Many styles and musical happenings characterize American music from the Swing era forward to present time. Read about the periods and styles and listen to the selections presented to get an overview of these years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_popular_music
Swing is primarily a kind of 1930s jazz fused with elements of the blues and the pop sensibility of Tin Pan Alley. Swing Bands were larger – headed by bandleaders that tightly arranged the material. A strong rhythm section characterized Swing music, usually consisting of a double bass and drums, playing in a medium to fast tempo, and rhythmic devices like the swung note. By the end of the 1930s, vocalists became more and more prominent. Swing came to be accompanied by a popular dance called the swing dance, which was very popular across the United States.
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This is a popular swing song by a jazz legend count Basie and his orchestra. Note that this is in two beats per bar. Later, swing music is composed with 4 beats to the bar making for a smoother more linear rhythmic feeling.
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Swing Band selections from the 30s: This selection consists of a number of swing band selections from this period of the 1930’s. Click on “More” at the site and see a complete list of selections. Listen to a few of them. The recording is old form that period. This is how they sounded to the people in that time.
Glenn Miller – – famous big band leader. In the Mood (selection below) was one of his greatest hits: Listen to this work (In The Mood).
Blues: Diversification and Popularization – Fusion
Beginning in the 1920s and accelerating greatly in the 1940s, the blues began rapidly diversifying into a broad spectrum of new styles. These included an uptempo, energetic style called rhythm and blues (R&B), a merger of blues and Anglo-Celtic song called country music and the fusion of hymns and spirituals with blues structures called gospel music. Later than these other styles, in the 1940s, a blues, R&B and country fusion eventually called rock and roll developed, eventually coming to dominate American popular by the beginning of the 1960s.
Country music is primarily a fusion of African American blues and spirituals with Appalachian folk music, adapted for pop audiences and popularized beginning in the 1920s. The instrumentation of early country revolved around the European-derived fiddle and the African-derived banjo, with the guitar added later.
Merle Haggard is one of the finest singers of Country Music.
Rhythm and blues (R&B) is a style that arose in the 1930s and 1940s, a rhythmic and uptempo form of blues with more complex instrumentation. Author Amiri Baraka described early R&B as “huge rhythm units smashing away behind screaming blues singers (who) had to shout to be heard above the clanging and strumming of the various electrified instruments and the churning rhythm sections.
Gospel music’s origins combine Christian spirituals and rural blues music. Beginning in about the 1920s, African American churches featured early gospel in the form of worshipers proclaiming their religious devotion (testifying) in an improvised, often musical manner. Modern gospel began with the work of composers, who “(composed) songs based on familiar spirituals and hymns, fused to blues and jazz rhythms”.From these early 20th-century churches, gospel music spread across the country. It remained associated almost entirely with African American churches, and usually featured a choir along with one or more virtuoso soloists.
Rock and roll is easily the single most popular style of music worldwide – developed primarily out of country, blues and R&B. Music historian Robert Palmer has noted that the style’s influences are quite diverse, and include the Afro-Caribbean “Bo Diddley beat”, elements of “big band swing” and Latin music like the Cubanson and “Mexican rhythms”. Another author, George Lipsitz claims that rock arose in America’s urban areas, where there formed a “polyglot, working-class culture (where the) social meanings previously conveyed in isolation by blues, country, polka, zydeco and Latin musics found new expression as they blended in an urban environment”.
1950s and 1960
The middle of the 20th century saw a number of very important changes in American popular music. The field of pop music developed tremendously during this period, as the increasingly low price of recorded music stimulated demand and greater profits for the record industry. Many of the first such stars were Italian-American crooners like Dean Martin, Rudy Vallee, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Frankie Laine and, most famously, the “first pop vocalist to engender hysteria among his fans” Frank Sinatra. Elvis Presley debuted in 1958 with Love Me Tender and became one of the best-selling musicians in history, and brought rock and roll to audiences across the world. Presley’s success was preceded by Bill Haley, a white performer whose “Rock Around the Clock” is sometimes pointed to as the start of the rock era.
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This is sung by Elvis Presley and is one of the most popular songs of the rockabilly era.
