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Following World War I there were major changes in Western culture that dramatically affected popular music. Some of these changes had begun prior to the war and others grew out of the conflict. Recording and playback technology allowed for ever-increasing ability to reproduce music for the masses. Perhaps as important, was the growing amount of free time and disposable income available to workers. As with other forms of popular culture, technology and disposable income resulted in the commodification of music...or the emergence of pop(ular) music on a grand scale.
Youth culture emerged strongly in the post war years with such movements as the "flappers" (American beginnings) who danced wildly to jazz and reacted to the immediacy of the time. In a sense European youth culture ignored the problems of unemployment, the resurgence of militarism in the 1930s as well as ideological politics. However these did not escape the writing of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill who wrote musical theatre employing jazz styles and American and British social themes. The music of Kurt Weill was for its day extremely sexual and valorised such subcultures as gangsters and Modernists. His music was a strange combination of European and American styles and themes (The Alabama Drinking Song, Barbara's Song, Mack the Knife). While escape was possible in Germany for some time it became increasingly difficult and dangerous, as detailed in the musical Cabaret, based on the work of Christopher Isherwood. Nazism attacked popular music as "degenerate art", especially jazz as it was so closely related to Afro-American culture and had no place in the hyper-nationalism of Germany under Hitler (Again, detailed very effectively in the film Swing Kids). Weill and others fled Nazi Germany for the US.
Critics on the Left also attacked popular music, but for different reasons. Marxists saw popular music as mind numbing and as detracting from the proletarian struggle. This was especially true of Theodore Adorno and the Frankfurt School who stressed that popular music was not art, but simply a commodity; a standardised, potentially endless reproduction unlike true art. Others saw popular music as immoral due to its relationship to Afro-American culture while still others felt it held no social value whatsoever.
In spite of the criticism, popular music continued to prosper as a commodity as well as a form of social expression between the wars. The radio brought listeners together in common experience to listen to the latest music available. The sale of recorded music and sheet music prospered in these years. Dance halls, cabarets and night clubs flourished. There was a great demand for popular music as a commodity. Choices in music were used to depict people as being of a certain sub-culture: as pro or anti fascist, promiscuous or puritanical, radical or conservative. While the pleasure and escapism of popular music in Europe between the wars contributed greatly to its success, so too did the use to which the music was put play a very key role in the rise of popular music.
White America "preferred" popular music from Tin Pan Alley from which an army of (mostly) nameless writers poured out seemingly endless ditties about the moon in June, to be recorded by popular vocal stylists. This was the music that Adorono was critiquing, music written as a commodity that could run its course in the music shops and on the radio to be replaced with another and then another. There was great money to be made in publishing the sheet music for songs that lived on after the current star had introduced them to the public. Among the early vocal stars of the period was Rudy Valley who recorded in a manner that assured the audience he was a nice white boy, as evidenced in his tribute to college girls "Betty Coed". Later the music industry promoted Bing Crosby and then a young teen idol Frank Sinatra as pop music stars. Their music was less course, sensual or controversial than black music. Regionally, other styles of popular music were promoted because of local preference. This was especially true of Western music in the South West. Even at this early stage of the development of pop music there was what later became known as crossover styles. While Bessie Smith's "Strange Fruit" about Southern lynching and Robert Johnson's "Hell Hound on my Trail" and a number of songs with overt drug references such as "Gimme a Pig foot" would hardly play well to mainstream America, songs such as Leadbelly's "Good Night Irene", Black female singers such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, and white jazz bands provided alternatives to Tin Pan Alley. This "bleaching process" by record companies would continue for some years. It did allow some entertainers to cross over and it accommodated those whites seeking wider variety opportunities, but for the most part the inter-war years were controlled and directed by record companies, eager to make profits. Their focus therefore was predominantly white music for white audiences with disposable incomes, even though some companies maintained a stable of black musicians for "race-records" on smaller subsidiaries. It is interesting to note that while a star system was developed and perpetuated by record and music publishing companies for white music there was not the same promotion for Afro-American musicians. It is difficult to argue effectively that popular music in America was art as defined by high culture. It was attacked by critics as purposeless at best and immoral and depraved at worst. However, critics of commodification, personal choices in leisure, youth culture and other inter-war tendencies tended themselves to infanalize the consumer. Popular music, jazz or Tin Pan Alley, white or black, country