Rock - White Blues
Sure there were Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams and the Grand Ole Opry gang and Elvis and Bill Haley and the Rock 'n' Roll explosion - all were all was close to the blues. But there were other white kids who deliberately went back to the black roots of the blues.
1965 The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - blues harmonica and Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar in Chicago.
1966 Janis Joplin - the white Bessie Smith.
But a separate tree of white blues took root in England. It took The Beatles and The Stones to keep popular music embedded in the blues and it was modern mainstream pop derived from the blues that sidelined jazz in the second half of the 20th century.
White Blues in England.
1. 1950s Ken Colyer
Brother Bill located a rare few American blues records at Collet's Bookshop in London. Intriguing music which took hold of Ken who wanted to know more and wanted to play. The Crane River Jazz Band followed and then, courtesy of the Merchant Navy, a trip to New Orleans. On his return with Chris Barber and Monty Sunshine The Ken Colyer Jaz Band turned professional.
1. 1960s The Birth of Rock.
1956 Chris Barber started importing American bluesmen to play with his band in England. Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Sister Rosetta Thorpe ... Ken Colyer had first presented 'Skiffle Groups' during the interval at jazz concerts and in the 1950s Barber promoted the idea and, inspired by Lonnie Donegan, soon there was an explosion of participative guitar strumming by youngsters everywhere. 1956 'Rock Island Line', 'Midnight Special'.
Amongst many others John Lennon started by picking up a guitar and imitating - in 1956 all the kids did it, the 'Skiffle' craze (1956 to 58) was all the rage in England, 1 in 9 of all kids played in a Skiffle Group, you couldn't be Bill Haley or Elvis but you could play Skiffle, you only needed a wash board and a 'tea chest' bass and a guitar, sales went from 5,000 to 250,000 and importantly the music used only 3 chords, as advertised you could 'play in a day'! In 1958 there were 40,000 Skiffle Groups in England!
1961 Blues Incorporated - Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies left Chris Barber. Korner became something of a father figure to the young aspiring musicians who had been infected with a love of the blues - Eric Burdon (Animals), Jack Bruce (Cream), Eric Clapton (Yardbirds, Cream) and the Rolling Stones.
1962 The Yardbirds - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page. Lead guitar virtuoso. Chicago blues of Muddy Waters. 'For Your Love' was pop not blues and Clapton left in disgust! Beck's guitar experiments with fuzz tone, feedback, and distortion helped revolutionize British rock. Beck was fired in 1966. Page led them until the break up in 1968. The others were on drugs Page wanted the intense blues rock which led to Led Zeppelin.
1963 John Mayall's Blues Breakers - John Mayall, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce (both later in Cream), Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood (later all in Fleetwood Mac), Mick Taylor (later in The Rolling Stones)
1964 The Animals - Ray Burdon and Alan Price from Newcastle - 'The House of the Rising Sun', gritty, bluesy sound with the deep-voiced lead. The band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm & blues material.
1965 Rolling Stones - Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, Mick Taylor, Ron Wood & Charlie Watts . Pure blues - 'I can’t get no Satisfaction' 1965 Bob Dylan - an American singer-songwriter became a major figure in popular music and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. His songs, such as 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They Are a-Changin'' became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. A folk singer who at Newport in 1965 went electric and influenced the world of rock instrumentalists.
1966 Jimmy Hendrix - in London and forms the Experience.
1966 Cream - Eric Clapton (guitar), Jack Bruce (bass), Ginger Baker (drums). 'Disraeli Gears', 'Wheels of Fire'. The first modern rock 'group', electric blues from Muddy Waters and B B King, heavy metal from Robert Johnson,
1967 The Who - songwriter/guitarist Pete Townshend, singer Roger Daltrey, bassist/songwriter John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. Smashed their equipment at Monterey. 'Tommy' a rock opera.
1967 The Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. 'Sergent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.
2. 1960-70s. Art & Theatre Rock.
1967 Pink Floyd - psychedelic rock music and avant-garde progressive rock music. Syd Barrett, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright. Known for philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative cover art, and the elaborate live '14 Hour Technicolor Dream' show at Alexandria Palace - a big event and a financial disaster. Most people were on drugs ... 1980 'The Wall' the scale of the show was gargantuan;, it included 45 tons of equipment, inflatable puppets, a bomber plane and a wall which was 160 feet wide and 35 feet high ...
