Someone in the “white music sucked in the 50s” thread mentioned that 50s/early 60s producers abused slapback echo. I decided to make a thread to say: no, they didn't. They *used* it. Someone else repeated Christgau's pathetic claim that Patsy Cline's records were better with their production fucked with by CD-era remaster producers. I say again: no.
Christgau's "98% of metal listeners are white men" comment is true of all rock. He's deluded if he thinks black people give one solitary fuck about any of his favorites. It's noteworthy when a white artist matters to black people; usually it doesn't happen. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, it's just a fact.
What's my point? My point is that as a man in his early thirties, I resent being asked to eternally salaam one bunch of ancient records and regard another slightly older bunch of ancient records as beyond contempt. 1956 good, 1953 bad? The evidence of my ears refutes that. So much of rock 'n' roll now sounds like a total sham, people who can't sing at all being hustled into a recording studio to cut a record because they're the right age. They piled them high, and sold them cheap. Meanwhile you have Jo Stafford, Dean Martin, Patsy Cline. The sound world of Mantovani. Exquisite arrangements. The highest fidelity of their day. Am I meant not to be able to hear that rock 'n' roll only happened because people too young to discriminate suddenly had disposable income?
Rock rolled on. Today, there are people younger than me forcing themselves to rate "Bony Moronie" and roll their eyes at "That's Amore". 1957’s equivalent would have been a youth culture that venerated ragtime and despised Sousa. Wouldn't both positions have been equally weird? I'd rather listen to traditional pop's transmissions from another planet – a more graceful, sophisticated one, than listen to "Chantilly Lace" and try to hear my life in it when it's not fucking there.
TL;DR: Liking rock 'n' roll is staid; liking trad pop takes imagination.
Bentley Brooks
Just like both, fucking who gives a shit what a dickhead like Christgau thinks?
Gabriel Diaz
Fuck Christgau. Gave 'Welcome to Sky Valley' a bomb, his opinions will never matter to me, and they shouldn't to anyone else either.
Michael Howard
Agreed, my point was not to make another Christgau thread, he's not the worst offender, but attack the zombie rock 'n' roll culture.
Kayden Young
and for some reason he gave an A- to Souljaboytellem.com
Jayden Smith
What white artists do blacks even like?
Adrian Moore
but yeah OP, I enjoyed reading your opinion, sadly I can't state my own because I listen to neither old rock'n'roll nor trad pop
Dylan Morgan
nirvana eminem
Brandon Young
I think there's a lot of weird trends in music history/music criticsm like this. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Rock n Roll is presented in retrospect as this big new thing that wiped everything before it off the map and that everything before it was sterile and lacking in redeeming qualities. Same with Punk music or the Alt Rock boom of the 90s. It's definitely an accepted narrative written by those who came into music through those trends. I agree though, there's tons of great music after the Classical era but before 1956 that just gets sidelined because it doesn't fit in what the critics want to say. Trad Jazz or Music Hall or whatever are an important part of musical heritage as well that just aren't given credence.
Angel Cox
but rock n roll was invented by black people rocks original audience was black people
Nathaniel Parker
red hot chili peppers
Ryan Anderson
Explain.
Jackson Jackson
Yeah, and they moved on after about six years. It's whites who've beaten it to death and buggered its corpse.
Jeremiah Ramirez
Well, the whole field of jazz, not just trad jazz which was an odd revival, is incredibly rich. And pop itself had so many shades to it before rock 'n' roll got started.
Noah Jenkins
But I agree, there's a chronological chauvinism based on very little.
black man invent bangy guitar bass white man say "sounds cool" rock music become a profit genre black man say "this is not rock" go off and make other music I don't know why I'm typing like this
Easton Roberts
Dude, I just don't like traditional 50s pop, why is that an issue to you? The good rock of that era is actually appealing to me in comparison.
Camden Flores
Good, but not as good as this, by the least rock 'n' roll singer imaginable.
I can't believe I'm being venerated outside of my own thread, you shit taste niggers are obsessed
Cooper Lewis
It's not an issue if you've tried with it. It's the dismissal that's the issue.
