TeachRock

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The Sun King: Sam Phillips

BACK IN THE MID-'50s, the Sun Records studio at 706 Union Avenue was the epicenter of a sudden, wrenching shift in world consciousness. Tremors had been felt for several years, and then, one afternoon in early 1954, Sam Phillips was busy with routine work in the tiny studio when Destiny walked in. Actually, Destiny, in the person of a handsome, painfully shy but flashily dressed young man with longish hair and greasy sideburns, paced up and down the sidewalk outside for some time before summoning the courage to actually walk in the door. Phillips, a thirty-one-year-old radio engineer from Florence,...

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Pat Boone: Boone In The USA

LET'S PLAY the numbers game. According to Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-1986, Pat Boone is the fifth highest-ranking artist in the history of theBillboard singles charts. Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, James Brown and Stevie Wonder were more successful (based on the number of singles charting and their positions). In the '50s, only Elvis was more popular, chart-wise, than Boone. Pat Boone reached the singles charts 60 times, putting him at #8 on that list. Six of those chart singles reached #1, spending a total of 21 weeks in that position, putting Boone in two more Top 10 lists. So much for...

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The King and I: A Visit to Graceland

KREATURE COMFORTS – "the Lowlife Guide to Memphis" – claims that Memphis can offer visitors "the best or worst of vacations: you could hit a jamming Keith Richards show on Beale Street or end up in line with 8,000 Elvis Zombies waiting to smell Elvis's bicycle seat at Graceland. The choice is yours." I'll take Graceland, thanks. Only inverted snobs contest the notion that the biggest musical phenomenon in Memphis – "Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll" – was Elvis Presley. For the last 20 years of his life, he lived at Graceland. When he died, in 1977,...

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Elvis Presley

(1935 – 1977) Hailed as the “King of Rock and Roll," Elvis Presley is one of the most important cultural icons of the 20th century and is universally credited with breaking Roll and Roll music into the mainstream. Born in Tupelo, Miss., in 1935 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis was a product of the musical culture of the American South — from the Gospel he heard in church, the Country music he heard on the radio to the black Blues and R&B he heard on Beale Street as a Memphis teenager, Elvis absorbed it all. He began his singing career with...

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Dick Clark: The Beat Goes On

THE MOST AMAZING thing about Dick Clark is not that "America's Oldest Living Teenager" still fits that role at age 61. It's not that he's one of the most successful (and wealthiest) people in show business. It's not even the fact that nearly all the great (and plenty of not-so-great) artists in the history of rock 'n' roll have appeared on his American Bandstand. The most amazing thing about Dick Clark is that he can't dance. He's admitted it. Dick Clark has two left feet. Beginning August 5, 1957, the Monday afternoon when he took over as host of the longest-running variety...

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Bruce Springsteen: Little Egypt From Asbury Park

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SITS cross-legged on his half-made bed, and surveys the scene. Records are strewn across the room, singles mostly, intermixed with empty Pepsi bottles, a motley of underwear, socks and jeans, half-read and half-written letters, an assortment of tapes, and a copy of Richard Williams' Out of His Head, the biography of Phil Spector. The space is small, but Bruce and the two friends listening to Harold Dorman's 'Mountain of Love' don't mind. They're listening for the final few bars of 'Mountain', in which the drummer collapses and loses the beat – the song slows down to a noticeably improper...

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Leiber And Stoller : The Blues (1950-1953) & The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years

JERRY LEIBER AND MIKE STOLLER. They rank alongside Berry as rock ‘n’ roll’s wittiest composers and their influence as record producers has been immeasurable. As writers they were the first to bring satire and a social conscience to rock; as producers they ushered out the simplicity of an era in which groups were pulled off the streets to "doo-wop" and "doo-wah" into a microphone for three minutes. From these primitive beginnings to monaural overdubbing, the very first eight-track studios and on into the realms of the technological future-shock, Leiber and Stoller have directed all the phases of post-war record production....

