This document discusses the emergence of rock and roll music and the birth of the popular music consumer in the 1950s. Broad demographic changes following World War 2, including the baby boom and rising incomes for youth, helped create a new youth market. This coincided with investment from capitalist enterprises in black musical genres like blues and R&B. New technologies like the 45 RPM record also helped spread rock and roll music to youth consumers and undermine the dominance of major record labels.

1. #med332 - @rob_jewitt
Rock and roll and the birth of the popular music consumer

2. Overview:
- The ‘baby boom’ and social context (1950s)
- Structural forces shaping the music industry
- The product (aka the music)

4. Between 1945 and 1955, youth
changed from a taken-for- granted
and largely unacknowledged
transitional stage between
childhood and adulthood to a
cultural category marked by
particular stylistic trends, tastes in
music and accompanying patterns
of consumption
- Bennett, 2001: 7

5. Common narrative
the youth culture of the 1950s and
later could not have happened
without teenagers having become
a significant market – that is,
without their having significant
disposable funds. Having that
money and an increased
independence from family,
teenagers began to identify
themselves as a group.
- Shumway, 1992: 119–20

6. Socio-economic shifts post-WW2
Boom extended to working class
New techniques of mass production

8. Young folk
The young had emerged as a new,
major market in the 1950s in Britain
and Western Europe, following the
United States which had experienced
less disruption in the 1940s than
war-torn Europe. Young people were
employed in relatively well-paid jobs
in new industries
- Bucock 1993: 28

9. commodities designed specifically for them

10. Leisure was no longer simply a moment
of rest and recuperation from work, the
particular zone of family concerns and
private edification. It was widened into
a potential life-style made possible by
consumerism. To buy a particular
record, to choose a jacket or skirt cut to
a particular fashion, to mediate
carefully on the colour of your shoes is
to open a door onto an actively
constructed style of living.
- Chambers 1985: 16

11. Popular music as mass production

12. Cultural industries…
employ the characteristic modes of production
and organization of industrial corporations to
produce and disseminate symbols in the form of
cultural goods and services, generally, though
not exclusively, as commodities’
- Garnham 1987: 25

13. Marked by:
• Incessant drive for capitalist expansion
• Creation of new novel markets
• Rapid turn-over of disposable products

15. Capitalist
organisation Cultural/social
activity
Music industry
Creative expression

16. youth music capital

17. Demographic shifts
77 million babies born
between 1946 and 1964
By 1964, 40 % of the
population of the United
States was under twenty
- Grossberg, 1992: 172

18. Rejection of parent culture
Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953)
Mildred: Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
Johnny: Whadda you got?

19. Authenticity
Rock’s special place (with and for
youth) was enabled by its
articulation to an ideology of
authenticity […] where they could
find some sense of identification
and belonging, where they could
invest and empower themselves in
specific ways
- Grossberg 1992: 204–5

20. Creative geniuses?

21. Elvis Presley
Presley took the song (‘That’s All Right Mama’), and the strong
rhythmic element in it, but kicked it out of the heavy almost
ponderous groove Crudup (the original artist) used. What Presley
succeeded in doing was injecting the blues with an abandoned
hillbilly attitude. ... The result was a musical hybrid, destined to
prove more exciting than either its blues or country parents,
while retaining elements of both.
- Welch 1990: 36 (link)

22. 4 crucial developments
1. the relative importance of
particular genres
2. the dominance of certain
forms of radio format
3. the role of technology
4. the shifting status of record
company majors and
independents

23. Copyright and genres
1909 – sheet music protections
1914 – ASCAP to collect royalties

24. ‘only ASCAP licensed music could
be played in Broadway musicals,
performed on the radio and
incorporated into movies ... by
the 1930s it effectively controlled
access to exposing new music to
the public’
- Peterson 1990: 99

26. Technology: 45s vs 33s

28. ‘The 1950s decade was the golden
era for small independents, which
embraced blues, gospel, modern
jazz, country, R&B, and rock ’n’
roll’. From 1948 to 1954, about one
thousand new record labels were
formed, and for many of these ‘it
came down to what music could be
recorded most cheaply’
- Kennedy and McNutt 1999: xvii

29. the average income of … blacks
rose by 192 per cent between 1940
and 1953, when 90 per cent of
blacks were in some form of paid
employment, and the total value of
the black consumer market was
$15,000 million.
- Brian Ward, 1998: 31

30. Summary
• Broad demographic changes helps go some
way to explaining the emergence of rock and
roll (but not all the way)
• Generational divide in conjunction with
economic upturn and expanse of capitalist
enterprises saw investment in black musical
forms
• Explore the music in detail on Monday

31. Sources:
• Andy Bennett (2001) Popular Music Cultures, Maidenhead: Open University Press
• Robert Bucock (1993) Consumption, London: Routledge
• Iain Chambers (1985) Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture, London: MacMillan
• Nicholas Garnham (1987) ‘Concepts of Culture: Public Policy and the Cultural Industries’, in Cultural
Studies, 1, 1 (January): 23–7.
• Lawrence Grossberg (1992) We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern
Culture, New York: Routledge.
• Kennedy and McNutt (1999) Little Labels – Big Sound: Small Record Companies and the Rise of
American Music, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Richard A. Peterson (1990) ‘Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music’, Popular Music, 9, 1:
97–116.
• Sanjek (1988) American Popular Music and Its Business. The First Four Hundred Years. Volume III:
From 1900 to 1984, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Roy Shuker (2001) Understanding Popular Music, London: Routledge
• David R. Shumway (1992) ‘Rock and roll as cultural practice’, in Anthony DeCurtis (ed) Present
Tense: Rock and Roll Culture, Durhman, NC: Duke University Press
• Brian Ward (1998) Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black consciousness and Race
Relations, London University of California Press
• Richard Welch (1990) ‘Rock ’n’ Roll And Social Change’, History Today (February): 32–9.
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-welch/rock-n-roll-and-social-change