How I Learned To Love Rock And Roll

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I have been spending quite a lot of time listening to rock and roll (and other music from the rock and roll 'era' c.late 50s). This was sparked by a sudden and complete infatuation w/"Chantilly Lace" by the Big BOPPER.

So I wanted to ask - what do my fellow Poptimists think about rock and roll? Do you like it? Do you listen to it? How does it stack up next to pop now (or pop from a more recent then)? Is it pop at all? Is it rock? Does the path of listening to rock and roll lead inexorably to the Stray Cats? etc. etc.

Here are some things about rock and roll which relate to other Poptimist concerns:

- The tracks are generally very short.
- They are often quite goofy.
- They sound like they were done very quickly.
- They mostly came out on single.
- There was a hell of a lot of it.
- There are a lot of boys with guitars around.
- Rock and roll is pretty old.
- Chunks of it are very revered.
- It gets revived a lot.

HMMMMMM. Over to you crazy comments box cats!

Comments

Re: all in all you're just another dime in the jukebox baby

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Little Richard's wildness and madness is certainly in part inherent, and in part learned from Esquerita, who at that time had no white audience at all as far as I know - that's where most of Little Richard's visual, vocal and piano wildness derived from, changing his music from his early smooth blues recordings.

Also, there is tons of craziness (silliness, aggressive wildness, insanity and so on) in R&B of the '40s and early '50s, before it was largely replaced by rock 'n' roll.

But I don't think aiming for the big market meant toning things down, though there was some of that at first. Haley was a very big early star for just that reason - taking out the sexual threat both of the up and coming white stars like Elvis and Jerry Lee, but also just by being white when music was still highly segregated, which meant he could have a widespread hit in a way that Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner and so on couldn't. Elvis of course benefitted from that latter point too.

Re: all in all you're just another dime in the jukebox baby

[koganbot]

I'll defer to Martin's greater knowledge on this, so long as we agree that "white" doesn't necessarily equal "bland."