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Rip It Up: How the 1950s R&R Press Shredded Pop Music Norms

 

This is the sixth and final installment in the series The Onyx Story. “Rip it Up” explores the 1950s birth of the rock and roll press, and the roll of the Onyx magazine Rock and Roll Songs.

 

The Birth of the R&R Press 

When rock and roll music burst onto the national stage in the mid-1950s, it inspired the first R&R press. These publications contain a wealth of knowledge about rock and roll and its early press coverage. The R&R press shaped the public’s reception of the rebellious new music genre. This post will take a close look at Onyx Publications’ contribution to this field: Rock and Roll Songs magazine.

In popular music, tastes can change overnight. In 1955 this happened when an old-new genre hit the national stage: rock and roll.

R&R started as a blend of rhythm and blues, country music, and pop in the early 1950s. It began in the South and rapidly swept the country. During the mid-1950s the popularity of rock and roll skyrocketed as a series of R&R discs crossed over from the R&B charts to the pop charts:

  • “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets
  • “Maybelline” by Chuck Berry
  • “Ain’t That a Shame” by Fats Domino
  • “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard
  • “At My Front Door” by Pat Boone, a hit cover of the El Dorados’ version
  • “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley
  • “Blue Suede Shoes” by Carl Perkins

This rising popularity led to the first rock and roll magazines. In addition to Rock and Roll Songs these magazines included:

Hep Cat’s Review
Rock ‘n’ Roll Jamboree
Rock ‘n’ Roll Stars

In addition to these new publications, existing music magazines began to regularly cover R&R including Rhythm and Blues (which added “Rock and Roll Beat” as its subtitle), Hit Parader, and Record Whirl.

As a result of this, a community of writers were covering R&R by 1957:

  • Ruth Cage in Rock and Roll Songs
  • Ed Konick in Rock and Roll Songs
  • “Gig” Goldman in Rock and Roll Songs
  • Babs Gonzales, in Rock and Roll Songs
  • Gary Kramer in a new Billboard column “On The Beat”
  • Ben Grevatt, who took over the column in 1958
  • Frieda Barber, in Record Whirl
  • Ed Shelby, in Record Whirl
  • Ralph Gleason in the SF Chronicle

Several of these writers – including Cage and Gleason – had had previously written about and advocated for R&B.

But, unlike R&B, rock and roll music failed to garner its own charts and columns in the music trades. Down Beat and Cash Box appear to have not run any rock and roll columns. Nor did their record reviews and record charts have separate sections for rock and roll as they had for R&B. However, Billboard  initiated a R&R column, “On the Beat.”

“On the Beat” was initially penned by music writer Gary Kramer. No lightweight, Kramer helped Ornette Coleman write the liner notes to his 1959 LP Change of the Century.

In 1958 Ben Grevatt took over the column.

In it, Grevatt interviewed Alan Freed. The DJ noted that the teens who started listening to R&R in the mid-fifties continued to be fans as they went off the college. Just as with swing bands in the 1930s, the college circuit was becoming a lucrative market for R&R bands in the 1950s. This suggested that R&R had staying power.

Grevatt continued this line of thinking and asked Freed:

What directions is pop music likely to take in the future?

[Freed:] It’s going to be rock and roll for a long time to come . . .

Another mid-1950s music writer who used their platform to make a case for rock and roll was Frieda Barter. Barter wrote for Record Whirl, a magazine published by Down Beat’s publisher, Maher. Barter was an ardent supporter of country music which undoubtedly predisposed her to rockabilly. This can be seen in a 1956 issue of Record Whirl in which Barter published one of the first interviews with rockabilly star Carl Perkins.

The array of music magazines that covered R&R were divided by their target readership. Rock and Roll Songs, Hep Cat’s Review, Rock ‘n’ Roll Jamboree, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Stars catered to the casual fan. But, Down Beat, Record Whirl, Billboard and Cash Box aimed for music industry pros and serious music fans.

Whereas the fan-magazine writers focused exclusively on R&R musicians’ strengths, music-trade writers and newspaper music critics wrote about musicians’ strengths and weaknesses. This can be seen  in the writings on R&R by Ralph J. Gleason in Down Beat and the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

Ralph Gleason’s Coverage of Rock and Roll 

As noted in previous posts, Gleason was one of the first major music critics, along with Jerry Wexler and Ruth Cage, to support R&B music, starting in 1954. Gleason began writing about rock and roll by summer 1955 when Elvis Presley was on the verge of becoming a national sensation.

Gleason saw Presley’s potential before he hit it big. This can be seen in an August 1955 column in which Gleason honored Presley’s “Mystery Train” as “Record of the Week.”