1972 David Bowie - 'Ziggy Stardust' in a multicoloured jumpsuit with his arm curled limply around guitarist Mick Ronson's shoulder! Pure theatre.
1972 Roxy Music - art school graduate Bryan Ferry (vocals and keyboards). 'Virginia Plain' with Bowie concerts were massively elaborate affairs, the audience were understandably gobsmacked by the costumes and dry ice but some were less taken with the blatant theatricality.
1973 Genesis - Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins, evolved from a
60s pop band from Charterhouse, with moody, simple guitar-driven melodies, to a
progressive art rock band ...
3. 1970s Heavy Metal.
1968 Led Zeppelin - formed from The Yardbirds by Jimmy Page with Robert Plant vocals.
1970 Black Sabbath - 'Heavy Metal' band from Birmingham. Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Terence 'Geezer' Butler (bass), and Bill Ward (drums). Slow, sludgy heavy rock sound before, 'louder than Zeppelin'. The guitar sound heard was largely down to Tony Iommi and an accident he had while working at a sheet metal factory. He had accidentally cut off the ends of his third and fourth fingers in a cutting machine. In a desperate bid to play guitar again, Iommi fashioned some makeshift finger tips out of melted plastic and leather and relearned the guitar. He ended up detuning the strings to lessen the strain on his fingers. In doing so discovered a new, heavier guitar sound, Sabbath's idea was to 'make music that would scare people'; their darker lyrical themes of death and references to Satan seemed to resonate with those tired of the 60s optimism and flower power and were looking for something altogether harder and darker. Fast, loud, scary, guitar riffs in black leather and studs.
1972 Deep purple - Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillian, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice. 'Machine Head', 'Smoke On The Water' which included one of the most famous riffs in rock history.
4. Punk Rock. Interlude.
1975 The Ramones - a New York rock band often regarded as the first punk rock group. They performed and played 2,263 concerts, touring virtually non-stop for 22 years. Passion and fury, DIY rock.
1975 Patti Smith - 'Horses', 'punk rock's poet laureate', she brought a feminist and intellectual take to punk music and became one of rock and roll's most influential musicians.
1975 The Sex Pistols - English punk rock band, London. Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. An iconic and highly influential.
5. 1980s Stadium Rock.
1975 Bruce Springsteen and his East Street Band - 'Born To Run' street music and blue collar American imagery, dense layering of instruments and his innovative use of piano and saxophone. It took a lengthy three months to record! The album's distinctive sound helped carve out a style that would come to dominate the rock charts in the 1980s, superseding Bob Dylan's rock of the 1970s.
1975 Queen - a seminal English rock band, Brian May, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor and John Deacon. Britain's most successful band of the past three decades with a large international fan base. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' typifies their musical diversity, lush multi-layered arrangements, vocal harmonies and incorporation of audience participation into their live performances ... 'We are the Champions', 'We will Rock You' ...
1976 U2 - a rock band from Dublin consistently one of the most popular acts in the world since the mid-1980s. The band are one of the most successful bands of all time. The band was formed when Bono (vocals and guitar), Edge (guitar, keyboards and vocals) and Adam Clayton (bass guitar) answered an advert placed by Larry Mullen (drums, percussion and vocals), they were teenagers at the time with limited musical proficiency ... ambitious 'Zoo TV' ...
1977 Dire Straits - a British rock band, Mark Knopfler (guitar and vocals), his brother David Knopfler (guitar), John Illsley (bass), and Pick Withers (drums). Although the band were formed in an era when punk rock reigned, they worked within the conventions of classic rock, albeit with a stripped-down sound that appealed to modern audiences weary of the overproduced stadium rock of the 1970s. 'Money for Nothing' ...
1977 The Police - a three-piece rock band Stewart Copeland, Sting and Andy Summers, strongly influenced by reggae music. Coming to prominence in the wake of the punk rock phenomenon, they rose to become one of the most popular groups in the world in the early 1980s. 'Roxanne' ...
1977 Kiss - voted the most popular band in America, a rock band formed in New York City in 1973. Easily identified by their trademark face paint and stage outfits, the group rose to prominence on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire-breathing, blood spitting, smoking guitars and pyrotechnics.
6. 1990s Alternative Rock in the USA.
1991 Nirvana - Kurt Cobain followed early underground bands like Black Flag who drew inspiration from the DIY ethos of punk, a network of fans, clubs and fanzines sustained the scene and launched the careers of bands like REM, The Pixies and Hüsker Dü on the Seattle scene, culminating in the success of Nirvana and 'Nevermind'.
