A Brief History of Popular Music: The Dawn of Rock n’ Roll

In 1951, Jackie Brenston recorded a song called “Rocket 88” with Ike Turner and his backing band, a song that benefited from an incredible accident. As the band was traveling down Route 66, guitar player Willie Kizart’s amp was damaged, and Kizart attempted to hold its speaker cone in place by stuffing the amp full of newspaper. The result was a sludgey sound we now recognize as distortion. Producer Sam Phillips loved it, and he was right to- “Rocket 88” was a solid Rhythm and Blues hit and is often cited as the first Rock n’ Roll song. 

With the money he earned from Rocket 88, Phillips would start his own record label, Sun Records, which sought to bring Black music like Rocket 88 to white audiences. In 1954, a nineteen year-old kid came around and cut a version of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right”. That young man was Elvis Presley, and he would change popular music forever.

Act 2: The Birth of Rock n’ Roll

Scene 1: The Originators

Rock n’ Roll existed before Elvis, but for a very long time people identified Elvis Presley’s version of “That’s All Right” as Rock n’ Roll’s beginning. The reason for this is simple- as Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker put it in Baz Luhrman’s definitely-100%-factual-not-at-all-exaggerrated movie Elvis, “he’s white.” This is an era of explicit segregation. No matter how good a Black artist’s music was, there were venues they couldn’t play and stores that wouldn’t sell their records.

I do not say this to downplay Elvis. The King and his music carries with it so much baggage that it’s difficult to separate his actual music and performances from the legend, but something clicked when I realized three things. 

First: Elvis was young. Elvis was younger when he released his first album than I am now. His style was not the eternally parodied and impersonated thing it is now, it was the hit new thing in youth culture. His unique look and performance style generated interest in the same way Billie Eilish’s traits did recently. Before Elvis, the Blues was for older folks. The Blues was life’s way of talking to you, so the best messenger was someone who’d lived a good bit of life. But kids have their own blues too, and the Blues was often danceable, so bringing the Blues to a young and energetic audience made sense.

Second: Elvis was hot. Have a look at this performance on the Ed Sullivan show.

Presley barely seems like he’s trying, he’s just innately that cool. The camera is sure to cut off his hips, but he doesn’t need the raw sex of his wiggling pelvis to make ladies swoon. If you want to understand the mania around Elvis, just look at his cheeky smile, his haircut that nearly every boy in America would adopt, the just-right amount of silliness, and that outfit! Elvis’ peers usually dressed in suits like his backup singers, but he’s up there in a glittery vest! He stood out in an effortless way. Musicians could get pretty big with unimpressive looks, but if you wanted to conquer the world like Elvis you had to be desirable. 

It’s worth noting that Elvis is on the Ed Sullivan show. Before the 1950s music consumers only saw the big names on their record’s covers. You probably wouldn’t get the chance to see Frank Sinatra perform if you weren’t already in a major city or watching him in a movie, but now the television meant that Elvis was in your living room. The highway system meant that Elvis could be in your town. And if he was around, well surely you had to see what the fuss was about, right?

Third: Elvis was good. If you did take that chance and saw Elvis, odds are you saw a damn good show. He played over one hundred shows in 1956, right as his career began to soar, and his tour was a big part of that. He worked the stage like few before him had (those who had worked the stage like him before were Black and/or leaned much more heavily into dance, such as Cab Calloway), he sang well, and he had solid guitar-work. If you compare him to the other early white rock n’ rollers you’ll really get it. Just compare his version of “Tutti Frutti” to the one by Pat Boone. The top comment on the linked video says it cleanly, @theMiamiRockStar comments, “this is rock music for Ned Flander types.” Elvis plays it fast, with his guitar stabbing in when he’s not singing, and he shudders out little vocal runs. Pat Boone plays the most boring possible version of the song. It’s music for people who don’t season their chicken. 

I’ll elaborate more on Elvis’ Black peers later, but if you compare his sound to theirs you’ll see why Elvis is considered a father of rockabilly alongside rock. When people talked about Elvis incorporating country-western sounds into Rock n’ Roll I never quite understood what they meant, but I think it’s in the ramshackle nature of his music. Rockabilly takes its name from the word hillbilly. It’s the kind of rock n’ roll you’d play with a washboard for drums. His more R&B inclined peers used a lot of horns, but all Elvis’ early songs needed was him, a small band, and backup singers. The sparse accompaniment lets Elvis really shine through his delivery and personality. 

