1940 - 1960 - Rock and Roll, Rhythm & Blues

1940 - 1960

The students will research the history of the era while chronologically listening to music of the era. The students will break into groups create venn diagrams to compare and contrast how the music of the era reflects the zeitgeist of the times. Each group can select one type of music. We will continue to build our word wall and update our chronological listening log.

Assessment

Students will be evaluated on their venn diagrams and listening logs

Historical Background

1940 - 1945 WWII
1945 - 1960 Post War Boom, Red Scare, MAD
1955 - 1960 Civil Rights Movement

Rhythm & Blues

Was the new name for "race music" coined in 1948 by Billboard Magazine. It covered all black music except classical and gospel.
Partly based on boogie-woogie rhythms of '40s.
Exemplars
Wynonie Harris' "Good Rockin' Tonight", Sonny Thompson's "Long Gone", Chuck Berry's "Maybellene".
Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Big Joe Turner, The Treniers, The Platters, The Flamigos, all made it onto the big screen in the '50s
Two Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock"/"Treat Me Nice" and "All Shook Up" showed an unprecedented acceptance of a non-African American artist into a music category known for being created by blacks.

Rock & Roll

In 1951, DJ Alan Freed started calling the rhythm & blues he played "Rock and Roll".
Like Rhythm & Blues, Rock & Roll is a big bag of various styles, and tends to be a synonym for popular music. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various popular musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues, gospel music, and country and western.
popularity of the electric guitar, a rock and roll style of playing, recording technology such as multitrack recording, and the electronic treatment of sound.

rock and roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. In addition, rock and roll may have helped the cause of the civil rights movement because both African American teens and white American teens enjoyed the music.

Blues

In Chicago and Detroit, Mississippi Delta blues became electrified by Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Elmore James among others. They were backed by bass, drums, piano and occasionally harmonica, and began scoring national hits with blues songs. At about the same time, T-Bone Walker in Houston and B.B. King in Memphis were pioneering a style of guitar playing that combined jazz technique with the blues tonality and repertoire. B.B. King also invented the concept of lead guitar, now standard in today's Rock bands. Bukka White (cousin to B.B. King), Leadbelly, and Son House, left Country Blues to create the sounds most of us think of today as traditional unamplified Blues.

Resources

All info from www.wikipedia.com