But, a pair of 1956 columns show Gleason taking a more nuanced view of Presley’s performance style. The columns were published around the time of Presley’s June 3, 1956 concert at the Oakland Auditorium. The first column was written before the concert, the second column was written after the concert. For the second column Gleason interviewed Presley and reviewed the  concert . The column titles show the shift in Gleason’s opinion of Elvis:

  • “The Vocal Volcanics of the Man in the Pink and Black Shirt”
  • “Presley Leaves You in a Blue Suede Funk”

In “Volcanics,” Gleason says:

Presley plays the guitar with a strong, twanging, terrifically rhythmic approach of an old-fashioned blues artist. He sings either in a more virile version of Johnnie Ray’s style  . . . or in a sort of amplified rhythm and blues voice, similar to Leadbelly or Arthur Crudup . . .

This column shows that Gleason, in his late-30s at the time, was entering middle age with his musical prescience and open-mindedness intact.

But, “Blue Suede Funk” painted a different picture of Presley. In it, Gleason drew a distinction between the artist’s entertainment style and musical style.

Gleason writes:

[Presley’s] entire performance  . . . was deftly aimed at his fans whom he deliberately raised to an emotional pitch [similar] to those thousands who crowded the Sportspalast in Berlin to chant in unison during the Third Reich. His emotional power is frightening.

Gleason, who was an anti-fascist college radical in the 1930s, and who served overseas in World War Two, clearly saw a “frightening” potential for authoritarianism in arena-scale rock and roll.

In the column, Gleason also criticized what he perceived to be Presley’s lack of authenticity,. He states that, “Elvis apparently doesn’t play guitar at all. Uses it merely as a prop.” In later columns from this time period, including his prescient profile of Johnny Cash, Gleason would praise rockabilly and country musicians who actually played their guitars and wrote their own songs.

In addition to Presley’s in-authenticity and effect on his audience, Gleason was turned off by Presley’s hip-swinging performance style, which he compares to a male stripper and called “grotesque.” Gleason had children by that time, and voiced a parent’s concern for what he saw as vulgar music being presented to teens.

Gleason, interviewed Presley backstage and quotes him phonetically, Mississippi twang intact. He’d used that technique with other rural Southern musicians such as Hank Williams, where it added credibility to the song-writer’s convictions. But just the opposite impression was conveyed by the Elvis quotes, which made him sound like a self-centered simpleton.

In his next Down Beat column Gleason reiterated his concern over what he saw as Presley’s “burlesque” stage moves. But, at the same time, he praises Presley’s singing as “earthy and elemental . . . and real.”

Outside of his criticism of Presley, and what  he saw as R&R’s sometime inane song lyrics, Gleason advocated for rock and roll during its seminal years, a time when it was disparaged by many writers and musicians such as Frank Sinatra.  Gleason’s perceptiveness foreshadowed the key role he played a decade later as one of the first 1960s rock critics.

Gleason’s fascination with R&R can be seen throughout his mid-1950s Chronicle columns. For example, in a 1956 column, “’Just Keep a Good Beat’ – That’s Fats’ Formula,” Gleason argued that Fats Domino was rivaling “the Perry Comos” of the world. He makes clear that Domino performed excellent music without resorting to stage antics.

Gleason’s anti-antics stance dated back to his 1940s “hot” jazz days: Dixieland jazz fans such as Gleason disparaged the stage theatrics and dance-floor acrobatics associated with swing jazz. In the Domino profile Gleason makes sure to quote Fats that “we play with a rhythm from Dixieland jazz.”

But it was Gleason’s 1958 column, “A Critic’s Explanation of Rock ‘n’ Roll Music,” that the writer demonstrated the ultimate act of musical praise by a journalist: to stand up for an emergent and controversial new genre.

“A Critic’s Explanation” was the first of a series of music consumer-guides that Gleason published in the Chronicle during the 1950s and 1960s. In this column Gleason fiercely defended R&R, which by 1958 had sparked the same kind of moral panic that rained down on R&B music.  And, just as he had with rhythm and blues, Gleason made the case for rock and roll by taking it seriously enough to provide a detailed analysis of its musicological and social significance:

“Rock and Roll” is a name for particular kind of blueish dance music . . . . It is the direct descendant of the blues singers and artists of the 20s and 30s. . . . It is played . . . in a standard tempo of 4/4 with a very heavy accent on the second and fourth accents [a syncopated “swing” tempo]. The piano player contributes a highly stylized [riff] . . . while the singer sings at maximum volume . . . .

The groups have a stylized out-of-tune sound to them. Rock ‘n’ Roll . . . is highly rhythmic [and based on] simple melodic figures, such as the walking bass line, long familiar to boogie-woogie fans.

But the real tip-off, aside from the out-of-tune singers, the piano hammering away in the top and the heavy beat, is the tenor sax chorus . . . . When you hear a snorting, howling, honking, squealing, tenor roaring away in the middle of a tune, the chances are that’s rock ‘n’ roll, Virginia.

Gleason nailed the essence of rock and roll.

And, as he had in the case of jazz, he excoriated white musicians who covered black R&R discs. The most well-known example of this was Gleason’s column, “Organization Man as Singer – Pat Boone.”

In the column, Gleason says:

Boone is a second-rater. . . . pretentious and even a bit of a phony. . . . He has a consistent record of picking up the songs [of black artists] and redoing them in a paler and more popular version. . . . His voice, as is his personality, never gets very definite. It’s always a  “safe” sound. [Boone is] nice, clean-cut . . . antiseptic, and also spiritless and pallid.