And boy does his personality shine. Much of the dangerous sexuality Elvis represented was in his emulation of Blackness, but there’s clearly more to it than that. “Baby, Let’s Play House” hides it in a paper-thin metaphor, but we’re all adults- it’s him begging a lady for sex (here’s a live version I found cool). He sells it perfectly with that stuttering “baby, baby, baby, b-b-baby” and just the right amount of desperation. He’s singing at you directly about how he wants to have sex with you. I can see why audiences lost their minds over him. You can also see him shine through his passionate hollering on “Jailhouse Rock,” his incredible singing on a ballad like “I’m Counting on You” or a dozen other great songs (my favorites are from his late 60s and early 70s comeback period with his MLK tribute “If I Can Dream,” “In The Ghetto,” “Kentucky Rain,” “Suspicious Minds,” and “Burnin Love.” They don’t really fit in with what I plan to highlight in those time periods so even though they’re quite separate from this era I’ll highlight them here). 

It’s easy to look at the dawn of rock n’ roll and make everyone else a footnote under Elvis. The man looms large over the era and rightfully so, the frenzy around him is a defining part of the decade, but while Elvis was memetic (and still is), in quality he was matched and often outdone by his Black peers. 

Little Richard was the biggest of the original Black rock n’ rollers, and there’s a few reasons why. Any amount of Black sexuality would be heavily policed, and while Little Richard’s music was hardly chaste, his persona was less sexual than Elvis. Just look at this performance from 1955.

He’s definitely not restrained- those big leans back and his iconic move of putting his leg on the piano are both great- but he’s not Elvis shaking his hips. Him tying himself to the piano makes the focus a bit less on him as the performer and more on the music he’s performing. This does not mean he blends into the background (far from it), but it does mean he might not cross certain lines white audiences may have. 

For example, take a song we’ve already spoken about that Little Richard popularized, “Tutti Frutti.” It was a song people sang at night clubs way back in 1951, and the lyrics were a lot less innocent than the version Richard released in 1956. People disagree about the exact lyrics, but people agree that it started as “Tutti Frutti, good booty,” that the next lyrics had to do with anal sex/lube, and that instead of “a-wap-bop-a-lu-bop a-lop-bam-boom” it was “a-wap-bop-a-lu-bop a-good-goddamn!” Songwriter Dorothy Labostrie cleaned up the lyrics, later claiming that Tutti Frutti was an ice cream flavor and that when her friend told her about the new flavor she responded, “aw rooty,” a version of “all right.” The exact truth of the song isn’t fully clear, but the result is the same, a song about dancing, partying, and perhaps eating some ice cream that’s just raunchy enough to be fun while innocent enough to get by your parents. 

There’s also the simple reason why he was successful- he was good. Earlier I said his attachment to the piano meant he blended a bit into the music. That isn’t wrong, but it obscures just how powerful Little Richard was as a performer. My musician uncle once told me that classical music was made to exalt God while jazz and rock were made to exalt individuals. Little Richard’s music was made to exalt his voice. Just compare his delivery of “I’ve got a gah-ha-hal named Daisy” to Elvis. Elvis at least attempted the gospel-esque run unlike Pat Boone, but the King doesn’t put an eighth of the power into it that Little Richard does. Not to mention the “whoo!” Popular music has a lot of yelps in this fashion, but in this era there’s nothing even close to Little Richard’s “whoo!” The “whoo!” Is untouchable. It’s like the party is getting so hot that Little Richard has to yelp out some of the heat like a kettle. Though “Tutti Frutti” is his signature song, Little Richard also has a solid back catalogue with tracks like “Long Tall Sally,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” “Lucille,” and “Rip it Up.”

But every early rock star pales in comparison to Chuck Berry. Little Richard and Elvis were young and good looking, Berry was in his thirties, and you could tell. It didn’t matter. While Little Richard and Elvis brought energy, sex, rebellion, and power, Chuck Berry brought virtuosity.