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Elvis’ Birthplace Tupelo, Mississippi

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Elvis Presley, Promoting the film Jailhouse Rock, 1957

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Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, 1970

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Hank Williams

He couldn't read. He couldn't write. He couldn't stop screwing up. Yet Hank Williams is a giant of popular music without whom rock'n'roll might never have happened. "I thought about Hank when I walked out on that Opry stage for the first time. all I could think of was, This is the same stage that Hank Williams was on and now I'm here." – Elvis Presley IN JAILHOUSE ROCK, VINCE EVERETT, PLAYED BY Elvis Presley, has a photograph on his cell wall. Unsurprisingly, it's of Hank Williams. Both singers were influenced by black music early in life, both won talent shows and learnt...

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Sam Phillips Elvis Presley and Crossover Success

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Buddy Holly: The Rocker Next Door with the Mail-Order Axe

IN A frame of reference where you might think of Elvis Presley as an idol and Little Richard as a hero. Buddy Holly has to be considered as an influence. Buddy Holly, the first rocker to actually go on stage wearing hornrimmed spectacles, who died in an air crash on February 3rd, 1959, and who thereby created rock's very first tragic legend, was much more than simply another fifties rock 'n' roll front man who got thrown into unnatural notoriety by his premature death. In any final analysis of the contribution of the stars of the fifties to the general steam...

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Big Mama Thornton (top) and Elvis Presley (bottom)

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Billboard Charts for “Hound Dog” as Recorded by Elvis Presley, 1956

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Elvis Lives, Cover of New Musical Express, August 27,1977

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Elvis Presley in Gold Lame Suit

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Sam Phillips with Elvis Presley at Sun Studios in 1956

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Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash Album Covers

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Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis (1974)

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50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong (1959)

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Dan Penn with Elvis Presley

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Elvis Presley – Self-Titled First Album (1956)

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Elvis Presley and Steve Sholes, 1955

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Mike Stoller, Elvis Presley and Jerry Leiber, MGM Lot, 1957

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Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock, movie poster (1957)

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Women Chasing Elvis Presley’s Taxi, 1960

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Elvis with his Parents, 1937

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Elvis Presley – “That’s All Right” Record Label, 1954

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Elvis, NYC, 1956

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Elvis Presley and Scotty Moore, 1956

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Elvis Presley Recording with Sam Phillips, 1955

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Elvis Presley in King Creole, Poster, 1958

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Elvis Presley Stripped by Fan Riot, Jacksonville, Florida, 1955

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Rockabilly: Was this the purest style in rock?

A DEFT, HARD-DRIVING BLEND of country, gospel and blues, rockabilly was performed mainly by white artists who traded legitimate country backgrounds for a short-lived but frenzied involvement in music with a strong beat. Young, naturally exuberant musicians were the prime exponents, but traditional country singers were not without guile and, for a brief period around 1954-57, they too sang with a flash and glamour to match their rhinestoned clothes. The word rockabilly was first coined by American trade papers who required a catchall term to cover a new development which had a variety of names including ‘western and bop’, ‘cat...

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Louis Jordan

The King of Jive Who Made The Good Times Roll IF BILL HALEY AND ELVIS PRESLEY have to be dubbed the father and king of rock’n’roll, then Louis Jordan must be considered its godfather. Practically all of the black American rhythm and blues, rock’n’roll and early soul stars who upset the Fifties have cited Jordan as the main man of their youth and several of the white rock’n’rollers have acknowledged his influence or recorded his songs. Certain elements of rock’n’roll were developing even before Jordan appeared on the scene and others cropped up after his heyday. But most were completely...

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Ahmet Ertegun And The History Of Atlantic Records

"WHEN I FIRST started Atlantic Records," reflects the label founder, Ahmet Ertegun, "I intended to make good blues and jazz music, as well as some pop music. My main interest was in jazz and blues." In the nearly 45 years since Ertegun and his original partner Herb Abramson first got together with this idea (and $10,000 from Ertegun's dentist), Atlantic has become one of the most consistently successful companies in music. So much the paradigm of the post WWII growth of the music business, Charlie Gillett used them for his model in his chronicle, Making Tracks. "The late 50s were a time...

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Frankie Lymon: Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

Black vocal groups once sang for enjoyment on street-corners throughout ghettos in each of the big American cities. Late into the night they harmonised together, sublimating a frustration which exploded by day. Zip-gun safely stored in the cistern, a Harlem teenager could leave his decaying tenement and join others for an acapella session in a dingy pool-hall or on a deserted subway platform. Street-corner talent-spotting became the normal way for a group to obtain a record contract. An audition from the guy who crossed the road to listen might mean gifts for all the folks and a shiny Cadillac. As groups proliferated...

