In article <3353BEC7.5FD4@nj1.aae.com>,
greg/pat frey  <interfer@nj1.aae.com> wrote:

>Josephine Chan wrote: 
>>    Were things really that bad in
>> the music business before the Beatles?
>
>As I look back, my feeling are that the Beatles HELPED create
>a new catagory of music. Before them, pop music was stuff that
>kids & adults both liked. It was very innocuous, bland stuff.

Not entirely so. There was teen pop and adult pop. Rarely the twain would
meet. Sometimes the charts would reflect the innocuous muddle-minded
middle-of-the-roaders. Its chords were pleasant; its mood was pacific.

"Canadian Sunset". "Sugartime". "Tennessee Waltz". "Swinging Sweethearts"...
It appeased the oldsters. The youngsters wanted sterner stuff, and that's
where the thrumming guitar and impassioned vocals/harmonies came in from
the likes of rock-and-roll's initial sirocco.

>The 'good' stuff was underground. I never heard Buddy Holly, Elvis,
>Little Richard until years later (after the British Invasion made them
>household names). 

This is where living in a major radio market might help; or having a
clued-in radio program-director. :-) Usually, as I recall, at least one,
sometimes two, representative pieces by each of these greats would be
played, almost as if each song was a museum piece. No context provided, no
history, though. It was hard to figure all this out on your own if you
didn't have a guide. Buddy's and Chuck's and Elvis' iconism was implied
but never explicit. We had to guess.

It's ironic that a British band had to teach us our own musical history,
and communicate its wealth to us!

>Once the Beatles hit big, rock N roll & the division between that & Pat 
>Boone, etc. became a yawning chasm!

Well, Boone was seen as a hep-cat for awhile, strange as that may seem.
Some never realized he was covering tunes that black artists did much
better...because there was a time when "race records" (as they were
called) wouldn't get sufficient airplay to make the original records the
hits they deserved to be.

And let's be clear, too, that rock-and-roll was still a revolution, even
as it scared the grown-ups. It was electric; it had a beat; it was
subversive, it was maddening. But it was seductive too, to those of us
with ears of the right age and predilection!

The blend of voices, of guitars: Duane Eddy, soft surf, the salt spray
awash over the air; girl groups, guys in silver suits, clicking their
fingers and purring in perfect rhythm. Rhythm-n-blues melding into the
first strains of Motown.... 

There was really plenty worth noting, as Biffy the Shrew notes in another
post, though he declines to name names. Well, I'm not shy. American pop in
the early sixties, before we knew even a rumor of the Beatles, was
inventive enough! Remember, it too inspired our boys. Just a few names
from 1962 and 1963, sterling years on the radio, IMHO: the Shirelles, Ray
Charles, the Everly Brothers, Mary Wells, the Marvelletes, the Isley
Brothers, Booker T & the MGs, the Miracles, the Chiffons, the Beach
Boys. And a host of others.

There were individual whorls of melodic action. Trends arose and puffed
across the musical landscape like a hot desert wind; but they seemed to
spiral and froth in their own personal orbits. The Four Seasons were big
but really were doo-wop's last gasp. Surf music, already a prominent
force, with or without words, was finding itself too seasonal to be
all-pervasive; it had to change to dragster music in the off-season.

There were lots of laudable one-hit-wonders (or limited fave-raves) on
the pop charts: the Essex, the Tymes, the Jaynettes. Spector's stable of
stars were always welcomed. Dion was busy reinventing himself. There were
novelties worthy of mention, simply because they peppered the music lists
with the unexpected: the trad fad ("Washington Square" by the Village
Stompers); Brazilian ("Girl from Ipanema" by Getz/Gilberto; "Blame it on
the Bossa Nova" by Edie Gorme, of all people); and Salsa (Mongo Santamaria
with Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man").

I think folk-rock might have been the next big trend if other forces
hadn't intervened. Dylan was making inroads (albeit by cover versions) all
during the early sixties; and folkie sound-alikes (viz, the Rooftop
Singers) were ready to bear the banner into battle. And of course there
was the occasional lovely drunken orgy ("Louie Louie") or the paean to
nit-wittery ("Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport"). These things pay the bills
too.

It was not a particularly cruel part of the decade. The ready ear could
find a plethora of pleasant sounds to soothe its aural soul.

But then there was this new sound.

A *really* new sound. Truth to tell, it was a clever admixture of the old
and new, American traditions with British filtering and tough Merseyside
beat. It was beyond a marriage of forms. It was a new musical amalgam.

Despite its antecedents, nothing like it had ever been heard.

And the craziest thing of all:

You couldn't tell *what* it was. There were no words for it. Just a blend
of voices, smoother than a heady liquor. Molten instrumentation, so
harmonious that there was no way to pull it apart. And who would want to,
anyway? 

There was a clear sense that this was the sound you couldn't describe, the
mania without a name. We didn't know what Fleet Street in Britain had
already called it. All we heard at the end of 1963 was the musical rush of
a cyclone, and we felt wind-whipped by its power. The songs did that..."I
Want To Hold Your Hand" first, and later in January 1964 *any* song they
could find... be it the Beatles backing Tony Sheridan, or off-brand labels
from Vee-Jay or Swan or Tollie. 

And every disc jockey was transformed into being the Beatles' exclusive
mouthpiece. Each station had a special Beatles expert: the one soul in the
sacred kilocycled ether who would share with you that rush in your heart,
who would race to air double-plays, triple-plays---whatever it took to
show you they were fans like you. 

We were all in it together, you see.

We knew the charts would be changed forevermore, though we couldn't prove
it to our harried parents.

Ultimately, we didn't *have* to prove it.

I recall, in fact, a moment when I said to myself: They can't possibly do
a number to top "A Hard Day's Night"...but they did. Nothing could be
better than "Ticket to Ride"...but there was. 

Realms undreamt-of in our philosophy hovered on the horizon like distant
promising storms.  And all we knew was that these British lads never
seemed to falter. They never lost sight of their creative vision. And in
their wake they brought a lot of wonderful musical pals with them, all
riding on the same remarkable front.

Even now I believe it, and hear it, whenever I hear that music again, that
sweet invasion of yore.

It's a revolution that never stops.

And if the newer generations of fans are any indication, it never
will.

-- 
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"...and in your voice I hear a choir of carousels...."
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saki (dlm3@midway.uchicago.edu)