If you listen to his albums After School Session and Berry Is On Top you’ll hear the guitar taking its rightful place in the center of attention. Sometimes that’s on gorgeous instrumentals like “Deep Feeling,” or on a song where it sits right next to the vocals like “Rock And Roll Music.” The signature way Berry would use his guitar was in a call-and-response style with short, quick sung lines being the call and the guitar responding. You can hear this on the wonderful “School Day (Ring Ring Goes the Bell).” “School Day” follows a character who suffers through school before leaving and dancing to some rock n’ roll. It’s a simple song with an all-timer of a capstone when Berry sings, “Hail hail rock and roll/Deliver me from the days of old.” The song epitomizes what rock n’ roll was- a way for the youth to get past whatever was bringing them down and push them into the future.

But Berry wasn’t nearly as young as the typical rock fans, and you can tell. Part of that is the somewhat old-fashioned singing style, but another is in how he handles his subjects. There’s “Wee Wee Hours” with its heavy sensuality, the all-ages fantasy of getting a sleek new car on “No Money Down,” and of course, the greatest of the 50s rock songs, “Johnny B. Goode.” 

A Live performance of Johnny B. Goode. A studio version is linked above.

In the seventies they sent a record with music into space in case aliens found it so they’d get a taste of human culture, and when it came to picking a rock song “Johnny B. Goode” was the right choice. The beat is solid, the pianos clank away, Berry gives one of his best vocal performances, and he plays some of the best guitar in rock history. Lyrically, “Johnny B. Goode” follows a kid who despite being an under-educated country bumpkin takes the world by storm with his guitar skills. That’s the story of jazz, rock, hip-hop, and America- starting from nothing and making it to the top through your skills. Music is one of the best avenues for this kind of narrative because you can prove it, you can hear how good he is at guitar playing and you can see that it’s so easy for Chuck Berry to play the guitar as incredibly as he does that he can do a silly little duck walk while he shreds. Saying how amazing you are and proving it is one of the core ideas of rock n’ roll, and on “Johnny B. Goode” Chuck Berry places himself in his rightful position among the stars.

There are plenty of other great rockers from this era I could get into, but those three are the largest, best, and most important for the narrative I’m creating. To be thorough, I’ll list a handful of songs or artists who are important.

Ritchie Valens brought latin sounds to rock music with songs like “La Bamba,” Bill Haley & His Comets had one of rock’s earliest big hits (though not one of rock’s best) in “Rock Around the Clock,” and Johnny Cash brought rock and roll to country music with songs like “I Walk Line.” Cash is an artist whom I feel I should highlight more thoroughly, but country only occasionally intersects with popular music so highlighting him much beyond his status as a country music legend and, like Elvis, a Sun Records artist who changed music forever doesn’t make much sense. Though I find both unimpressive, you might get more from The Big Bopper’s goofy style (“Chantilly Lace”) or Buddy Holly’s somewhat square doo-wop (“That’ll Be the Day,” the drum-heavy “Peggy-Sue,” and the lovely “Everyday”).

Side-note: What is R&B?

Rhythm and blues is a name that covers a very wide scope of music. I bring up this topic here because rock and roll begins as an offshoot of rhythm and blues and the difference between the two can be blurry during this time. The core of it is that, in contrast to the Blues you’d hear from Muddy Waters or Robert Johnston, rhythm and blues has a strong, often danceable rhythm to it. The core of the Blues could be just one person with a guitar and their voice, but rhythm and blues requires some kind of band or other backing. 

The issue with this definition is that basically every style of modern pop music is some version of the Blues put to a strong rhythm. A definition closer to how people actually use it would be something like this: popular music performed in a Black American style. That’s much more vague, but the label of R&B is also vague. Where I think that definition is enlightening is in understanding what isn’t R&B. For instance, Led Zeppelin played heavy blues music with strong beats, but their music was not continuous with trends in popular music, instead continuing innovations in louder, less commercial styles of rock music. 

R&B has a history slightly separate from pop music, but it also is a label that gets thrown around towards basically any Black singer’s music. R&B began at a time when the chart for it was called race music, and the way people call almost any Black artist’s music R&B is a reflection of this segregationist history. While R&B is far from the end-all-be-all of Black American music, it is the dominant label for Black American music. Like all genres, it has faded in and out of popularity, but unlike most genres it’s lasted very long, mainly by being a starting point from which artists diverge. Add a strong guitar and backbeat to get rock n’ roll. Add gospel elements and you’ve got soul music. Add an electronic drum beat and you’ve got new jack swing or hip-hop. 

