There is a perennial problem representing music in words. Several musicians, frustrated by failed attempts to describe their work in print (including Thelonious Monk, Frank Zappa, and Laurie Anderson), have been quoted as saying something like “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Albrecht laments the practice of “textualizing” music, saying “music is not like language at all and does not follow or adhere to the same functions, forms, and structures as the spoken or written word” (14). Susanne Langer suggests that language and music belong to two distinct symbolic systems, discursive and presentational. She describes discursive symbolism as “the vehicle of propositional thinking” without which there is “no literal meaning, and therefore no scientific knowledge” (67), and presentational symbolism as the means of conveying emotions and artistic expression. Language allows for the possibility of objective clarity, while music (and other arts) allows us to explore subjective ideas and feelings.
David Shumway describes rock music as “both a sign system—or perhaps an ensemble of such systems—and a practice; a form of semiosis and an activity in which performers and listeners engage” (“Practice” 756). Understanding music, especially rock ‘n’ roll, as a communal practice helps to explain the fact that it “speaks” to people, and does so in ways that are not purely subjective. Listeners may not agree on the meaning of a particular piece of music, but can acknowledge certain common effects (music played at a slow tempo in a minor key invariably evokes sadness, for example). This is especially the case with popular music that, by definition, is produced not only to share messages, but to do so broadly. The most successful pop songs tap into universal emotions.
But even if music elides literal meaning, it is seldom random. As the neurologist Oliver Sacks has described, “every bar, every phrase arises organically from what preceded it and points to what will follow…over and above this there is the intentionality of the composer, the style, the order, and the logic that he has created to express his musical ideas and feelings” (112). In this sense, music is never←16 | 17→ chaotic, but rather the antithesis of chaos. Even the most seemingly confused and improvisational music imposes some kind of order.10 This applies to rock ‘n’ roll, in contradiction to its reputation for anarchy and spontaneity. In fact, nearly all popular music, including most rock songs heard on television or radio, adheres to such a predictable chorus/chorus/refrain/chorus format and three-minute time limit that it is perhaps the most tightly structured music ever created.
A medium is generally defined as a technology through which information is conveyed. According to Lance Strate, “all technologies are media because they go between ourselves and our environment” (Legacy 29). But music also serves as a connection between human beings and their surroundings, and any musical genre can be considered a medium because it carries meaning and because its widespread effects can be isolated, enumerated, and studied. Since one of the fundamental assertions of this book is that rock ‘n’ roll has different effects and takes on different meanings depending on which delivery system is used, it is necessary at times to consider rock ‘n’ roll as a medium of communication. Viewed in this way, the presentation of rock ‘n’ roll on television is clearly understood as a remediation, defined by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin as the process in which one medium “appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance” of another medium, leading to alterations of both media and how they are perceived (65).
Consideration of popular music must also be approached in the context of Michael Real’s broad concept of mass-mediated culture, which encompasses all “expressions of culture as they are received from contemporary mass media, whether they arise from elite, folk, popular or mass origins” (14). The very existence of rock ‘n’ roll cannot be disentangled from the mass communication technologies, including recording playback devices and broadcast media, which permeate twentieth century American culture. From this vantage point, rock ‘n’ roll music is first and foremost a cultural touchstone, irrevocably linked with youth and florescent concerns such as romance, sex, and freedom. As we discuss rock ‘n’ roll, we engage with more than a musical genre or the collective output of artists identified with it, but with a cultural practice that encompasses subjective qualities of spirit and attitude. Though it may elude easy definition, some level of non-conformism, insubordination, and subversion cannot be avoided as an integral element of the gestalt.
As with all popular art forms, rock ‘n’ roll may be defined by its antecedents, developing as it did from traceable roots in the blues, rhythm and blues, country and hillbilly, jazz, and other popular styles. Particular structures, styles, and syncopations, nearly all borrowed and tweaked from the earlier genres, can be identified as characteristics of rock ‘n’ roll music. Describing the mixing of African and European forms that produced rock ‘n’ roll, Ray Allen applies the anthropological concept of syncretism, which “refers to the recombination of cultural elements into←17 | 18→ a new whole that commonly occurs when different cultures are in close contact” (136). By the mid-1950s, rock ‘n’ roll was readily identifiable from its forebears, with a particularized vocabulary of chords, harmonics, and rhythms.
Unlike television, which is not an artistic expression in and of itself, rock ‘n’ roll is an art form. In The Story of Rock, among the first scholarly works devoted to rock ‘n’ roll, Carl Belz argues that rock is “part of a long tradition of folk art in the United States” (3). Unlike fine art, which self-consciously comments on the world, folk art offers a direct reflection of reality. Belz admits that this distinction is not always clear-cut and, as rock music developed in the 1960s, it certainly adopted many of the ambitions and pretensions of art with a capital “A.”11 But rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s, although sometimes deceptively sophisticated, satisfies Belz’s conception of a folk idiom. In those early years, rock ‘n’ roll was as much of a sociological phenomenon as a musical one, bubbling up from the youth subclass, conveying cultural information that transcended any particular song.
Although it possesses its own distinct conventions and vocabulary, a concise description of rock ‘n’ roll is elusive. It is sufficient here to note four fundamental building blocks:
• the 4/4 meter of traditional blues and jazz, a common element in most popular music,
• the basic shuffle adopted from African American swing (jazz and R&B) and the hybrid Western Swing (equal parts jazz swing and hillbilly), organized around eighth notes with variation provided by syncopation,
• the I-vi-IV–V harmonic progression of the 1950s vocal style that came to be known as doo wop, epitomized by groups such as The Ravens and The Orioles, and
• the two-bar rhythm familiarly known as “shave-and-a-haircut, two bits” or “hambone,” often translated as ONE (two) and (three) FOUR / (one) TWO THREE (four).12
As critic Alex Ross reminds us, music history is not a flat landscape, but borderless and continuous (541), and precise dating of musical phenomena can be problematic. Many point to Wynonie Harris’s 1948 R&B hit version of Roy Brown’s “Good Rocking Tonight” as the song that signaled that boogie-woogie had been replaced by something faster and more insistent. But 1954 is widely viewed as the year in which rock ‘n’ roll emerged as an identifiable genre. That year, Joe Turner, a veteran of the Kansas City jazz scene, and Bill Haley, who came from a country & western background, both sang “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”; Hank Ballard & The Midnighters originated a string of suggestive story songs with “Work With Me, Annie”; “Sh-Boom” by The Chords, “Gee” by The Crows, and “Earth←18 | 19→ Angel” by The Penguins became the first R&B records to “cross over” onto the pop charts, signaling the arrival of the urban doo-wop vocal style; Ray Charles impiously blended gospel and rock with “I’ve Got a Woman”; Johnny Ace defined a more intimate ballad style with “Pledging My Love”; and Elvis Presley made his first recordings for Sun Records in Memphis.
Figure 1.2: Bill Haley and His Comets still rocking around the clock in