Phase I: Initiation - Rock and Roll!!!
by Henry Warwick

Shake, Rattle, and Roll! - Elvis Presley, 1954

Rock and Roll Music’s Initiation phase occurred during the catastrophic Renewal phase of the previously dominant style- Jazz. The playing style of Rock and Roll was a bluesy hybrid of different styles - a late development of the blues - rhythm and blues (which itself later transmogrified into simpler and less controversial "R&B" as it collided with greater influences from black Gospel Music). This was a particularly upbeat blues with a strong back beat- fun and danceable- music for mating rituals. The other stylistic parents of Rock and Roll were an influence of country music (as seen in early Elvis recordings) and pop vocal music, as found with the likes of Dean Martin. Rock and Roll also had a technological parentage, one largely novel to itself, the Electric Guitar, and one inherited from jazz, the trap kit. Other technological innovations critical to the development of Rock and Roll was the perfection of the record player, the development of the juke box, and the inclusion of radios in passenger cars.

The Trap Kit was invented at the turn of the 20^th Century, and was a technological innovation that was critical to the development of both Jazz and Rock and Roll. Prior to the development of the Trap Kit, drums were not as dominant a force in popular music. One could play timpani in an orchestra, or a snare or giant bass drum in a marching band configuration, but in the 19^th Century, one usually played the drums standing up, if drums were played at all. A seated drummer has feet free for other duties. The seated drummer was a creation of the Kick Drum (in 1908 by Ludwig) aided shortly thereafter in the 1920s, with the invention of the High Hat cymbals. This development of the trap kit was a critical moment, as it changed the composition of popular music ensembles. Seated with a kick drum, a percussionist could make an incredible amount of racket, and the propulsive dance beats that emanated from the Trap Kit emulated the power of the new modern industrial era, resonating with its unrelenting demand of repetition and emancipation from the strictures of Victorian cultural values. This put the beat more central to both the composition and performance of popular music. The effect was stunning and compelling — one drummer could easily fill a hall with a battery of beats.

The next question was- who can play with such an instrument? Who can withstand the thrashing? Mandolins, violins, flutes, recorders, and other more intimate instruments were instantly drowned out by the roar of the drums and the white noise of the cymbal crashes. With proper amplification yet to be invented and decades yet from popular availability, the job fell to the horn section to carry the melody, the bass viol to fill the bottom end, with the middle to be painted with another percussion instrument, the piano, and occasional wispy accents from a brightly strummed guitar. All this, just to be heard over the drums.

Amplification, which started with the development of telephony in the 19^th century, didn’t really get underway until the 1920s, and amplifiers were expensive, heavy, and relatively weak by today’s standards. In the late 1930s and through the 1940s, amplification technology grew tremendously, an electronic specter at the end of the big band era, and the first death knell for Jazz. This new and powerful amplification permitted the development of two instruments crucial to the development of rock and roll- the singer and the electric guitar.

Singers had existed since people had voices, but with the arrival of orchestras in Western Music and the development of Opera, singers had to use various techniques to properly project their voice over the power of an orchestra. Over the centuries, the development of several techniques designed to optimize the audibility of the voice- diaphragmatic singing and consistent vibrato, for example, became recognizable signifiers of classical technique, and was transferred to vocalists in ensembles who also had to compete with instruments. This enabled singers to "really belt it out" and be heard over a band, even a band with a trap kit, if the drummer held back a bit. Amplification changed all that. Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Billie Holliday- none of them had particularly strong voices- it was their intimate presence before the microphone that permitted their careers to exist, and set the stage for rock and roll vocalists. As the amplification permitted ever greater intimacy in performances, a small or gentle voice can be a powerful vehicle, and detailed nuanced inflections in a voice became as powerful a tool in a singer’s toolkit as diaphragmatic projection and vibrato was in a previous and very recent era. Also, this emphasis on intimacy and nuance in vocal performance made it possible to celebrate voices that previously would have been dismissed.

The development of the electric guitar goes back to the 1920s, but it didn’t really come to the fore until the 1940s with the playing of Charlie Christian and Django Rheinhardt in a Jazz context, and even more importantly, the technological innovations by Les Paul and Leo Fender with their developments of the solid-body electric guitar in the late 1940s. Prior to the development of the solid-body, the electric guitar was basically a regular wide-bodied acoustic guitar with a microphone stuck under the strings. Its primary function was percussive, not melodic. It was boldly strummed as a harmonizing accent to the beat and melody. There were a few notable geniuses of this early "electric hollow body" guitar, as noted earlier - Christian and Rheinhardt among a few others - but for the most part, the guitar (much less an electric one) was not an important instrument in an era of big bands as loud brass instruments and the trap kit dominated the weak and expensive amplifiers of the time.

In the 1940s big bands would often have over a dozen players blasting away on their horns. With the electric guitar, the band could shrink to an ensemble, and eventually to a quartet of electric guitar, electric bass guitar, drums, and a vocalist who could play some rhythm guitar- the atavistic remnant of the bygone pre-amplification age.

The development of better amplification and the solid body guitar had a remarkable result. It was no longer necessary to have a crowd of horn players to compete with the trap kit. One or two guitars with amplifiers were more than capable of filling a hall with sound. Hollow body electric guitars soon shrank in depth from 75 — 100mm to 50 or less. The innovations in guitar playing spearheaded by the blues vocabulary of players of the 1920s and 1930s and the jazz players of the 1940s provided a new vocabulary of musical expression for this new ensemble of players — rhythm and blues - which is what happens when you put an uptempo aggressive drummer in a blues band of electric guitars and amplified vocals.