Just remember that genre labels are constructed, and the label of R&B is a reflection of the era it was created in.

Side-note 2: Billboard

Billboard is a music magazine that tracks music sales with their chart. They’re the definitive source for how commercially successful music is, but they’re far from perfect. There’s always concerns over fraud, strange loopholes in genre charts (especially country), and strange factoids that make chart success a less definitive thing than it may appear. For instance, before these purchases were digitally tracked (in the current soundscan era) retailers would self-report sales to Billboard, leaving much more room for errors or number-fudging. The purpose of this series is not just to track what is most popular, but what I feel is most relevant to American music history. For instance, Chuck Berry didn’t have a single number one hit before 1972 when he covered the novelty song “My Ding-A-Ling.” That did not make me think for a second that “My Ding-A-Ling” was a more important song than “Johnny B. Goode” Nobody heard “My Ding-A-Ling” and was inspired to become a musician (not to discredit “My Ding-A-Ling,” a song which at least seems like it’d be fun to see live). I use the Hot 100 singles (the chart for individual songs regardless of genre) as a jumping off point for a broader consideration of what is relevant, popular, and important.

Scene 2: The Brill Building, Dance Crazes, and the Studio

The early days of rock n’ roll were interrupted by two events. The first was Elvis being drafted into the Korean War, meaning for two years there was no new material from him. The second was dubbed ‘The Day the Music Died,’ the tragic plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. Rock kept going, but this interruption resulted in a period in popular music that is widely considered a dark time. 

I mean for this series to be a celebration of popular music, but it is a reality that a great deal of popular music is bad. You get some good songs every year, but in 1959 Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart’s top 10 doesn’t have a single great song, or at least any particularly interesting songs. Outside the top 10 you get Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” which had traction on Tik-Tok, but outside of that the year is almost entirely devoid of well-remembered songs. 

Paul Anka is a good benchmark for the popular music of this time, specifically the large number of teen idol pretty-boys. Popular music is art, but it is also a business selling products. When record companies saw the numbers Elvis Presley could sell, they knew they had to find another Elvis. Sometimes the search for the next big thing results in a discovery of truly great talents, but far more often it results in the kinds of cheap knockoffs of a popular thing you’d expect to find on Temu. 

The lessons businessmen took from Elvis’ success wasn’t that his style of fast, sexual rhythm and blues was a style to promote, after all it was too controversial, too Black. The lesson they took is that they needed as many pretty white boys as they could find, the less threatening the better. Moreover, it was clear to them that rock n’ roll was a flash in the pan gimmick and not the defining trend of music for the next thirty years (at minimum), so they made sure this pretty white boys were singing the most over-orchestrated, saccharine gloop you’ve ever heard. 

The other big trend of this period was doo-wop. Named for the ubiquitous background singers singing those sorts of almost-words, the style had the speed and danceability of early rock n’ roll, but without most of the bite and heaviness. Though I find it referenced more than it is directly remembered, there were some fantastic hits from the style, namely The Platters’ “The Great Pretender” the more rock-leaning “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” by Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, and the psuedo-novelty masterwork from The Tokens, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh).”

In that vein, it’s also worth mentioning this era’s novelty songs, which have had a surprisingly long shelf-life. If you’re young you probably have no clue who Bobby Darin is, but you might’ve heard “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” “The Purple People Eater,” “Witch Doctor,” or other similar songs. I think they’re worth noting because people remember them, but I don’t think they’re particularly good or interesting. The chipmunke-d vocals on “Purple People Eater” and “Witch Doctor” are a notable experiment, the result of speeding up tape-recorded vocals, but it wasn’t used for particularly good music that inspired later trends (for chipmunked vocals to become a mainstream element of music you’d have to wait til the next century).

Rock and Roll did have its solo artist auteurs during this time. Elvis came back from his deployment and kept making music, but there were also two new faces. Roy Orbison is the third big Sun Records artist, but he only started having hits after leaving the iconic Memphis label behind for Monument Records. He also started writing his own songs, resulting in his unique, powerful persona. 

