I''ve combined two classes into one account, because they're about the same thing, and flow into each other. What they're about is the early history of rock & roll, leading into a challenging discussion of rock's worth. Maybe it's easier to make an artistic case for rock if you look at its later history -- in the '50s, nobody dreamed that rock could be art, or even that it could be serious. But it was interesting to state some points of view early on, and I have to admit I find the early history of rock fascinating, more so than the history of its later and perhaps greater eras. Where Did Rock & Roll Come From? That's the first question to ask, and even thinking lightly about it gives an idea of why the early history of rock is so fascinating. In class, I played two musical examples to illustrate the question. One was a song from South Pacific, the Rogers and Hammerstein musical that opened on Broadway in 1948. The other was Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," which hit the airwaves in 1955. The first is witty and civilized; the second is a delighted, raucous shout. When rock & roll appeared, it didn't replace sweeter, more traditional pop music overnight. Nor did it arise out of nothing. Rock-like songs were appearing on the pop charts as early as 1946. But its emergence into the pop mainstream in the mid-50s was a shock that all America felt, and it's well worth asking how we got there. When I asked the question in class, one student had a good answer. He said rock came from rhythm and blues, and from other forms of black music that had been around for quite a while. He was absolutely right, and his point is one way to start. The music we now call rock & roll existed before it ever showed up in mainstream pop, like some unwashed visitor from another land. It existed -- but, for the most part, only black people listened to it. For most white people, it might as well have been played on the far side of the moon. I can't resist putting this story in a global context. Classical music is a product of western culture, the culture of Europe. But Europe exists as part of a larger world, a world that includes Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and endless other areas, all with culture and music of their own. Europe wasn't the only civilization to move aggressively against its neighbors, but from the 16th century on, it did so much more thoroughly. By the end of the 19th century, Europe for all practical purposes ruled the world. Many, if not most, non-western countries were its colonies.(Anyone my age will remember maps of not too many decades ago, showing such regions as "the Belgian Congo" and "French Equatorial Africa.") This wasn't a situation that could exist forever. And perhaps the most virulent form of western domination of non-western people existed in the United States, in the form of slavery. Africans were brought over here en masse, and sold as slaves. That gave us what soon became our own indigenous non-western population, an African-American portion of our country that developed its own music, and was destined to influence our culture and our history in ways nobody could have foreseen. There were, of course, forms of African-American music that white people listened to before rock & roll. There were spirituals, gospel music, ragtime, jazz, and blues, though maybe only ragtime and jazz developed any wide popular appeal. Of all these styles, blues is the one with the most direct relationship to rock & roll. It began in the Mississippi delta, where it was typically played by one person, singing and accompanying himself on a guitar. On early blues records (I played one of the most obvious choices, something by Robert Johnson, normally considered the greatest of the delta blues singers, but maybe just for that reason not really typical) you can hear the standard blues progression: I, IV, I, V, IV, I. (Note to my friends from outside classical music: These numbers are a standard classical-music way of referring to chords. They name a series of chords that could be played in any key. In C, the blues progression would be C, F, C, G, F, C.) We need to remember that blues progression, because it shows up in rock & roll. The blues developed further around the time of World War II, when there was a large migration of black people from the south to cities in the north, especially Chicago. There they found more money, and a more developed way of doing things. Now the blues could be played by instrumental ensembles, and the electric guitar could replace the acoustic guitar. The blues developed a more modern sound, and a stronger beat. All sorts of hybrids arose. Many of them can be grouped under the name "rhythm and blues" (or R&B for short). They allowed all sorts of music to be played with a blues feel, and the new, strong blues beat. This became a new kind of urban black pop music, lively, modern, completely up to date. Some of it began creeping into the white pop-music mainstream. Starting around 1950, a new feeling started to develop among white teenagers. This is beautifully documented in Last Train to Memphis, Peter Guralnick's superb biography of