DBWI: Rock and Roll

When I was in Memphis on my business trip, I heard this local music called "Rock and Roll" apparently it was a big thing in the South in the 1950's and 1960's, but eventually faded out.
It seemed to be a decent type of music, however, it is played with these awful electrified guitars, sounds like cat's screeching when they get heavy into the solo piece. I think I might have liked it more if I had been a kid listening to it for the first time, who knows?
 
I did a google search for "rock and roll;" it said that had someone named Elvis Pres-something not been killed in a truck accident it would have been an influential style of music.

Maybe it would have rivaled swing, country, and the Baroque rival on the popular music charts.

(OOC: slaps face to make sure this is not real:eek:)
 
The way you describe "rock and roll" reminds me of certain genres of music found in many areas of the former Ottoman Empire, i.e. Greece, the Middle East, the Balkans, etc., only substitute the electric guitars with electric "tetrachordo" lutes/mandolins (the Greeks call them either a "mpouzouki" or "outi" depending on the size of the instrument), and I can see why some were angry with this development.
 
I really wish Midgard would post his thoughts on this Rock and Roll, he's our resident expert on Dark-Swing and Black-Country, ever seen the swing set all gothed out, it's beautiful.

I do think that this rock and roll may have strained racial relationships in the USA a little more, if whites had started to play rock and roll and "stolen" it from the black musicians.

But with the King of Swing records signing artists of all backgrounds, it blended the teen scenes together.
 
I looked it up in a Dictionary of Music, its a form of jazz that never really caught on with mainstream society. Makes you wonder what would have happened to Carl Perkins if that Elvis fellow hadn't have died.
 
There's something called the Blues which is still popular among African-Americans and which has a cult following among white musicians, is this what you are referring to?

BTW John Lennon was the best Prime Minister the Brits ever had :cool:
 
There's something called the Blues which is still popular among African-Americans and which has a cult following among white musicians, is this what you are referring to?

BTW John Lennon was the best Prime Minister the Brits ever had :cool:
"Something called the Blues"... you need to get out more :p Blues is kinda big here in Australia - there was a huge explosion of it in the '70s (like The Dogs - absolutely huge nationally, but never popular at all in the US) and it's remained fairly popular ever since. Country's still the mainstay in the music scene, of course (bands like Murphy's Lore, 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts, etc), but there are still plenty of blues bands (Powderfinger is an obvious example) and Australian country music tends to incorporate aspects of blues nowadays too.

I heard a couple of "rock and roll" songs a few years ago, and it's not exactly the same but kinda similar. Rock and roll is more oriented towards a heavy beat though, and it is generally louder & less soulful than the blues. Not sure I liked it - it seemed a little too... simple.

By the way, about John Lennon - even though I agree with you totally, that was a bit of a non-sequitur don't you think?

(OOC: "The Dogs" = Cold Chisel. In OTL they named themselves after an obscure song that wouldn't have been written in TTL. Jimmy Barnes actually wanted to rename the band "The Dogs" but they were already known as Cold Chisel so it was too late to change.)
 
BTW John Lennon was the best Prime Minister the Brits ever had

This is probably a reference to the fact that John Lennon while in highschool played in a Skiffle band (also know as the British Blues) called "The Quarrymen".

There was a "This is your Life" special about 10 years ago on Lennon and they bought together some of the former band members.

There was a Peter/Paul McArther?? who was now a high school principal.

George Jardson?? who was now a Vicar in some small town in northern England.

Steve Sutter?? who is a well known artist in Germany along with wife?

They all said the if either Bundy Halley or Ellis Preston had lived they may have stuck with the music.

They all tried playing together at the end of the show and it sucked big time, all I can say is thank god they didn't.:D
 
I have heard the electrified guitar played and it is simply awful.

Remember the early Jimi Hendrix zydeco music? When he would play his accordion too close to the microphone? That's what the electrified guitar sounds like. Not really music.
 
OOC: Has anyone here actually LISTENED to any Rock and Roll songs from the 1950's by anyone OTHER than Elvis? :p The ones I've heard are what we would now consider light/soft rock. [/OOC]

Whats with all the hatred towards electric guitars? They don't sound any different then acoustic ones, they just have a little plug-in thingie so that you can connect them to a speaker. Some of my favorite country music stars use the things!

All I can say is that if it sounds like a friggin accordian the musician just doesn't know how to play the damm thing. They'd sound nearly the same way with an acoustic if they tried. That wierd sound you are describing can only mean the musician is in desperate need of some guitar lessons, in the hands of a good musician you can't tell the difference.

Note: of course this is coming from someone who can barely hear without his hearing aids, so I may be missing something :D
 
OOC: Has anyone here actually LISTENED to any Rock and Roll songs from the 1950's by anyone OTHER than Elvis? :p The ones I've heard are what we would now consider light/soft rock. [/OOC]

Whats with all the hatred towards electric guitars? They don't sound any different then acoustic ones, they just have a little plug-in thingie so that you can connect them to a speaker. Some of my favorite country music stars use the things!

All I can say is that if it sounds like a friggin accordian the musician just doesn't know how to play the damm thing. They'd sound nearly the same way with an acoustic if they tried. That wierd sound you are describing can only mean the musician is in desperate need of some guitar lessons, in the hands of a good musician you can't tell the difference.

Note: of course this is coming from someone who can barely hear without his hearing aids, so I may be missing something :D

OOC: Why do you think I mentioned Carl Perkins?
 
Funny, I was at a seminar yesterday discussing the rise of doo-wop - there's a general reckoning that rock 'n' roll couldn't become dominant anyway because of the lack of crossover appeal between black and white audiences. It's a bit of a red herring to point to Presley's death as the reason why rock 'n' roll never broke through, because Frankie Lymon's plane crash didn't hurt harmony-pop, did it?

And as for the electric guitar hate... seriously guys, what about the Ravens, the Kirks, the Pies? For crying out loud, the Beach Boys play electric guitars and they're the greatest harmony group in the history of the world! And believe me, no matter what you do to a guitar it still sounds infinitely better than a bleedin' stylophone...
 
Wasn't Evis a crooner, really? Just a slightly updated and younger version of Frank Sinatra?
Rock and rolling music, as I understand it, never achieved the energy of zydeco.

I also think that a white musician couldn't make the crossover. White musicians stole stuff from the black artists (just look at country music). But the black artists were motivated to appeal to both black and white audiences. Only a black artist could make the crossover work.

Even if Elvis had lived, there is just no way that the "king" of rock and rolling music would stand a chance against Hendrix the "Zydeco Czar"!

hendrixzydeco.jpg

OOC: I love photoshop.
 
Rock and Roll, like many other forms of American Music didn't stand a chance against the "German Invasion" of late 60s and the 70s, and for good reason-- rock and roll (or "rockabilly", as it is more accurately known) is just sped-up Blues, which, in turn, is just warped-out folk.

The fact was simply that American music in the 50s and 60s was too divided with dozens of regoonal, racial and socio-cultural preferences that no one genre leant itself to mass media-- except a competely novel, foreign genre with complete seperation from tradition, (except that of European Classical Music, but somewhat distantly) -- Electronica. Hence the "German Invasion" suceeded massively in the USA -- of course the use of English Lyrics helped. AFAIK, no rock and roll artist had the artistic talent of German Electro groups like Tonefloat[*], although ironically they played rock and roll as students.

As for the electric guitar-- it's like a jackalope, a complete mismash of the old with the new without much technical soundness or aesthic consideration. A synthesizer made much more sense and could produce a very diverse, yet melodic sound.

(OOC: [*] Kraftwerk analogue in TTL)
 
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