The Intertwining of
Culture and Music
The Intertwining of
Culture and Music:
Love and the Times
By
Frank A. Salamone
The Intertwining of Culture and Music: Love and the Times
By Frank A. Salamone
This book first published 2017
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2017 by Frank A. Salamone
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-4499-3
ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4499-4
Any book has many contributors even if one gets the credit for writing it.
The inspiration for writing at all comes from my wife, Virginia, all my
children, friends throughout my life, and, of course, my youngest
grandchild, Tessa, who has blessed my old age by showing me what I
missed through busyness with all my children and other grandchildren and
greatgrandchild; namely, the sheer joy of life and the unraveling of its
mysteries. Without the help of many jazz artists and of Milt Gabler,
impresario par excellence, there would have been little if any content in
this book. My major musical inspirations have been many. Mainly, they
have been Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sonny
Rollins. That is not to ignore the increasing importance of Mozart in my
understanding of music.
“The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence between.”
―Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword .................................................................................................... ix
Manuel Quinones
Preface ........................................................................................................ xi
Marcus Aldredge
Acknowledgements ................................................................................... xv
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1
Love and the Times
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 15
It’s All Sacred Music: Duke Ellington from the Cotton Club
to the Cathedral
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 27
Jazz and Its Impact on European Classical Music
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 39
Borrowing from the Classics: The Use of Classical Themes in American
Pop Music
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 45
1950s Music
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 63
Bringin’ It All Back Home!
Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 73
Milt Gabler
Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 97
The Culture of Jazz and Jazz as Critical Culture
viii
Table of Contents
Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 115
Bebop and Hip-Hop: Their Strong Relationship
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 121
Bopping along with Johnny Mercer
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 129
Bonanza and Popular Themes from TV and Movies
Index ........................................................................................................ 137
FOREWORD
Frank A. Salamone knows a lot about jazz. But even more than that, he
knows a lot about love.
I married Frank’s son, Frank Charles, over Labor Day weekend in
2012. It was a small ceremony at former First Lady Dolley Madison’s old
house in downtown Washington, D.C., just a short walk from the White
House. It was a guy marrying another guy. My mom, an upper middle
class, well-educated Puerto Rican woman in her 60’s, has always been
accepting of me being gay, but in reality, she didn’t know what to expect
from the ceremony and appeared a little shell-shocked throughout the
whole ordeal. God knows, maybe she expected the judge to be wearing a
hot pink robe and roller skates. However, Frank A., my new father in law,
was thrilled. At least that’s how I saw it because that’s what he showed.
Frank wasn’t exactly thrilled when his son came out of the closet to
him. I’ve been told he was somber and pensive for some time after he got
the news. It was something Frank clearly had to internalize. But soon
Frank not only accepted it, he embraced it.
Fast forward about a decade and Frank was tasked with having to
embrace me. And he did. Frank chatted up my mom during the wedding
and then told me what a lovely woman she was. Over the past several
years Frank has also told me about his past, the challenges of navigating
through academic bureaucracy, his field research in Nigeria and his love
for performing arts. For a gay man looking for societal acceptance, it’s
nice to sit on the couch with your father-in-law, stuffed from eating turkey
during the holidays, and chat about the everyday.
It’s hard for all of us to be open-minded about things we don’t fully
understand. Frank at least tries. And often he more than succeeds. Maybe
it’s the anthropologist in him. This book, for example, contains thoughts
from Frank Jr. about electronic music and Queen of Disco Donna
Summer. It was the author’s effort to both embrace his son’s interests and
also venture beyond his comfort zone in analyzing cultural trends and their
relationship with music. Frank similarly expands on the connections
between hip-hop and earlier music forms that help explain the African
American experience.
Even though I grew up in Latin America and the music of my people
reverberated around me—salsa, merengue, plena, danza—Frank knows
much more about Spanish-Caribbean music than I do. For better or worse,
x
Foreword
I spent most of my formative years watching Madonna on VH1 or
listening to the all-English pop station. I thought it made me cool. My first
real experience with Latin Jazz was watching the documentary Calle 54
while in college. Now Frank peppers me with factoids about Tito Puente
and Eddie Palmieri. Sometimes it makes me feel just a bit self-conscious
about my lack of knowledge. More than that, however, it makes me want
to hear more.
In this book Frank explores how music is a vehicle for love and a
barometer of our broader attitudes. Beyond his passion for music and,
specifically, jazz, one can say Frank loves through music and jazz. He
showed love to his son by taking him to jazz concerts as a young boy and
introducing him to several of its masters. “Oh, I’ve met him,” Frank Jr.
tells me when the likes of Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie come up in
conversation. “Dad took me,” he says like it’s no big deal. It was a big
deal. It was love.
