A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s. Eric Charry

      INTRODUCTION

      This book offers a concise history of rock and R&B (rhythm and blues) through the early 1990s in three parts. Part 1 begins with a history of the music industry and then provides a capsule history of who did what when, with particular emphasis on the emergence of recognizable genres within relatively compact time spans. Part 2 contains the sixty-four figures that are referenced in part 1. They can be read on their own, as they tell a unique kind of story in a novel way. The focus in these two parts is a history illustrated with information-rich visually transparent figures. Part 3 explores key contemporary theoretical issues, with concrete examples that provide frames of reference for processing and interpreting the material in the first two parts. Throughout, I draw extensively on primary sources—the voices of musicians, writers, and consumers (using chart data) at the time.

      This particular combination of approaches and methods offers a new perspective, and herein lies the uniqueness of this text. The sixty-four figures each tell a story, and the accompanying writing fleshes them out. The figures are intended to guide readers through a diverse, unwieldy, and seemingly anarchic field of musical expression. A crucial point to ponder with most of the figures is why these elements are put together on a single page. In other words, what do the artists, groups, genres, songs, albums, or record labels have in common? This gets to the heart of how a genre or style congeals.

      With the increasing availability of quality online content, readers should be well prepared to move deeper into the stories; understand historical flows and ruptures; recognize innovations, overarching trends, and genre formations; critically evaluate an artist’s or group’s place within a genre; critique my own selection process; and, most important, listen. Most sections contain footnotes with specialized lists of additional print, film, and video resources.

      A New and Concise History stops in the early 1990s for several reasons. It developed out of notes for an undergraduate course I have been teaching annually since 2002, and so it is keyed to what can reasonably be packed into a single college semester. As a text for a one-semester course, it already contains a dense amount of material for a sustained, intensive, and holistic experience. Those finishing this book should be well prepared to explore on their own more recent music, the reception and perception of which is in a greater state of flux. Furthermore, those born in the 1990s and later may have a more intimate and visceral relationship to music of the past several decades. Putting that music under a micro- (and macro-) scope, with a veneer of academic objectivity, runs a risk of diminishing returns. The historical distance with the subject matter in the following pages may help readers embrace a greater breadth of perspective on more recent music.

      Throughout this book I adopt the spirit in which twenty-two-year-old Muhammad Ali referred to singer Sam Cooke as he made his way into the ring to congratulate Ali the night he won the world heavyweight boxing championship in February 1964. Cooke had been a star of the gospel music world before crossing over to the secular world of R&B, pop, and soul, a style that he personified—the previous year Cooke released an album titled Mr. Soul. Amid the celebration and a television interview, Ali called out, “This is Sam Cooke! Let Sam in. This is the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll singer” (qtd. in Guralnick 2005: 558–59).¹ I often use the terms rock and roll and rock as shorthand to cover the fullest conglomeration of many loosely connected genres and subgenres. A narrower usage of the term rock in the popular press can refer to an aesthetic tied to the 1960s and 1970s, exemplified in a predominantly white, guitar, bass, and drums format.

      Some prefatory notes will help the reader more quickly grasp the information presented. All song titles are in quotations marks; album titles are in italics. I often refer to Billboard magazine popularity chart positions (sales, radio airplay), and so it is crucial to understand their significance. Popularity does not necessarily equate with artistic merit. High chart positions primarily indicate that an artist or group is being widely heard (in homes on record, cassette, or CD players and on the radio) and most likely appreciated. (There is a valid argument that record labels and radio stations can collude, and have done so, to successfully push undeserving artists.) When the month and year of a record (and sometimes full date) is provided, it refers to its initial entry into a chart (unless otherwise noted). This marks its entry into the public consciousness, which could be right after its release or many months later. In cases where a record appeared in several charts with different entry dates, I occasionally opt (in the disco and electronic dance music sections) to indicate the month of entering the first chart and list the charts by chronological date of entry (e.g., entered charts October 1974: dance #1, pop #9, R&B #34). This enables the crossover path to be seen without too much clutter.

      For the figures with timelines, the left-most horizontal alignment of the name of an artist, song, album, or record label marks the specific year or month. For artists the month indicates when they initially entered the charts, except for figures 19, 20, 29, 30, 32, and 58, which indicate the initial break into the Top 40 slots.

      In the References section, I provide primary-source print citations for most magazine and newspaper articles to give readers a clearer sense of the historical context; many of these can be found online (e.g., those in Billboard, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Village Voice). For articles from less accessible magazines that have been reprinted on the subscription website Rock’s Backpages (2019), I also provide that indication (as RBP). Citations can be found in one of three places: bibliography (print, online articles and websites, radio programs); discography (limited to certain vinyl or CD recordings) if -d is appended to the date (e.g., 1960-d); or the filmography/videography (documentaries, feature films, YouTube clips) if -v is appended to the date (e.g., 1960-v). I occasionally opt to bypass academic-style conventions in the interest of consistency and clarity, as in omitting hyphens when genre names are used as adjectives, such as “rock and roll era.”

      Given the expansiveness of the references (over 750 items) and the more than 1,000 songs, albums, and artists mentioned in the text and figures, one might note some irony in the use of concise in the book title. Think of each of the three parts as separate, somewhat independent, very different—and concise—takes on the same topic. They could be read in any order, even jumping around among them. I hope I have struck an appropriate balance with the stories they tell.²

      1 The full moment occasionally appears (and disappears) on YouTube.

      2 Supplemental materials, including a historical timeline, playlists, and time stamps for the audio and video sources, are available on the book’s website, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.