A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s. Eric Charry
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28. Birth years of singer-songwriters 215
29. Bob Dylan Top 40 pop singles and LPs in the 1960s 216
30. Beach Boys, Beatles, and Rolling Stones pop Top 40 comparisons, 1962–1971 217
31. Beatles U.S. albums: Pop album chart positions 220
32. British Invasion groups/artists and debuts in U.S. pop singles Top 40 221
33. Birth years of early 1960s groups 222
34. Soul: Naming a genre in song and album titles 223
35. Mid to late 1960s U.S. rock (psychedelic and hard) 224
36. Funk: Naming a genre in song and album titles 225
37. Groups with organ, 1960s 226
38. Integrated groups, 1960s to early 1970s 227
39. Groups with Latin percussion 227
40. Birth and death years of 1960s musicians 228
41. All-time Top 40 hits: Soloists and groups (through 1999) 229
42. Blaxploitation films and the next generation 231
43. Funk bands: Their debut LP year and their first pop Top 10 single 232
44. Progressive, art, experimental, and glam rock 233
45. Early to mid 1970s rock: Top 40 singles and albums 234
46. Folk rock and country rock groups 235
47. Disco singers and groups and their debut disco LPs 236
48. Punk and new wave groups and their debut LPs 237
49. Disco and punk comparisons 238
50. Women rock singers fronting bands, 1970s 239
51. Gendered instruments 240
52. Jazz and jazz rock albums in the pop Top 40 241
53. Rap groups and LPs moving into the mainstream, 1984–1990 243
54. Some key rap record labels 244
55. “Fight the Power” sample and lyric sources 245
56. Early metal groups, new wave of British heavy metal, and American metal 246
57. Hard rock, metal, and punk comparisons 248
58. Second British Invasion groups: Artists and first pop Top 10 singles 249
59. Superstars of the 1980s 250
60. Rock for a cause 251
61. Alternative, indie, and postpunk 252
62. Rap groups entering the pop Top 10 (albums), 1992–1997 253
63. Solo emcees entering the pop Top 10 (albums), 1993–1997 254
64. Women rock singer-songwriters, 1994–1997 255
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank all the students who passed through my course MUSC108 (History of Rock and R&B) at Wesleyan University, especially those who raised questions or were not shy about pointing out rookie errors. Their many hundreds of creative class projects (audio and video recordings and magazine articles) provided myself, themselves, and their peers I’m sure, with great entertainment and insight, with some song cover versions and rewrites surpassing the originals. Adult students in Wesleyan’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program and at the Cheshire Correctional Institution also provided valuable feedback on versions of this manuscript. The latter students were especially open about questioning what they read, and I thank them for their candor and directness. I thank John Bergeron, Noah Baerman, and my teaching assistants for their help with MUSC108.
My colleagues in the Music Department at Wesleyan University have provided a warm and inspiring environment, which has contributed greatly to my thinking about music. I thank Priya Charry for formatting all the figures; Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press, for seeing this project through to completion; and the two anonymous peer reviewers, whose critical comments were invaluable in formulating revisions. I thank Dan for our many-decades-long conversation about the music covered here and, as always, Hannah, Priya, and Miriam for their support and for just being there.
INTRODUCTION
This book offers a concise history of rock and R&B (rhythm and blues) through the early 1990s in three parts. Part 1 begins with a history of the music industry and then provides a capsule history of who did what when, with particular emphasis on the emergence of recognizable genres within relatively compact time spans. Part 2 contains the sixty-four figures that are referenced in part 1. They can be read on their own, as they tell a unique kind of story in a novel way. The focus in these two parts is a history illustrated with information-rich visually transparent figures. Part 3 explores key contemporary theoretical issues, with concrete examples that provide frames of reference for processing and interpreting the material in the first two parts. Throughout, I draw extensively on primary sources—the voices of musicians, writers, and consumers (using chart data) at the time.
This particular combination of approaches and methods offers a new perspective, and herein lies the uniqueness of this text. The sixty-four figures each tell a story, and the accompanying writing fleshes them out. The figures are intended to guide readers through a diverse, unwieldy, and seemingly anarchic field of musical expression. A crucial point to ponder with most of the figures is why these elements are put together on a single page. In other words, what do the artists, groups, genres, songs, albums, or record labels have in common? This gets to the heart of how a genre or style congeals.
With the increasing availability of quality online content, readers should be well prepared to move deeper into the stories; understand historical flows and ruptures; recognize innovations, overarching trends, and genre formations; critically evaluate an artist’s or group’s place within a genre; critique my own selection process; and, most important, listen. Most sections contain footnotes with specialized lists of additional print, film, and video resources.
A New and Concise History stops in the early 1990s for several reasons. It developed out of notes for an undergraduate course I have been teaching annually since 2002, and so it is keyed to what can reasonably be packed into a single college semester. As a text for a one-semester course, it already contains a dense amount of material for a sustained, intensive, and holistic experience. Those finishing this book should be well prepared to explore on their own more recent music, the reception and perception of which is in a greater state of flux. Furthermore, those born in the 1990s and later may have a more intimate and visceral relationship to music of the past several decades. Putting that music under a micro- (and macro-) scope, with a veneer of academic objectivity, runs a risk of diminishing returns. The historical distance with the subject matter in the following pages may help readers embrace a greater breadth of perspective on more recent music.
Throughout this book I adopt the spirit in which twenty-two-year-old Muhammad Ali referred to singer Sam Cooke as he made his way into the ring to congratulate Ali the night he won the world heavyweight boxing championship in February 1964. Cooke had been a star of the gospel music world before crossing over