Pop/Rock: Sounds & Vibes of the 20th Century
Second Edition
Download a sample excerpt (PDF) here

$35.00   

Introduction

Way back in the 50s, when I was a pre-teen and knee high to an upright piano, music grabbed hold of my heart. Its hold was so strong that I knew, contrary to the best laid plans of parents and teachers, and my own real aptitudes for the sciences, music – that is, popular music – would be my love and meal-ticket to the end. So I began to inhale then-popular styles and various artists’ hits, gravitating to two areas that really excited my creative juices – theatrical organ (show tunes, standards, etc.), and later straight-ahead pop rock… a strange duo! My father said he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but both my parents loved music and encouraged my passion.

The radio, 7″ singles and early LPs were my teachers, as there were no popular music studies available in public school or the hallowed halls in which I later earned a respectable BA. Until the early 80s in fact, pop was ‘pooh-poohed’ as the wretched urchin, bastard child of the high and mighty classics and ‘legit’ genres. Too bad!… As a result, my overall awareness and understanding of music is the result of a fifty-year random walk by my ears, and thousands of chance encounters – hearing new records and old, filing them in my gray-matter ROM, reading a bit here or there (because there simply wasn’t much available to read – it wasn’t worth writing about, after all), and stringing it all together like a web spun by a tipsy spider.

And so I started and pursued my erstwhile career as a theater-organist, then formed a rock band in 1964, began writing songs and producing records soon thereafter, and – a fingersnap and nearly forty years later – I’m teaching at Berklee College and writing about my torrid affair with popular music. Castanets, please.

True confession: looking back, I would know a hell of a lot more about my passion and profession, and know it a lot better, if some wizard had written a guide book like this one, Survey of Pop/Rock Styles in 1965.

But better late than never.

I try to imagine how someone whose love for music is just igniting today can possibly organize his quest to embrace its wonders. It’s such a vast, open landscape, and like the hall of little doors at the bottom of the rabbit hole that carried Alice down and into Wonderland, nothing is labeled – it’s almost indecipherable to a novice or outsider, no matter how great his or her love for music. Somebody, anybody, help, please!!!

By now there are a number of weighty tomes chronicling the history of pop and rock – relating the lives and musical minutiae of the ‘important’ writers’ and performing artists’ masterpieces… describing the writing, playing and performing quirks that brought each artist to the fore and connected his entire output. Many of these tomes, my own recent book included, go even farther, exposing the detailed architecture and decoration ‘milestone’ hits. Yet this is too much too soon for someone who is in the process of forming his or her own opinions of various styles and artists.

What is needed is a clear, organized roadmap or family tree of popular music, not an encyclopedia.

Cheers to my friend and colleague Mirek Kocandrle for realizing the need for such a straight-forward, non-judgemental map, and for loving music enough to put in the enormous effort of compiling this book! It is truly a unique and wonderful resource, both for students (Mirek’s own, and mine for starters, to whom I will recommend this as one of a few ‘must-have’ career-builder books) and to fans and amateurs – lovers in the truest sense of the word – of the artform known as popular music.

After all, it is the love of music by millions of listeners that makes hits and points the direction to our musical future, NOT the writers of tomes mentioned above. Thus, the public has written and continues to write the history of popular music. Thumbs up to this, thumbs down to that, an unending parade of pass/fail judgments that have sent many one-hit genres or artists to instant oblivion and sustained the mainstream styles and their

flag bearers thru decades, almost unaltered from beginning to the present (Yes, I’m thinking of the Rolling Stones!).

Once in a while the whole public blips and we have something very strange, maybe even embarrassing, to look back on: bubblegum, late 70s disco, not to mention the Macarena. What can I say? At least the music of these sideshows was better than the fashions and hairstyles that accompanied them. Anyway, it’s good to laugh at oneself, or so say the shrinks.