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Jimmy Page: The Trouser Press Interview

Dave Schulps, senior editor of Trouser Press, spent more than six hours with Page, one of the longest interviews Page ever did. The interview was scheduled to happen on the East Coast after the band's 1977 MSG gigs, but Page was too tired to talk. So Swan Song put Schulps on their chartered jet with the and flew him to California. Schulps ended up snagging the guitarist on three separate occasions a few days later in Beverly Hills. The interviews took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, on June 16 and 17, 1977, while the band had a brief...

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The Soul Stirrer: Sam Cooke

FEW ENTERTAINERS have fallen quite so far from grace as Sam Cooke did when he died, 30 years ago, at the Hacienda Motel in south-central Los Angeles. Whatever the doubts and suspicions surrounding the shooting – and there are still many – it is hard to see it as a martyr's death. Yet think of Sam Cooke and you think: Grecian good looks, irresistible charm and style, and a voice that rings out like a glorious, golden peal, cooing ‘You Send Me’ down the corridors of eternity. For the best part of 15 years, Cooke was an archangel, a black American...

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Murray the K’s Entitled!

If anybody is... WHFS IS A 5000-watt FM station with call letters that were meant to stand for High Fidelty Stereo. It was the first station to broadcast mutiplex in the D.C. area, transmitting from a 150-foot antenna atop the Triangle Towers, a fifteen-story apartment house at 4853 Cordell Avenue, right across the street from the Psyche Delli and the Bank of Bethesda in Bethesda, Maryland. You can always tell you're in Bethesda by the way they always keep the white lines white. Bethesda has one of the highest per capita incomes of all the municipalities in America. The WHFS studios...

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Chess Records: The Original Blues Brothers

"WOW, YOU guys are really getting it on!" exclaimed Chuck Berry, observing the Rolling Stones cut 'Down The Road Apiece', a track he'd recorded himself just a few years earlier. It was June, 1964, and this youthful British beat band were happily messing around at the Chess studio in Chicago as their older black musical idols watched on, intrigued. In the background Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson argued loudly about a woman from Kentucky. Muddy Waters, whose song 'Rollin' Stone', had supplied the English band with its moniker, even helped them bring in their equipment. Later on, they chatted...

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The Who in San Francisco

THE WHO PLAY rock "n’ roll music ("it’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it," says Chuck Berry). Not art-rock, acid-rock, or any type of rock, but an unornamented wall of noise that, while modern and electronic, has that "golden oldies" feeling. Four Mod kids who started in 1963 as the High Numbers in London’s scruffy Shepherd’s Bush, the Who play a tight driving music which is a descendant of the rock of Elvis, Bill Haley, Gene Vincent, and even the early Beatles. In San Francisco near the end of a ten-week, fifty-city tour, the Who were at their...

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Lennon and McCartney: Songwriters — A Portrait from 1966

IT IS NOW ABOUT A DOZEN YEARS since the pop music revolution – since Alan Freed began to play, instead of soupy white imitations, straight rhythm and blues in New York and called it rock'n'roll; since Wild Bill Haley and his Comets roared to the top of the Top Ten with 'Shake, Rattle and Roll'; since the advent of the 45 rpm record and the post-war prosperity stretched that Top Ten into the Top 40, and even the Top 100. Despite adult accusations of the sameness of all the bleating sounds, pop has changed many times in those years. Those...

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The Carter Family: Into The Valley

FIRST KILL YOUR HOG. SKIN IT, singe off the hairs and leave the hide to soften. Tug it over a round frame, whittle out a neck, "and there's your banjo", says Roni Stoneman. "The five-string banjo is the only American instrument. The black people brought the four-string banjo, but the five-stringer and the clawhammer style came from the mountains." Roni, elderly Southern belle and professional banjo player, is one of the 15 of Ernest 'Pops' Stoneman's 23 children who made it to adulthood. "A lot of people made their own instruments. There wasn't much money around, but there was plenty...