In the days when 'Teen Spirit' was a brand of deodorant,
'grunge' was something that blocked the sink and REM still had religion,
'alternative rock' was hard to find. Those in the know followed the advice of
The Replacement and tuned their radio to 'the left of the dial' in search of
more challenging, authentic and passionate guitar music than the spandex and
hairspray acts that straddled mainstream rock in the 80s.
1970s - at this point white Rock has nearly buried Jazz. Elvis, The Beatles,
Black Blues/Pop has also done its damage to Jazz. Rhythm and Blues, Ray Charles,
Motown,
In 1971 Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong dies. Then, in May 1974 Edward 'Duke' Ellington dies.
In 1977 the Rock idol Elvis Presley dies.
The Disco dance craze is on the rise.
Gil Scott Heron starts experimenting with a new type of music that will be called rap. It is a form of spoken poetry to music.
1980s - in 1981 the Sonny "Walkman" becomes popular and in 1983 the CD is introduced. Both help to change the public attitude to listening to music and spark a huge nostalgia for many different types of music, including jazz.
1990s - 1992 brings a new form of jazz called 'Acid' jazz. However, it is a short passing fad.
Then came Hip Hop ...
A variety of Blues inspired popular music and small group improvised swinging jazz continue to excite and entertain. This stuff will never die! Today there are many bands out there keeping the tradition alive, jazz is becoming more and more popular. Many are 'tribute' bands others are young groups, everybody wants to sing and play.
Salsa. Many of them play a Ska-Jazz mix. Ska is also derived from jazz and island music. Some good ska and/or jazz bands include The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the Cherry-Poppin Daddies. A great jazz singer/pianist is Harry Connick, Jr.
American Popular music is one evolving tree of sounds -
Negro Spirituals and field chants with a shout and response style with repetitive syncopated rhythms turned into Blues music - music of the youth of that era
Blues musicians like Thomas A. Dorsey took the blues into the
Southern Baptist Churches to give us Gospel Music loved all over the world as
much as Jazz and Blues and considered by everyone outside the USA as an integral
style of Jazz - music of the youth of that era.
Blues evolved and influenced early ragtime and Minstrelsy, and later hot parade
and dance bands, which became Dixieland or Traditional Jazz Bands and the blues
still influences many styles of Jazz today - music of the youth of that era
Blues also inspired the development of Country and Western Music
and Rock and Roll which both matured into different segments of popular music -
the music of the youth of that era
Today we have more fragmentation -
Swing, Bebop and Modern Jazz evolved from the jazz of the 1920s - music of the youth of yet another generation
New Country which is what Country and Western evolved into - music for the youth of this era
Rock 'n' Roll, boogiefying songs, singer/songwriters, Folk Rock, Heavy Metal, Reggae, New Wave, Techno pop, rap & Hip Hop. Rock, Heavy Metal, Punk Rock, Rap and Hip Hop is the evolution of Rock & Roll - music for youth of this era
Then there's the Brits - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Andrew Lloyd Webber ...
Some reminiscences -
I grew up and entered the music world in the early sixties when Dixieland/Traditional Jazz was not even heard of by most musical youth who were just getting into old music of the Post WWII Blues and early Rock and Roll
I had to go looking for Dixieland music, which I loved as soon as I found it, but I had no place to play it and make a living, so I followed the money trail and played all the more popular variants except the Hip Hop Rap and Heavy Metal which does not appeal to me.
I am going out and playing Music where ever it is played and there is a Substantial audience, I play GOOD music not just Dixieland. Any professional musician who is engaged in trying to make a living in pursuing this profession has to do the same thing to maintain a liveable wage and pay the bills.
I am fortunate enough to be able to play and I mix my repertoire of musical offerings to please the audience in front of me at the time, and the mixture comprises many styles of GOOD music.
I try to present the best of each style and use it tastefully, often creating a musical journey through time and exposing them to music and styles and songs that they may never have even heard depending upon their ages.
To play only ONE style of music is suicide for working musicians, I have found that music that makes me happy also makes my audiences happy.
Most Traditional Jazz Societies have shut out the rest of the
music world that does not play their kind of music and unfortunately isolating
themselves. As did the 'Country & Western' 'Grand Ole Opry' generation. Neither
of them can buy Radio airplay in today's world,
Music ain't nothin but a bunch of notes, it's how and when and where you put
them that make it magic.
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