Music History


"THE BLUES HAD A BABY AND THEY NAMED IT ROCK 'N' ROLL!"
Muddy Waters song

The depth of this subject is such that I felt it deserved a page of its own instead of being scattered throughout posts of this blog.

If you are looking for the link to year-by-year song lists, scroll down to the bottom of this page.

As you explore the links, remember to use your "back" arrow to return to prior pages.

Note:  For best enjoyment of the music on the blog, earphones or auxiliary speakers (with sub-woofer!) are recommended!

History of Blues/Rock 'n' Roll!
For anyone wanting to know more about this music genre, the following sites offer some good info, the first being one of the most detailed histories you are likely to find anywhere.  You could spend days drilling down to all of the rich details contained in this one site.
W.C. Handy - Father of the Blues

 The following link is the fastest way to get to most of the meat of the History of Rock and Roll web site, which is very intricate and detailed, with lots of layers.  For a quick overview of the Blues Highway (Highway 61) from Memphis through the Mississippi Delta, here's a direct link to the "Blues" link: The Blues Highway.  Be sure to scroll down on the second page for more great links.  The Full Grid from the History of Rock and Roll web site

The following link takes you to the full History of Rock and Roll site.  After the link opens, look on the left side of the screen at the menu and click on the "Roots and Influences" button.  History of Rock 'n' Roll.  This is where the Grid noted above came from.

Following link has some unbelievably rich information about Blues festivals all over the US and the United Kingdom!  Yep, they like their blues in the Mother Country!  Don't forget to check out the Mississippi Delta/Clarksdale Page  for specific lists of blues festivals, museums, maps, etc.

Alphabetical list of blues festivals - comprehensive
America's First Blues Publication - Comprehensive list of blues festivals
Founded as America’s first blues publication in Chicago in 1970, Living Blues magazine has set the standard for blues journalism around the world.  Living Blues was acquired by the University of Mississippi in 1983 and is published bimonthly by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. 

Blues Revue Magazine - Dedicated to the full spectrum of the genre

 
Exploring the history and origins of rock 'n' roll, blues/soul, R&B is best done in small chunks.  As you browse through and "drill down" at these web sites, just remember to use your "back" arrow to return to where you started!  If you get lost along the way, you can just come back here and start anew!  For those who are much younger, and who are in the dark about how some of today's music evolved, this will be by way of introduction, and perhaps spur you to expand your knowledge on this subject. The internet is certainly a great research tool, but I have found, if you don't know what you don't know, you probably won't know what to look for! This will get you started.

Gene Nobles

Randy's Record Shop
Gallatin, Tn - WLAC

Once upon a time......


I began listening to a late-night radio show in the early to mid-Fifties called "Randy's Record Mart", Gallatin, TN.  The show aired on WLAC, a Nashville radio station whose signal could be heard far outside its local area.  I came across this little post while looking for background information to include here, and it probably best describes what the Randy's and WLAC experience was like for me, and I suspect, thousands of teens who were present for a music revolution:
 

WLAC - Early History
The early years of the station featured, as most big-city stations of that time, network programming (WLAC was a CBS affiliate), local news, studio-orchestra musical features (accompanied by an in-studio pipe organ), farm reports, and some educational programming. Its main competitor in that era was WSM, which became known as the radio station where country music essentially developed and became a national phenomenon. When country music became a big business in the late 1940s, WLAC added early-morning and Saturday-afternoon shows in an attempt to steal some of WSM's thunder. Otherwise, the station prided itself as a pillar of the community and placed emphasis on general full-service programs.

"John R" (John Richbourg)

The Night Time R and B years
By the 1950s, however, WLAC would achieve a distinctive notoriety of its own. The station became legendary from a quartet of nighttime rhythm and blues shows hosted by Gene Nobles, "John R." (John Richbourg), Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hossman" (or simply "Hoss") Allen in the 1950s and 1960s. Thanks to the station's clear channel designation, the signal reached most of the Eastern and Midwestern United States, although African-American listeners in the Deep South were the intended audience of the programs. Further, several foreign countries, particularly islands in the Caribbean and southern Canada, were within range of the station's nighttime signal; the music heard on WLAC played a notable role in the development of ska (Jamaican) music as a result. WLAC was particularly popular with some young white teenagers; some believe that the nightly shows laid the foundational audience for the rock and roll phenomenon of the late 1950s.


