September 19, 2001
Program digs into roots of rock 'n' roll
Drake covers golden age of rock
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Celebrating 50 years since its founding all semester, Northwestern Michigan College's Oleson Center was ground zero of a trip back in time Monday evening.
"The Roots of Rock and Roll" multimedia presentation was a comprehensive history of how rock 'n' roll began, grew, almost died and eventually transcended its founding.
With Barry Drake guiding the audience using photos, music and his analysis and commentary, the 90-minute presentation catapulted some audience members from gray-haired retirement into a slice of youthful vigor.
"I love that old music, the 50s are kind of my decade," said James Mitchell of Traverse City, who graduated from high school in 1952. "This presentation brought back a lot of memories, I had forgotten some of those songs."
Drake covered the years from 1953 to 1963, delving into the social, political and racial issues that paralleled rock 'n' rolls conception and growth. A singer and songwriter since 1965, Drake has steeped his life in rock 'n' roll and now travels the country giving presentations on music of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
"The 50s was the golden age of rock 'n' roll, when the music was brand new and people were hearing these amazing sounds for the first time," Drake said.
Drake started at the beginning, back in 1953 when there were three main types of music available: pop, country and western and rhythm and blues. Pop grew out of the big band era and included mostly ballads or love songs. Singers such as Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney typified this sound.
Country and western, Drake said, was acoustic music by white southerners for white southerners, centered in Nashville. Also derogatorily called hillbilly music, Hank Williams was the epitome of that genre in the early 1950s. Rhythm and blues music was created by black musicians for a black audience, mainly located in larger cities such as New York, Detroit, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. It featured a heavy beat and emotional singing; Muddy Waters is an example of that sound.
A Supreme Court decision in 1954 declaring school segregation illegal and the subsequent mingling of black and white teens plus the spread of 45 rpm records and affordable players gave the new sound the boost it needed. White teens began listening to black music, helped along the way by independent record labels and independent-minded disc jockeys.
"Rhythm and blues was the main influence on rock 'n' roll," said Drake, who also discussed how it nurtured the new sound. "It really began when Bill Haley and his Comets traveled and played rhythm and blues for a white teen audience. With 1954's "Rock Around the Clock," I don't think there was a teenager who hadn't heard it; it was rock 'n' roll's first number one hit."
But Bill Haley was a little too old, a rare survivor from the big band era, and his natty suits and bow ties didn't have the right look. The hunt was on around the country for a star.
When Elvis Aaron Presley came into Sun Records in Memphis one day to record a song, it took six months before anyone realized that the King had arrived. Drake said Elvis was in the right place at the right time and, working with two veteran country and western musicians, his recording of the old rhythm and blues classic "Milkcow Blues Dodge" in 1955 got everything rolling.
"When they first played together and experimented with the new sound, they sounded awful," Drake said. "Then on a break, Elvis and the musicians started fooling around and it all came together."
From Elvis, rock 'n' roll soon divided into five sub-categories. Northern bands were white musicians who did not play instruments, such as Bill Haley. New Orleans rock 'n' roll featured black piano players, including Fats Domino and Little Richard. Rockabilly grew out of country and western and was white southern rock and roll; besides Elvis, there was Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Chicago rhythm and blues was the fourth category of rock. The sounds of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry were enduring and later influenced British groups such as the Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin and Cream. Vocal groups singing three-, four- and five-part harmony - such as the Platters, Coasters, Ravens and Penguins - formed the fifth category.
Given how rock evolved in the 1960s and beyond, Drake said that Chuck Berry, not Elvis, could legitimately be called the King of rock 'n' roll.
"They both arrived at the same music from two different directions," he said. "Berry was a black kid from St. Louis who sang white country and western while Elvis was a white kid from the south who sang rhythm and blues."
Despite parent protest, rock 'n' roll flew high in the late 1950s, appealing to both black and white teens in unprecedented numbers. But the new sound almost died in 1959; a series of tragic accidents and high-profile arrests gutted the mainstays of the sound. A turn to folk music and a year of teen idols almost stopped the new form in its tracks.
Then a new slick, uptown sound sustained rock 'n' roll in the first years of the 1960s until the British invasion resurrected the sound and set the music on the path to history.
"Rock 'n' roll is now the most popular form of music," Drake said. "Many older people thought it was just a fad and the founding fathers' of rock 'n' roll found their music passe in just a few years. The music had to grow up to endure."