Jeremiah Barnes
Tell me more of Little Richard's Power Soul Vocal father
Carson Hill
Whites make the best rock, though.
Alexander Davis
This fucking sucks.
Adam Taylor
It was originally an autocorrect of power and soul
Mason White
The thing they turned rock 'n' roll into, they're best at, but nobody else wants to do it anyway.
Parker White
Why do you think it sucks? It has it all. The voice, the jazz, the dissonance, the production. A classic.
Landon Roberts
All that and it still manages to be boring. Just realized the guy's English. That explains a lot. England didn't have anything good until the Shadows came along.
Jace Long
It's only boring to you because it was introduced as being by "the least rock 'n' roll singer", proving my point.
Charles Hill
I do like rock 'n' roll and know it when I hear it so it would have been boring regardless of how it was introduced. That's not even the least rock 'n' roll singer. That title belongs to Pat Boone. I still don't know what point you're trying to make.
Sebastian James
You've just admitted that anything that's not rock 'n' roll is boring to you. That's pathetic.
I wasn't literally ranking them, the point is that Young isn't rock 'n' roll but that record is more sonically interesting than most rock 'n' roll records.
Levi Ross
All I said was that I like rock 'n' roll. You're reaching pretty far if you think that mean I find anything that's not rock 'n' roll boring.
Nathaniel Cruz
Look at what you said.
>I do like rock 'n' roll and know it when I hear it so it would have been boring regardless
That means "I knew it wasn't rock 'n' roll, so it was sure to bore me."
Adrian Morgan
>regardless of how it was introduced I was replying to your dumb assumption that your description of the singer would have any impact on whether or not I liked the song.
Joseph Gutierrez
You said you would have been bored anyway, which is saying that you only like rock 'n' roll, or else why would you bring rock 'n' roll into it?
Kayden Myers
>You said you would have been bored anyway That song would have been boring regardless of how it was introduced? Yes. >which is saying that you only like rock 'n' roll No. If it was a good song, I would have said so. Regardless of genre. >or else why would you bring rock 'n' roll into it? I didn't. You did when you posted the song.
Blake Baker
You said you would have been bored because you know rock 'n' roll when you hear it. That's what you said.
Cameron Gomez
I'd say this is more skiffle with some rockabilly effects, but it's interesting.
Xavier Morales
>I think there's a lot of weird trends in music history/music criticsm like this. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Rock n Roll is presented in retrospect as this big new thing that wiped everything before it off the map and that everything before it was sterile and lacking in redeeming qualities.
Which wasn't true. Actually, Christgau even said in a column that the rock and rollers of the '50s had more veneration for pre-rock pop than popular myth has you believe, after all they grew up when big band music and crooners dominated and their earliest exposure to music would have been Sinatra, Crosby, and Stafford.
Elvis thought rock and roll was kiddie stuff you grew out of and Frank Sinatra was what a serious, adult performer should aspire to be. Chuck Berry was influenced by swing music quite strongly, also his guitar style, rooted as it was in pre-rock forms of music, is almost impossible to emulate despite the countless covers of his songs (even Keith Richards himself could not play Chuck's licks and get the groove and tone exactly right). Rock as a business, as a lifestyle was a thing of the baby boomers, who were really the generation that rejected and overthrew traditional pop.
Carson Young
>Meanwhile you have Jo Stafford, Dean Martin, Patsy Cline. The sound world of Mantovani. Exquisite arrangements. The highest fidelity of their day. Am I meant not to be able to hear that rock 'n' roll only happened because people too young to discriminate suddenly had disposable income? The thing most critics are trying to argue was that rock and roll had drive, it was edgy, black, and you could dance to it, while traditional pop was slow, bland, saccharine, and white as a snowflake. The early 50s was a remarkably bland, conformist time and kids wanted to have a good time, and the postwar economic boom gave them the money, leisure time, and new technologies like the portable record player that allowed them to do it.
Noah Turner
Traditional pop didn't go away though, it lived on in new, insidious forms of adult contemporary music like Celine Dion and Adele.