or blues was reflecting the needs of Americans to express themselves. Racially segregated music reflected the powerful racial divisions in America as much as the Negro Baseball Leagues and the Klu Klux Klan did. Even liberal whites would only really support black culture that had been sanitised and bleached for white audiences. With the advent of World War II, musical tastes, accompanying dance styles and popular tunes related to the war were intermingled and crossed cultures as a variety of nations untied to stop fascism. Country boys from the American mid-west took their music to France and England establishing a taste for western music there. Jazz, already popular in parts of Europe, established a firmer hold when Benny Goodman and other American musicians played for the troops. Various forms of popular dance music were the standard at USO dances and community social functions put on for the soldiers. British musical hall songs, with their saccharine sentimentality and witty double entendres proved very popular as well as complimentary to those hammered out in Tin Pan Alley. The war made stars of many British music hall performers, most noticeably Vera Lynn who assured the troops that "We'll Meet Again". To much of Europe and North America, war with the Nazis was a war of morality. Naked aggression, deception and racial genocide made the war a struggle against evil. Therefore once Hitler was defeated, Western culture generally embraced a new standard of liberalism which was reflected in the United States with Federal legislation encouraging contracts for companies that employed blacks. The US military was desegregated in the years immediately following the war and not long after, Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in America' past time. This is not to say that Negroes now shared in the nation had to offer, but it was increasing difficult to justify institutionalised racism in the shadow of the Nuremberg Trials and evidence of the Holocaust. So the allies, especially the United States, reflected a strong liberal sense after 1945. In America the music of the immediate post-war years reflected the optimism of the age: "life's a holiday on Primrose Lane". The post-war Baby Boom had its musical accompaniment with a more mature Sinatra and other male vocalists, but popular songs remained the craft of the songwriter, not the performer. Singer/songwriters were still very much to be found in Blues and folk music, not Top 40 hits. In England the Labour government nationalised the BBC and planned to make it a vehicle for the creation of a cultured working class, emphasising palatable pop songs, often covered by English singers, and light classical recordings, free of commercial advertising. Experimental jazz emerged as the music of the socially disaffected in America, the Beats. It was closely associated with intellectualism and liberalism, but was not widely popular. Emerging from the war as well were new technologies that would again radically alter the nature of popular music. From pick-ups on acoustic guitars to solid body electric guitars and electric bass guitars, small groups were now able to play to larger venues. Amplification was improved, as was smaller, more portable PA systems making live performances easier and less expensive.
In the post war years rachous, electric dance music of various forms became popular, again among the black communities, perhaps because it was cheaper and portable. This music became known as rhythm and blues. Songs such as "Good Rockin' Tonight" was the music of young blacks in the ghettos. Another type of increasingly popular Afro-American music that dated back before the war was Doo-Whop, stylised vocal harmonies that was easily performed with the minimum of accompaniment. Comparatively, white music that embraced electric music was Country and Western, for many of the same reasons. It was less expensive than a full orchestra, it was more portable, and electric music could be appreciated by larger crowds. By contrast, folk and jazz music was less willing to embrace electric music.
The important issue which is raised here is: was rock and roll and its accompanying youth culture of fashion and accoutrements such as hot rods artificially created and marketed to a new consumer category of teen, or was it an authentic youth movement reflecting the needs and desires of post-war youth? If it was the latter, the music functioned as form of sub-culture identity. The fact that pop singers of the inter-war years (eg: Sinatra), parents and other authority figures lashed out at the new music as degenerate, sexual and without any "true" musical value made it all the more appealing to a slightly rebellious youth culture. Ironically, much of the criticism that was heaped on the music and performers echoed the critique of popular music in the inter-war years. In a society driven by thrusting capitalism, it was not long before the dominant culture co-opted rock and roll, again, sanitised it and, consequently, reaped great profits from an increasingly controlled type of rock which was more palatable to a broader listening audience. The recordings of Presley, after RCA purchased his contract from Sun Records, are noticeably less "Black" or Western sounding. By 1959, Rock and Roll pioneers had faded quickly, many confirming the fears of rock's critiques. The Everly Brothers had to cancel a tour of England due to nervous exhaustion and prescription drug abuse, Berry's criminal record became known, Little Richard's sexual ambiguity was a nagging concern, Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen year old cousin, and Gene Vincent died in an alcohol related car accident. Also in 1959 a plane crash took the life of three pioneers of rock including Buddy Holly. According to rock history it was the "day the music died".
