430 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
Rock and roll owed much of its popularity to its differences from the music of
Tin Pan Alley. Musical traits included a driving rhythm with a strong backbeat; a
fondness for twelve-bar blues form; the use of amplifi ed instruments, especially
electric guitar; blues-infl uenced singing; and vocal sections alternating with
instrumental solos for tenor sax, electric guitar, or keyboard. Many early rock
and roll hits were white performers’ versions of rhythm and blues songs, with
lyrics about love and sex. The rather grating singing style of many performers,
wholly unsuited to either Western art music or Tin Pan Alley, derived from rural
music, white and black.
Thus rock and roll performers drew a hard line between themselves and Tin
Pan Alley or Broadway-style pop, with its kinship to the classical sphere. They also
distanced themselves from folk and blues singers by embracing new technology
and avidly pursuing commercial success, from jazz musicians by emphasizing
fi xed versions of pieces that were easily accessible to audiences, and from gospel
performers through their secular subject matter. And unlike rhythm and blues
and country music, rock and roll was intended for teenage listeners. Ray Charles,
whose records ranked high on rhythm and blues popularity charts, insisted that
“I never considered myself part of rock ’n’ roll.” Charles found “a towering dif-
ference” between the rockers’ music and his own. “My stuff was more adult,” he
explained. “It was more diffi cult for teenagers to relate to... more serious, fi lled
with more despair than anything you’d associate with rock ’n’ roll.”
Likewise, rock and roll found little sympathy among established fi gures in
mainstream popular music. Mitch Miller called rock and roll “musical baby food”—
harsh words from the man who gave America “How Much Is That Doggie in the
Window?” Nonetheless, he had a point: compared to the more sophisticated music
and lyrics sung by Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, or Hank Williams, rock and roll was
kid stuff. But music-industry executives found it highly profi table kid stuff.
Rock and roll’s impact on the music business was revealed by its domination
of Billboard’s sales charts. But that was only the start. Before the mid-1950s, each
Billboard chart refl ected a discrete market with its own performers, radio sta-
tions, and retail outlets. The phenomenon of a crossover—a disc’s moving from
one chart to another—was considered a fl u ke. Record i ndu st r y profes sion a l s were
caught off guard in the summer of 1955 when “Rock around the Clock,” by Bill
Haley and the Comets, the top single on the pop (i.e., white) chart, also appeared
on the rhythm and blues chart. Then Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” which topped
the rhythm and blues chart, appeared in the fall on the pop chart and stayed
there for fourteen weeks. And then “Heartbreak Hotel,” Elvis Presley’s fi rst sin-
gle for RCA Victor, topped both the pop and country charts while also rising to
number 5 on the rhythm and blues chart. Rock and roll was proving to be a truly
interracial expression. Barriers that had long separated country music, rhythm
and blues, and pop seemed in danger of collapsing.
The spectacle of eroding barriers in the music business mirrored a historic
change that was under way in American society. As young white listeners reveled
in a new, black-inspired popular music, black Americans were entering a new
phase in their fi ght to secure the rights of citizenship. Brown v. Board of Educa-
tion (1954), the Supreme Court decision that declared school segregation illegal,
provoked wh ite Southern opposition in an env iron ment that condoned v iolence,
and politicians found ways to encourage the defi ance of court orders without
actually advocating it.reactions to rock
and rollcrossover records172028_17_412-439_r3_sd.indd 430 23/01/13 10:58 AM