Elvis. All over the south, where black and white people lived closer to each other than they did in the north (even though blacks were much more restricted), radio stations sprung up that played black mixture, or a mixture of white music and black. Many white kids listened to them. They didn't buy the records they heard, because that would still have felt strange. This, after all, was often called "race" music (a common, in many ways insulting term back then). Record stores in white areas might not carry it. But these kids were listening. Change was in the air. And it was certainly in the air for some African-Americans, who thought it was time they had equal rights. Hadn't black soldiers fought just as hard as whites in the war against the Nazis? How could America oppose the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and still maintain discrimination against its black population at home? Black people, in any case, were more educated than ever before, and some began to take action, orchestrating a legal challenge to segregated schools in the south. In 1954, that challenge bore fruit -- the Supreme Court, in one of its rare unanimous decisions, declared segregation unconstitutional. That signaled the end to legalized racial discrimination in the United States, and opened an era of open struggle for equal rights, an era in which, for the first time, black voices were heard all over the country, proclaiming their equality, and demanding that it be realized in practice. Here we had the non-western world fighting back, making itself known, demanding equal time for its people, and, by implication, for its culture. Internationally, former colonized nations were gaining their independence; slowly but surely, the dominance of western civilization was starting to end. And what was that crucial date in the USA? 1954 -- the year Elvis made his first record, the year generally accepted as the first year of rock & roll. And what was rock & roll? It was music black people had listened to for years, that now found a new, young, excited white audience. Thus the history of rock mirrors the history of the world around it, as black people, raising their political voice more strongly than they'd ever raised it before, found themselves raising their cultural voice as well, and finding that white people were listening. This is one reason why rock is so important -- why I might even claim that it's the most important musical development in western music since the development of harmony and counterpoint early in the middle ages. It's also a reason why rock was so exciting. It's not just a new musical style. It's the sound of a new era, with new ideas and new possibilities. And these weren't just theory. Rock was the music of people who hadn't had access to the mainstream before. Many were black, but some, like Elvis, were poor whites. Rock empowered hillbillies as well as African-Americans (there was even a style called "rockabilly"), and brought all sorts of buried Americana -- buried, at least where polite society was concerned -- into the light of day. Meanwhile, At Carnegie Hall… What was going on in classical music while rock & roll was emerging? Serialism -- highly abstract compositions, feisty and ecstatic in Europe, academic in America. American opera -- some of the key works of the American operatic repertory, such as it is, were written in this general period. Among them are Susannah, The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Amahl and the Night Visitors. John Cage -- he entered his most out-on-the-edge period during the '50s, working more closely with painters and dancers than with musicians. Cage (along with Morton Feldman and Earle Browne, who wrote music with a related aesthetic) is an example of the kind of underground ferment that bubbled into glorious public view in the '60s. But otherwise classical music in America during the '50s is notable for not reflecting the huge cultural forces that rock & roll embodied. Yes, we had our first black musicians in major orchestras, and the first black singer in a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera. But these were, numerically, at least, tiny steps, and the field as a whole -- above all the music itself -- remained untouched by everything rock & roll represented. How can classical music claim to be serious art in America if it stands apart from changes in American culture? An Uproar of Styles Returning now to rock & roll…one thing I love about its early years is how varied it was. If you know the music well enough, you can hear styles mixing and changing right before your ears. You might like to look at the first rock listening assignments, for examples of what I'm talking about. I'm not going to try to put the songs themselves online, but most of them are familiar. You might well know them. But don't let familiarity blind you to what's going on in this music. Is there a '50s rock & roll style? Not really. Bill Haley and His Comets were playing something that was as much country music as rock. It certainly doesn't have the "big beat" everybody talked about; instead, it dances with a kind of shuffle rhythm. Hard to