Elvis was a sex god, Johnny Cash was an outlaw, Little Richard was a flamboyant showman, Chuck Berry was a virtuoso, and Roy Orbison was rock’s first sad-boy. His first big hit was “Only the Lonely,” a thoroughly unique song in an era when other rockers were singing about sex and rock and roll (the drugs would come later). People sang about heartbreak, yes, but not like Orbison did. For everyone else, loneliness was a temporary thing but on “Only the Lonely” loneliness is a group-defining trait. Inviting others to acknowledge the sadness in life in this big way was a powerful thing, and if you combine this with his signature style - black clothes, sunglasses, and minimal showmanship - you get the seed that would sprout unto the goth subculture. Orbison’s biggest hit was 1964’s “Oh! Pretty Woman,” but his best songs are the ones that highlight his voice. On “Crying,” “Running Scared,” “In Dreams,” and his 1989 hit “You Got It,” you’ll hear his signature vulnerability combine with his operatic baritone to reach incredible heights.

Brenda Lee had her fair share of operatic songs - “I’m Sorry,” “All Alone Am I,” and the heart wrenching “I Want To Be Wanted (Per Tutta La Vitta)” - but she was much better known for her explosive force. Her nickname was “Little Miss Dynamite,” given after her debut single “Dynamite.” That song made a few things about early rock n’ roll click for me. For one, Lee’s style is much closer to country than a lot of the early rockers, making the two genre’s connections easier to see. For another, Brenda Lee hollering about sex had me clutching my pearls in an instant. A young woman singing about sex in that way helped me understand the conservative backlash to rock’s sexuality much better than Elvis did. The sexual revolution and the women’s movement was still a ways away at this time, but Brenda Lee having hits this explicit is a clear sign of things to come. And I’d be remiss to forget the delightful “Sweet Nothin’s,” which was famously sampled by Kanye West for “Bound 2.” If all you know of Brenda Lee is that sample and her Christmas music, I can’t recommend her enough. She’s a true powerhouse and one of rock’s first iconic women.

Outside of those auteurs (and many more I’m certainly omitting), the main innovation came from New York City, where pop/rock music was professionalized at the Brill Building. An updated Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building saw dozens of legendary songwriters and producers come by to create hundreds of songs. Since I’m posting this just after the Christmas season I can guarantee you recently heard Brill Building songs like “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and The Ronettes’ “Sleigh Ride,” but the Brill Building’s best works leaned more towards R&B. Though not a Brill Building song, The Drifter’s “Save the Last Dance For Me” is a gem from Brill Building producers/songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They went on to work with that song's primary singer, Ben E. King, for the truly magical “Stand By Me.” They also delivered one of Elvis’ biggest hits in the previously-mentioned “Jailhouse Rock,” and a song that would go on to be very influential with The Searcher’s proto-psychadelic “Love Potion No. 9” (warning, this one uses a slur for the Roma people. Boo!).

Other Brill Building songwriters included Carole King, who would go on to become a solo singer-songwriter in the 70s after writing hits like “One Fine Day” for The Chiffons, and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for The Shirelles. Though most of his work comes after this period, Burt Bacharach was also a Brill Building writer who created many all-time classics such as Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By,” “They Long To Be (Close To You),” (famously covered beautifully by The Carpenters) and B.J. Thomas’ eternal “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” 

The Brill Building was known in particular for its girl group hits. I’ve already spoken about a few of them but I’d be remiss to forget The Shangri-La’s stone-cold classics “The Leader of the Pack” and “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” There was a strange trend of songs about young love being dashed away by death, and “Leader of the Pack” stands head and shoulders above its peers by not being completely kitsch, understanding the fun of dating a dangerous boy and letting the tragedy hit you as hard as the car hits the narrator’s bad-boy. “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” does a similar trick of juxtaposition, having the tragedy of the narrator’s love ending tinting the positive memories of the relationship.

The most legendary Brill Building songwriter/producer is one of the greatest minds in popular music, a man as influential as Elvis if not moreso. He was also a murderer and terrible abuser. I am talking about the legendary Phil Spector. As a small tangent, I’d like to state that celebrating these men’s work in no way means I am celebrating their other actions. There are many ways in which fully separating art from its creator is impossible, but Spector’s work does not reinforce negative societal traits that allow men to get away with terrible actions such as his. As I analyze his work, take in mind some of the points made in this article from The Guardian. No amount of genius is an excuse for abuse, and abusive behavior is not a result of genius.

