genre came into being, and that was also when I would claim Rock and Roll basically ceased to exist.
Many of you will raise their eyebrows at the notion that Rock and Roll is dead. I think that’s because they don’t really know what Rock and Roll really was.
I wish I could play you some records–but thanks to Youtube you can find them yourself quite easily…and I’m not a musicologist. So my insights should be suspect. But I know a little.
Rock and Roll came out of Rhythm and Blues, which of course came out of Blues, which itself, along with Jazz, was a direct result of the black, ie slave, experience in this country.
(Slavery was itself a unique–or peculiar as the Southerners liked to refer to it–American phenomenon. Slavery (small s) existed elsewhere, but nowhere like it existed here. It was on the same scale elsewhere (Haiti) but never for so long. As such, Blues could never have been born anywhere but in the United States–which is a dubious distinction, and one that should not fuel American Exceptionalism (just the opposite))
Blues was a unique musical event, which of course had many influences, but by and large it was traditional African music combined with Christian and secular European forms.
When Blues hit the shores of especially Louisiana (New Orleans) it became mixed with influences that sailed in from all over the world, and Jazz was born. Now here I’m going out on a limb, because as I say I’m no expert, but Blues and Jazz (now distinct forms) combined to make Rhythm and Blues (I’m thinking of Louis Jordan). Then along came Bill Hailey, and others, and Rock and Roll was born. Rock and Roll itself is a simplification of Rhythm and Blues, as far as I can tell. In any case, it too became a distinct form. And it had a pretty good run. Until it ran into Folk, which, as I say, killed it.
So what is Rock and Roll? Okay, everybody is familiar with Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Hailey and the Comets. He, along with Chuck Barry and others, pared down what Big Joe Turner was doing with Rhythm and Blues. Listen to basically any popular music from the 50’s and you will hear the distinctive formula that made Rock and Roll. Mostly it was guitar based, though sometimes the piano held down the rhythm. And it almost always had a saxophone solo between the second and third verses. Simple, straightforward, very danceable, and timeless.
Listen to it. Listen to lots of it. It’s glorious. Rock and Roll is the expression of the joi d’vivre of post-war, generally prosperous (and generally white, though the form was clearly a child of the black experience), generally car-owning American youth.
It’s funny I mentioned Don Mclean earlier. Because The Day the Music Died could have been a title for this post. In fact, the song is usually credited as being about the death of Buddy Holly–in the famous plane crash that also claimed the lives of The Big Bopper amd Richie Valens. It is probably also about exactly my central theme. Notice that McLean is writing in the new post-Rock and Roll idiom. Not exactly Folk Rock, but certainly on the spectrum between Folk and Rock.
Like I say, many of you still think Rock and Roll is with us. Trust me, it isn’t. More later.