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Rhythm and Blues remained extremely popular during the 1950s among black audiences, but the style was not considered appropriate for whites, or respectable middle-class blacks, because of its suggestive nature. Many popular R&B songs instead were performed by white musicians like Pat Boone, in a more palatable, mainstream style, and turned into pop hits. By the end of the 1950s, however, there was a wave of popular black blues-rock and country-influenced R&B performers gaining unprecedented fame among white listeners; these included Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Over time, producers in the R&B field gradually turned to more rock-based acts like Little Richard and Fats Domino.
Listen to Little Richard sing Long Tall Sally and Tutti Frutti
The Nashville sound arose in the 1950s, a fusion of popular big band jazz and swing with the lyricism of honky-tonk country. The popular success of Hank Williams’ recordings had convinced record labels that country music could find mainstream audiences. Record companies then tried to strip the rough, honky-tonk elements from country music, removing the rural sound that had made Williams famous. Nashville’s industry was reacting to the rise of rockabilly performer Elvis Presley by marketing performers that crossed the divide between country and pop. Chet Atkins, head of RCA’s country music division, did the most to innovate the Nashville sound by abandoning the rougher elements of country, while Owen Bradley used sophisticated production techniques and smooth instrumentation that eventually became standard in the Nashville Sound, which grew to incorporate strings and vocal choirs.
Soul: Soul music is a combination of R&B and gospel that began in the late 1950s in the United States. Soul music is characterized by its use of gospel techniques with a greater emphasis on vocalists, and the use of secular themes. The 1950s recordings of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and James Brown are commonly considered the beginnings of soul music.
Motown: The Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, Michigan became successful with a string of heavily pop-influenced soul records, which were palatable enough to white listeners so as to allow R&B and soul to crossover to mainstream audiences. An important center of soul music recording was Florence, Alabama, where the FAME Studios operated. Later in the 1960s, Aretha Franklin would also record in the area. Fame Studios, often referred to as Muscle Shoals, after a town neighboring Florence, enjoyed a close relationship with Stax, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis also contributed to recordings done in Alabama.
The Beach Boys
https://youtu.be/hvFyCGiNWPQ
1960s rock: Inspired by the lyrical focus of surf, if not the musical basis, The Beach Boys began their career in 1961 with a string of hits like “Surfin’ U.S.A.”. Their sound was not instrumental, nor guitar-based, but was full of “rich, dense and unquestionably special” “floating vocals.
Beatles
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, started in Liverpool, England in 1960. They are the most successful and influential band in the history of music. The Beatles drew influences from many music genres through their career, including 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, classical, psychedelia, and Indian music, and their songs ranged from pop ballads to hard rock. Towards the mid 1960s, The Beatles became bolder with their style of music. This largely started in 1965, with the release of the album “Rubber Soul”, and hit a peak in 1967 with the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, which was named as the greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine.
Penny Lane – One of their famous recordings
Counterculture: The counterculture was a youth movement that included political activism, especially in opposition to the Vietnam War, and the promotion of various hippie ideals. The hippies were associated primarily with two kinds of music: the folk-rock and country rock of people like Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons, and the psychedelic rock of bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Doors. The British Invasion initially included bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Zombies who were later joined by bands like the Moody Blues and The Who. The sound of these bands was hard-edged rock, with the Beatles originally known for songs that resembled classic black rock songs by Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, The Shirelles and the Isley Brothers.[Later, as the counterculture developed, The Beatles began using more advanced techniques and unusual instruments, such as the sitar as well as more original lyrics.
Folk-rock drew on the sporadic mainstream success of groups like the Kingston Trio and the Almanac Singers, while Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger helped to politically radicalize rural white folk music.The popular musician Bob Dylan rose to prominence in the middle of the 1960s, fusing folk with rock and making the connection to the Civil Rights Movement. He was followed by a number of country-rock bands and folk-oriented singer-songwriters like Joan Baez and the Canadian Joni Mitchell.