Now during family get-togethers when Frank is going through the
numerous music channels on pay television, he sometimes stops on a
salsa, merengue or Spanish language pop station. It takes us a while to
notice. And when we do, we wonder, “What the heck is he playing?” I like
to think that Frank is looking to learn more about music and also embrace
me.
You can be talking to Frank about the kitchen sink and he’ll come up
with anecdotes about the good days of his youth in Rochester or his
favorite musicians. Sometimes Frank’s kids say to themselves “here we go
again” when their dad goes on about Louis Armstrong’s views on race or
Charlie Parker’s drug problem and his baroness patron. In my view, when
Frank bites my ear off about something like Duke Ellington and Richard
Nixon’s relationship, I know I’m in. I’m one of the family.
Manuel Quinones
Silver Spring, Maryland
PREFACE
MARCUS ALDREDGE
IONA COLLEGE
A cogent piece of scholarship and writing shares the layered, but
interwoven qualities displayed in the knitting of a beautiful quilt.
Projecting the big picture, to varying degrees of clarity and explicitness, of
the craftsperson’s contribution is often a process of discovery and
refinement for the writer and reader, alike. The dialectical relationship
between writing and thinking is profound and encompassing, as Howard
Becker (1986) tells us, but writing doesn’t begin in that all too
romanticized and idealized state of physical, cognitive or social isolation.
But neither does Romantic love which is also a cultural product of a
society’s historical place and milieu. Such themes that provide the
complex depth and colorful impressions are preferably embedded within
that quilt or text in this matter. The Intertwining of Culture and Music, the
most recent contribution by Frank Salamone, displays a tapestry of broad
complexity, insightfulness and social interconnectedness in popular
culture.
It has been asserted that, “cultures sit in the space between order and
action, structure and agency” (Wray 2014). Salamone seeks to excavate
various historical practices and innovations in popular culture and the
critical intersections and tension between an individual and one’s society.
The relatively short eleven chapters represent a broad, but insightful
survey of this topic. Salamone initially explores the American fascination,
if not fetishization, of romantic love and how and to what degree this often
elusive emotional prize has appeared in popular music and culture. In
charting his course, he sets the stage by exploring the content of popular
songs over the latter half of the twentieth century in Chapter 1. It does not
take long before the author delightfully turns his focus on the topic he both
adores and knows quite well: American jazz music. In a similar vein
Chapter 2 takes a thoughtful look at the renowned Edward “Duke”
Ellington and his musical and social expressions of love and his more
abstract negotiation and disruption of cultural binaries, such as the sacred
and the profane.
xii
Preface
Chapter 3 turns to the awe-inspiring rise of American jazz in the eyes
of European classical musicians. This chapter explores the cultural motifs
of “primitivism” and “exoticism” that framed, filtered, yet enthralled
European interest and interpretations of this largely African-American art
form. False binaries, often racist in nature, remain an important theme
here, as well. Chapter 4 explores the musical exchange between classical
and popular music with the notable and most vivid focus on the Beatles.
Herbert Gans ([1974] 1999) would find solace in this topic given his
insistence that high and popular or lowbrow culture have long been
borrowing and integrating content from each other.
Subsequent chapters cut across a variety of related topics, including the
popular music of the 1950s which includes jazz, doo-wop, and country.
The rise of Rock ’n’ Roll and its embodiment of the racial, genre, and civil
divisions in the 1950s is an unavoidable theme of this decade Salamone
highlights. Chapter 6 demarcates a more theoretical turn in Salamone’s
manuscript engaging the historical roots of jazz in Africa and its
understanding through the lens of creolization theory. One of this theory’s
tenets questions and problematizes the potentially patronizing if not
demeaning assertion that social groups who have been recipients of
varying degrees of domination and exploitation have no agency and power
to act back and assert and achieve social change. This chapter is explored
through the narrative of Fela Anakulapi-Kuti, a Yoruba musician, who led
a youthful movement against the government and significant social
inequalities in Nigeria.
Chapter 7 turns to a more concrete interview between Frank Salamone
and a pivotal person and player in popular and jazz music, Milton Gabler.
Gabler describes and elucidates, with a slightly mercurial tone, his roles,
influences and locations throughout the jazz musical timeline of New York
City. Chapter 8 explores a topic with which Salamone is now long
connected, the exploration of jazz as a powerful and critical force in
political inspiration, subversion and social change. Located within this
cultural narrative is the trickster archetype emblematic in famous jazz
musicians, such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, who humorously
rock the boat, often unknown to their oppressors. One such theme of social
recognition and disruption is that of the “double consciousness” for
African-Americans W.E.B. Du Bois poignantly outlines in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ([1903] 1989).