But what really did it for me was his latest disc . . . . “Good Rockin’’” . . . cut by Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown . . . the disc that started the term “rock ‘n’ roll” on its way. The [song’s] lyrics are [clearly about having sex] and [Boone] is either very cynical or naive as to make one wonder about his value as a symbol to youth. . . . His performance, by the way, is almost laughable. You have to have a bit of real life in you [to sing bawdy blues songs] and [Boone] just doesn’t carry it off convincingly.

Thus, Gleason’s mid-1950s writings reflect a nuanced view of rock and roll. These columns reflected Gleason’s complex and critical view of popular music. In the case of R&R, there were some musicians Gleason admired and some he didn’t. There were certain aspects of performance style he praised and other aspects he condemned.

Gleason and a small handful of music critics thus created the serious  discourse about rock and roll . This dialogue, like the music itself, was underpinned by a new set of aesthetic principles derived from blues, jazz, R&B, and early folk/country music:

  • A preference for visceral sonic traits: danceability, loudness and dissonance
  • A more modern view of the expression of sensuality in popular music (although middle-aged critics such as Gleason struggled with this)
  • A left-leaning opposition to 1950s sanctimoniousness, conformity, censorship and fake wholesomeness, and the moral panics based on these traits

Thus, when Rock and Roll Songs #1 hit the stands in May 1956, R&R, like jazz in the 1920s had casual fans, serious fans, and conservative detractors who condemned it.

 

Rock and Roll Songs

The cover of Rock and Roll Songs #1 told the story: its editors and writers knew how to pick songs that were both artistically and commercially successful; some are today considered milestones in recording history. Just take a look at the most prominently displayed song titles:

In addition to Elvis, a second white musician covered Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” the singer Ralph Gleason skewered in his column: Pat Boone. Compare Boone’s version with Richard’s and decide for yourself if Gleason was right:

“Tutti Frutti” by Pat Boone.

Just as Rock ‘n’ Roll Songs reached out to its teen readership with its playlists, it also did so in its language. The writers continued the use of  jive jargon started in the R&B press. It also continued the use of Charlton Publications’ blend of song lyrics, profiles, photos and fan features.

Some of these features, such as the letters-to-the-editor page, supported racial integration. Called Rock ‘n’ Roll Word Scroll,” it accompanied a fan letter with the writer’s photo. Photos of black and white fans were sometimes grouped together:

In Rock and Roll Songs, jive-laden article titles obscured the more serious content within the piece. An example is “Dig the Answer Man,” where readers posed questions about R&R. One answer included an account of how R&R was a gateway to rhythm and blues for white teens. Another addressed getting R&R songs published.

As was the case in other Charlton song-lyric magazines, many of the musician profiles provide rich biographical detail. An article might begin and end with an unashamed blurt of hype, but in between often lay a well-researched biography including quotes. For example “Rock and Roll Chick on a Waltz Kick,” about vocalist Kay Starr, reveals that she started out in the band of seminal jazz violinist Joe Venuti.

Another article, “The Daddy of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” tracked the history of DJ Alan Freed who did more than any other individual to bring rock and roll music to a national audience (“Heartbreak Hotel” did the rest).

Even the last page of Rock and Roll Songs #1 included some historically interesting snippets. It featured two columns that combined music industry acumen with a dash of jazz theory thrown in.

“The Real Spiel” was a column that provided information about musicians’  tours and upcoming discs. Of particular interest was an account of an R&B revue at the San Francisco Paramount Theater. This was the same show that introduced Ralph Gleason to R&B and R&R, which he chronicled in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Took Because the Kids had to Dance.”

A second column highlighted the interest of rock and roll fans in modern jazz. “A Bopster Exposes Modern Music,” was written by Babs Gonzales, a pioneer practitioner of jazz vocalese, a style of singing in which the vocalist improvises solos utilizing words. The most well-known proponent of vocalese was Jon Hendricks who wrote the lyrics for “Birdland.”

Click here to “Birdland” by the Manhattan Transfer with Jon Hendricks.

In 1956 Gonzales released a disc that showcased his singing style,  “House Rent Party.”  A review described it:

As the name of the Gonzales column implied, it was tribute to bop jazz.  In his inaugural column Gonzales reflected on the link between “Modern Music” and pop music. Indirectly, he speaks to common sensibility between bop jazz and R&R that is often overlooked by music historians. It also frames certain idioms of popular music as expressions of the modern avant-garde, a viewpoint that music scholars would explore a half-century later.

Articles like this show an underpinning strategy of Rock and Roll Songs: snag casual music fans with cover articles like “How Pat Boone Makes Girls Swoon,” and then lead them to more penetrating writing.

Rock and Roll Songs’ veneer of raw excitement and fun masked the serious intent of its editors, and writers like Ruth Cage. But, then, isn’t raw excitement and fun exactly what rock and roll was really all about?

 

© 2019 Donald E. Armstrong, Jr.

 

 

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