********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 25, 2009, at 10:55 PM, Alan Rudy wrote:
>
> So, here's the question: Why are there no Rock and Roll standards like
>> there are in Jazz, Blues and Folk?
>>
>
> There was a piece in last weekend's Financial Times by Elijah Wald arguing
> that it was all the doing of Mitch Miller, who ran Columbia's pop division
> starting in 1950. Well, Miller and technology - the development of the 45
> and the LP. An excerpt:
>
> The most influential of these record auteurs was Mitch Miller, an oboe
>> virtuoso who in 1950 became head of Columbia’s pop division. Miller produced
>> hits the way Hollywood made films. Rather than simply recording a working
>> band or performer, he would find a song he liked, select – or “discover” – a
>> star to sing it, and hire unique combinations of instrumentalists to give it
>> a distinctive, ear-catching flavour. Those combinations could be bizarrely
>> imaginative. For example, in 1951 Miller took a song based on a passage from
>> Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage and an Armenian wedding
>> melody, backed it with a harpsichord playing boogie-woogie, and handed it to
>> a jazz singer named Rosemary Clooney. “Come On-a My House” stayed at the top
>> of the pop charts for eight weeks.
>>
>> Miller’s artists could not replicate the sound of their records at live
>> shows but that was becoming less important. And as records were freed from
>> the limitations of live performances, unexpected sounds and styles began to
>> infiltrate the hit parade. Miller reached the upper echelons of the US pop
>> charts with songs from Britain, Italy, France, Portugal, Denmark, South
>> Africa and Rhodesia. His instrumental palette included everything from
>> symphonic string sections to flamenco and electric steel guitars, French
>> horn quartets, and bagpipes. As other producers followed his lead, studios
>> became creative centres rather than simply places to record.
>>
>> Rock ’n’ roll at first seemed to buck this trend. Bill Haley, Chuck Berry,
>> Little Richard and the early Elvis Presley recorded with their touring
>> bands, and their records captured the same energetic sounds they presented
>> on stage. Some old-line music marketers sneered at the young rockers’
>> amateurism but many hailed the style for rejuvenating the live music
>> business and getting a new generation out dancing.
>>
>> For a few years, that optimism seemed justified. The rock ’n’ roll
>> revolution was driven as much by dancing as by music, and by the early 1960s
>> the twist had spawned a wave of increasingly free-form dances and inspired a
>> last great wave of live dance bands. Many of those groups were enthusiastic
>> teenagers working for subsistence wages, but from Dick Dale and the Deltones
>> in the beachside ballrooms of southern California to the Beatles on
>> Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, they churned out loud, rhythmically powerful music,
>> four to eight hours a night, seven nights a week.
>>
>> Even the rock ’n’ roll scene, though, increasingly favoured studio
>> productions that could not be replicated by a club combo. In 1959 Jerry
>> Leiber and Mike Stoller backed the Drifters with a full string section,
>> opening the door for the lavish orchestrations of Phil Spector. And if
>> Motown’s Berry Gordy lacked Spector’s bombastic pretension, he also thought
>> primarily in terms of distinctive singles rather than consistent live acts.
>>
>> When the Beatles hit the US, they were still playing in the basic
>> dance-band style exemplified by their cover of the Isley Brothers’ “Twist
>> and Shout”. But their arrival coincided with the first wave of discothèques,
>> which proved that it was possible to attract crowds of young dancers with
>> nothing more than a sound system and a savvy DJ. By the later 1960s, dance
>> clubs were no longer expected to have bands. By the 1970s most dancers would
>> have been disappointed to hear a live group rather than a club mix.
>>
>> So when the Beatles quit touring in 1966, it was less a revolutionary act
>> than an acknowledgment that the world had changed. They complained that
>> their music couldn’t be heard over the crowd noise but that was beside the
>> point. The screaming teens had come to see the men who made their favourite
>> records and didn’t need to hear what was happening on stage because they
>> knew those records by heart.
>>
>> So in terms of the audience’s expectations, the video game Rock Band has
>> it right. By the time the Beatles appeared at Budokan they were the roadshow
>> for their records, and if they didn’t match the sound of those records, that
>> can reasonably be considered a flaw.
>>
>
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