Shortly after Fender and Les Paul’s developments of the solid body electric guitar came the electric bass guitar, an instrument even more inextricably linked to rock and roll and all that came after. Materially, and technologically, the stage was now set for a new hybrid popular music. As usual, the fundamental inspiration came from black American culture. I’ll get to that in a few moments.

Music must have a distribution system. During the Depression of the 1930s and early 1940s, record sales languished, and the radio became the greatest method of distributing music and promoting record sales. Radio sets dropped precipitously in price in the late 1920s, and when the economy collapsed in 1930, the bands that sold the best and were the most popular were the ones that received the greatest airplay, a fundamental structure in music promotion and distribution prevalent to this very day. Musical record technology developed very little during this time. The dominant record type was the 78rpm record. In the 1930s, 33rpm records were developed, but were used almost exclusively by radio stations, as the turntables for these records were few and expensive.

In the late 1940s, several different formats came to the fore — the 16rpm record, the seven-inch 45rpm record, the 33rpm LP, and other hybrids (like the 12inch 45rpm, or the seven inch33rpm, etc) were developed. After a bit of wrangling in the corporate cultures, primarily between RCA Victor and Columbia Records, licensing issues were resolved, and everyone was able to proceed forward and make records in any format that were playable on anyone’s turntable. This permitted the development of the jukebox.

A complex contraption, the jukebox allowed young people to hear their favorite records in settings where they could congregate for mating rituals. It was in this milieu that Rock and Roll appeared. Another critically important development for the popularization of Rock and Roll was the common availability of the automobile thanks to the relatively enlightened Fordist and Keynesian economic policies of the American Government and the Government’s Corporate Owners and Sponsors.

Another important influence of the passenger car was it permitted mingling of people from great distances. Prior to the car, one was limited by how far one could walk or ride a horse drawn carriage, which usually only doubled one’s distance. Cars provided increased mobility on an order of magnitude over the horse. By the early 1950s, it was common for older teens of the burgeoning American middle class (and therefore, predominantly white) to have their own car. The radio in the car fed them the music they wanted to hear (Rock and Roll) on the way to the soda shop where they could dance to even more Rock and Roll. Or, they could take the car for a drive to some secluded place, where they could "give up all control on that vinyl tuck and roll" - listening to the Wolfman of Del Rio broadcasting 50,000 watts from Mexico, bouncing off the ionosphere overmuch of the American West — or Alan Freed from Cleveland — or other DJ from New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and elsewhere — all playing that "demon rock and roll music".

Thusly wholly associated with teen mating rituals, Rock and Roll was further condemned for its influence over youth and despised for its fundamental stylistic parentage. This music, Rhythm and Blues, was wholly identified with the black community, but was attracting increasing attention from white audiences. This separation of black and white identified musics, which persists to this day, was a sad by-product of the post Reconstruction apartheid that hung like a hideous leaden yoke on the neck of American Culture.

Drawing on music present in Rhythm and Blues, especially with artists like Little Richard, a white DJ in Cleveland, Alan Freed, brought Rhythm and Blues into broader acceptance by calling it "Rock and Roll." So named, the category found a larger racially mixed demographic and quickly grew, catapulting some of its practitioners into super-stardom. One of them would become emblematic of the Initiation Phase: Elvis Presley.

A white man singing black music with a tinge of country music and molded as a pop vocalist in a country where drinking fountains were racially segregated found an immediate audience in one of the most unique demographic flukes in the history of western culture- the post world war 2 Baby Boom, specifically the American Baby Boom. These adolescents had more disposable income than any other generation of young people in history, and they invested their allowances on the procurement of commodities that reflected their interests as rebellious youth- music frowned upon by their racist elders and parents. Music that was rambunctious, danceable, and lyrically tied to their raging hormones. This music was not politically sophisticated. This was music of the mating ritual. The same raging hormones that propelled the jazz beat in the 20s and swing in the 30s and 40s drove Rock and Roll sweaty fevered beat. Of course, their parents, brought up on the complexities of Jazz and Big Band music looked down on Rock and Roll, much the same way their parents, brought up on Tin Pan Alley, Ragtime, Barbershop quartets, and Classical Music looked at Jazz and Big Band, and the same way Rock and Roll parents today look down at Hip Hop and Rap Music.

As rebellious as it was, it wasn’t merely the rebellion of Rock and Roll that made it distinctive — it was Rock’s dependence on new electronic Technology and the interests created by the enormous wealth of the Baby Boom demographic that brought Rock and Roll into focus. Within a few years, the music industry would understand what Rock and Roll truly represented, and it took one Superstar to bring that point into complete awareness.

Elvis Presley was that superstar — he brought black Rhythm and Blues into a white suburban focus through a tweaked lens of country music and pop, and made millions for himself and the music industry in the process. His incredible success was an unambiguous signal to the industry that the style of Rock and Roll was a viable product, and could hold its own in the music market. Elvis’s music, in terms of style and presentation, was completely of the Initiation Phase, but his success made him the harbinger of the next phase- Legitimation.

Henry Warwick (hw@creativesynth.com)

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