“The first time I heard a rock and roll record it was like a miracle. I couldn’t believe such a wonderful thing could happen. Then a month later I heard a second rock and roll record, and I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. You know, I had no idea there would be another one.” -Veteran Music Producer Jim Dickinson
Ohh, when the south mixes with the north, when the big city mixes with the boons, when soul mixes with the jump blues, and country and western gets thrown in there, and you pull the big Beat out of all three, a terribly wonderful thing arises.
Loud, revolting, anarchic, gratingly terrific music comes plowing out. You get rock ‘n’ roll baby.
And that’s what they got when Louis Jordan (remember him from last week? I told you to save those papers) started romping around the country with his Tympany Five and smacked those blues boys down ’round Memphis full on with the Beat and got down into Texas and goosed those good ole’ boys in the rear end with a buck shot of the wham bammin’.
Both parties felt it right away. You can’t not feel the Beat. And you can’t argue with a feeling.
So down there in that country we call a state you got the Texas Playboys pickin’ up on some of this fancy pants jump beat and putting it right in there with their lovelorn odes to the waitress down at the roadhouse and juicing up them country ballads with a little womp on about two and four.
But the Texas Playboys were a big outfit. They’d top out at about twenty members – give or take a few slide guitarists – and of course they repeated the mistake of just putting one drummer behind all those other non-percussive blow horns and strum sticks.
So naturally, as much as they pushed and pulled to bring out the Beat, it was a little scared to show its face round all that melody. I mean, wouldn’t you be a tad bit intimidated if you had to face off against twenty flyin’ and floatin’ saxophones that can turn out just ’bout anything from Bach to Thelonious Monk and all you got in your arsenal is a couple of bangs and bonks?
Not that the Beat doesn’t understand its importance. It’s just more than a little hard to convince a bunch of pretty boy, shiny things that their time in the spotlight is over and they gotta take about three steps back into the shadows.
So, a few cats like Bill Haley and his Comets started stripping down the sound just like Louis did with his band. But this time they bring it down even smaller down to one, maybe two guitars, a bass and some drums. All instruments you can hit. No blowin’ involded, just striking, putting the Beat right back at home cause it was born out of the piana, and everyone knows you gotta pound the piana. It’s a percussion instrument.
These guys put a whole heaping spoonful of Country and Western in there, they throw in some bits of Gospel, work in the blues somewhere in the mix and sittin’ right there on top of it all is the Beat.
We’re gonna let this one sizzle for a while, and bring it to a rolling boil in the near future cause things start happenin’ concurrently here and they get all tangled up, so it’s best just to take it in doses.
Now about the same time, but just a little prior to this, up there in Memphis and a few spots norther and a few spots souther there’s quite a few jive turkeys like Fats Domino (who actually rolled out of Nawlins) and Ruth Brown who’ve picked up on this whole Beat thang and are starting to put out a few sides mixing the emotion of the blues with the motion of jump on some small labels cause the big boys still have their heads up their ying-yangs with the whole Tin Pan Alley and Pop Crooner fodderol.
They’re turning ’em out and they’re getting called “race” records for obvious reasons. What they really had was Rhythm ‘n’ Blues, which is even more obvious cause what you got mixed up in them wax grooves is RHYTHM and BLUES. No one sweats it too much cause they know the music’s too durn good not to get heard eventually. And ’bout three or four years later those that contol such things slap the R&B moniker on ’em cause their starting to hit big with the white kids. Go figure.
But back when those “race” records first were gettin’ cut it was right tough to get ’em played cross the radio waves. The first hurdle was the name. Big, big problem there. You got teenagers listening to the radio. White teenagers. We can’t have them doing those dirty dances and getting all rowdy.
You all know what that leads to: S-E-X. Mom and Pop still sleep in two twin beds, so there ain’t no way they’re gonna take the chance of letting Sally and Joey get the idea in their heads to slip out and discover one or two things about each other.
On top of that you got the problem of finance. Getting a side played on the radio sold the record. Which brought in the money. Which was siphoned off into DJ’s pockets. Who played the record. Which sold the record. Which brought in the money. See the cycle here? Ain’t no entrance, just a big circle that was closely guarded by them Big Dogs.
But along comes a little dog. A little dog with a big, big voice. The Moondog. None other than Alan Freed, who would pump those R&B records out on 50,000 watts of WJW power across Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Michigan (which will come into play a little later).
Now there are some conflicting stories on how exactly Mr. Freed got started in the R&B biznass. Some of ’em are as pure as little Bessy Sue next door, and some of ’em make him look like a rapscallion akin to Blackbeard.
In either case, the fact is he played those records when only a few others were. And he got those kids shakin’ and quakin’ to the freshest, hippest, most down and dirty music to jump off those waves. Kids would hide under the covers with the volume turned low on their Sears transistors so their parents wouldn’t hear the Moondog howl and the R&B bite.
He’d shout right over the top of those records, making them wilder than they already were. Barking “GO! GO! GOGOGOGOGOGOGO! GO! GO!” pounding a cowbell and a phone book while a honking sax solo wailed out of the record player. He taught those kids how to be cool. How to let loose and just go with it. How to surrender themselves to the Beat.
Kyle Pearson is an undecided sophomore who worries more about Rock ‘n’ Roll more than he worries about his health. Of course your mom is always there to help him with that. Send love mail, hate mail and credit card numbers to [email protected].
