Pop Music Names

The Pop Music Names
By Sharon White

The songs of the early fifties generally had light melodies, sweet lyrics and wholesome singers. Innocent and inoffensive "feel-good" tunes, performed by artists like Pat Boone, Rosemary Clooney and Perry Como dominated the pop charts. Major Record Companies decided to abandon the majority of black race records and their black audience, creating an opportunity for Independents such as Sam Phillips’ Sun Label or Chess Records to sign them up.

Artists like Bill Haley and the Comets adapted the work of the Black artists to come up with their own sound. The music's solid rhythm and heavy back beat inspired new forms of dancing. Soon there were stars - Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Carl Perkins. Due to the prejudices of the times, Disc Jockey Alan Freed coined the name "rock and roll," ironically using a term that was slang for sex in the Black community at that time. Its initial appeal was to middle class white teenagers who soon came to feel it was their own. In this era, so called ‘race music’ was largely censured by America's white establishment as being too rebellious, sexual and anti-social to be acceptable.

If Rock and Roll was formed from a fusion between Black music and White entrepreneurship, then the foremost of the fair-skinned founding fathers must be Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Their writing genius, combined with the kinetic energy of Elvis made Rock and Roll history by recording Hound Dog, and Elvis Presley became a household name.

There were also scandals (i.e. The Payola Scandal which would lead to the demise of the career of Alan Freed) in the early days' which did nothing to foster either parental or governmental confidence in the new music. Near the end of the decade, a plane crash killed Buddy Holly and also took the lives of Richie Valens and The Big Bopper. Since all three were so prominent at the time, February 3, 1959, became known as ‘The Day The Music Died.’

Female vocal groups began to produce songs that mixed Doo-wop harmonies with Rhythm and Blues music. Most notable were The Shirelles, The Marvelettes, and The Crystals who flourished during the early 1960’s.

By 1962 ‘The Brill Building’ in Broadway, New York had housed over 165 music businesses and more significantly hosted Don Kirshner and his star collection of songwriters, (Carole King / Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka / Howard Greenfield, and Barry Mann / Cynthia Weil). Record Producer Phil Spector was churning out unique classics by artists like The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers and finally Ike and Tina Turner with his legendary ‘Wall of Sound’.

In the 1950’s Britain an independent musical culture developed.