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Phil Spector

ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED MOMENTS IN late-Sixties rock comes at the beginning of 'To Be Alone With You' on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album. As the guitars begin to strum, Dylan drawls, "Is it rolling, Bob?" "Bob" is Bob Johnston, Dylan’s producer. With that single question Dylan brings to our attention Johnston’s role in the singer’s recording career. The producer is here acknowledged as a crucial part of the whole undertaking — as necessary as the tape machines, microphones, and instruments...almost as important as the singer himself. By the end of the Sixties, most rock fans could give you the names of...

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…Howlin’ for the Wolf

"I was just a country boy, glad to get some sounds on wax" IT WASN'T unexpected; not like the sudden shock when a man is wiped out is his prime by ice on the wings, vomit in the throat, or a wayward bullet; but there was still a sense of irretrievable loss that came with the news of Howlin’ Wolf’s death. He'd been ill for a long time now. Overweight and subject to heart attacks, he'd been in and out of hospital since the late sixties and more or less inactive for the last couple of years. Now the news reports...

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Chuck Berry: Rock Lives!

...especially it seems, at the Saville. Chuck Berry talks to RM's Norman Jopling for this in-depth interview CHUCK BERRY has become a musical institution in the eleven years that he has been making hit records. Since his first American hit single 'Maybellene' in 1955 (before Elvis Presley scored HIS first American hit), Chuck has endeared himself to the hearts of all types of pop music admirers – from never-say-die side-burned drape-jacketed rockers, to trendy mini-skirted young ladies. Just how much has Chuck himself changed in that considerable amount of time, musically? (to go back to Presley, think how much HE has changed!) "Then...

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Fats Domino: The Man Who Sang Rock Before Haley

HIS first million-seller was named after himself. Until last year he had more million-sellers than Elvis, who finally caught up with him after a hard struggle. He had more Gold discs before his biggest hit – in 1956 – than after. That hit was 'Blueberry Hill', the first disc was 'The Fat Man' and the man himself is Antoine "Fats" Domino. When Fats first came on the scene back in 1948 the big trend in pop music was jazz, and watery pops. There was no "vital" music for the kids except some obscure Blues that wasn't commercial enough anyway. Fats made 'The...

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Jimi Hendrix 1968

"Will he burn it tonight?" asked a neat blonde of her boyfriend, squashed in beside her on the packed floor of the Fillmore auditorium. "He did at Monterey," the boyfriend said, recalling the Pop Festival at which the guitarist, in a moment of elation, actually put a match to his guitar. The blonde and her boyfriend went on watching the stage, crammed with huge silver-fronted Fender amps, a double drum set, and whispering stage hands. Mitch Mitchell, the drummer, came on first, sat down, smiled, and adjusted his cymbals. Then came bassist Noel Redding, gold glasses glinting on his...

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Gil Scott-Heron: And now, for a fascinating and demanding dialogue…

GIL SCOTT-HERON aims to be a catalyst. Not a leader of revolutions, but an insistent elbow in the ribs, nudging people off their fence to bring them a little bit closer to the essence of their problems. He likes that word essence; uses it a lot. He uses all words a lot. They are his stock in trade. He's not loud or dramatic, but he's sure of himself and sure of what needs saying and sure as hell not afraid to say it. A conversation with Gil is a fascinating if demanding dialogue. Nothing's thrown away. He's attentive and analytical of...

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Monterey Pops! An International Pop Festival

Reporting for Newsweek took me to Monterey. I'd gone to work for Newsweekright out of college in 1965 – I was a reporter in the London bureau whenRubber Soul came out, Carnaby Street was jumping, and the Who were at the Marquee. In January '67, just as the '60s musical-social ball was bouncing westward, Newsweek moved me to San Francisco. I arrived in time for the Human Be-In and soon was hanging out at the Avalon and Fillmore, interviewing Jerry and Janis, and covering student demonstrations in Berkeley. In May I began to hear rumours of a huge hippie festival: all the best new bands...

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Dion: The King of the Noo Yawk Streets Comes Home

WHEN DION DiMucci made his major comeback at New York's Radio City Music Hall two years ago, he was joined onstage by an all-star quartet of backing singers: Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, and Billy Joel. It said a lot for the 48-year-old singer that he could bring together four such different examples of the New York street troubadour, each of them in their own way having come under the spell of the man who sang those swaggering classics of the early '60s 'The Wanderer' and 'Runaround Sue'. "When we were rehearsing that show," says Dion two years later, "I...

