This week we moved into a new era; The Sixties-Folk Revival, Motown & Soul, British Invasion, and more. We began with The Urban Folk Revival. Folk music is music that was generally made at home, on the artist’s home porch or in a basement. It was generally not made to be popular but occasionally it certain songs would change and would become a hit. In comparison, popular music almost never changed into folk music. In the 60’s the folk music became “popular music” and that’s why they call It the “fold revival”. Recording really revolutionized folk music because we could listen to songs, record them, then transmit them into your own version.

John and Alan Lomax were famous for collecting folksongs and traveled around “collecting” these songs. The Lomax’s would often visit prisons because the prisoners would be doing hard labor. While doing hard labor in these prisons they would sing. So, that attracted the Lomax brothers to try and find their next star singer; and they did. He goes by the name of Leadbelly. The Lomaxs’ actually got Huddie Leadbelly out of prison and started him on a recording career that lead him to be a minor star. Leadbelly is known for the song “Goodnight Irene” that can be considered folk. Moving forward, we began studying Woody Guthrie and the song “Do Re Mi”. The meaning of Do Re Mi is a way of singing, singing scale or money of that matter.

Woodie Guthrie’s best known song is “This Land Is Your Land”. I was very familiar with this song, but only the first two verses which sounds very patriotic. But then as the song continues, the song becomes very questioning and sounds like a political action song that no one can stop Woodie from walking the freedom highway. This song is mainly referring to the politics of America and the height of the cold war.

Welcome to my second blog post! Starting with Tuesday 2/14/2017

This week we began talking about the beginnings of rock and R&B and their cultural influences. R&B started out in the black community until white artist discovered it and they began to produce it. Rocket 88 by Jackie Benston and Delta Cats which is one of the most well know “Beginning of rock” songs. The saxophone, guitar, piano, drums and usual instruments are all that I noticed during this song. The beat could be described as a swing/shuffle beat. The piano has a “Boogie Woogie” style of sound. In many ways, it doesn’t sound much different than Louis Jordan’s music. Rocket 88 is symbolizing the Oldsmobile rocket 88 and the freedom of being 16 owning a vehicle attracting a much younger, immature crowd. Moving forward, Rocking & roll was the next subject. Rockin’ & Rolling is a slag term for sex. This was a term popularized for new music by Alan “Moondog” Freed. Rock & roll consists of R&B, especially jump blues, urban blues, and country. The next artist that was introduced to us was Chuck Berry. Chuck is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter and is one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll music. Chuck is also well known for his famous dance move “The Duck Walk”. One thing that I notice between all these performers, is that the audience is middle-high class white crowd, as compared to the performers that are black. Allan freed tries to break this barrier and introduce black folk into rock. Following rock n roll, the Doo-Wop was introduced. The Doo-Wop is a male or female quartet singing, related to gospel quartets, barbershop, and swing singing. Elvis is the prime example for the face of rock n roll. Elvis Presley was a white American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the “The King of Rock n Roll” or simply “the King”. Presley was born in Mississippi then moved to Memphis, Tennessee. He began his music career around the age of 18 when he recorded a song with Sam Phillips. Sam Phillips recorded R&B, and was looking for a white singer who could sing R&B. Elvis got launched by singing these tunes that sounded like black R&B tunes, but Elvis was white! Many people during that time thought Elvis was black when he first started singing, just by the sound of his voice. He got introduced on the radio by the radio host asking Elvis what High-School he went to. Referencing and symbolizing to the radio listeners, Elvis is white.

Welcome to my Music History 333 Blog Post of what we have covered thus far!

Over the past two weeks we have started covering basics and history of songs in the early 1900s. Signing up for this class I had no idea what to expect. Having just about zero experience with music besides my daily dose of Spotify, I had no idea what to expect. I thoroughly enjoy this class way more then I had expected! The first week we covered some of the basics of sound such as tempo, rhythm, melodies, meters, beat, syncopation, texture, versus and chorus’. Being completely foreign to these meanings, I felt as though Dr. Baumer did a great job adjusting and aiding us to these meaning. For example, having us  clap along to the beat and rhythm of minstrel, country, and blues song of top artists during that time period.

Towards the end of the first week and beginning of the second we started to talk about was Minstrelsy. This was a word/topic I have never heard of before. Minstrelsy is  a popular stage entertainment featuring songs, dances, and comic dialogue in highly conventionalized patterns, usually performed by white actors in blackface. It developed in the US in the early and mid 19th century. One of the famous Minstrelsy actors we were learned about was a man by the name of Thomas Dartmouth Rice. Rice imitated the dancing of a black man, but his character was Jim Crow. Jim Crow represented the former practice of segregating black people in the US.

Moving forward to the 3rd week, we started covering early R&B between 1945-1955. What I found very interesting is that R&B was used in reference as “Race” records or “Race & Black”, a term invented by Ralph Peer. The first artist we covered goes by the name of Louis Jordan who was famous for the song Choo-Choo Ch-boogie, and Caldonia. Louis Jordan was a pioneering American musician, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as “The King Of Jukebox” he was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the later years of the swing era. Mr. Jordan regularly topped the R&B charts and was one of the first black recording artists to achieve significant crossover in popularity with the mainstream “white” American audience.

Following Louis Jordan, we started to cover Urban Blues. The first artist we started studying goes by the name of Muddy Waters. He made a name for himself by playing one of the first electric guitars. Electric guitars became a huge hit because with basic acoustic and a large crowd, the acoustic was simply just not loud enough. Following Louis Jordan we covered T-Bone Walker-the originator of the electric blues sound. He was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was an influential pioneer and innovator of the jump blues and electric blues sound and became popular from one of his top hits called “Hoochie Coochie Man”

As mentioned previously, all the information we have covered in class is so fascinating to me and I look forward to learning more as we progress through the 1940s-1950 to more modern time.

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