Reasons for Death of Rock n Roll
Elvis joins army
Little Richard went to church
Chuck Berry arrested for teenage girls
Jerry Lee Lewis marries 13 y/o cousin
Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash
Payola scandal
Record companies paid DJs for airtime
Big record companies felt threatened, go after the DJ’s

Alan Freed gets in trouble while Dick Clark gets off

Teen Idols
How after Payola, big record companies filled the void

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Christian, white teen boys like Frankie Avalon

Dick Clark
Host of American Bandstand,

Owned publishing companies, played artists he published

Leiber/Stohler
Very important songwriters wrote Hound Dog, music for Elvis,

Applied Tin Pan Alley Pop for black bands

Wrote songs for the clovers/drifters

Brill Building
Songwriting factory for black music, publishing house

Carol King/Goffin were a married couple here, wrote 23 top 10 hits, mostly wrote for young black women

Rolling Stones
Like the Beatles, fascinated w/ American music

Heavy blues roots

Came to America in 1964, got really popular

Set themselves up as the Beatles alter ego- more improvised, rough around the edges

Jagger/Richards were a prolific songwriting team

Eric Clapton
Also came out of the British Blues Revivial

started out playing with Yardbirds (w/ J Paige and Beck), forms Cream

Also fascianted with Robert Johnson- ie “Crossroads”

Bob Dylan
Very inspired by Woody Guthrie

Got pinned as a protest singer, but tried to avoid being pigeonholed

Eventually “plugged in” took people a while to like him in an electric full band setting-(At Newport Folk Festival)

Ray Charles
arguably created the classic soul style

Uses gospel elements, adds non-religious lyrics

called “the genius of soul”

Sam Cook
“Sweet Soul” had a bit more of a pop orientation, less gritty

used to be a gospel singer

James Brown
Known as “the hardest working man in show business”–gave his all on stage

Progressed from soul to funk and may have even inspired some early hip hops

Barry Gordy
Started a company out of a house called “Hitsville USA”- produced Motown music

75% of everything they did hit the charts

Black owned, black run company

Took soul sound and cleaned it up for a white audience, caused some controversy in the soul community (The Motown formula and success)

Phil Spector
Music producer famous for creaing the “wall of sound”- a dense reverberated sound that comes across well on AM and jukeboxes
Dick Dale
Known as “king of the surf guitar”, pioneered fast solos