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Led Zep in L.A.

"I DON'T EVEN like Led Zeppelin," the girl in the black velvet jacket and hotpants said petulantly as she bummed a cigarette off an acquaintance in the lobby of the Continental Hyatt House Hotel in L.A. "I'm only staying here because my friends have a room. I think Zep are really tacky." Methought the lady did protest too much. Why would three well-known L.A. groupies book a room at Zep's hotel if they didn't dig the band? Why would they spend most of their spare time either hanging out in the lobby or else trying to gatecrash the security on the ninth...

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The Bees Gees: From Down Under To Disco

SINCE ENTERING POP MUSIC in the Fifties, the Bees Gees have had three careers on three continents, each more successful than its predecessor. The first was in Australia as child prodigies. In 1967, they came to Britain as suitable opposition to the Beatles. Finally in the mid-Seventies they found themselves setting the pace for the disco boom and emerging as songwriters of note on the adult-oriented rock scene. The career of the three Gibb brothers began inauspiciously enough in December 1956 at the Gaumont cinema in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, where they volunteered for the regular mime spot preceding the Saturday morning...

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Rock and Roll and the American Dream

Grades: High

Subjects: ELA, Social Studies/History

Activities: Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Economics, Literature

What is the American Dream and how did Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash personify its ideals?

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“Hound Dog” and 1950 Race Relations

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music

Activities: Maps, Musical Analysis

Topics: Black History, Civics and Politics, Geography, Media Studies

How does the story of “Hound Dog” demonstrate music culture’s racial mixing as it differed from mainstream American life in the 1950s?

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Producing the Sounds of a Changing South

Grades: High

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Gallery Walk, Textual Analysis

Topics: Black History, Geography, Music Business, Technology

How did the recordings Sam Phillips produced at Sun Records, including Elvis Presley’s early work, reflect trends of urbanization and integration in the 1950s American South?

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The Memphis Sound and Racial Integration

Grades: High

Subjects: ELA, Social Studies/History

Activities: Gallery Walk, Maps, Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Black History, Civics and Politics, Geography

How has Memphis music culture provided one example of art’s capacity to challenge the racial boundaries that have so often structured American life?

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Gospel Music and the Birth of Soul

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Musical Analysis, Textual Analysis

Topics: Black History

How did Gospel influence American popular music?

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The Rise of the Electric Guitar

Grades: High

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Charts and Graphs, Four Corners, Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis, Visual Design

Topics: Economics, Guitar, Music Business, Technology

What factors led to the rise of the electric guitar as the dominant symbol of Rock and Roll?

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Sam Phillips

(1923 – 2003) If he'd done nothing other than discover Elvis Presley and release his early singles, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips would be a crucial figure in the birth of Rock and Roll. But the Memphis-based impresario's music-related achievements were far broader than his pivotal association with Elvis. The Alabama native opened the Memphis Record Service in 1950, hiring out his services to record weddings, funerals, and civic events, while cutting sessions with such local (and soon to be legendary) Blues musicians as Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Junior Parker, James Cotton, Rufus Thomas, Rosco Gordon, Little Milton, and Bobby Blue...

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Considering the Future of Rock and Roll

Grades: High

Subjects: ELA, Social Studies/History

Activities: Role Playing, Textual Analysis

Topics: Geography

How is Rock and Roll's power, at least in part, a result of its being born on the margins of society?

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Dion and the Teen Idols

Grades: High

Subjects: ELA, Social Studies/History

Activities: Role Playing, Visual Analysis

Topics: Censorship, Youth/Teenagers

What role did the so-called "teen idols" of the late 1950s play in bringing Rock and Roll into mainstream American culture?

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Rock and Roll Goes to the Movies

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: Social Studies/History

Activities: Station Activities, Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Censorship, Media Studies, Technology, Youth/Teenagers

How did movies help to introduce Rock and Roll culture to mainstream audiences in the 1950s?

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The Beatles and Teen Culture

Grades: High

Subjects: Social Studies/History

Activities: Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Civics and Politics, Media Studies, Music Business, Youth/Teenagers

How did the Beatles’ image as a “rock band” affect young people in America?

