Freed and Clark had differing reputations in the African American press at the time (1959–60):
If there’s one shining star in the constellation of Alan Freed’s career, it has been his determined, quiet, but effective war on racial bigotry in the music business. Largely as a result of his efforts, several Negro singing groups are top successes today because of his encouragement and fairness…. His “Big Party” has always had Negro kids right in there putting down a tough “slop” with the best of them. Have you ever seen Negro kids on Dick Clark’s program? … Someone should raise the question as to whether there was ever any payola to keep Negro kids off of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV program?15 (New York Age 1959)
SOCIAL IMPACT
Gathered around a piano in the mid-1980s with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, discussing life on the road in the 1950s in a one-hour filmed conversation, Little Richard suggested that rock and roll had a stronger social impact than many people might be aware of.
Little Richard: In some of the shows that I did in the early days, when I was drawing more blacks, they would have white spectators ([to Bo Diddley:] I know you used to play like that too, I’m sure that we all did), and the white people would jump over the balcony and come down, and rock and roll really brought integration about.
Chuck Berry: It helped.
Little Richard: It was a big force and a big help in integration coming about.
Today a lot of people don’t know that.
Bo Diddley: That’s right.
(Hackford 1987-v, disc 3)
In addition to the more private kinds of listening activities, such as in the home or in a car, large-scale public rock and roll concerts—even those in segregated venues in the South—may indeed have had a positive impact in the path toward racial integration. Although, as we will see in a story related by Eric Burdon of the Animals, those teens crashing the color line in the next decade did not necessarily represent all their peers who loved rock and roll.
Just looking through the prism of the number of pop Top 40 hits from 1954 to 1959, the contributions of the first-generation architects of early rock and roll have registered very unevenly. In chronological order of breaking through, they include Bill Haley (fifteen), Fats Domino (twenty-one), Chuck Berry (nine), Little Richard (nine), Elvis Presley (thirty-two), and Bo Diddley (one). Popularity chart recognition is just one, albeit essential, part of a multifaceted story. Some parts of the story resist measurement, such as originality, innovation, and feel (groove). And still other parts, such as the virulent opposition on the part of some adults, may be hard to fathom. The contribution of this generation of rock and roll pioneers to a new vision of U.S. culture and society is well documented and generally recognized, yet still incalculable.
See figure 14. Some key independent record labels, 1940s–1950s (date founded and artist’s debut recording) See figure 18. Birth years of early rock and roll, soul, and funk leaders See figure 19. Elvis Presley Top 10 hits
See figure 20. Top 40 crossover pop hits by black rock and roll artists
See figure 21. Five cover comparisons, 1954–1956
See figure 22. Five styles of early rock and roll, 1954–1956
See figure 23. Rockabilly artists and their debut recordings
1 See Sears (1956-v, 1957-v), Price (1956-v), and Dubin (1957-v).
2 Simon (1956) noted that, before Carl Perkins, no country artist ever appeared on the R&B charts. Despite being from Texas, Holly never registered on the country charts.
3 The first two classes of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986, 1987) is populated by many of the people covered in this chapter (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019).
4 This paragraph draws from Peterson (1990: 101, 105) and Ennis (1992: 136–37).
5 Boone’s cover had a similar fate on the Disc Jockey chart, but fared better on the Juke Box chart (#8), surpassing Little Richard (#14). One can only speculate whether white teens would have been okay with purchasing and requesting airplay of Little Richard’s recording but less comfortable listening to it in public spaces on jukeboxes.
6 Little Richard had a similar take on another cover: “Elvis took my ‘Tutti Frutti’ and I was very disgusted. But by him singing it, he really made it bigger, and made me bigger” (Wharton 2002-v).
7 See Hackford (1987-v, disc 4, Robertson interview).
8 Little Richard established the terms of a public queer persona in rock, no mean feat given his religious background (C. Malone 2017). For more on Little Richard, see C. White (1984).
9 Early uses of the term rockabilly in Billboard include the following. “The wave of ‘rock-a-billy’ imitators (which accompanied Presley’s rise) has sharply receded during the last couple of weeks” (Bundy 1956: 17). “The phenomenon of the charts, of course, is the presence of three rockabilly platters on the R&B list [by Presley and Perkins]” (Simon 1956). “The current domination of rock and roll and rockabilly tunes in the pop music field” (Billboard 1957).
10 Sixteen-year-old Oklahoman Wanda Jackson’s debut, “You Can’t Have My Love,” was released two months earlier, in May on Decca, reaching #8 on the C&W Juke Box chart. More in the realm of country, she would not cross over to the pop charts until 1960, with “Let’s Have a Party.”
11 Phillips is quoted from his studio partner Marion Keisker in Guralnick (1971: 172).
12 Louie Robinson (1957: 61); Guralnick (1994: 75); see also Reagon (1992: 201) and Heilbut (2002: 101).
13 Presley’s publisher required songwriters to give up a third of their credit if they wanted their songs recorded, something that embarrassed Presley: “I’ve never written a song in my life…. It makes me look smarter than I am” (qtd. in Guralnick 1994: 386–87). Blackwell states, “There had to be a deal, share this and that. I said no at first, but they said Elvis is gonna turn the business around, so I said okay…. It turned out we sounded alike, had the same groove…. The cat was hot, that’s why his name is on the songs. Why not? That’s the way the business is anyway” (qtd. in Giddens 1976: 48).
14 Raymond and Raymond (1987-v) focuses on 1956, when Elvis first burst into national celebrity; Wharton (2002-v) contains many tributes on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death; and Zimmy (2018-v) takes a deep dive into his life and career.
15 Delmont (2012) has more on payola and Clark (143–47) and African American newspapers noting segregation on American Bandstand (184–87); see also Jackson (1997).
4
1960–1964
Too much happened in the 1960s to cover in a single chapter. The first half of the decade saw the rise of a small independent Detroit record label (Motown) that would have an enormous impact way beyond its humble beginnings. By the time the Beatles arrived in the United States in February 1964, quickly taking over the pop charts and leading a British Invasion that saw a new British group enter the Top 40 almost every month for two years, Motown had launched two of its four most successful artists, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. The other two were the Supremes, who would begin an extraordinary run of #1 pop hits that year, and the Jackson Five (featuring eleven-year-old Michael Jackson), who would do the same at the end of the decade. The decade opened with an urban folk revival that provided the backdrop for the sudden celebrity of Joan Baez, followed by Bob Dylan, whose sophisticated songwriting cast a long shadow in all directions. James