Spector’s signature technique was the Wall of Sound. He’d have a large ensemble of musicians play at once, often having multiple instrumentalists play the same part on the same instrument, or overdub an existing track. The result is a dense, layered sound perfect for the AM radios and jukeboxes that were the primary way people consumed music at the time. To hear it in effect you can simply listen to The Crystal’s “Uptown,” or “And Then He Kissed Me.” There’s also his incredible work with The Righteous Brothers on “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” and “Unchained Melody,” or even Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High.”

Spector’s greatest work, however, came from his work with his wife and abuse victim, Ronnie Spector and her group, The Ronnettes. 

“Be My Baby” is the kind of masterpiece that makes me happy I’m alive. It’s the rare song that can make me cry without a single bit of sadness in it. That iconic drum beat, that bum. bum-bum Bap! has a heartbeat feel that captures something incredible. I can’t tell if it’s love at first sight, one moment of romance that brings out overflowing emotion, the moment Cupid’s arrow strikes, some mix of everything, or the heartbeat of Love itself. Hal Blaine was Phil Spector’s regular drummer, and if you make drum beats as good as this, it’s clear why. 

Ronnie Spector told The Telegraph that her and her fellow singers were treated like employees rather than artists, and that is an injustice like little else. For one, it describes the sorts of mistreatment Phil would put musicians through, having the orchestra rehearse the track fourty-two times before recording “mostly for theatrics,” as Hal Blaine put it, but it also describes the way pop music was considered a disposable thing. Phil was the genius, Phil was the man who did everything, Phil could get whichever singer for a song and it’d turn out the same. That idea could not be more wrong. Ronnie delivers a vocal performance for the ages, somehow capturing love in a way that’s coy, proud, massive, private, overwhelming, restrained, chaste, lustful, playful, serious, and any other possible way love can be captured. There’s a small army performing around her, shakers, tambourines, horns, strings, guitar, backup singers (including Sonny Bono and Cher), and Ronnie cuts right through all of it directly into your heart. Her vibrato is perfect, her “woah-oh-oh-ohs” are fantastic, and despite having such a universal performance there’s so much that’s specific. The bit of her New York City accent peeking through when she sings the word “turn,” the perfect pause before the second verse, and those gorgeous vocal runs, it’s the kind of performance you could write a thesis on. 

Unfortunately, Ronnie Spector’s story does not continue alongside the history of popular music. She recorded her vocals for “Be My Baby” when she was just eighteen years old, meaning very controlling partner. Phil hid Ronnie away in their mansion, jealous of the attention she got from other men. He went to absurd lengths to ensure that she didn’t run away, having dogs patrol the mansion, using barbed wire, and hiding her shoes. He yelled at her so much that she became mute for a time. Eventually, she did escape, and nowadays she is tragically known for her terrible marriage as much as her incredible performances. I bring this up not just to highlight Phil Spector’s bastardy, but because this story is unfortunately one that repeats constantly in music’s history. Powerful men manipulate young, talented women, and the results are tragic. 

Despite the sorrow that would come, the early 60s were a fairly innocent time. This was, after all, the all-American childhood that Baby Boomers grew up with. Fitting into that innocence is one of the biggest trends of the 60s- dance crazes. 

There were an absurd amount of dances you might do at a party. There was “The Loco-Motion,” “The Mashed Potato,” “The Pony,” “The Wah-Tusi,” “The Monster Mash,” and even the Batusi (None of those dance songs or any dance songs I mention from here come close to Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1000 Dances,” a song I only mention because I LOVE IT. This song is so damn good, those Batman-theme-ass horns, those vocals, that bridge! Hell yeah!). There was one dance, however, that ruled every floor in that era: The Twist. The most famous version was by Chubby Checker (which is actually a cover; the song was originally written and performed by Hank Ballard), and he had a lot of competition. Billboard's year-end chart for 1962 has 10 different songs with “twist” in the title, and plenty more dance songs. 

This is because Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” originally came out two years earlier. Two separate TV performances skyrocketed the song in two different years, meaning Chubby Checker had the same song not only reach number one on the Hot 100 in two different years, but also reach the year-end Hot 100’s top 10 in two different years. Twisting was so popular that Chubby Checker had another hit with “Let’s Twist Again.” Ordinarily I’d write that off as a blatant cash-grab, but considering people really did want to twist again like they did last Summer I feel like I have to respect it.

1962’s dance-filled year-end chart reflects the industry catching up to the trend Chubby Checker started- something so big that even First Lady Jackie Kennedy hosted twist parties at the White House. Why? 