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Liverpool: The Birthplace of the Beatles

Grades: High

Subjects: Social Studies/History

Activities: Maps, Station Activities, Textual Analysis

Topics: Civics and Politics, Economics, Geography, War

How did growing up in post-WWII Liverpool influence the Beatles?

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The Roots of Country Rock

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music

Activities: Musical Analysis, Textual Analysis

How did Country Music influence Rock and Roll and the musicians who made it?

lesson:
The Emergence of Folk Rock

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Musical Analysis

What is Folk music? To what extent did Folk Rock sustain the spirit of Folk music?

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Punk as Reaction

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: Art/Design, Social Studies/History

Activities: Role Playing, Station Activities, Visual Analysis, Visual Design

Topics: Civics and Politics, Youth/Teenagers

How was Punk Rock a reaction both to the commercialization of Rock and Roll and to the social climate in late 1970s Britain?

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Ritchie Valens

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music

Activities: Musical Analysis, Role Playing

Topics: Latin American History, Migration

How did Ritchie Valens meld traditional Mexican music and Rock and Roll?

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The Black Origins of Punk

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: ELA, General Music

Activities: Creative Writing, Station Activities

Topics: Black History

How did the bands X-Ray Spex, Bad Brains, and Death define Punk on their own terms?

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Too Much

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Press Conference, ABC News Archives

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That’s All Right

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Return to Tupelo

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Hound Dog

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Dewey Phillips

(1926 – 1968) As the most popular radio disc jockey in Memphis in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Dewey Phillips was a trailblazer in several ways. He had a larger-than-life on-air persona that presaged later Rock and Roll DJs. In a segregated southern city he was a white DJ who played both black and white artists for an integrated audience. And he played a mix of styles – Blues, R&B, Country, Rockabilly, Gospel — that were the building blocks of what soon would be called Rock and Roll. Philips served in the Second World War, and when he returned to Memphis his desire...

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Rick Nelson

(1940 – 1985) Ricky Nelson was born into show business — his parents were chart-topping Big Band performers who transitioned into radio and television personalities during the 1940s. As a teen during the 1950s, Ricky starred as himself, alongside his parents and brother, in the television hit The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. For years, each episode would conclude with a musical performance by Ricky Nelson and his band, in the style of his rockabilly idols Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Nelson's performances on the show, along with his boy-next-door good looks, attracted a massive teenage audience and landed him a...

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Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup”

Although he's best known for Elvis Presley's covers of his songs "That's All Right" (which was Presley's debut single in 1954), "So Glad You're Mine" and "My Baby Left Me," singer-guitarist Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup is notable for his own contributions to the Blues canon.  With a distinctive voice and a guitar style whose primitivism may have been attributable to the fact that he didn't pick up the instrument until he was 30, the Mississippi-bred Crudup had traveled around the South as a migrant worker and toured as a member of the Gospel act the Harmonizing Four before moving to...

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Blue Moon of Kentucky

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Hound Dog (on the Ed Sullivan Show)

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Bill Monroe

(1911 – 1996) Bill Monroe was a pioneering Country music performer and bandleader, credited as the Father of Bluegrass, a genre that drew from the Appalachian folk, Gospel and Blues music with which Monroe had grown up. Monroe was born the youngest of eight children in Rosine, Ky., to a musical family. Orphaned at the age of 16, Monroe moved to Indiana, working through the Great Depression in an oil refinery. He subsequently formed a duo with his brother Charlie and as half of the Monroe Brothers scored an immediate hit single with the Gospel song "What Would You Give In Exchange For Your...

lesson:
“Blowin’ in the Wind” as a Rallying Cry

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: ELA, General Music

Activities: Musical Analysis, Textual Analysis, Timeline

Topics: Geography, Literature, War

How does the song “Blowin’ in the Wind” use poetic devices to communicate an open-ended yet powerful message about the human condition, without ever losing its historical specificity?

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Bo Diddley: The Grandfather of Hip Hop?