Chapter 9 explores the convergences and parallels between bebop and
hip hop as musical styles birthed in the African-American community
plausibly tracing back a similar lineage to Louis Armstrong. Chapter 10
concludes Salamone’s chapters devoted primarily toward jazz by focusing
The Intertwining of Culture and Music: Love and the Times
xiii
on the jazz vocalist Johnny Mercer, among others, and his role in helping
popularize jazz. Continuing the theme of the 1950s, just barely, the
bookend chapter concludes by exploring the cultural salience of the TV
series and Western, Bonanza. The series parallels this article’s placement
because it bookended the 1950s beginning in the fall 1959, running
through the early 1970s. Its characteristic projection of “traditional”
notions of family, honor and gallantry did not necessarily reflect the period
of cultural transition and tumult that its TV duration bridged. This chapter
provides a fascinating culmination to this book’s portrayal of popular
culture as sharing a historical context of significant cultural upheaval and
technological change in the mid-twentieth century. These chapters and
topics are also tied together by the recurring theme of cultural hybridity.
Salamone also notes, in similar vein, that Claude Levi-Strauss deemed
certain cultural things as falling into “anomalous categories” synthesizing,
transcending and potentially endangering traditional binaries. This
collection of academic snapshots by Frank Salamone provides an
important and vivid collage of these themes and times.
References
Becker, Howard. 1986. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and
Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Du Bois, W.E.B. ([1903]1989). The Souls of Black Folk. New York:
Penguin.
Gans, Herbert J. ([1974] 1999). Popular & High Culture: An Analysis and
Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books.
Wray, Matt. 2014. Cultural Sociology: An Introductory Reader. New
York: W.W. Norton and Co.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank the staff of the Smithsonian Institution Duke Ellington
Archives and the staff of the Library of Congress for their aid in
facilitating this research.
CHAPTER ONE
LOVE AND THE TIMES
–Without music, life would be a mistake–
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Growing up in the 1950s it seemed that every popular song was a love
song. The juke boxes and radios blared the latest hits and almost every one
of them was a song aimed straight at the heart. A teenage boy had no
chance but to expect that each pop tune would guide him toward the love
of his life, at least the love of tonight. Although I was more a fan of jazz
and the music of earlier decades in which jazz was a large segment of the
popular music, nevertheless the silky tones of Nat Cole, minus his trio, had
the power to stir up strange emotions. So, did those of other singers of the
early 50s—Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, and many others. Even as Rhythm
‘n’ Blues, renamed Rock ’n’ Roll, took over the pop charts, there were still
some mellow singers bridging the gap—Bobby Darin, Johnny Mathis, and
others. Even Elvis turned to the traditional love song at time as “Love Me
Tender”, for example, demonstrates. The fifties were a period in which,
however, times were changing and so, too, the depiction of love in
America also changed.
That personal experience led me to ponder what the connection
between the concept of romantic love and popular music might be. Was it,
as Frank Sinatra sang in a ballad of the times, like love and marriage? The
song claims you can’t have one without the other. Can we only have a
correlational answer or can we delve more deeply for one that suggests
some causation? A survey of the top tunes from 1955 to 2005 sheds some
light on the issue. It also suggests that “love” means something different
from one period to another, leading to all sorts of generational confusion
and misunderstandings.
This chapter examines whether socio-demographic change affects
mass-mediated expression of emotion. Specifically, do objective societal
trends affect popular song content? When society is getting better, do pop
song lyrics get more positive? For example, does reduced unemployment
or increasing income lead to more representation of positive ideas like
love, achievement, or growth? When reality is going downhill, is there
2
Chapter One
more negativity in pop songs? This is interesting in itself as a social and
cultural question: how is popular culture affected by objective reality?
This chapter covers the period from 1950 to 1980 and concentrates on
the pop music top 100 songs for the decades 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
Billboard added Top 100 charts for other genres of music over time: for
example, Latin Music was given its own chart in 1986. This article does
not examine these other important charts but tries to account for the
influence of other musical forms on popular music. This period marks a
movement away from the fears of World War II, the rise of a strong
American exceptionalism and engagement with the world, and the disaster
of Vietnam and the rise of the Youth Movement.
The Fifties and Romantic Love: The American Romance
with the Automobile
–In brief, automobiles are so designed as to be dangerous at any speed–
Ralph Nader, “The Safe Car You Can’t Buy”,
The Nation, April 11, 1959
Virtually since its invention, Americans have had a love affair with the
automobile. Perhaps, the fifties mark the high point of that affair. During
the fifties, the automobile industry experienced a huge growth, and cars
become fetish symbols. They became more elaborate, much faster than
they had been, and a sign of American prosperity and energy. The Beat
generation added to the myth of the automobile, depicting its driver as
heroic and dangerous. The fifties witnessed several “road movies” that
added to the myth. Brando and Dean personified these figures on the big
screen. TV also added its own version. Programs like “Route 66”, for
example, glorified the wonders of the open road. That open road had long
been an American symbol, exploited by Mark Twain, Herman Melville,
and Walt Whitman among others.