The simple answer is that the first wave of baby boomers were becoming teenagers, meaning there was a large market of people who wanted to dance. If you combine that with the marketing done through dance television shows it’s an explanation that makes a lot of sense. If you were a young person wanting to buy a song with your first paycheck, you wanted something you could dance to, and marketing served as a cause for that want and a solution. After that, the trend progresses and progresses and progresses until everyone is doing it. 

But the full story requires the things that come after. This was the largest generation America had seen in the biggest economic boom America had seen. Young people could afford to go out, drive cars, go to parties, and meet people. Those people went out, and plenty of them saw pretty people doing the twist, and went on to make love to them. This is how things work, but remember- this is the early 60s. Women are not men’s legal equals. Abortion is illegal in many states. Queer love is illegal. Interracial love is illegal. All of these things and many more would be factors in the decade’s culture, and a great deal of these things could first be found as men and women danced together. 

Scene 3: A-Changing Times

The young generation was coming of age and they dreamed of being like Elvis. People were starting bands in their garage, learning to play the songs from recordings, and some of them even hit it big. You can see one of them at 100 on 1962’s Billboard year-end Hot 100, and in 1963 you can see them at number one. 

The Beach Boys are one of pop’s greatest acts, but you’d sure think they were novelty merchants. While both “Surfin’ Safari” and “Surfin’ USA” are solid songs, they’re fully tied to the somewhat niche surf subculture. If that subculture hadn’t been blowing up in 1963- that was also the year of “Wipe Out” and Dick Dale’s legendary “Misirlou”- who knows where the group might have gone. On much of their early hits, band leader Brian Wilson takes a Chuck Berry formula of a fast-talking-verse-as-a-call before a response and replace Berry’s guitar playing with doo-wop styled harmonies- the band’s signature. As time would go on, the group would evolve, the greatest evolutions being key to pop music’s next act, but for now it’s best to appreciate them as the youth culture’s first capital-G Great hitmakers. After all, people to this day love “I Get Around,” “Help Me Rhonda,” “California Girls,” and “Barbara Ann.”

Another young act on 1963’s year-end charts was a blind boy called Little Stevie Wonder. The young boy was a part of a label seeing a great deal of success: Motown. The Detroit label would grow to become the center of Black music, and had a great deal of similarities to New York’s “Hit Factory” in the Brill Building. While the Brill Building would largely fail to compete with the greater trends of the 60s, Motown would prove to be one of the 60’s greatest trends. Part of that is Motown replacing the Brill Building as the center of danceable Black music, but it’s also that Motown was as connected to the place the label and studio resided as it was the artists in front of it. The primary person associated with the Brill Building was, largely, Phil Spector. There are far too many great talents behind Motown to consider even one the main person. Would it be label founder and mastermind Berry Gordy? Smokey Robinson? Marvin Gaye? Diana Ross? It’s impossible to say. The amount of talent at Motown is unbelievable, and it resulted in some unbelievably good music.

Many specific Motown hits fit better into other parts of popular music’s history, but not listing out many of the best songs ever made just feels wrong. There was Little Stevie Wonder’s powerful jam “Fingertips Pt. 2,” Martha Reeves & the Vandellas “Heat Wave,” Marvin Gaye’s “Pride and Joy,” and The Miracles’ “You Really Got A Hold On Me” in 1963 alone. On each you’ll hear the rich sound Motown is known for, but on “You Really Got A Hold On Me” you’ll hear Smokey Robinson’s songwriting shine. It’s one of the greatest songs ever about toxic love, and The Miracles’ recording is especially fantastic. The gorgeous instrumentation makes the narrator’s choice to stay in this awful situation make emotional sense, and I find the choice to have the lyrics, “tighter, tighter” well after the breakdown of “Hold me, hold me, hold me” to be particularly clever. 

Smokey Robinson wrote Motown’s earliest hits with “Shop Around.” He also wrote perhaps Motown’s best with The Temptations’ “My Girl.” “My Girl” is a standout among standouts, one of the most gorgeous love songs ever made, with incredible singing and a perfect bass part. Also among Motown’s legends was Marvin Gaye, who would have a truly lasting hit with “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough,” alongside classics like “Through the Grape Vine.” There were also their girl groups; The Marvelettes had a huge hit with “Please Mister Postman,” Martha Reeves & the Vandellas would have another classic with “Dancing in the Street,” and The Supremes would prove to be a legendary pop act. Fronted by Diana Ross, the group would have great success with “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Stop! In the Name Of Love,” “Baby Love,” and the true masterpiece “You Keep Me Hanging On.” 