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Musical Analysis, Textual Analysis

Topics: Black History, Guitar

How were Bo Diddley’s recordings an anomaly in relation to 1950s Pop music, and how is his rhythm-driven sound and self-presentation a precursor to Hip Hop style?

lesson:
World War II and the Shrinking of the Ensemble

Grades: High

Subjects: Social Studies/History

Activities: Charts and Graphs, Role Playing, Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Labor History, Technology, War

How did wartime restrictions and other factors cause popular music ensembles to shrink in size during the 1940s, helping to set the stage for the small “combos” of Rock and Roll?

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Bruce Springsteen

(b. 1949) Born to working-class parents in a small New Jersey town, Bruce Springsteen rose to become arguably the biggest American superstar in Rock. Now in the fifth decade of a career that’s spanned incarnations as a bar-band guitar hero, Dylanesque street poet, chronicler of blue-collar American life, writer of anthemic radio hits, and Woody Guthrie-esque balladeer, Springsteen has an especially devoted base of fans, who hail “the Boss” for his anti-Rock-star populism and for intense, long-haul performances that reflect both a dogged work ethic and a belief in the power of music as a redemptive, uniting force. A self-described loner...

lesson:
The Beat as an Object of Celebration and Concern in Segregation-Era America

Grades: High

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Structured Academic Controversy, Textual Analysis

Topics: Black History, Censorship, Technology

How has “the beat” been an object of both celebration and concern in the history of popular music?

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Elton John

(b. 1947) In a career spanning five decades, Sir Elton John has notched more than 50 Top 40 hits and sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most popular and successful singer-songwriter-performers of all time. He remains best known for his output during the 1970s, a decade he started as a sincere, somewhat somber piano-playing singer-songwriter and ended as an arena-packing Pop star, and during which he had a phenomenally prolific streak of No. 1 albums and hit songs. Elton was born Reginald Dwight in Middlesex, England. He was picking out songs on the piano at age three;...

lesson:
The Beatles Work Towards Success

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: Math, Social Studies/History, STEAM

Activities: Equations and Calculations, Maps, Textual Analysis, Timeline, Visual Analysis

Topics: Geography, Math, War, Youth/Teenagers

How did The Beatles' rigorous work schedule during the years 1960-63 build their strengths as performers, as musicians, and as a band?

people:
Bob Dylan

(b. 1941) Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is one of the most influential and revered figures in Folk and Rock. Among the most celebrated songwriters of the 20th century, Dylan is often credited with introducing literary and intellectual ambition into popular music. Dylan came to prominence as part of the American folk revival of the early 1960s, and has maintained an active career that spans five decades and over 30 albums. Bob Dylan was a teenager when Rock and Roll exploded onto the American landscape in the mid-1950s and the young Dylan was an avid...

lesson:
The Indigenous Roots of Rock and Roll

Grades: AP/Honors/101, High

Subjects: ELA, Social Studies/History

Activities: Document-Based Questions, Interactive Tech Tools, Role Playing, Station Activities, Textual Analysis

Topics: Civics and Politics, Guitar, Native American History

What does Link Wray’s biography say about how Native Americans lived in the first half of the 20th century, and what role did Wray’s upbringing have on his music?

lesson:
Ritchie Valens (Elementary School Version)

Grades: Elementary

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Musical Analysis, Personal Reflection, Textual Analysis

Topics: Appropriation, Latin American History

How did Ritchie Valens meld traditional Mexican music and Rock and Roll?

people:
Ed Sullivan

(1901 – 1974) Ed Sullivan was a television host whose hugely popular variety show — The Ed Sullivan Show, which broadcast from 1948 to 1971 — was an important outlet for many early Rock and Roll acts. Artists who appeared on the show during its long tenure ran from Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley to the Doors and Janis Joplin to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. The most notable musical moment in the show's history was the Beatles' appearance on February 9, 1964, which a full-on cultural event credited with sending Beatlemania into high gear in the U.S. The program — a...

people:
Paul McCartney

(b. 1942) It's tempting to imagine how different the world would be today if Paul McCartney hadn't run into John Lennon on July 6, 1957, at the Liverpool church fete where Lennon's group the Quarrymen was performing. But it's also hard to imagine that, even if the Beatles had never existed, McCartney's prodigious talents and considerable ambition wouldn't have found an outlet somehow, or that he wouldn't have become an influential cultural figure even if the British rock explosion that the Beatles ignited had never happened.  It's an oft-repeated if overly simplistic meme that McCartney was the facile Pop tunesmith to...