Rock music and advertising also used the myth of the heroic driver,
although advertisements for plush executive cars that presented them as
heroes do appear a bit ironic in retrospect. However, the executive liked to
think of himself as a potential rebel, with or without a cause, and
dangerous in his own way. Furthermore, although there were some
warnings about the danger of the big fifties gas guzzlers to the
environment, relatively few Americans took them seriously.
Certainly, in the fifties, the automobile represented far more than mere
transportation. It signified power, sex, freedom, and technology. The
architect Le Corbusier wrote in The City of the Future, for example, “Cars,
Love and the Times
3
cars, fast, fast! One is seized, filled with enthusiasm, joy ... in the joy of
power”. The Cadillac’s famous tail fins bore witness to that lust for power.
They had, after all, been copied from an American World War II fighter
plane.
In the fifties, the car was part of the American courtship ritual,
nicknamed a moving bedroom. The movie star, James Dean encapsulated
the mythology of the car through his movies and his death. He died
skidding off the road while racing his Porsche, “Little Bastard”. The death
in the “saddle” tied him to legendary figures of the American West, adding
to his aura.
For the fifties, the road was the whole world, or so it seemed to teens,
at least male teens. Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go” (1964)
captured the mood of the times. Cruising up and down the road was an end
in itself, or a means to an end, finding “chicks” who would ride with you.
The car indeed had become a phallic symbol, as so many of its critics
exclaimed. Its supporters only shrugged in reply. A sampling of the top
songs in the 1950s emphasizes the point while clarifying it.
It should be noted that most lists of top 1950s songs ignore the early
1950s; that makes good cultural sense because the early 1950s music
really belongs to the late 1940s. In the same way, early 1960s music
belongs to the late 1950s. The top 100 list, then, of the 1950s includes
these songs: songs by Elvis are found throughout the list.
These are eight songs by the King, including Don't Be Cruel / Hound
Dog and Heartbreak Hotel / I Was the One:
("http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/all_shook_up___th
ats_when_your_heartaches_begin/" \o "[Album108709]";
"http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/jailhouse_rock___tr
eat_me_nice/" \o "[Album108708]";
"http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/_let_me_be_your__
teddy_bear___loving_you/" \o "[Album240442]";
"http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/love_me_tender___
anyway_you_want_me/" \o "[Album108706]";
"http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/elvis_presley/dont___i_beg_of_y
ou/" \o "[Album326093]").
Note that most of these were love songs, even if not necessarily
traditional love songs. The flip side of “Hound Dog” was a love lament,
and if time permitted I could argue that understood in Blues talk “Hound
Dog” was a love argument. The flip of “Jailhouse Rock” is the very sweet
“Treat Me Nice”.
4
Chapter One
Specifically, Elvis had the numbers 1, 8, 13, 17, 18, 22, 47, and 67 top
sellers of the decade. Not one of these top sellers came after 1957. His
army career interrupted his top 40 surge, but he could resume his place in
music on his return. Although he was always able to rock out, his hits
tended to be rather mainstream songs with a tinge of rhythm and blues; he
was indeed the white man who fulfilled Sam Philips’s dream of a white
man who could sing like a black man. His music reflected the growing
integration of the country, the mixing of black and white cultural traits
which then had its place in social life.
It is no wonder that his music sounded so revolutionary at the time and
so tame today. It was not bubble gum pop at all. It was blues-based music
by a southern boy who came from the Holiness Church and listened to
black music and absorbed it. Howling Wolf, for example, stated, “He
[Elvis] made his pull from the blues” (Howlin’ Wolf in conversation with
Peter Guralnick, 1966 (http://www.elvisinfonet.com/spotlight_blues_album
.html).
What made Elvis so important to the integration of musical styles and
audiences was that his natural talent for rhythm and blues could gain him a
strong black following. Michael Bane recounts a story in his book, White
Boy Singin’ the Blues (1992), of Elvis entertaining a black audience at
Club Handy in Memphis when it was still against the law for a white to
enter a black entertainment venue. The audience was skeptical at first, but
Elvis soon won them over with his versions of “Milkcow Blues Boogie”
by Sleepy John Estes, and a song by Crudup, probably “That’s All Right
Mama”. His black audience must have appreciated Elvis’s outspoken love
of blues and respect for its practitioners. Michael Ward quotes Elvis as
saying, “A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock ‘n’
roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind
of music like colored people (Ward, 2011136).”