More accurately, it was the date assigned to the day the music changed. By the end of 1959, popular music charts were littered with a new type of popular music, a style reminiscent of rock, but less sensual, aggressive and threatening. Record companies had cover artist such as Pat Boone record Little Richard hits, Bobby Vee, Fabian, and Ricky Nelson, clean cut middle America versions of early rockers had hits that were much more acceptable to the adult culture. These teens were much easier to market to the public. Mainstream consumer culture had for the most part taken over and softened youth rebellion, but still maintained and promoted a youth culture, replete with sock-hops, dance records, hot-rods and diners, even a youth menu of shakes, fries and burgers (this is played out extremely well in the film American Graffiti). Rock and roll was, after 1959, in the hands of promoters, managers, company executives and producers. After high-school, teens were expected to put away their youthful pleasures, attend college, get jobs and abandon the symbols of their youth. This was a wonderfully developed form of marketing, allowing the business culture to repeatedly reproduce, with slight modification, a consumer driven youth culture. In the history of rock and roll, the early 1960s are considered something of an artistic wasteland. Pushing liberalism to further extremes, America elected a young president dedicated to the "New Frontier" and the continuing struggle against segregation at home the preservation of democracy in the world. Optimism grew in the period with low unemployment and a re-affirmation of the miracle of democracy. On the charts there were large number of black artist, many doing Doo-Whop and harmony vocals and dance music. The Coasters recorded hits by the writing team of Leiber and Stroller, indicating that even Tin Pan Alley had adjusted to the shift to a rock and roll culture. When in 1962 John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, again "the music died"... in popular mythology, the assassin's bullet punctuated the end of an era of optimism in America.
Following on the heels of Kennedy's assassination, Ed Sullivan showcased the Beatles to a North American audience. Deprived of aggressive rock for what had become a "generation" of teen culture, and amused by the fashion and hairstyles a new generation of teens embraced the band. This was again made easier when Elvis fans and the older generation rejected the "Fab Four". Now Cuban heeled boots, long hair and Mod fashions, marked youth rebellion in the way that leather jackets and Duck Tail hair had done in 50s. What made the Beatles easily palatable to Americans was that while they looked different, their work included a great deal of American pop music including songs from Broadway musicals and Tin Pan Alley. It was in a way a re-packaging of American pop music.
The Beatles were a marketers dream. Beatle products ranging from trading cards, clothes and lunch boxes to Beatle wigs flooded the American market in 1963-64. Record companies hoping to cash in on the windfall realised by Capitol Records signed an army of British singers and performers...launching the "British Invasion". As in the early 60s when pleasant young teens were marketed as teen idols and were more acceptable to the mainstream, the first wave of British acts were marketed as nice clean cut lads. In fact, many were married and older than they were presented to be. Many too came from the working class neighbourhoods of England's industrial centres and had honed their skills in tenderloin districts on the continent. They were well used to drugs, alcohol and sex: John Lennon was the perfected example: his marriage and glasses were hidden from the fans and his nasty and violent side was expunged from public view.
The issue surrounding British performers having success with Black music is a curious cultural debate. While some critics suggest the marketing of Afro-American music by white artist hindered black success and reinforce racial prejudice in the music industry, others take a different view. The young British performers such as Eric Clapton and Keith Richards exposed Black artists to white America, creating a strange diaspora for American Blues: from the cotton fields, ghettos and juke-joints, to the working class neighbourhoods of England and then back to the rumpus-rooms of middle class white America. North American fans of the British Blues musicians traced the history of their music and rediscovered many once ignored and under-rated Blues performers from their own country. Certainly the Beatles and Stones kept Chuck Berry's name going while the R&B star was in jail. Both sides of this debate have good points to make in the role of popular music as it relates to the creation and marketing of music, as well as subtle reinforcement of existing racial attitudes. Another issue that has arisen a result of the Mods coopting Black music as part of their working class protest and sub-culture, relates to the issue of pop music as a commodity. Rather than the consumer being a passive recipient of the marketing process, based on the Mod example (there are others), it would seem that consumers purchase commodities for purposes not originally intended. The consumer defines the use of the product. This is an important issue in all aspects of popular culture: the purpose to which the commodity is put. This is a direct critique of the Marxist/Leavisite schools which suggests that the consumer is a more passive participant in the process. |
The Modernist
movement began prior to 1914, but it took hold during and
immediately after WWI as Europeans attempted to expunge the
past that had created the "War to end all wars". In France,
people began embracing those things American, those things
that were "wild", exotic and different, as a way to forget
the past. Among these were American music, especially jazz
and other forms of Negro music. In the inter-war years
France's most popular entertainer was Afro-American
performer Josephine Baker. In Germany the Cabaret culture
was another form of escape and it too embraced those things
American and flirted on the edges of fetishism. Dadaism was
another form of modernism that sought to break down all
formal artistic structure and in music offered unstructured,
atonal performance. These and other aspects of Modernism
were a reaction to the nineteenth century and emphasised
escapism, individual pleasure above group conformity and the
creation of new social identities. 