people:
Frankie Avalon

(b. 1940) Pop singer Frankie Avalon was among the premiere “teen idols” of the late 50s and early 60s, scoring many hits in the pre-Beatles era and starring in dozens of films, among them a popular series of beach movies that paired Avalon with Annette Funicello. As a boy growing up in Philadelphia Avalon studied the trumpet, and played with local bands. He scored a break thanks to an encounter with singer Al Martino, who hailed from the same south Philly neighborhood where Avalon lived. Martino was back home visiting friends and celebrating a recent hit when Avalon talked his way into Martino’s party and played...

lesson:
Introducing New Wave

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music

Activities: Musical Analysis

What did Punk Rock provide that opened the door for New Wave acts? And what are some among the defining attributes of New Wave?

lesson:
The Influence of Rhythm and Blues

Grades: High, Middle

Subjects: General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Musical Analysis, Textual Analysis

Topics: Music Business

What did R&B bring to early Rock and Roll, and how was early Rock and Roll different?

people:
Jerry Lee Lewis

(b. 1935) Perhaps the wildest of Rock and Roll's early pioneers, Jerry Lee Lewis embodied an unruly mass of contradictions that manifested themselves on such hits as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," "Great Balls of Fire" "Breathless," and "High School Confidential." Shouting his lusty lyrics and pounding his piano like a man possessed, Lewis — affectionately known, then and now, as the Killer — balanced the sacred and the profane like nothing that had ever been in heard in American popular music, establishing himself as a walking embodiment of American parents' darkest fears about this strange new music.  When he showed...

people:
Lead Belly

(1889 – 1949) A singular figure in American music, Lead Belly is often called a Blues singer, but his repertoire ran well beyond Blues, and into a breadth of American Folk styles, from prison work songs and field songs to spirituals and square-dance calls. An itinerant singer who was both a songwriter and a repository for tradional songs, Lead Belly built an extensive repertoire that significantly influenced the Folk revival of the 1960s. Huddie Ledbetter was born in 1889 (by most estimates) near Shreveport, Louisiana. He was the son of sharecroppers and took an interest in music as a young boy,...

video:
“Remembering The King” – ABC News – Nightline

lesson:
Beatlemania

Grades: High

Subjects: Social Studies/History

Activities: Four Corners, Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Media Studies, Music Business, Youth/Teenagers

What were the factors that contributed to the rise of Beatlemania?

people:
Big Mama Thornton

(1926 – 1984) Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton was described by songwriter Jerry Stoller as “a bit frightening,” “a force of nature” and “absolutely magnificent.” With her larger-than-life personality and spicy take on the Blues she was one of the R&B performers that helped usher in the coming of Rock and Roll. Like many R&B performers of her generation, Thornton started singing in church as a youngster. By her teens she was playing drums, guitar and harmonica and developing her earthy singing voice playing shows around her home base of Montgomery, Ala. She spent much of the 1940s touring the South...

lesson:
How to Study Rock and Roll

Grades: All Ages, AP/Honors/101, Elementary, High, Middle

Subjects: ELA, General Music, Social Studies/History

Activities: Textual Analysis, Timeline, Visual Analysis

How can teachers help students analyze and understand Rock and Roll?

video:
Heartbreak Hotel

lesson:
Dancing the Twist on Television

Grades: High

Subjects: Social Studies/History

Activities: Charts and Graphs, Role Playing, Textual Analysis, Visual Analysis

Topics: Dance, Media Studies

How did teen dance shows and the Twist influence American culture?

video:
Jailhouse Rock Trailer

video:
Love Me Tender Trailer

people:
Albert Grossman

(1926 – 1986) Albert Grossman was an American talent manager who is most famous for representing Bob Dylan between the years 1962 and 1970. A shrewd and aggressive businessman, Grossman foresaw the 1960s Folk revival, and smelled opportunity. He co-founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, famously saying at the time, "The American public is like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be kissed awake by the prince of Folk music." Over the years, Grossman represented many of the most prominent names in the folk and rock worlds, notably John Lee Hooker, Odetta, Todd Rundgren, The Band, Gordon Lightfoot, Peter, Paul and Mary, Electric Flag and...