But Mirek’s book is more than a roadmap. It also presents a series of snapshots of important trends and times: Top 50 Albums of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s…, Teen-Idol and other ‘maps’, decade-by-decade lists of the hottest record producers, Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame Inductees… Each of these shows the scope, breadth and ultimately, the power of the public’s tastes. They also reveal important threads and links between artists working

in one style and another – who worked with whom, who was produced or recorded by whom… Such interconnections would never become apparent by simply hearing the music of different artists produced by the same person, etc. But when someone points out the thread, Sproing! “Wow, now I see it.”

What I especially like about this Survey… is the quiet, implicit way in which it validates each and every style or genre. It thumbs its nose at no kind of music or artist. If the public enjoyed it, it’s in here. To impose ‘professorial’ expertise would be to judge the public’s taste, a big mistake in any art form, not to mention an outrageous expression of vanity on its own. Besides that, judging and comparing is the job of music criticism, while Mirek (and I) merely want to say, “Here’s the map. Look at all this great music… Now get in there and listen!”

Which is an important point in itself. When I hear a new record, my first thought is, “Do I like it or not?” If I do, I want to hear it again, louder, so I can get IN it rather than standing alongside, extending a formal greeting – “How do you do?” (just joking). Once I step in and find it comfortable – a real test drive – I listen again, closer, for lyrics, arrangement touches, riffs – whatever is unique and catchy about it. When I find the ‘hooks’ that grabbed my attention, my mind starts connecting the record to others I know and love, and that’s where curiosity leads me straight down the rabbit hole. Where, how did the artist come up with this record? What did he/she/they listen to before going into the studio?… at home?… in the privacy of their car?

I suspect that many people go through something like my own process from infatuation to knowledge when new music presents itself. At that’s exactly when a book like this is worth its weight in gold records. Because – hold your hat – recording artists are people too! Their tastes and creative output are a result of the same kind of mental process as any fan’s. Bob Dylan loved folk music, and if you turn to Chapter 14, you’ll find out which other contemporary folk artists HE loved and listened to.

Every artist knows who else is working in their genre, and what their latest records sound like (witness the unspoken rivalry between the Beach Boys and Beatles to top each other, culminating – to the delight of all – in Sgt. Pepper… and Pet Sounds). In fact, most well-known artists are friends with other luminaries in their style, if for no other reason than they share the same stages, in the same festivals, on the same or parallel tours. Thus,

contemporary ‘folk’ and ‘folk-rockers’ form a real community, as do the enormous brotherhood of ‘hip-hopsters’ and bass-music mavens. Do most artists consider each other as rivals? Since there are only so many spots in the Top 20 for this or that genre, the obvious answer is yes. Musically, however, I’m sure that the vast majority of artists welcome the latest sounds from their competitors, anxious to see what new twist they have brought to the music that is their mutual passion.

So welcome to the club. Use this Survey… as a ticket to knowledge and enjoyment, an invitation to well-guided listening. Just pick the road you want to travel on. When you’ve explored that and any other offshoots or parallel road of interest, you’ll be more than ready to meet the artists who drew up that part of the street-map to begin with – those who may never have achieved national or global popularity, but inspired the hitmakers you know and love. Like Arthur Crudup, the Mississippi blues man whose gutsy, rough-hewn performances formed the backbone of Elvis Presley’s and the entire rockabilly sound, or Lonnie Donegan and other ‘skiffle’ artists (playing high energy, light-hearted, almost vaudevillian blues-based proto-rock) who topped British charts around 1960 and inspired the Beatles, Zombies, Rolling Stones and others to become great entertainers, as well as writers and recording artists.

When you encounter the progenitors of the music that ultimately ignited the public’s passion, you’ll recognize their sound and spirit immediately, directly, with a knowing ear and a warm welcome. And hopefully, you will enjoy them just as your own favorite artists did when that same music took hold of their own hearts. When you finally open that door and step inside, tell them Mirek sent you.

Wayne Wadhams, January 2003