A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s. Eric Charry
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previous year Cooke released an album titled Mr. Soul. Amid the celebration and a television interview, Ali called out, “This is Sam Cooke! Let Sam in. This is the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll singer” (qtd. in Guralnick 2005: 558–59).1 I often use the terms rock and roll and rock as shorthand to cover the fullest conglomeration of many loosely connected genres and subgenres. A narrower usage of the term rock in the popular press can refer to an aesthetic tied to the 1960s and 1970s, exemplified in a predominantly white, guitar, bass, and drums format.
Some prefatory notes will help the reader more quickly grasp the information presented. All song titles are in quotations marks; album titles are in italics. I often refer to Billboard magazine popularity chart positions (sales, radio airplay), and so it is crucial to understand their significance. Popularity does not necessarily equate with artistic merit. High chart positions primarily indicate that an artist or group is being widely heard (in homes on record, cassette, or CD players and on the radio) and most likely appreciated. (There is a valid argument that record labels and radio stations can collude, and have done so, to successfully push undeserving artists.) When the month and year of a record (and sometimes full date) is provided, it refers to its initial entry into a chart (unless otherwise noted). This marks its entry into the public consciousness, which could be right after its release or many months later. In cases where a record appeared in several charts with different entry dates, I occasionally opt (in the disco and electronic dance music sections) to indicate the month of entering the first chart and list the charts by chronological date of entry (e.g., entered charts October 1974: dance #1, pop #9, R&B #34). This enables the crossover path to be seen without too much clutter.
For the figures with timelines, the left-most horizontal alignment of the name of an artist, song, album, or record label marks the specific year or month. For artists the month indicates when they initially entered the charts, except for figures 19, 20, 29, 30, 32, and 58, which indicate the initial break into the Top 40 slots.
In the References section, I provide primary-source print citations for most magazine and newspaper articles to give readers a clearer sense of the historical context; many of these can be found online (e.g., those in Billboard, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Village Voice). For articles from less accessible magazines that have been reprinted on the subscription website Rock’s Backpages (2019), I also provide that indication (as RBP). Citations can be found in one of three places: bibliography (print, online articles and websites, radio programs); discography (limited to certain vinyl or CD recordings) if -d is appended to the date (e.g., 1960-d); or the filmography/videography (documentaries, feature films, YouTube clips) if -v is appended to the date (e.g., 1960-v). I occasionally opt to bypass academic-style conventions in the interest of consistency and clarity, as in omitting hyphens when genre names are used as adjectives, such as “rock and roll era.”
Given the expansiveness of the references (over 750 items) and the more than 1,000 songs, albums, and artists mentioned in the text and figures, one might note some irony in the use of concise in the book title. Think of each of the three parts as separate, somewhat independent, very different—and concise—takes on the same topic. They could be read in any order, even jumping around among them. I hope I have struck an appropriate balance with the stories they tell.2
1 The full moment occasionally appears (and disappears) on YouTube.
2 Supplemental materials, including a historical timeline, playlists, and time stamps for the audio and video sources, are available on the book’s website, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.
I
HISTORY
1
MUSIC INDUSTRY, MEDIA, AND TECHNOLOGY
Rock and R&B are thoroughly enmeshed in a legal, economic, media, and technological network that is called the music industry. How did rock, or any kind of music for that matter, get commodified in the form of a sound recording and distributed in the first place? What legal and economic mechanisms were put in place so that musical artists would be able to reap the benefits of their creations—their intellectual property—and thereby devote their lives to making music? How did technological developments in sound recording and storage media transform the production, distribution, and consumption of rock? What role did radio, television, and print media have in the explosion and sustained presence of rock, making it an essential part of U.S. culture? And how were technological advances in musical instruments, including synthesizers and samplers, catalysts for new musical sounds, ideas, and styles? We will explore the answers to these questions and more in this chapter.
COPYRIGHT
The foundation of the U.S. music industry is based in copyright law, which gives the exclusive right to the composer and recording artist to reproduce and sell music; they may then assign that right to a publisher or record label in return for payment called royalties. Every sound recording has two sets of rights associated with it: (1) the musical composition (the abstract melody, chords, and lyrics) and (2) the recorded performance, that is, the sound captured in a vinyl single or album, cassette, compact disc, or other digital format (see figures 1 and 2).
If the Beatles record the Chuck Berry composition “Roll over Beethoven,” then Chuck Berry should receive a royalty payment for each copy of the Beatles record that is sold (two cents until 1978; 9.1 cents in 2019). Berry, the composer, would typically split his royalty payment with his publishing company, the organization that registers his composition with the U.S. Copyright Office and looks after collecting the royalties. The Beatles version is called a cover. Chuck Berry does not have to give his permission—the Beatles can use a “compulsory license,” which still requires that Berry receive royalty payments (called mechanical royalties).
If Jay-Z records his composition “Can I Live,” consisting of him rapping over short looped excerpts (called samples) of Isaac Hayes’s recording of “The Look of Love,” then Jay-Z must get permission from Hayes (or more probably his record label) and negotiate payment, either a flat fee or a royalty per record sold. Hayes (or his label) has the right to refuse. (The owners of the rights to Beatles recordings—Sony/ATV, eventually reverting to Paul McCartney—do not allow samples.) Additionally, because Isaac Hayes’s recording was a cover version of a composition by Burt Bacharach (composer) and Hal David (lyricist), Jay-Z must also share composer credits and royalties with them.
Bacharach and David registered “The Look of Love” with ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), one of the two major music performance rights organizations (the other is BMI [Broadcast Music, Inc.]), which licenses compositions for public performance, which is protected by copyright law. These performance rights organizations collect fees when works by their composers are played on the radio and TV, or at bars and other live music venues, and they distribute those fees as royalties to their artists. ASCAP lists four writers for “Can I Live” who would capture those royalties: Jay-Z (Shawn Carter); his producer, Irv Gotti (Irving Lorenzo); Burt Bacharach; and Hal David. ASCAP also lists three publishing companies, meaning that the various writers registered their songs (“The Look of Love” and “Can I Live”) with different publishers to look after the benefits of copyright.1 Separate from composer’s royalties, record labels negotiate with their recording artists for the royalty percentage that they will earn as performers per recording sold, and they also control permissions to sample the recordings of their artists.
A musical arrangement—the style in which an abstract composition is rendered in performance by instrumentalists and vocalists—is not copyrightable. A federal court decision in May 1950 set the precedent for the rock and roll era, ruling that Evelyn Knight’s nearly identical cover version of “A Little Bird Told Me” (on Decca Records) did not violate the copyright of the original version recorded by Paula Watson (on Supreme Records). The composer Harvey Brooks received the usual royalties from the cover version, but nothing else was due to him or anyone else involved in the original recording, including vocalist Watson, the arranger, or Supreme Records (Billboard 1950).