Alright, 1950’s. And only the early stuff.
While we may think it’s not important, you’d be surprised at how much of this
music you’ve not only heard, but you also know some of the words to. The 50’s
was basically when the idea of commercial music became a household one. The
average well off household was now able to afford a phonograph, amplification
for live performance had gotten significantly better, and television relied on
music programming much more heavily in it’s early days, before Big Brother and
Duck Dynasty and cartoons and whatever. Now, before you jump the gun, there was
plenty of amazing, “popular,” music, before the 50’s. But what makes ’51 to ’55
so significant was that 1951 was the first year of the Billboard Hot 100. For
the first time in human history, we were cataloging sales, airplay, and fiscal
statistics. This also meant that the public could for the first time really get
a good idea of what was “good,” without relying on T.V. or word of mouth. So
let’s start off with a fairly signature piece, you’ll probably recognize this
song right off the hop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNuX7bs2qAM
(Mr. Sandman – The Chordettes)
That song was only the #18 single for the
year 1955, but it’s lived on and on, been covered by a bunch of artists, and is
still a recognized song today. Now right off the hop, we can notice a few
things that are amazingly different from the average popular song today. The
first thing I noticed, is how spare the instrumentation is, at least at the
start of the song. The start of the song 4 women around one microphone, a
piano, and one person farther off mic slapping their knees as percussion. And
that’s not made up, the only percussion is someone slapping their knees. Later
on around the second verse the backup band comes in with some drums bass and
piano, but they’re quiet, spare, and non-essential to the song as it’s been
established. But if you were to show that to any executive today, first thing
they’d tell you is it needs more rhythm. So immediately we see that in the
early days, percussion was not as essential to a hit song as it is today. One
thing this song does have in common with modern music today though: This song
was not written by the Chordettes. No, this song was written by Pat Ballard,
and then first recorded by the Chordettes in 1954. So, back then, same as
today, pop artists would often utilize compositions of others, or have someone
specifically write for them, to help make a hit. I’ve never been a fan of this
process, but you can’t say it doesn’t work.
The biggest similarity this song holds with
modern popular music is probably the most important one we can note though.
This song is catchy. The melody almost instantly gets written in your brain,
and the words are not only fairly intelligent, but they’re also memorable,
meaning you’ll be singing it to yourself all day. And that’s the thing that the
early 50’s really heralded, popular music, being the catchiest music. That may
sound silly, but if you step back 4 years and listen to the song that was the
#1 single overall that year, you’ll get what I’m on about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaFtsqU2V6U
(Nat King Cole, Too Young)
Now I don’t know about you, but the
instrumentation sounded like the background music from an early Disney movie,
not the number one selling single of the year. But when popular music began, it
wasn’t really as much for the kids, because back then, phonographs and singles
were a bit more expensive, so the primary buyers of music would’ve been adults.
So that fact resounded noticeably through the entire chart for the first few
years it was around. Most of the time, the big singles were crooners like Frank
Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole. One thing to notice as well is that
there were no “long hits,” during this era of music, if a song clocked in a
over 3 minutes, it was getting up there. Having a hit longer than 4 minutes,
was unheard of, so even for a complicated piece of music like this, it was
important that it could be easily digested by the general public.
One other thing to notice, and please don’t
take this the wrong way, but Nat King Cole is black. And that doesn’t sound
like it means much of anything, but in 1951, public segregation was still a
thing, and would remain “a thing,” until 1964. So it’s very significant to note
that music may have actually been one of the driving forces behind ending segregation
in the United States, because for a black man, in 1951, to have the #1 selling
single in America, almost certainly means that many musicians and officials are
forced by nature not only to recognize him as a peer, but possibly as a
superior individual.
we take it for granted how easy it is to
identify a hit nowadays. Currently, it’s a dance club bass and snap rhythm,
with synth leads, dangerous and computer assisted vocals with a very thick and
heavy sound, and usually very distinct buildups and bass drops. But when we
compare Nat King Cole’s #1 hit, to the one that came a year later, we see that
the market back then was quite a bit more, tasteful, and really didn’t need
trends to tell them what music was the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnHLKM8hQR8
(Leroy Anderson – Blue Tango)
Alright, let’s not dance around the point.