Dizzying Changes in American Life and Musical Riffs on It
–There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes
you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take
part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels,
upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And
you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that
unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! –
U.C. Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio, 1964
Love and the Times
5
It is intriguing and enlightening to view the period of the sixties
through the eighties as a dizzying period of incredible social change and
its consequent turmoil. Looking back from 2014 it is somewhat clearer
than living through it. Many of the changes are consequences of the spread
and defense of the American Empire and the reaction to it of those who
believed America should be something other than the world’s policeman
and protector of the one per cent at the top of the economic pyramid.
Musically, those who believe the latter have been more exciting and
creative. The arts flourish in periods of chaos and the best and most
permanent work seems to come out of it. There is indeed room for the
familiar and mediocre, and even Beethoven incorporated much of his
idols, Bach and Mozart, while influencing all music that has come after
him. After all, Charlie Parker in a similar vein incorporated Louis
Armstrong’s solos note for note into much of his work—played faster but
with respect. Thus, what seems like chaos to many people at first is but a
logical extension of what has gone before, a means of finding stability
during rapid social and cultural change.
There was indeed rapid social and cultural change in this period. The
early sixties were a continuation of the late 1950s. John F. Kennedy was
the first president born in the twentieth century and promised youth and
change. He did in fact move towards greater equality in promoting
women’s right to equal pay, and promoting civil rights for African
Americans as a moral obligation. There were signs that he was moving to
end the Vietnam conflict at the time of his assassination.
Certainly, the Vietnam War marks the onset of the Sixties culturally. It
also marked a rapid change in the music. The music expressed protest
more openly, especially popular music. There was a greater frankness,
even crudity, in the lyrics, which carried over to love songs. It is not until
1965 that the first open protest song makes the Billboard list. It is Barry
McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” (Billboard http://www.digitaldreamdoor.
com/pages/best_billbord2.html). Indeed, there is not another top ten tune
on the list that even remotely resembles a protest tune. Nevertheless, there
were many protest songs in the period but, by and large, they were not pop
tunes. The pop tunes were still mainly love songs and nonsense tunes like:
Dominique, There! I’ve Said It Again, I Want To Hold Your Hand, She
Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, Hello, Dolly! My Guy, Love Me Do,
Chapel Of Love, A World Without Love, I Feel Fine, Come See About Me,
Downtown, You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’, This Diamond Ring, My Girl,
Eight Days A Week, Stop! In The Name of Love, I’m Telling You Now,
Game of Love, Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter, Ticket to Ride,
The Sound of Silence, We Can Work It Out, The Sound of Silence, My
6
Chapter One
Love, Lightnin’ Strikes, These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, The Ballad
Of The Green Berets, (You’re My) Soul And Inspiration, Good Lovin’,
Monday, Monday, Hello Goodbye, Judy In Disguise (With Glasses), Green
Tambourine, Love Is Blue, (Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay, Honey,
Tighten Up, Heard It Through The Grapevine. Crimson and Clover,
Everyday People, Dizzy, Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, Get Back, Love
Theme from Romeo & Juliet, In the Year 2525.
All these Billboard top tunes were generally much lighter than the
songs by Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Country Joe and others. Here
are the top ten protest songs per TopTenz.net:1
1. Give Peace a Chance—John Lennon; 2.Masters of War—Bob Dylan;
3.With God on Our Side—Bob Dylan; 4. I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die
Rag; 5. The War Drags On—Phil Ochs; 6. I Ain’t Marching Any More; 7.
A Change is Gonna Come—Sam Cooke; 8. Universal Soldier—Buffy
Sainte-Marie; 9. Blowin’ in the Wind—Bob Dylan; 10. Turn! Turn! Turn!
—Pete Seeger.
Some of these songs did make the Billboard Charts but not one made
the top 100 for the decade (Music Outfitters http://www.musicoutfitters.
com/topsongs/1960.htm). More interesting, perhaps, is the placement of
“Love Theme from a Summer Place” by Percy Faith as the number one
song of the decade. It is a lush, haunting traditional instrumental. It is
surprising only to those who underrate America’s love affair with the
dreamy romantic. Elvis continued to have hits, but his only two on the top
100 for the decade were “It’s Now or Never”—an English version of “O
Sole Mio”, very far from a rocking tune—and “Stuck on You”, a 50s-style
rocker. Of the top 100, 79 were love songs, some like “Harbor Lights”,
remakes of much earlier hits from the 30s or 40s.
However, some of the frankness of the protest songs was entering the
Billboard pop charts. Although none of the more explicit love songs made
the decade’s top 100, there were some on individual year’s top charts. In
1964, for example, the Stones’ “Satisfaction” had some of the bite of a
Blues love song. Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” of 1969 is about as explicit as
one could get and still be on the air in 1969.Perhaps, the impact from the
typically sweet or subtle love lyrics to the more explicit came in the 1970s.
Here is a selection of titles from the Billboard 1970s Top 100 list of the
decade.
