Womn n rck

REWRITING ROCK HISTORY PART I

ROCK’N’ROLL

¡ By 1954, the sounds of Rock’n’Roll are ubiquitous

¡ Rock’n’Roll Characteristics:

¡ Hillbilly yelping

¡ Ecstatic shouts of gospel

¡ Exciting vocal delivery and performance style of R&B

¡ Backbeat – Gospel and R&B

¡ Guitar solos

¡ Boogie Woogie rhythms

¡ Youthful subject matter

ROCK’N’ROLL PIONEERS

¡ Bill Haley and the Comets

¡ Little Richard

¡ Elvis Presley

¡ Jerry Lee Lewis

¡ Chuck Berry

¡ The Drifters

¡ WHAT DO THEY ALL HAVE IN COMMON?

“Say man, there’s a woman who can sing some rock and roll. I mean, she’s singing religious music, but she is singing rock and roll. She’s shakin’ man ... She jumps it. She’s hitting that guitar, playing that guitar, and she is singing…

Whoooo. Sister Rosetta Tharpe.” —Jerry Lee Lewis

GOSPEL MUSIC

¡ Church of God in Christ (COGIC) ¡ Pentecostal denomination

¡ Instituted own services in 1907

¡ Memphis

¡ Included speaking in tongues, shouting ,emotional music, and bodily movement

SISTER ROSETTA THARPE (1915-1973)

¡ “Rock Me” - 1938 ¡ Lively version of Dorsey’s “Hide me in thy Bosom”

¡ Performed at Harlem Cotton Club – first time gospel is taken into secular world

¡ First gospel singer to record for a major record label (1938)

¡ From Spirituals to Swing (1938)

¡ Blurred sacred and secular

“STRANGE THINGS HAPPENING EVERY DAY” (RECORDED IN 1944/RELEASED 1945)

¡ 0:00-0:14

¡ 0:42 – 1:00

¡ 1:30 – 1:57

¡ Instrumental Intro w. boogie woogie rhythm

¡ Electric guitar, piano, bass and drums

¡ Call and Response

¡ Electric guitar solo

It wasn’t just where Sister Rosetta played, and it wasn’t just what songs she played.

IT WAS ALSO HOW SHE PLAYED.

THARPE AS PERFORMER/GUITARIST

¡ Energetic

¡ Sharp style of picking

¡ Played electric

¡ Windmill

“UP ABOVE MY HEAD” (1946)

¡ Gospel Time 1964

¡ By this time, had met pianist Marie Knight

¡ Knight would tour with Tharpe for many years

¡ They were also lovers

¡ Gayle Wald Shout Sister Shout (2008)

REACTION TO ROCK’N’ROLL ¡ Rock’n’Roll becomes focal point for fears around miscegenation, juvenile

delinquency and moral decline

¡ Rock’n’Roll brought musics that were race specific into the mainstream

¡ Anti-Rock’n’Roll campaigns began in the early 1950s

¡ Target suggestive lyrics

¡ Elvis Presley feared by parents

¡ South versus Rock’n’Roll: banned from various venues

¡ President Eisenhower – Conservative era in American history

PATTI PAGE

¡ Top Charting Female Pop Singer of the 1950s

¡ “Doggie in the Window” (1953)

ROCK’N’ROLL AND GENDER

¡ Rock’n’Roll = sex, urbanity, and miscegenation

¡ Rock’n’Roll was antithetical to respectability and femininity

¡ Rock’n’Roll ≄ Femininity

ROCKABILLY

¡ Strong beat and rhythm ¡ Moderate to fast tempo ¡ Twangy electric guitar ¡ Lyrics spoke of love and sex ¡ Vocal delivery fluctuated wildly

¡ Range of inflections and timbres ¡ Timbre = quality of a sound

¡ Not about speed or volume ¡ Timbre can be rough, smooth, clear, distorted, screamed,

tinny etc.

ROCKABILLY

≠

JUNE CLEAVER

WOMEN AND ROCKABILLY

¡ Sang of parties and teen love

¡ Vocals were decidedly “unladylike”

¡ Gasps, hiccups, slurs – anything to add excitement to the lyrics

¡ Anything to emphasize the emotion of the text

WANDA JACKSON

“Fujiyama Mama” (1957)

¡ Just as wild as any man

¡ So wild she’ll “blow her top” – like the Fujiyama volcano

¡ Compares her destruction to the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

¡ Everything is rough, growled, and raspy

¡ Hiccups on Fujiyama

ROCKABILLY ATTIRE

ROCKABILLY ATTIRE

WANDA JACKSON ¡ Singer and guitarist

• Discovered by Hank Thompson

• Begins in country

• Tours with Elvis

• Mother designs stage costumes – fringe

• Changes the way women in country dress

REPRESENTATION IN BILLBOARD

It must be stressed that for all the new found liberality at home amongst the nation’s youth, many if not most of the female rockabilly artists failed to appear on the national record charts at all. This reinforces one of the recurrent responses to any threat posed by any ‘other,’ that in this case an uninhibited and sexually aggressive woman was ‘transforming it into a bit of exotica so other as to be meaningless (David Sanjek, 1997).

(Sanjek,149).