The Beginning of Everything: The 1950s in Music

World War II was over, but the two

victorious powers, the United States and

the Soviet Union, broke their alliance

and became enemies, dividing the world

into two blocks. The Western capitalist

block led by the United States and the

Eastern Communist block led by the

Soviet Union, starting the Cold War.

[music]

This gave way to the Korean War, which

was also divided. Latin America lives in

most cases on unstable ground. Regions

of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia

began to decolonize. Some European

countries began to recover from the war

and entities such as Japan and Germany

began to develop like few other

countries. Modernity had come. This

brought optimism to society.

Industrialization and the economy began

to grow. Cities became bigger and

bigger. People left the countryside. The

United States claims its place as a

power and begins its model of

consumerism. The way its society changes

influences a large part of the planet.

And young people, of which there were

many, question the world inherited by

their parents. And with all of this, the

foundations of the 50s are built.

The 1940s had been ruled by the big band

in swing, but at the beginning of the

new decade, they were losing dominance

to a new form of pop, the great voices.

Hey there, baby.

Inspired by Italian melodies, a new

archetype of stars was created. Mitch

Miller of Columbia Records set the tone

for the development of popular music

until the middle of the decade. Miller

integrated country, western, rhythm and

blues, and folk music into the musical

mainstream, causing many of his label's

top artists to record them in a style

that corresponded to pop traditions. New

ways of approaching arrangements and

albums changed the rules of the game.

Instead of capturing the sound of live

bands, they were making 3minute

musicals, heavily influenced by

Hollywood cinema as well. Before there

was an attempt with records to emulate

the sound of live bands. Now the records

would lead the way of the industry. They

led Frankie Lane, Guy Mitchell, Rosemary

Clooney, Patty Paige, Tony Bennett, Ella

Fitzgerald, Johnny Matthysse, Dean

Martin, Eddie Fischer, Billy Holiday,

Nat King Cole, Brenda Lee, and of

course, Sinatra.

The musicality was changed. This new pop

focused on the story of the songs or the

emotion expressed in each lyric. And

Sinatra tucked these new movements to

build himself as the first great star of

music. He was the first great musical

phenomenon and the foundations of

fanaticism were born with him. In an era

where producers could have singers

almost as manufacturers, Sinatra broke

with several industrial icons and gave

him much of his identity.

But not everything was pop. The southern

United States was immersed in other

currents and the working class adopted

country music with simple form, folk

lyrics, and harmonies accompanied by

instruments such as banjos, fiddles,

harmonas, and many types of guitar.

African-American, Mexican, Irish, and

Hawaiian music had a formative influence

on the genre. The radio had its

references such as Woody Guthrie and

Hank Williams. And future stars such as

Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee

Lewis, Richie Valins, Johnny Cash, Roy

Orerson, and Carl Perkins emerged as the

new representatives of the style. The

Nashville sound turned country music

into a multi-million dollar industry, an

industry that satisfied the demands of

one part of American society. But there

was another side that stood in stark

contrast to this music.

African-Amean communities had their own

sounds. Rhythm and blues was their

standard. The great migration of black

Americans to the urban industrial

centers of Chicago, Detroit, New York,

Los Angeles, and elsewhere in the 1920s

and 30s created a new market for jazz,

blues, and related musical styles. Fats

Domino or Little Richard were among the

many exponents of another industry that

became rich. And although at first only

African-Americans bought R&B records

because they were only sold in their

markets, gradually young whites came to

the genre.

The sound was changing and Little

Richard or Carl Perkins were taking the

sound to new territories. Suddenly, in a

country like the United States that

still encouraged segregation, a

phenomenon occurred that mixed the music

of the whites with the music of the

blacks. And in that combination, rock

and roll was born.

In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey

Alan Frerieded began playing rhythm and

blues music to a multi-racial audience

and is credited with the first use of

the phrase rock and roll to describe the

music he was playing. In the early

1950s, a young man named Chuck Barry was

working with local bands and St. Louis

clubs as an additional source of income.

He had been playing the blues since his

teens and borrowed guitar riffs and

theatrical techniques from blues

musician T-Bone Walker. Barry's

showmanship coupled with a mix of

country tunes and R&B melodies sung in

the style of Nat King Cole and with a

little of the style of Muddy Waters

appealed to a wider audience,

particularly affluent whites. He was

called the father of rock and roll

because he understood that the roots of

rock could be found in blues and country

and instinctively combined the two. And

with these foundations came someone who

brought rock and roll broadly into the

mainstream of popular culture.

IT was Elvis who made rock and roll the

international language of pop. Brought

it into the culture, into society, into

the youth, accompanied by figures like

James Dean forged the image of

rebellion. Elvis changed the course of

music. His recordings, dance moves,

attitude and clothing came to be seen as

the foundations of rock and roll. He

opened the spectrum also to rockabilly

and ballads. Elvis was the world's first

superstar. Pushed by TV, by radio, by

magazines, by movies. He was the first

star to commercialize his image and open

more doors to the music business.

Racists attacked rock and roll for the

mix of black and white people it

implied. Elvis Presley's popularity was

similarly based in his transgressive

position with respect to racial and

sexual boundaries. Considered by groups

as a danger to American culture,

dream [music]

when I [singing]

want you.

At the same time as Elvis, there were

other figures that filled other spaces

in the development of the genre. Richie

Valance, with only 16 years of age,

opened the doors to Mexican-American

culture. Buddy Holly broke aesthetic and

sonic barriers for rock. He inspired the

generation to come.

In other places, the music was strongly

influenced by the American culture. In

Europe, they established jazz, swing,

and traditional pop through the records

and movies that arrived, and they began

to produce their own rock and roll and

achieved in exceptional cases some world

hits like Valer from 1958.

Mexican-American culture influenced

Latin America. Laba was the first

Spanish language song to reach the top

of the Billboard charts. Daniel Flores,

who some call the godfather of Latin

rock, released his hit song Tequila. The

Bolero was born in Cuba and the Bosan

Nova in Brazil. Tito Poente, an

American-born Puerto Rican,

revolutionized Latin music at the time.

He incorporated many new percussion and

woodwin instruments into the popular

Latin sound.

Jazz lived its moments of glory at the

end of the decade. Some of the best

albums in the history of the genre were

conceived in that period, and the East

Coast of the United States experienced

one of its most important musical

scenes. Miles Davis stripped jazz of its

blues roots and pushed it towards a

sound that had much more in common with

European classical music. Critics gave

this music the name cool jazz. The term

cool started being applied to this music

around 1953 when Capital Records

released the album Classics and Jazz.

Cool and quiet.

The decade was coming to an end.

Television was increasingly present in

homes and it seemed that better times

were coming after all. But in 1958 and

submerged in scandals by the

conservative sector of the country, the

king of rock Elvis paused in his career

to serve his country, leaving a huge

void in the world's youth. And on

February 3rd, 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie

Valins, and the Big Bopper along with

the pilot Roger Peterson died in a plane

crash near the small rural town of Clear

Lake, Iowa. It shocked the world and was

dubbed the day the music died. Without

these idols, and with Elvis far away,

music seemed to be paused in morning

where the youth would wait for new

reference.