Pop Music’s Crystal Ball

We’re hearing a lot about different visions for America, some of which includes nostalgia for the good old days, particularly the 50’s, when – the story goes – things were more orderly.

Now, we’re not going anywhere near politics, but we would like to look at just one slice of the 50’s – its pop music – and see what it might tell us about our own times.

The standard narrative of 50’s music goes something like this:

The first half of the decade was dominated by lightweight throwaways like this…

…until rock and roll came along to shatter everything.

As with most cliches, there is some truth in that, but the real story is a lot more complicated.

CultureSonar’s Ken Hymes points out that — if you look at the top 200 songs of the 1950’s — doo-wop and “rock and roll” make up much less than half the list. There’s also a lot of grownup, blues-flavored music from folks like Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles and Elmore James. That’s quite a mix: not a one-trick pony or a cluster of cheesy teen idols.

Of all the words you might use to describe Elmore James, “lightweight” is not one of them.

Then, of course, there’s rock n’ roll itself. It was simple music, right? – “three chords and truth,” as the saying goes.

Well, not so fast…

First, there were the musicians themselves. They brought an unusual amount of good baggage to the party – mixing jazz, country, swing, blues and pop to create something utterly new. For the most part, these guys could PLAY, and were not afraid to go pretty far out there in their seemingly-simple pop songs.

Our own Michael Rays notes that Elvis Presley’s incomparable musical wingman, Scotty Moore, for example, brought some genuine crazy to the King – and is still influencing guitar players six decades later.  Just check out the out-there guitar solo in “Too Much.”

And then there’s Buddy Holly.

A few years after Holly died in a plane crash, studio geniuses like Brian Wilson of the The Beach Boys, Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound, and George Martin with