History of Popular Music from 1950

The history of pop music is tied up in the history of technology that delivers it. New technologies have allowed artists and songwriters to reach bigger and different audiences.

Rhythm & Blues, Rock’n’Roll
Modern popular music begins with rock’n’roll in the early 1950s. In the late 1940s musicians reduced the big band format to its minimum with just vocals, sting bass, drums, piano and brass. They then created a bouncy jazz syncopated version of the blues and they called it ‘Rhythm and Blues.’ This music was marketed and played by the African Americans population in a still segregated USA. The establishment did not approve of the dancing and sexuality that was created by the music, but it was OK for the black people in the poorer parts of Chicago and New York to dance to the music but was very much frowned upon to the white community. White teenagers had to listen to the tame singers their parents approved of, e.g Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. 

Then Elvis Presley had an idea....a birthday present for his mother. 

Elvis was a young truck driver who walked in one say in his lunch break to record a song for his mothers birthday. When Elvis sang the first song Sam Phillips decided to make an extra copy to show her boss. She kept pushing him to use the singer. 
Eight months later in 1954 Sam called Elvis into the studio to sing a song called ‘Without You.’ 
The song sounded terrible so Elvis sang some gospel. Suddenly everything blew up for Elvis. He found a band, recorded some songs with them, the first one being ‘I Love You Because.’ 
Whilst Elvis was recording Sam realised what he had been looking for, a white singer who sounded black. ‘Thats All Right, Mama’ was the first single for Elvis.
Sam then took a record to Dewey Phillips, Sams former business partner and top DJ. Dewey played the song over and over again and it attracted enthusiastic reaction from the public. Many listeners thought Elvis was black but Dewey emphasised that he went to Humes High school-which was an all-white school. 


By pairing down’n’dirty rhythm and blues with a soulful, clean cut, god looking white boy, Sam Phillips created an irresistible pop culture combination. 

Pop Music and Television
Television was the next big technical innovation that had an impact on the way people consumed popular music. Bill Haley and the comets introduced American TV audiences to Rock’n’roll with Around the Clock on the Ed Sullivan show in 1955. A year later, 21 year old Elvis Presley preformed Hound Dog on the Milton Berle Show where the modern pop star swam into focus on TV screens. 


Reactions To Elvis
Although it wasn't his first TV appearance, his rendition of Hound Dog created a media storm that rocketed Elvis to nation and international attention. Critics slammed his singing and dancing. 

Parents, Teenage Girls and Cops
The older generation, the while establishment,feared Elvis because he was a white boy who sang music, his soulful voice turning teenagers on to the ‘tribal rhythms’ of R&B. 

Elvis made no secret of his love for gospel music and he attended services for the coloured and he tried to hide that many of his musical heroes were black. When he hit the big time, he was frequently photographed with black musicians. 

“ A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock’n’ roll was here a long time before I came a long...Nobody can sing that kind of music like coloured people...Lets face it: I can’t sing like Fats Domino can. I know that.” 
Elvis Presley. 

Music like everyone other aspect of culture was strictly segregated along colour lines. The thought of white teenagers dancing alongside their coloured counterparts sent many into fits of rage and campaigns were launched to stamp out the rock’n’roll menace.