During the 1950’s, a lot of major events happened such as the civil rights, the affects of world war 2 and women’s rights. All of these events changed and developed music in many different ways.
Big names in the 50’s:
Martin Luther King Junior – He was a civil rights movement activist who lead peaceful protests in order to fight for equal rights for black’s.
Rosa Parks – She was a strong black women who sat at the front of the bus when there was segregation in America, which stated blacks at the back and whites at the front. Her powerful confrontation lead to MLK leading the Montgomery bus boycott and kicked off the civil rights movement.
Elvis Presley – He was named king of rock ‘n’ roll with a lot of hits such as “Hound-dog” and “Jailhouse rock”.
Frank Sinatra – Again, he was a huge name in the music industry but he was also an actor.
Chuck Berry – He was the most popular R&B artist from 50’s-70’s.
James Brown – He was a very talented man who could sing, song write, dance and produce.
World War 2 Impact – Due to the men needing to be out on the fields and fighting for our country, it left a lot of factory jobs vacant yet they needed as many workers as possible. A lot of the factories started making ammunition so they couldn’t afford to loose their workers yet we needed more soldiers. As a result, it meant women started taking over the factory jobs whilst the men went to the fields. They worked incredibly hard, and well, but before all of this, women were expected to stay at home and just cook and clean for their male partner. However, when men returned from war, women were expected to return to their every day lives of staying at home and just cooking and cleaning. This didn’t go down well and many people saw how well women provided for the country and started demanding equal rights.
Women’s Equal Rights Movement affected the music industry because a lot of music started to talk about women differently, such as presenting them as much more stronger and independent people instead of just being dainty and needing a man to protect them. Music became kind of like a statement, in many cases, and a way to project the movement and their true thoughts on why women deserve equal rights.
Civil Rights Movements Impact – Civil rights movement really kicked off in the 1950’s after Rosa Parks sat at the front of a segregated bus, and along the whites, and then refused to move. This sparked off the Montgomery Bus Boycott, lead by Martin Luther King, which lead to many other peaceful protests, as well as violent protests when Malcom X saw that they weren’t making much progress with just being peaceful.
This affected music because a lot of R&B artists were black and they started singing about their struggles within slavery, like on the cotton fields and how mistreated they were. The movement theme-tune song was called ” We Shall Overcome”. A lot of genres played an important role in getting their messages across such as, Motown, soul and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Music helped raise funds for the organisation and keep hopes high when they needed motivation. They did tend to use Blues as a way to express troubles too because it was such a slow tempo and it allowed them to express emotions well.
Entertainments Developments -After world war 2, a lot of people were looking for a brand new lifestyle, after all the misery from the world war. This saw a massive advancement in different forms of entertainment with the introduction of jukeboxes, drive-in cinema’s, vinyl’s and the option of 3 different channels on TV.
This impacted music because it meant there was a variety of different ways people would/could listen to your music so it meant you had to think more about target audience and what you want the audience to take away from your music i.e. you’d only really want dance songs for a duke box, or at least not really minor sounds. All of this developed from the 50’s-90’s but people were always looking for new ways to gain a larger target audience, i.e. playing into what the general public want to hear.
Random fact – R&B came before Rock ‘n’ Roll!
Recorded Music – In a live performance, you’d only have approximately 3 microphones, one for the singer, drum kit and then whole room, so the sound had very low quality. Dynamics was very low quality too because there was not a whole load of processing and editing their music, they only really decided if it was stereo or mono sound.
Who’s song is who’s? – Many artists actually stole others songs! Some examples are:
“Tutti Fruiti” was actually originally by Little Richard and only covered by Pat Boone.
“Rock Around The Clocks”, by Bill Hayley and his comets, sounds a lot like Hank William’s ” Move it on over”.
Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” sounds a lot like Bob Willis’ “Ida Red”.
“Hound Dog” was originally by Big Mama Thornton and was only a covered by Elvis Priestly.
A lot of people actually had songwriters who wrote the majority of their songs and they just never got credited because black people’s music wasn’t able to succeed in such a racist society. For example, Elvis actually had Otis Blackwell write a lot of his songs such as “All Shook Up”.