Though I could list dozens more Motown songs I’ll leave it there- for now just know that Motown was behind much of the greatest music of the 60s. We’ll return to the Motor City as time goes on. As I write this I already regret spending such little time on songs this incredible, but this is a brief history of popular music and this article is long enough already. 

The last important artist for this transitional scene is the breakout star of 1963. He wasn’t a great singer, he wasn’t backed by a mastermind producer, he was just a man with a guitar. His name was Bob Dylan. 

Though his first album got little traction, his second, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, caught on like a sail catching wind. His first album was all songs written by others, but Freewheelin saw Dylan write all but two songs on the record, and Bob Dylan proved he could write songs like nobody else could. On “Girl from the North Country” he writes the sort of song that an olde English bard ought to have written, on “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” he writes like a grand philosopher questioning his disciples, and on “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” Dylan writes with a remarkable emotional depth- especially considering he was only about twenty years old. But Freewheelin’s most influential songs are clearly “Blowin’ In the Wind” and “Masters of War.” “Masters of War” is a powerful, blunt, and harsh song that rails against the men fueling the military-industrial complex. The Vietnam War had begun by this point, though the war and its backlash would only become the era-defining conflict we now know with America furthering its involvement in the latter half of the 60s. When the Vietnam War became the nation’s preeminent political crisis, “Masters of War” was the sort of songs artists looked to emulate alongside “Blowin’ In the Wind.” “Blowin’ In the Wind” asks the big questions, and as his generation wrestled with women’s rights, civil rights, the buildup of nuclear weapons, and the sorts of questions all young people ask themselves as they reach adulthood, Dylan put them into plain words. He did not solve the problems though, because the answers were blowing in the wind.

Yet down that wind, many would catch those answers and deliver them to the nation. 1963 was the year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, and his “I Have a Dream” speech. Inspired by King’s speech, his own experiences, and “Blowin’ In the Wind,” Sam Cooke would release the incredible “A Change is Gonna Come,” one of a great many soul-wrenching political songs of the era. Though the upcoming era would be defined by the politics these sorts of songs embody, neither song was a great chart success (though folk singers Peter, Paul, and Mary of “Puff the Magic Dragon” fame would have a hit with their cover of “Blowin’ In the Wind”). Dylan was the sort of artist that critics acclaimed and artists loved, but he never quite caught on with the broad public. 

But though Dylan wasn’t a commercial juggernaut, his potent words and raw, nasal voice would be emulated by countless others as the years went on. In 1963 it could be easy to say that American music’s future was going to be defined by this new generation of young talent. People were combining the Rhythm and Blues of Little Richard with more gospel elements to innovate Soul music, people were playing a classic blues style and getting hits through songs like “Green Onions,” and all across the nation teenagers were learning to play rock n’ roll (some of whom would go on to have hits like “Hang on Sloopy,” “Wild Thing,” and the very influential “Louie Louie”). By the next year nobody would believe that, because on February 7, 1964, four young men would land at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City,. Their names were John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and they called themselves The Beatles.

This concludes this act of popular music’s history. If you’d like to learn more about this era, please ask me personally or through my Instagram: amy_queenthinng,

I would also like to mention two artists that I did not mention in the previous History of Popular Music article: Perry Cuomo and Nat King Cole. Cuomo is the prototype for middle-of-the-road light easy listening. I did not mention him because I do not enjoy his music. I find the kind of music he makes to be awful, and not worth your while besides being an example of boring, bad busic. I mention him here because he was quite popular and I feel like I should have. Nat King Cole, on the other hand, was damn near Apollo made flesh. He fits right next to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald as all-time great jazz vocalists. I only did not mention him because I didn’t think of him. May god forgive me. Give a listen to “Unforgettable,” “When I Fall In Love,” and “L-O-V-E.”

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Snapes, Laura. “Phil Spector Defined the Toxic Music Svengali – a Figure That Persists Today.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 Jan. 2021, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/18/phil-spector-toxic-svengali-music-industry