If you were 13 years old in the 1950s and this was all you had for music, you'd welcome the coming of Little Richard too.
Jaxson Barnes
Agreed, it's not rock 'n' roll, but it's just as exciting, and for me, has more sonic interest than Summertime Blues, which was in the post I replied to.
Henry Rodriguez
The thing is, even before the rock explosion in 1955-56, white kids had been buying black R&B records for some time, people involved in the record business had been noticing this phenomenon for a few years at that time. It was clear that kids were looking for something more driving than, uh, Patti Page?
Liam Collins
Why are you repeating the standard line as if my posts didn't make it clear that I'd heard it many times before? It wasn't bland, it was sensual and dreamy and full of stories. Nor was it "white as a snowflake" - Dean Martin had more black friends than Elvis ever did.
Jonathan Gonzalez
R&B > R'n'R
Robert Gray
>I'd rather listen to traditional pop's transmissions from another planet – a more graceful, sophisticated one, than listen to "Chantilly Lace" and try to hear my life in it when it's not fucking there Ok, I see what your problem is and I also found this picture of you.
You see, rock and roll and other forms of music that have a strong beat you can dance to...they tend to appeal to sociable people who go to parties, bump ass, pick up girls. That sort of thing. Of course a shut-in basement dweller can't appreciate such music.
Daniel Sanders
But don't you get it? Pop was not all anyone had. There was always jazz and classical. This is not taking into account folk or race records. All more interesting than the literal scam that was rock 'n' roll.
If I had been 13 then, I wouldn't have wanted anything more from pop than this. Listen to that voice, man. Rock 'n' roll was for the credulous.
Daniel Peterson
Excuse me, I love early rock 'n' roll but don't do any of those things.
Adam Williams
Jazz had stopped being danceable by the 50s and devolved into self-indulgent noodling for people who sit in a cafe as it's pouring rain outside. So something had to take its place.
Nathan Ramirez
Would Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley & Little Richard be considered rock and roll or rhythm and blues?
Colton Phillips
No man, rock 'n' roll fails as dance music. It's not sexy anymore, and nobody posting here can genuinely claim to find it so.
The point is that listening to old music is time travel. I'd rather travel to an interesting time and culture than an uninteresting one.
Adam Carter
>Implying white kids would be allowed to listen to "negro music"
Adrian Baker
Chuck Berry and Little Richard were definitely rock 'n' roll, Bo Diddley is debateable. I'd call him more blues.
Parker Powell
I didn't say jazz was danceable, although there was swing - and indeed, rock 'n' roll was basically sold on the same basis swing had been, but with much less skill and fewer overheads - few musicians + amplication taking the place of a dance band. Even the fashions look similar. But the real art of pop got lost.
The point is, you could dance to traditional pop, you just couldn't do rock 'n' roll dancing to it.
Gabriel Cooper
Early rock and roll's songwriting was limited to nonexistent, this was true. It was mostly party-down dance music, and the older generation at the time, raised on traditional pop written by Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Irving Berlin, bemoaned the loss of melody or songwriting in rock. So it took Dylan and the Beatles to give melody and songwriting to rock. This was the real rock revolution, in 1965 rather than 1955, and it paved the way for rock becoming serious business instead of a cheesy, loud teenage fad.
Colton Reed
Many of them already did. Make your mind up. Either their parents were racist, in which case they wouldn't have got to listen to Little Richard, or they weren't, in which case they had heard other stuff.
The point here isn't the Whig history bullshit of pretending that rock 'n' roll was neccesary or an improvement, it's just a question of what's interesting to listen to. I think rock 'n' roll was mostly non-music, and what was worthwhile is no longer stimulating. A foreign culture interests me more than one that's been shoved down my throat all my life, and rock 'n' roll is the latter.
Anthony Fisher
Yeah but even then, every time someone tries to bring back in some of what was lost, it gets slapped down as inauthentic - to something that isn't even authentic to anyone's experience these days anyway.