Psychedelic rock was a hard, driving kind of guitar-based rock, closely associated with the city of San Francisco, California. Though Jefferson Airplane was the only psychedelic San Francisco band to have a major national hit, with 1967’s “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, the Grateful Dead, a folk, country and bluegrass-flavored jam band, “embodied all the elements of the San Francisco scene and came… to represent the counterculture to the rest of the country”; the Grateful Dead also became known for introducing the counterculture, and the rest of the country, to the ideas of people like Timothy Leary, especially the use of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD for spiritual and philosophical purposes.
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This is by Jefferson Airplane and is one of the most legendary songs of the psychedelic rock genre.
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1970s and 1980s
Following the turbulent political, social and musical changes of the 1960s and early 1970s, rock music diversified. What was formerly known as rock and roll, a reasonably discrete style of music, had evolved into a catchall category called simply rock music, an umbrella term which would eventually include diverse styles like heavy metal music, punk rock and, sometimes even hip hop music. During the 1970s, however, most of these styles were not part of mainstream music, and were evolving in the underground music scene.
Willie Nelson and Outlaw Country
The early 1970s saw the rise of a new style of country music that was as rough and hard-edged, and which quickly became the most popular form of country. This was outlaw country, a style that included such mainstream stars as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Outlaw country was very rock-oriented, and had lyrics that focused on the criminal, especially drug and alcohol-related, antics of its performers, who grew their hair long, wore denim and leather and looked like hippies in contrast to the clean-cut country singers that were pushing the Nashville sound.
Disco: By the mid-1970s, disco, a form of dance music, was becoming popular, evolving from underground dance clubs to mainstream America. Disco reached its zenith following the release of Saturday Night Fever and the phenomenon surrounding the movie and the soundtrack by The Bee Gees. Disco’s time was short, however, and by 1980 was soon replaced with a number of genres that evolved out of the punk rock scene, like new wave. Bruce Springsteen became a major star, first in the mid to late 1970s and then throughout the 1980s, with dense, inscrutable lyrics and anthemic songs that resonated with the middle and lower classes.
1970s funk and soul
In the early 1970s, soul music was influenced by psychedelic rock and other styles. The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length statements with hard-hitting social commentary. Artists like James Brown led soul towards more dance-oriented music, which eventually evolved into funk. Funk was typified by 1970s bands like Parliament-Funkadelic, The Meters, and James Brown himself, while more versatile groups like War, The Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire also became popular.
1980s pop
By the 1960s, the term rhythm and blues had no longer been in wide use; instead, terms like soul music were used to describe popular music by black artists. In the 1980s, however, rhythm and blues came back into use, most often in the form of R&B, a usage that has continued to the present. Contemporary R&B arose when sultry funk singers like Prince became very popular, alongside dance-oriented pop stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna. The mid-1980s also saw Gospel music see its popularity peak. A new form had evolved called Contemporary Christian music (CCM). CCM had been around since the late 1960s and consisted of a pop/rock sound with slight religious lyrics. In the 1980s, the country music charts were dominated by pop singers with only weaker influences from country music, a trend that has continued since. A revival of honky-tonk-style country with the rise of people like Dwight Yoakam and the new traditionalists Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs is also a part of this period, as well as the development of alternative country performers like Uncle Tupelo. Later alternative country performers, like Whiskeytown’s Ryan Adams and Wilco, found some mainstream success.
Hip hop: Hip hop is a cultural movement, of which music is a part, along with graffiti and breakdancing. The music is composed of two parts, rapping, the delivery of swift, highly rhythmic and lyrical vocals, and DJing, the production of instrumentation either through sampling, instrumentation, turntablism or beatboxing. Hip hop arose in the early 1970s in The Bronx, New York City. Jamaican immigrant DJ Kool Herc is widely regarded as the progenitor of hip hop; he brought with him the practice of toasting over the rhythms of popular songs.
Rapping included greetings to friends and enemies, exhortations to dance and colorful, often humorous boasts. By the beginning of the 1980s, there had been popular hip hop songs like “Rappers Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang and a few major celebrities of the scene, like LL Cool J and Kurtis Blow. Other performers experimented with politicized lyrics and social awareness, while others performed fusions with jazz, heavy metal, techno, funk and soul.