"Hossman" (Bill Allen)
Elsewhere, in the History of Rock & Roll Grid, you will see the emergence of DJs in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and New York playing "race" or "r&b" records, but none earlier than the inimitable WLACs Gene Nobles, John R, and the rest.  Nobles began the move, in 1946, toward what were considered at the time "race" records, a euphemism intended to deter supposedly respectable audiences. But he and the others discovered the large numbers of African-Americans in places like the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Lowcountry, Louisiana, Chicago, and Detroit, people whom practically no other radio stations were serving. Gradually phasing in artists like Amos Milburn, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino in the early 1950s to supplement the big-band artists of the era such as Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, the WLAC announcers presided over the development of what became "rhythm-and-blues" music. They did this mainly to attract advertisers who serviced the African-American community, such as hair-care products like Royal Crown Hair Pomade or chicken hatcheries, which packaged baby scrub roosters and other undesirable stock in large quantities for sale. The jockeys developed a reputation for colorfully pitching those products on-air; some product slogans lent themselves to sexually suggestive double entendres, which only increased the announcers' popularity among teen listeners. The jockeys conducted the advertising sales on a "per inquiry", or commission, basis, meaning that ratings per se did not play a major role in the programs' successes.

Bo Diddley

Performers of later years, such as Johnny Winter, credit the station as being a valuable source of inspiration for their artistic development. A strange irony about the phenomenon was unknown to most listeners of that time: all four disc jockeys were in fact middle-aged Caucasians, not African-Americans, as their Southern, gravelly, drawling voices suggested. Richbourg and Allen in particular made frequent use of colloquialisms most familiar to their audience, thereby convincing many that they were "soul brothers," as a common expression of that day would have it.



Other regular sponsors of the four shows included Randy's Record Shop of Gallatin, Tennessee, Ernie's Record Mart, and Buckley's Record Shop, the latter two of Nashville, all of which conducted mail order business selling the recordings featured on the shows, and had affiliations with record companies in Middle Tennessee. Buckley's Record Shop folded in the early 1970s; Randy's Record Shop ceased operating in the late 1990s. Allen and Richbourg also had financial interests in recording companies, artist management, and recording studios at varying points in their careers.


Each jockey's program lasted from one to two hours per evening Mondays through Saturdays, occupying roughly (with adjustments over the years) the period between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. Central Time; on Sunday nights, Richbourg or Allen hosted programs featuring the similar black gospel genre. Richbourg and Allen took credit for helping boost (or start) the careers of artists like James Brown, Ray Charles, B. B. King, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin; Nobles helped the likes of Little Richard.


Source - Wikipedia - WLAC


The following link contains a lot of personal recollections and details about those early days.


WLAC - Nashville Broadcasting History


                                      


And, more of the story.



.....and the beat goes on...









More  - Randy's Record Shop - Gallatin, TN - WLAC

As a young teenager in Memphis and northwest Mississippi, I wasn't aware of much outside my small little world except my ears perked up one night when I was with some friends at a local drive-in -- I think I was living in Belzoni, MS, which is deep Delta, take my word for it! -- and I heard the strains of a song unknown to me at the time, but later identified as "Hearts of Stone".  This was 1954, I think, and it had a repetitive "no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, your daddy knows, I thought you knew, hearts made of stone will never break........."   In the background, "do do-wa, do do-wa da do"!  Blaring out of a speaker in the drive-in parking lot, you could not escape hearing it. Right then and there, I think I was inoculated and with that song burning in my brain, I knew I definitely wanted to hear more of those wonderful sounds!
 

I had a small (well, not so small, actually, as I don't think there existed anything like a "transistor" at the time!) radio, which I would hide under the covers at night.  I found Randy's Record Mart in Gallatin, TN, and my world changed!  "Hearts of Stone" was actually recorded earlier by a group called "The Jewels", but the version I first heard was this one, with Otis Williams and the Charms.

So, come with me now, "to those thrilling days of yesteryear", and listen to the song that turned me on to "soul/rock 'n' roll".



Actually, the song that is most often called the first rock 'n' roll song (there are probably 20-25 serious candidates), was this one, with Ike Turner (yes, Tina's abusive husband). "Rocket '88" was released in 1951. You can hear the "boogie woogie" piano strains, but the sax was the early instrument more prominent than the guitar that was identified with the "rock 'n' roll" sound.  Jerry Lee Lewis had to have heard the rinky-tink sounds of the piano, as well, because he would later incorporate these into his style.  Ike Turner, by the way, was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi (my other hometown, and where I graduated high school), which is the "ground zero" for where the blues originated.  



So, in the mid-fifties, in between the old stuff my parents were listening to (Kay Starr, "Wheel of Fortune" comes to mind), the soul or doo-wop sound was what I dove under the covers at night to listen to most.  Fats Domino, Big Joe Turner, these were the artists that turned me on.  In 1955, the movie, Blackboard Jungle, was when rock 'n' roll exploded and set the world on fire.  The movie featured the song, "Rock Around The Clock", by Bill Haley and his Comets, at the beginning and the end of the movie.  The genie was out of the bottle, and teenagers nationwide started to dance! This marked the point that the new musical sounds came to the attention of the grownups!

Ever want to check to see what year a particular song was on the charts? What about the top songs, year by year? All your questions can be answered at the following site.

Year by Year Song Lists and Rock Timeline
This is a very rich web site, with music lists, year by year.  A great site to hang out in.




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