Jose Morris
Of course, rock 'n' roll wasn't the start of black music being heard by white teenagers, it was the start of black music being heard by stupid, conformist white teenagers. Rock is a conservative genre because rock 'n' roll was aimed at witless crackers.
Daniel Brown
>I didn't say jazz was danceable, although there was swing - and indeed, rock 'n' roll was basically sold on the same basis swing had been, but with much less skill and fewer overheads - few musicians + amplication taking the place of a dance band.
This is an important point. Big band swing used large orchestral ensembles, and WWII effectively put it out of commission. Musicians got drafted into the military and wartime rationing made it hard for bands to tour. After the war, swing died out due to changing tastes and postwar inflation making those large orchestral ensembles cost-prohibitive.
So for the first decade after WWII, pop music was mostly crooners and novelty songs, and it was dull, slow, and not danceable. During the early 50s, as I said, kids started buying black R&B records. The rock explosion at last came when Chuck Berry began writing songs that explicitly aimed at the teenage audience, and Elvis gave rock its first white superstar/sex symbol.
Ethan Roberts
But I'm glad someone else is acknowledging the facts.
I like dance music. I like music for listening to to. The canon of rock 'n' roll is these days neither one nor the other. It's not sexy, and it's not rewarding listening. It's as staid as the staidest traditional pop, but without the craft values or interesting difference from the now cliched rock idioms.
Joshua Phillips
>A foreign culture interests me more than one that's been shoved down my throat all my life, and rock 'n' roll is the latter. Please loosen the headband on your fedora. It's cutting off the circulation to your head.
Isaiah Bell
How has it been shoved down your throat in the 21st century?
>It's not sexy, and it's not rewarding listening. Except it is.
Tyler Long
Anything with a beat is danceable, and slow dancing was traditionally found sexier than fast dancing. It wasn't dull - are you one of those people who forgets that he never needed a product before its existence was advertised to him?
>at last came >gave rock
Why do you talk like this? Are you worried you'll notice how gimcrack the music is if you stop talking like a TimeLife infomercial starring the late Bobby Vee?
Jordan Allen
And there were other factors. During the early 50s, pop music in the form we know it today came into being thanks in large part to Mitch Miller and his crew at Columbia. While in earlier times, pop music was based around arrangements in a manner similar to classical music, Miller conceived of a new kind of pop music based on textures and studio effects rather than arrangements.
Technology also was a major factor. In 1949, RCA debuted the vinyl 45 and 33 RPM record format, which was more lightweight, easier to handle, less fragile, and less noisy than the old shellac 78 discs. The 45 discs in particular, because they were easier for careless young kids to handle, helped create a unique teenage music culture.
Colton Reed
Look, unfamiliar sounds will always be more interesting than familiar ones. Rock 'n' roll may have been the former once, but it's been the latter for as long as any of us has been alive. I'd rather listen to the recognisable but quite different sound worlds that came before it.
Constant documentaries reminding us to find it important. The canonization of it as official culture. Look at the inability of people on this thread to acknowledge how boring and stiff it is when it isn't just Fabian-tier con artistry.
It's completely staid. The fact that the guy's distorting his mic slightly changes nothing, it's like a gavotte or something. Even the sentiments of the lyrics are of a dead time.
Only to people who want to suck off their grandfathers and eat the dust that results.
Jonathan Jones
>conceived of a new kind of pop music
Again, why are you talking like someone with no soul of their own?
Lincoln Lee
>After the war, swing died out due to changing tastes Count Basie complained in the mid-50s that kids no longer came to his shows. As he put it, "I would ask [teenagers] why they didn't come to our performances and they told me 'We cannot dance to this music.' And I thought 'But there was dancing before.'"
Aaron Turner
>Even the sentiments of the lyrics are of a dead time But what of trad pop? Are not those songs also the sentiments of the lyrics of a dead time?
Brayden Fisher
OP is a guy whose grandmother used to collect tons of Elvis memorabilia and beat him while playing "Heartbreak Hotel" on the turntable.