Salsa: Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly Caribbean rhythm that is popular in many Latin American countries. Salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations; the term can be used to describe most any form of the popular Cuban-derived musical genres (like chachachá and mambo). Most specifically however, salsa refers to a particular style was developed by mid-1970s groups of New York City-area Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants to the United States. Apart from percussion, a variety of melodic instruments are commonly used as accompaniment, such as a guitar, trumpets, trombones, the piano, and many others, all depending on the performing artists. Bands are typically divided into horn and rhythm sections, led by one or more singers (soneros or salseros) .
Punk and alternative rock
Punk was a kind of rebellious rock music that began in the 1970s as a reaction against the popular music of the day – especially disco, which was seen as insipid and uninspired. Punk drew on American bands including the Velvet Underground, The Stooges and the New York Dolls. Punk was loud, aggressive and usually very simple, requiring little musical training to play. Later in the decade, British bands like the Sex Pistols and The Clash found short-lived fame at home and, to a lesser degree, in the United States.
Alternative rock is a diverse grouping of rock bands that in America developed largely from the hardcore scene in the 1980s in stark opposition to the mainstream music scene. Alternative rock subgenres that developed during the decade include indie rock, Gothic rock, noise rock, grunge, and college rock. Most alternative bands were unified by their collective debt to punk, which laid the groundwork for underground and alternative music in the 1970s. Alternative rock had little mainstream success in America in the 1980s, but via the grassroots establishment of an indie scene through touring, college radio, fanzines, and word-of-mouth, alternative bands laid the groundwork for the breakthrough of the genre in the American public consciousness in the next decade.
Alternative Rock:
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Heavy metal:
Heavy metal is a form of music characterized by aggressive, driving rhythms and highly amplified distorted guitars, generally with grandiose lyrics and virtuosic instrumentation. Heavy metal is a development of blues, blues rock, rock and prog rock. Its origins lie in the British hard rock bands who between 1967 and 1974 took blues and rock and created a hybrid with a heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound. Most of the pioneers were English, though many were inspired by American performers like Blue Cheer and Jimi Hendrix.
The 1990s and 2000s
1990s in American popular music was the rise of alternative rock through the popularity of grunge. This was previously an explicitly anti-mainstream grouping of genres that rose to great fame beginning in the early 1990s. Grunge is an alternative rock subgenre with a “dark, brooding guitar-based sludge” sound. With the addition of a “melodic, Beatlesque element” to the sound of bands like Nirvana, grunge became wildly popular across the United States.[
By the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s pop music consisted mostly of a combination of pop-hip hop and R&B-tinged pop, including a number of boy bands. Notable female singers also cemented their status in American and worldwide popular music, such as Beyoncé (with her solo career and as lead singer of Destiny’s Child), Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. Also notable was the influence of hip-hop producers on popular music in the mid-late 2000s, including the Neptunes and Timbaland, who made the sounds first heard on Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveSounds and Nelly Furtado’s Loose imitated throughout popular radio with artists Madonna, Akon and Lady Gaga. In the late 2000s into the early 2010s, pop music began to move towards being heavily influenced by the European electronic dance music scene, taking root in the college crowd through producers like David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia and Skrillex.
Hip hop/pop combination had also begun to dominate 2000s and early 2010s. In the early 2010s, prominent artists like Bruno Mars, Drake, Lil Wayne, 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar, Machine Gun Kelly, and Macklemore began to dominate the mainstream music scene.
The predominant sound in 1990s country music was pop with only very limited elements of country. On the other hand a guitar revival took place and raised a new generation of alternative guitar bands often described as post-punk revival or garage rock revival.
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This song is by Nirvana, who did more than any other group to bring grunge into the mainstream.
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Rock has had a formative influence on popular music, which had the effect of transforming “the very concept of what popular music” is. while Charlie Gillett has argued that rock and roll “was the first popular genre to incorporate the relentless pulse and sheer volume of urban life into the music itself”.
The social impacts of American popular music have been felt both within the United States and abroad. Beginning as early as the extravaganzas of the late 19th century, American popular music has been criticized for being too sexually titillating and for encouraging violence, drug abuse and generally immoral behavior.