1
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-protest-songs-from-the-1960s.php
Love and the Times
7
13
Make It with You
Bread
23
Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)
Melanie
48
Come and Get It
Badfinger
71
Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)
The Delfonics
79
I Want to Take You Higher
Ike & Tina Turner
88
Up the Ladder to the Roof
The Supremes
Fedler, et al.1982conducted an interesting study of the lyrics of popular
music testing their hypothesis that popular music lyrics from 1950 to 1980
became concerned more with physical than emotional love. In other
words, lyrics became sexier and more explicit. Putting aside the dubious
assumption that physical and emotional love are necessarily separate, it is
an interesting hypothesis. They found in their analysis that songs became
progressively more explicit over time and less romantic. “During the
1960s, lyrics became more ambiguous, and sexual desire became a more
dominant theme. By the 1970s, the traditional values were broadened:
persons described in modern love songs often met, spent a single night
together, and then parted without any emotional bond or commitment.
Today even songs with the most explicit lyrics become number one hits”. I
would suggest that further analysis shows that even some of the more
explicit lyrics, such as Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay” have a strong romantic
current, and how does one code “The Love Theme from Romeo and
Juliet”?
There are areas that need a bit more coverage in depth as Frank C.
Salamone reminds me in a personal note (May 18, 2013). First, there is the
impact of disco and electronic music. Donna Summer, the Queen of Disco,
was reaching out to new areas. She did not want to be known only for
disco, or for her physical beauty. Her “I Feel Love” was the first major
recording with an all-electronic accompaniment in contrast to a human
voice. (Donna Summer, Queen of Disco Who Transcended the Era, Dies at
63 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/arts/music/donna-summer-queenof-disco-dies-at-63.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)).
Her combination of a church-rooted voice and up-to-the-minute dance
beats was a template for 1970s disco, and, with her producers Giorgio
Moroder and Pete Bellotte, she pioneered electronic dance music with the
8
Chapter One
synthesizer pulse of “I Feel Love” in 1977, a sound that pervades twentyfirst century pop. Her own recordings have been sampled by, among
others, Beyoncé, the Pet Shop Boys, Justice and Nas.
The song is on Rolling Stone’s all-time top 500 hits and became
popular in dance clubs, especially finding favor in the gay community
(Wikipedia “I Feel Love” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love).
“Indeed, there is”, writes Frank C. Salamone, “a straight line from ‘I Feel
Love’ to the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, which takes you from the
hedonistic but not-completely-selfish disco era to the dawn of the ‘me
decade’. ‘Sweet Dreams’ is barely, if at all, a love song but does speak to
the harsh realities of intimate, interpersonal interaction at the dawn of an
era defined by greed and disregard for others. The video starts with an
iconic shot of Annie Lennox in a boardroom pounding on the conference
table. It also references militarism and Hindu spirituality, and has an
interesting shot in which Lennox’s bindi turns into a gun sight” (You Tube
“Sweet Dreams” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg&feat
ure=youtu.be).
This movement marked a strong African American influence in dance
music, even though these latter songs were of European origin. Giorgio
Moroder, a Tyrolean who worked in Germany, produced “I Feel Love”,
adding a strong on the beat four-to-floor rhythm to make the funky music
more accessible for whites to dance to (see You Tube http://youtu.be/
1R9hwGOObqs).
Finally, in 1954 Muddy Waters recorded Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want
to Make Love to You”. The difference between his version and Etta
James’s is interesting. Basically, James answers Muddy Waters who stated
he did not want his girl to wash, or cook, or do anything else but make
love with him. James responds:
All I want to do is wash your clothes
I don’t want to keep you indoors
There is nothing for you to do
But keep me making love to you
(http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ettajames/ijustwanttomakelovetoyou.html)
One can argue over which is sexier. The contrast is one between a
man’s and women’s perspective. Both songs were hits on the African
American charts, and hip whites knew them well. The point is that the
sixties did not discover either sex or sexy songs. I do not deny that the
physical element of love became more explicit as the youth music of the
1960s became diffused through the 1970s music. However, I am not ready
to accept that this inevitably led to a lack of romanticism in music.
Love and the Times
9
Physicality was always present in African American music. Jazz and Blues
lyrics did not shy away from an open recognition of sexuality: Louis
Armstrong’s “Back o’ Town Blues”; “Cheesecake”; Ferdinand Jelly Roll
Morton’s very nickname; the very phrase rock and roll from a Blues lyric,
“My Man Rocks Me With a Steady Roll”; Lucille Bogan’s “Shave ’em
Dry”; Alberta Hunter’s “You Can’t Tell the Difference after Dark”; and so
on. Lyricists like Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer, influenced by African
American music had a few very explicit songs. Porter’s “Love for Sale”
discusses the life of a prostitute in explicit terms. His “It’s All Right with
Me” is also clear about what is all right, especially in Frank Sinatra’s
version. Mercer’s “Tangerine” from the 1940s pulls no punches, and his
“Teach Me Tonight” leaves no doubt about what lesson is to be learned.