believe people thought their now-classic "Rock Around the Clock" might start riots when it turned up on the soundtrack of The Blackboard Jungle, a movie about troubled teens. Fats Domino's "Ain't It A Shame" has the big beat, but in a way it isn't a rock song at all, at least if rock is supposed to be a new style. Domino came from New Orleans, the city where jazz was born, a place with a long black-music tradition. In this and other songs, he just played the same kind of rhythm and blues he'd been doing for years, and would keep on doing for years afterward. It was the pop mainstream that changed, suddenly becoming open to his work. "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers is most obviously an example of the kind of vocal music groups that kids were developing on street corners, doubtless influenced by a generation of popular black vocal groups like the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, and, much closer to rock & roll, the Orioles. Because the kids on the corners didn't have instruments, they made up ways to imitate instruments in their singing. That's why the bass in the group starts the song singing his famous "deh toom-ah, ta toom-ah, ta toom-ah, do do" he's imitating an instrumental bass. But there's also a lot of jazz in the song. The backup singers (a mixed black and Hispanic group, very rare back then) liked a jazz vocal trio, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross sang very complex arrangements, so it's not surprising that the backup stuff in "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" is much more complex than you'd normally hear in rock & roll. And then there's the instrumental playing. The vocal group, remember, didn't have any instruments. So when they made their record, someone had to provide a band. As it happened, their record company had a house band, a small combo led by Jimmy Wright, a saxophonist who spent his free time up at Minton's in Harlem, playing bebop with the likes of Thelonious Monk. Obviously, he and his musicians were pros; they worked out a fine R&B-style accompaniment. But when they get to the sax solo, something comes over them. They start playing jazz! You can hear that in Jimmy Wright's sax, of course, since he does a lot more in his solo, melodically and motivically, than most R&B sax players. But listen also to the bass. During the solo, he starts playing a typical jazz "walking" bass, nothing like the stuff he's been playing during the rest of the song. What was jazz doing in the middle of a rock & roll song? Nobody ever said it couldn't be there. Rock & roll didn't yet exist as an established style, and it could incorporate material from nearly anywhere. Rock & roll ballads (like the Penguins' "Earth Angel") could absorb the AABA form found in pre-rock pop songs. Elvis could make his first record, "That's All Right," in a style that now seems like rock & roll, even though the recording doesn't even use drums. The Cadillacs, another early vocal group, could record "Gloria" with a dim accompaniment from a pianist, an organist, and a bass player, none of whom have the faintest idea what they're doing. Not only were the styles not fixed, but many of them were invented on the spot while the records were being made. Chuck Berry, for instance, had started playing music in his home town of St. Louis, and fancied himself a bluesman. But he'd also amuse his audience with country-style novelties, one them being a ditty about a man, a girl, and a car that he called "Ida Red." When he took a shot at a serious musical career, he took a trip to Chicago, where the small Chess record label was recording a lot of the electric blues that emerged after the great black migration northward. (Fascinating and important fact: Early rock & roll was almost exclusively recorded on small labels. The big record companies didn't believe in it.) But Philip Chess, one of two Chess brothers who ran the label and named it after themselves, produced Berry's first record, and didn't care for his blues, which in fact (as we can hear on blues records he did make) wasn't very distinguished. Instead, Chess liked "Ida Red," which he renamed "Maybelline." In it, Berry found his authentic voice, and became a star. (This, by the way, is an interesting case of something not at all uncommon in pop music -- a commercial producer sometimes knows better than an artist what an artist is good at.) Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" -- so familiar now that it sounds like it's engraved in very happy stone -- was also an accident. Little Richard was recording traditional R&B, and the session wasn't going well. He started singing an obscene nonsense song he liked, and the producer perked up. Somewhere they found someone to quickly write new, sanitized lyrics, and -- thanks to this accident -- one of rock & roll's greatest classics was born. Elvis's first record, too, was an accident. Elvis was a shy 10 year-old, whose conversation, much of the time, was limited to "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am." He'd come to Sun Records, a very small label in Memphis oriented toward black music, to use a service they offered the public. For a few dollars, you could make your own record for your private use. As a present to his mother, Elvis recorded a ballad. Sam Philips, who owned and ran the label, heard some potential, and months later got Elvis together with a rudimentary band -- just guitar and bass, augmented by Elvis's own crude guitar (he played a child-sized one he'd been given years before; he was too poor to buy another). But the sessions weren't going well. Elvis hadn't even seriously sung in public, much less made a record. Who knew what to do with him? During a break, just for fun, he started singing "That's All Right," a blues number recorded by a singer named Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Suddenly Sam Philips heard something new -- a combination of country music (or, as it was frequently called then, "hillbilly music") and R&B, an unheard-of hybrid that Elvis, who absorbed music in all available styles as easily as he breathed, had made up right there. Even today, that record has a freshness that tells the world something new is going on. Quite literally, it was a combination of white music and black music, a crossing of racial lines in music that nobody had ever done before -- and which Sam Philips had been looking for, without knowing what form it would take when he found it. (Chuck Berry, by the way, crossed those lines, too, but in the opposite direction, from black to white. His racial identity was so unclear from his music, at least to some people, that he once got booked by the Ku Klux Klan!) The Importance of It All Rock & roll was not just a new sound in the America of the mid-'50s -- for many people it was a shocking new sound. I've mentioned the racial barriers that were, at least implicitly, crossed. Someone I know, a white woman, grew up in the south in those years, and remembers the first time she heard Elvis on the radio. She couldn't tell if he was white or black. In an area where racial segregation was enforced by both custom and law, that was a bigger shock than we can easily imagine. Major record labels and other established interests scoffed at rock. Some people tried to ban it. I remember seeing a film of a southern sheriff who solemnly declared that rock & roll was "nigra [he wasn't too far wrong there] and communist" music. Sophisticated people made fun of the lyrics. ("Be bop a lula, she's my baby/Be bop a lula, don't mean maybe." That's miles from Cole Porter!) Some people in the record business found white performers to make comparatively innocuous versions of rock & roll by black singers. There was a sense, everywhere, of something new being created. You can hear that, to give just one striking example, in a Chuck Berry song, "Roll Over Beethoven." He says that classical music has to move over to make room for rock. He sounds perfectly happy, and isn't complaining; it's not as if he has any objections to classical music. But he doesn't respect it, either, as pop songwriters of a previous era did. He just thinks it's in the way. One of rock's most important innovations comes from something I discussed in the last sections -- the way the new sound of a record would be invented during recording sessions. I'm not going to say that never happened earlier. But pop music in the pre-rock era functioned something like classical music. In classical music, everything starts with the composer, who writes out a complete score that the performers play. In older pop music, everything started with the songwriter, who'd write a song. Someone would then arrange it, and the singer would record it, accompanied by musicians playing the written-out arrangement. (Jazz, of course, fucntioned much more flexibly.) When rock & roll arose, all that changed. The musical text -- by which I mean a notated composition -- could be pretty trivial. Does anyone really want to see Little Richar'ds "Tutti Frutti" written out in score? What made these early songs distinctive and compelling was the sound of the performance. And that, often enough, was constructued during the recording. The producer of the recording is the one, often, who was responsible for the sound, and thus adopted the role of the composer. (If you want to get more detailed, you might compare the producer to an "auteur" in film -- a director who doesn't write the screenplay, act the roles, or even shoot the film, but who gives the whole thing its unmistakable tone and content.) Those familiar with rock history know, of course, that it wasn't till the early '60s, with the rise of Phil Spector, that the role of the producer was widely recognized. But it's clear that producers -- Phil Chess with Chuck Berry, Sam Phillips with Elvis, whoever commissioned those new lyrics for "Tutti Frutti" -- played a huge role as early as the '50s. So when you listen to rock & roll, you have to analyze it differently from a classical work. It's not fair to say something like, "Well, there's a simple melody and only three chords." You have to listen to the overall sound of the record, the tone of the singer's voice, the way the rhythm is inflected. It's there that the real content lies -- and often you feel a