Overview
The teenage culture of the fifties and early sixties was the seedbed for the youth-driven counterculture of the late sixties and early seventies. This shift toward a countercultural sensibility among young people was reflected in the music itself. If in the fifties Rock and Roll had been viewed primarily as a popular entertainment, in the period of “transformation” it would come to be viewed as–in its most elevated forms–an Art. In the hands of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and others, music became a “serious” thing. As young people faced the troubling facts of a war that included them and a country that refused them the right to vote, music now offered, among other things, a megaphone through which their disillusionment could be voiced. As the nation saw the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement that followed, artists like Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder used music to express feelings of frustration about the racial divide and excitement around the possibility of change. And as the music addressed the world of which it was a part, the music grew more complex, more varied—but, importantly, that music was also changing the world in ways it hadn’t previously.
Chapters
chapter:
Bob Dylan
More than any other performer associated with Rock and Roll, Bob Dylan created a body of work that could be — and has been — analyzed in literary terms. Often referred to as “a poet,” Dylan took popular music’s possibilities to new places. Nominated for a Nobel Prize in...
chapter:
Folk Rock
Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, among the most important figures associated with Folk Rock, has often described how in conceiving his group’s sound he married his interest in Folk music with an emergent love for the Beatles. The result can be heard in the Byrds' debut of 1965. The...
chapter:
Hard Rock is Born
The Hard Rock of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and a handful of other late 1960s and 1970s artists will be featured in the lessons coming in this chapter. Out of the Blues explosion and, more particularly, from the splinters of groups like the Yardbirds and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers,...
chapter:
Detroit: Blue Collar Rock
In the history of popular music, some cities play a more significant role than others. New York and Los Angeles, by virtue of size, location, and proximity to the music industry, figure larger than anyplace else. In the midst of the British Invasion, London achieved a similar status. Nashville,...
chapter:
The Summer of Love
1967. In many respects it was the high point of a new youth culture's emergence. The ideals of the so-called hippie era were new, held enormous promise for many young people, and got a moment of celebration in this window, before being tested more rigorously in the years that...
chapter:
The Protest Tradition
Pete Seeger has proclaimed that so-called “protest” music has deep roots in world culture, roots extending well beyond the protest era of the 1960s. By way of example, he points to the nursery rhymes of Elizabethan England, demonstrating the manner in which they were sometimes veiled criticisms of King and Crown....
chapter:
Country Rock
Country music was always a part of Rock and Roll. It was there in Elvis Presley's work, just as it was present in the southern Soul of the 1960s and in Chuck Berry's "Maybellene." The Beatles played with it, as did the Rolling Stones. Without that Country ingredient, Rock...
chapter:
Social Soul: The Roots of Hip Hop
Motown Records, home to the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and so many more, dubbed itself "The Sound of Young America." Consistent with this, Smokey Robinson has described the early Motown mission as being in part about making not black music but a music that would cut across the...
chapter:
Southern White Soul / Blue Eyed Soul
The history of Rock and Roll cannot be reduced to any single tendency. But if one had to select the most frequent tendency that has forced the music's evolution, it would relate to the borrowing of black culture by white musicians. From Jimmie Rodgers to Elvis Presley to the...
chapter:
The Singer-Songwriters
From today's perspective, the category seems almost odd. Singer-Songwriter? If you wrote it, you may as well sing it, right? But this is, in many ways, a line of thought that started with the Beatles and hit a high point with the Singer-Songwriters. Go back a few years before...