One more example to push the point is “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” by
Harry Noble. It was first a hit in 1952 by Karen Chandler, and sent goose
bumps up many a young adolescent boy’s back. Connie Francis rerecorded
it in 1959.
The difference is that the songs of the 1970s were, in comparison with
the earlier ones cited here, less polished, less harmonic, and more
adolescent in general. There is a kind of “look at me, I am being naughty”.
As one writer puts it:
After the Golden Age came the music of protest, of Vietnam and
hippiedom and the civil-rights movement and beyond. Once rock-and-roll
had knocked the Golden Age songs of Hollywood and Broadway off their
perch, innumerable other musical subgenres crawled out of the shadows or
came into being, among them bluegrass, disco, electronica, synthpop, ska,
zydeco, rockabilly, techno, hip hop, house, trance, garage, funk, R&B,
soul, gangsta rap, heavy metal, punk rock, and emo. These developments
were hardly without a plus side: all kinds of good music were born. But
the merit was all too often outweighed by the sheer decibel level and, in
many cases, by vulgarity, incoherence, and brutality. In any event, as
American musical tastes fragmented, so did American society and culture.
Songs had once bound Americans together – and encouraged them to bind
together. Now, all too frequently, they defined Americans in opposition to
one another. Bruce Bawer, The Golden Age of American Music was the
Golden Age of America
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/03/24/the-golden-age-ofamerican-song-was-the-golden-age-of-america/).
10
Chapter One
Conclusion
There are some conclusions one can draw from a quick scan of love
songs over the past sixty or so years. First, no matter how much things
have changed in music, an idealized version of romantic love has
prevailed. Through the protests of the sixties, the integration and diversity
that increased from the fifties to the present, the proliferation of musical
styles decade by decade, the ease of retrieving the myriad forms of music
at the click of a mouse—through all these changes, including changes of
styles—one constant has been the “silly love song”. As rockers get older,
they often seek to establish their credential through singing the Great
American Songbook, successfully. Indeed, their attempts are no worse
than Frank Sinatra’s foray into rock classics.
Structurally, pop music has changed very little. The twelve, or
sometimes the sixteen-bar blues with three basic chords underlies much
rock music. The thirty-two-bar song in an A-A-B-A form is mainly the
foundation of the rest of pop music. The blues, with some changes, goes
back at least to the nineteenth century, with roots in Africa. W.C. Handy
helped standardize it in its twelve and sixteen bar formats.
The Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/
topic/254261/WC-Handy) states the case quite clearly: “Handy worked
during the period of transition from ragtime to jazz. Drawing on the vocal
blues melodies of African American folklore, he added harmonizations to
his orchestral arrangements. His work helped develop the conception of
the blues as a harmonic framework within which to improvise. With his
“Memphis Blues” (published 1912) and especially his “St. Louis Blues”
(1914), he introduced a melancholic element, achieved chiefly by use of
the “blue” or slightly flattened seventh tone of the scale, which was
characteristic of African American folk music”.
The standard American song, the thirty-two-bar structure with A (8
bars, A (repeat those 8 bars) B (a different 8 bars, called the bridge or river
or channel), and a final A repeating the first 8 bars. This form can have
many variations, and may have a coda tagged on to end the song. Its debt
to Art Music, commonly lumped together as Classical music, is apparent
(see Music and the Fibonacci Series http://www.goldennumber.net/music/,
and Brad Mehldau: Writing (http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/
papers/november_2010.html). It is at root the classic theme and variations.
Jazz musicians play on the variation angle, altering the melody, harmony,
and rhythm of the tune, reinventing it to fit the times, their personality, and
their degree of genius. At root, however, the Great American Songbook is
mainly composed of love songs.
Love and the Times
11
Michael Feinstein, a vocalist who has done much to preserve The
Great American Songbook, has been a leader in establishing sources for its
preservation. The Website, The Michael Feinstein Great American
Songbook Initiative (http://www.thecenterfortheperformingarts.org/GreatAmerican-Songbook-Inititative/About-the-Great-AmericanSongbook.aspx), states:
The “Great American Songbook”, sometimes referred to as “American
Standards”, is the uniquely American collection of popular music from
Broadway and Hollywood musicals prevalent from the 1920s to 1960s.
Familiar composers include George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern,
Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and Richard Rodgers. Singers include Frank
Sinatra, Al Jolson, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Bing
Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé and so many others.
This timeless music offered hope of better days during the Great
Depression, built morale during two world wars, helped build social bridges
within our culture, and whistled beside us during economic growth. We
defended our country, raised families, and built a nation to these songs.
