29 July 2008
Rhythm & Blues
Rock 'n' roll incorporated updated rhythm-and-blues traditions
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
Three prominent African Americans represent the rhythm & blues-based side of rock ’n’ roll. Chuck Berry was a songwriter/performer who addressed his songs to teenage America (white and black) in the 1950s; Little Richard cultivated a deliberately outrageous performance style that appealed on the basis of its strangeness, novelty, and sexual ambiguity; and Fats Domino’s work embodied the continuity of rhythm & blues with rock ’n’ roll. Domino was the earliest of the three to become an established performer, but all three crossed over to mainstream success within the first few months following the massive success of the white rocker Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.”
The biggest rock ’n’ roll star to come from the country side of the music world was Elvis Presley. In 1955, RCA Victor, a major label, set about trying to turn the “hillbilly cat” into a mainstream performer without compromising the strength of his appeal to teenagers. They succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Although Presley’s television performances were denounced by authorities as vulgar, the shows were attended by hordes of screaming young fans and admired on the screen by millions. And Presley’s records racked up astronomical sales from 1956 on into the early 1960s, establishing him as the biggest-selling solo artist of rock ’n’ roll, and then as the biggest-selling solo recording artist of any period and style – a title he still holds at the beginning of the 21st century!
Presley’s extraordinary popularity established rock ’n’ roll as an unprecedented mass-market phenomenon. His reputation as a performer and recording artist endured up to his death in 1977 at the age of 42 – and continues beyond the grave. Presley made fine records at many points throughout his career, but his principal importance rests upon his achievements during the early years of rock ’n’ roll. In 1956 Presley cut a handful of records that changed the musical world for himself and for those around him, and the unbridled exuberance of his live performances during that era became the model for every kid who wanted to move mountains by strumming a guitar, shaking his hips, and lifting his voice.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