power and even a depth that overwhelms the misleading simplicity of the music and lyrics. Which Music is Better? At this point, I couldn't resist asking the class which kind of music they thought was better, classical or rock? The answers mostly favored classical: "They're different. I love both. But when classical is good, it doesn't get any better than that." "Pop music is simpler." "Once you know the words to the pop tunes, you get bored. Classical music can stand the test of time. You're not going to laugh at it like you laugh at '80s music." "Classical music is more complex and more disciplined. It's hard to compare a 45-minute symphony to a three-minute pop song." "Classical music requires patience and open-mindedness. There's not much in rock about change. It's about falling into a groove." "Pop music is geared toward an era. Classical music is from the 18th and 19th centuries, but we listen to it today, and its origin doesn't matter." "Classical is texture music. It has more depth." "Pop all sounds so similar." "I listen to pop music, but I get sick of it." Not everyone was quite as sure of classical's superiority: "There are some sounds you can't get from classical instruments. You can drive to pop, or be cooking or reading." "I wouldn't really equate classical with being good and rock being bad." "It's not an issue of what's better or worse -- there are two difference aesthetics. You can't say classical music lasts and rock doesn't." "There's something about classical music that doesn't die away, but some pop has that effect." At some point in the discussion, one student said that the Beatles will still be with us 200 years from now. Another objected, saying there was no way we can know that -- but we do know that some classical music has already lasted 200 years. This, I thought, was a very good point. People often say with complete confidence that their favorite music will last, but it's all just speculation. Still, we can say that some rock has already lasted 40 years, and if we really want to be open-minded -- or do I just mean bratty? -- we also have to admit that we don't know if even Beethoven will still be played in 200 years. Maybe there'll be a giant shift in taste, or in some of our fundamental cultural ideas. (In some ways, that has already happened. Our view of women isn't remotely like Beethoven's, or Mozart's, or Verdi's. Some moments in older operas are starting to look a little silly, if not outright sexist. There's a lot of writing for the Countess and Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro, for instance, that embodies one view of women expressed overtly in The Magic Flute -- that they're far too likely to chatter.) Of course, I had to challenge the students. How should we listen to rock? I asked them. We can't listen the same way we listen to classical music. We have to listen between the notes, and even between the words, till we can hear what the music is really telling us. As an example, I took the first record Elvis ever made, "That's All Right." I played it, and asked the students to tell me what they'd expect if Elvis was singing directly to them. His voice sails and glides, floating on sudden gusts of excitement. He seems to savor every word, and turn every meaning over in his mind, looking at every possibility, but dwelling mainly on the happy ones. He sounds like he's saying goodbye to a woman who isn't good for him at all, but he sounds supremely confident, happy and full of mischief, if not outright trouble. He turns the tables; is the woman no good for him, or he is too much for the woman? "He's a dog!" said one of the women in the class, meaning that he's the kind of man women can't trust at all. There was a general agreement about that. (When I played the song for a class I taught 10 years ago at the University of Minnesota, there wasn't any unanimity. Some students thought he'd be the most loyal lover any woman could imagine.) There was also general agreement that I was right when I said there was depth in the song. But then one student -- the one who once played in a punk band -- said that the song wasn't any great achievement, because the musicians had just played it, without any thought. Well, as it happens, that isn't so. The song sounds completely effortless, but we know it wasn't. There's lots of information available about the recording sessions, especially in Peter Guralnick's book. Sam Phillips worked long and gracefully to make the song as good as it is, refining what the guitar player did -- he was too fancy at first -- and drawing a performance from Elvis that wasn't like anything Elvis had ever done before. All of Elvis's recordings for Phillips's Sun label went through many, many takes. They sound easy, but that's a hard-won accomplishment. I was hardly surprised when the students asked me what I thought. Which is better, rock or classical? My answer comes in the form of a question. "Better for what?" If I want deep spiritual inspiration, I'll go with classical music. For most everyday emotions -- and for any musical experience directly related to current American culture and my own everyday life -- I'll take rock.