Interestingly, both the blues and the 32-bar pop song have deep roots
in the past, but have also had art music (“classical music) touches added to
their foundations. W.C. Handy, a Fiske University graduate and schooled
composer/musician, added western harmonic touches to the folk-rooted
early blues, without decreasing their African identity. Similarly, the Great
American Songbook composers in general knew the works of Bach,
Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky and others, as well as the European roots
of the twentieth century pop song. To it, many—Cole Porter, George
Gershwin, Jerome Kern and others added jazz touches, to which lyricists,
like Johnny Mercer, easily wrote American sentiments in American
idioms.
Not surprisingly the two streams merged over a long period of time—
think Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Jimmy Rushing, and, the masters Louis
Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Sadly, Europeans seemed to note this
merging long before Americans did, at least on the art music level. As I
wrote (Salamone 2008, The Culture of Jazz: Jazz as Critical Culture, p.
52):
For European composers whom jazz influenced, there seemed to be a
highly-personalized epiphany, an epiphany and conversion that were suited
to the individual temperament of the composer. For example, for the
sociable Milhaud and Ravel, their epiphanies occurred in Harlem, while for
the more private Delius, it was an epiphany that transpired in a Florida
swamp far removed from society. However, for each, it was a quasi-
12
Chapter One
religious conversion and an eye-opening experience. Something new
entered their souls and transformed their lives and understanding of reality.
It was spiritual, emotional, and cognitive realigning. Each felt that he
became a new person, and that newness suffused his music.
This newness, freshness, perpetual reinventing is a mark of American
music as is its perpetual incorporation of elements from diverse cultures.
American music is a showplace for World Music. The best of America is
shown in its ravenous appetite for borrowing from other cultures, whether
it is religion, painting, food, or music. It is an expression of true
democracy which breaks the shackles of our sometimes chauvinistic
exterior. The music is perpetually refreshed through the addition of new
elements into the mix. And the silly love song comes around, as we have
seen, in every form sooner or later. At heart, at root, the American is a
romantic. We dream different dreams, perhaps, but nonetheless, we dream.
Johnny Mercer’s “Dream” could be America’s theme song, as it was
his. After all, it sums us up rather well, I think, or why do we keep
returning to that silly love song and why is the way a jazz musician
performs a love song the true test of ability?
Dream when you’re feeling blue
Dream that’s the thing to do
Just watch the smoke rings in-n the air
You’ll find your share o-o-f memories there
Works Cited
Billboard’s Top #1 Songs of the 1950s
(http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord1.html).
Billboard’s Top #1 Songs of the 1960s
(http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord2.html)
Bane, Michael. White Boy Singin’ the Blues. Da Capo Press
Brad Mehldau: Writing
(http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/papers/november_2010.html).
Bruce Bower, The Golden Age of American Music was the Golden Age of
America (http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/03/24/the-goldenage-of-american-song-was-the-golden-age-of-america/).
Fedler, Fred; et al., Communication Research; Comparative Analysis;
Content Analysis; Emotional Response; Mass Media Effects; Music;
Popular Culture; Sexuality; Sociocultural Patterns; Trend Analysis.
ERIC. 1982.
Love and the Times
13
I Just Want to Make Love to You
(http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ettajames/ijustwanttomakelovetoyou.html).
Mercer, Johnny. 1944 Dream.
Mehldau, Brad Music and the Fibonacci Series and Phi
(http://www.goldennumber.net/music/, and Brad Mehldau:
Writing
(http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing/papers/november_2010.html).
Music and the Fibonacci Series and Phi
(http://www.goldennumber.net/music/).
Howlin’ Wolf in conversation with Peter Guralnick, 1966
(http://www.elvisinfonet.com/spotlight_blues_album.html).
New York Times Donna Summer, Queen of Disco Who Transcended the
Era, Dies at 63
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/arts/music/donna-summerqueen-of-disco-dies-at-63.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&).
Ortner, Sherry. 1994. “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Pp.
372-411 in Culture / Power / History: A Reader in Contemporary
Social Theory, edited by Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry
Ortner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pettijohn, Terry F. II, and Brian J. Jungeberg. Playboy Playmate Curves:
Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences Across Social and
Economic Conditions. PSPB, Vol. 30 No. 9, September 2004 11861197.
Salamone, Frank A. 2008 The Culture of Jazz: Jazz as Critical Culture.
University Press of America, 270 pages.
Salamone, Frank C. 2013 Personal Correspondence. May 13.
Wikipedia “I Feel Love” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love).
You Tube “Sweet Dreams”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg&feature=youtu.be).
Wikipedia “I Feel Love” (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Love).
You Tube http://youtu.be/1R9hwGOObqs.