More information about the 
American popular
music has its roots in many, varied, cultures, as many as
have relocated in the new world. Certainly Afro-American
culture has contributed disproportionately to American
popular music. The Blues has its roots in the
"field-hollers" of slavery and was made widely popular via
the internal migration of blacks after WWI, and the
commitment of W.C. Handy who took it to Carnegie Hall. Jazz
roots can be traced to the brothels of New Orleans (the name
comes from jezebels or "jazz-belles" the name given to
prostitutes). America of the inter-war years was a racist
society and Blues and jazz were predominantly Afro-American
musical styles. Ragtime, popularised by Scott Joplin,
transferred more easily to the white mainstream of popular
music because it was instrumental and found early appeal in
sheet music sales. In cities such as New York and Chicago,
whites would, like their European counter-parts, embrace
black music as a symbol of their modernism and rejection of
tradition. The most famous of the jazz clubs of the
inter-war years was the Cotton Club in Harlem, where whites
could be entertained by stylised black performances created
to please the punters. More typically, black music of
various kinds was played and enjoyed in racially segregated
neighbourhoods throughout the US. Black music was to middle
America too sensual, too wild and too closely related to an
independent black culture. The radio, however, contributed
greatly to the ever-growing popularity of black music since
the airwaves could not be as easily isolated and segregated
from mainstream America. As blacks returning from the war
and later during the Depression moved into the ghettos of
northern cities, their music came with them and it spread
throughout the country but were still confined to restricted
areas.
The Baby Boomers
embraced a new form of popular music by 1955 that reflected
in part America's sense of its post-war liberalism. Rock and
roll, taking its name from a black rhythm and blues term was
aggressive dance music with clear links back to electric
Blues, made evident by Chuck Berry, a Black singer from St.
Louis. It has been suggested that rock in its early days was
a synthesis of black music and country (Rock-a-billy),
certainly evidence in the Sun Records recording of Elvis
Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as Berry on Chess
Records. The first huge success for a rock song came when
"Rock around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets, a
white western combo, was included in the film Blackboard
Jungle. The song went to #1 for the year 1955 and shared the
charts that year with Fats Domino, Berry, The Platters, The
Penguins and other Afro-American performers. Not all these
artists were what would fit a strict definition of rock and
roll, but their styles were appealing to teens who now had
disposable income, a sense of themselves and a desire to
promote a youth culture of their own, distant from the war.
It would seem that the once racially segregated charts and
musical preference, were, like baseball, breaking down. It
was not however, completely gone. 
While it has been accepted in the national
mythology of America that the death of Kennedy paved the way
for a new style of rock and roll and the Beatles, there is
little "hard" evidence for this position. In fact, the
British Invasion is steeped in mythology much more than
historical reality. The "history" of the movement was
created by the music industry to make the music and
performers more acceptable and saleable to a wider audience.
Even before they arrived in America, The Beatles had been
cleaned up and divested of much of their working-class,
rocker image, by their manager and promoters. The Beatles
were typical of British pop combos who played a more
aggressive type of American rock and roll, being influenced
by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and some better
known R&B performers. Seldom were these acts promoted or
played on state controlled radio in England making support
for them more of a youth sub-culture than it did in
America.
Music critic
Francis Newton (historian Eric Hobsbawm) argues that Blues
and jazz, music of an oppressed black population in America,
resonated to the oppressed working class of England and
found a very accepting audience there. Black performers
toured England and France when they could not find work in
their own country, playing at jazz clubs such as Ronnie
Scott's in Soho. This reality and the fact that Blues
records found their way into England via Afro-American
sailors (part of the rock and roll mythology) had created by
the 1960s an active British Blues community. In an attempt
to cash in on the popularity of the Beatles, record
companies and promoters signed Blues bands such as the
Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Yardbirds, Manfred Mann,
The Who and the Kinks, who modified their Blues style to fit
the pop music market. Ironically, when these groups had hits
in the US it was often with songs by Chuck Berry, Howlin
Wolf, Robert Johnson and many other American Blues artists
who had not succeeded in the US outside of large centres and
Black communities. White British Blues bands extended the
Blues to middle-America in a way that black Americans never
could. In England, Blues bands and America Black artists had
particular appeal among the working class youth sub-culture
known as Mods, who were extremely well groomed and presented
in a style that mocked the bourgeois mainstream.