Ryan Ortiz
This is it, the need for faster music didn't exist beforehand - that's not how capitalism works. Rock 'n' roll created the need which made the older music seem archaic. Nobody was sitting around going "gee, the only records I've ever heard with backbeats are somehow undanceable to me for reasons that don't even make sense, I hope someone invents rock 'n' roll soon". This kind of thinking is anchronistic, patronising and simply wrong-headed.
Robert Rodriguez
>Look at the inability of people on this thread to acknowledge how boring and stiff it is when it isn't just Fabian-tier con artistry.
You're the odd one out for a reason. We aren't "sheeple", you're just a contratian shit.
>Even the sentiments of the lyrics are of a dead time.
The lyrics are just there for the sake of having lyrics, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Tastes change of course. Even a lot of the rock that was out in the 70s like KISS or AC/DC would be undanceable to today's kids, the beat of it is too thin for today where the preference is for a really WHOOOMMM WHOOOMMM WHOOOMMM kind of beat.
Crafted speech is more timeless than spontaneous speech, and more interesting even when it isn't. The lyrics of "You Belong to Me" are image-rich and even sexually symbolic. The Bunker Hill record is just an old-timey guy hollering that he owns his girlfriend. Nobody feels like that anymore, and those who do, don't say it in those words.
Aiden Diaz
This, a lot of it was brooding and sounding almost ready to explode with pent-up energy.
>Nobody feels like that anymore, and those who do, don't say it in those words.
Why does that matter?
Luis Gutierrez
Exactly. But we keep being told by the whole industry of rock nostalgia and the people who imbibe its nonsense - like some of the posters here, for example - that that music is still exciting in some timeless way, and it's just not, any more than any other time's fashions are. The issue for me is that people talk as if those records were still new, and as if stuff from three years before or even the same year is irrecoverably old, and I don't feel that's the case at all.
Blake Fisher
That's almost parodically staid.
Because I'm not interested in masturbating over dead people's sex lives.
Evan Martinez
"I actually remember before there was rock and roll. Music was just...Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney, and then, one day, along comes Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, and Elvis, and it was like 'This is rock and roll'."
Ethan Bennett
Bill Haley was a cup of Ovaltine in human form, the idea that people ever found him exciting is hilarious.
Jayden Gray
Right. See, the point he's trying make here was that traditional pop had a certain...artifice to it. Meaning, professional songwriters would write standards and everyone would go out and sing them. The rock era brought about a change in that the performer wrote his own songs and they were personal and confessional, rather than whatever generic love ditty that Irving Berlin wrote for you. In essence, he's saying trad pop singers performed more for the sake of singing rather than because they "felt" the words of the song.
Frank Sinatra was a rare case of a trad pop performer who escaped this, he could make lyrics others wrote seem very personal and real in a way that, like, Perry Como could not. Dean Martin said of him "I don't get what ol' Frank gets so emotional over. It's just singing."
Robert Morgan
Is that the only criticism you can come up with? Every post you make is parodically staid. I feel like I'm listening to a Stan Freberg record.
>Bill Haley was a cup of Ovaltine in human form, the idea that people ever found him exciting is hilarious. Try and imagine him in a 1955 context though. J. Edgar Hoover actually had the FBI bug him because they thought he was a communist plant and he received death threats in the mail. And yes, Elvis, who was younger and sexier, soon replaced him.
Jaxon Evans
Rosemary Clooney was a great singer, check out this tasty shit:
But the record you linked *was* staid, it was like listening to Korla Pandit. Try finding a rock 'n' roll record that's sexy to people who weren't alive at the time, and isn't either a guy rasping "MIIINE" or some little pavane of a thing.
Angel Morgan
If only records like that were more than a rare exception.
It annoys me that they didn't use the original recording, but still neat.
Ryan Jackson
>Try to prove my subjective point
Nicholas Smith
Now a real fake industry plant was Ricky Nelson. His debut record, while amateurish as fuck, still sold over a million copies. He didn't work his way up from the bottom like Elvis or Chuck Berry, he was a successful TV star whose father figured he could also market him to rock-crazed teens.
Benjamin Murphy
But it isn't. Most of the simplistic aspect is pure cynicism.