That was an instrumental song. It was an orchestral piece by Leroy Anderson,
and in the year it was released, that single outsold people like Vera Lynn, Les
Paul, and Eddie Fisher. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a great piece of music,
but in contrast even to the other songs we’ve heard, it’s hard to believe that
this song was the most popular of it’s year. I mean, yes, it’s catchy, it’s a
decent length, and it has distinguishable “verse and chorus format.” So when we
really consider it, back then, it may not have been a huge surprise to have a
song like this as a number one, or in the charts at the very least.
Although weirdly, I wanna talk about the
number 2 song from 52’ now. Because it’s amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeIce5NsWKk
(Wheel of Fortune – Kay Starr)
Did you hear that? That woman is amazing.
That voice is astounding, completely mesmerizing. The instrumentation is a
great mix of jazz percussion and orchestral arrangement, and the soundscape
that comes with that wheel spinning at the beginning, may make this one of the
best songs I’ve ever heard pre 1965. I almost get the urge to headbang to those
opening strings like you would to metal, and that says something. And that
brings me to my next point. If you wanted to make a hit in the 50’s, you needed
talent, and I don’t just mean writing talent, I mean, you had to have mad
chops. Because back then, studios were not very complex, and weren’t capable of
much, you were lucky if you able to do more than a couple overdubs, and use
more than a few mics at a time. Which meant that whole orchestra was recorded
live to tape all at once, and that woman had to nail that amazing, amazing
performance, in one take. It was essentially like playing live, if you messed
up while the tape was rolling, it was on the record. Once it was set down,
there was really almost nothing you could do to alter it. That vibrato in her
voice was all her, because it had to be. Today, hit artists scarcely even have
to practice, as long as they can do a comparable job in studio, after as many
takes as they want, it can be pitch corrected and fiddled with to be “perfect.”
And as far as instrumentation goes, that could’ve all been done with one
keyboard.
Now when I looked at 53’s top song, I
realized that even back in the 50’s, the entertainment industry was all bundled
together, music, television, and movies could really all walk hand in hand.
That’s because 53’s top song is literally called: “The song from Moulin Rouge.”
It’s instrumental for the first two minutes of the song, and then is a love
ballad for the next two. It’s ultimately not very catchy, and although it’s
still a good song, you can guess that it was perhaps only due to the movie’s
influence that the song became popular. And when you think of it, that’s
something that’s happened pretty consistently throughout popular music.
Sometimes a song that really would’ve been ignored or significantly less famous
if it weren’t for the ties it had to something else.
So let’s talk instead about alternative
music. Now every decade has a different interpretation of alternative music. In
the 80’s Punk and Hardcore, and metal, were the big alternative genres. In the
90’s hardcore distilled into grunge and became a smash success. The 90’s
alternative was heavy, dance based electronic music, using heavy sampling and
synth, like the 80’s but heavier. As you’d expect, the 2000’s subsequently
introduced heavy dance pop songs.
So what was alternative in the early 50’s?
Rock and Roll. Through those early years, rock had never made it onto the top
30 singles of the year, and that’s mainly because it was seen by parents and
adults as rebellious, loud, sin-inducing music that should be kept away from
their children, but as singles got cheaper, and opinions changed, rock began to
make it’s first flirtation with the mainstream in late 1954, and by 1955, the
second biggest single of the year was a rock song. Now, I know it sounds as
though I’m just giving the typical runaround when it comes to parents not
wanting their kids to hear “the devil’s music,” but it’s worth noting that the
early 1950’s saw a spike in religious participation in America. Between the
president’s open encouragement of faith, and the increasing influence from
emerging media, America was in the midst of a sort of Religious revival. The
line from the Pledge of Allegiance, “One nation under god,” wasn’t actually
added in until 1954, and the motto of “In God We Trust,” was created shortly
after. So it’s then easy to understand that there was nearly public outcry when
Rock and Roll music began to appear in Radio in television, but as we see,
there’s no way to stifle a trend. So in 1995, a rock song, if not in fact, THE
rock song, was number two in the charts. So I’ll let it play me off. I can
guarantee you’ve all heard this one before, thanks for listening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_JZcC0tHI
(Bill Haley and his Comets – Rock Around the Clock)
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