Show 123: Rhythm 'n' Blues, or Rock 'n' Roll?

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 23.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show123.  For instance, the July 4^th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.

Also, this show contains  R+B, a little Soul, and Gospel.]
 
Well, last Saturday's program didn't go the way I had planned. I said in my Introduction, that since I was visiting in the SouthWest, I wanted to make a broadcast that was South Western in flavor, and also feature some Rhythm 'n' Blues. From the outset it was clear that (a) I could feature very little music from the Southwest, because I was traveling, and my CD collection was at home, and (b) my understanding of Rhythm 'n' Blues was at odds with how practically everyone else understood it, not least, Katie. Pop, Rock, and other semi-popular genre music enthusiasts were eager to engage in what is clearly musicology, but since they were inventing an entire field of study, namely the musicology of music that was outside the classical domain, they had to take up the enormous task of inventing terminology for their new field.  What is jazz?  What is gospel?  What is blues?  What is Rhythm 'n' Blues?  What is Motown?  What is Rock 'n' Roll?

Now, almost everyone seems to think they know exactly what all of these things are, but because of the extreme youth of the field everyone seems to feel at liberty to reject all the existing definitions of a particular term, and introduce their own.

For your entertainment, I'm going to try and give you what I think the definitions (or descriptions) of these genres and terms are, even though I don't know diddly-squat about them, except for blues.  I know very little about blues, but I feel comfortable saying that I can tell blues when I hear it.  But there are many sub-genres within blues, so I might be confusing all of blues with some sub-genre.

Jazz:  Now, this is a difficult one.  I don't think I can define it, but I've picked up some of the characteristics of the genre, though jazz musicians tend to push the boundaries of their art all the time, thus making it impossible to define it.  It is definitely improvisational in nature (but a great deal of it is written down, especially classic, big-band jazz); a lot of jazz is improvised on specific popular tunes (though a lot of jazz is based on original tunes); and jazz is highly rhythmic, and syncopated (though other sorts of music is also highly rhythmic, and syncopated.  So I give up.

Gospel:  I know even less about gospel and soul, so I'll leave this one alone, too.

Blues:  Most music lovers will agree that blues has a very recognizable structure: a 12-bar unit, the bars being almost invariably in quadruple time (except for the very last bar, which might be in a free rhythm sometimes).  There's a 4-bar line, then another 4 bar line with essentially the same tune, and a 4-bar 'answer', making a sort of verse.  Then there's another verse.  Then there is essentially a 12-bar instrumental interlude.  Then there is a final 12 bar verse.  So the song will be in AABA form.  Sometimes it can be extended with two interludes, to AABABA, or even AABACA.  The tempo is loose, allowing the singer to give special emphasis to particular words and phrases.

Rhythm 'n' Blues on the other hand, as I understood it, was essentially a blues tune, often an existing one, played with a steady rhythm, accompanied by a bass and drums.

Today, however, people are accustomed to thinking of this as Rock 'n' Roll, like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, and consider Rhythm 'n' Blues to be a much wider variety of songs, essentially including all music performed by African-American musicians, for African-American musicians audiences.  You can see exactly where this —essentially unusable— definition has come from: some musicologist has expected popular music to fall into clear-cut categories which can be individually labeled.  This has been a vain hope in classical music; it seems even more hopeless in popular music.  In despair, the musicologist —who is most probably either someone outside the African American community, and feels comfortable lumping all Black music into one enormous bin, or was trained in the White-dominated classical music mainstream— has abandoned all hope at reasonable classification.  Classification is difficult, inexact, and very useful.  Classifications that are too exact are too fragile to be useful; classifications that are too broad are even less useful.

All of Chuck Berry's work, most of Bonnie Raitt's early recordings, Tracy Chapman's songs, are clearly in the Blues / Rhythm 'n' Blues  category, and that's why I featured lots of songs by them.  The Beatles, in their early days, admired the songs of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, and other major R & B musicians of the fifties and early sixties, and covered lots of the tunes they loved; I played a large number of Beatles songs of that kind.  But that style is now called Rock 'n' Roll, apparently.  We have reached the point at which classification is getting too academic!  It's all interesting stuff, but I'm not that interested in it!

Part A

Do-Re-Mi:  It's the 50th Anniversary of The Sound of Music, as you can tell by the number of features on Julie Andrews in the Media!  This is an awesome song, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein III

Don't you ever love me:  Harry Belafonte's song.  Another song is sung to the same tune--Yellow Bird.

Concerto in A minor for Violin:  A high-energy Bach movement, that can stand up to the pop songs in this program...

Rock and Roll music:  The Beatles cover Chuck Berry's masterpiece.

Bad Boy:  One of my favorites from early Beatles.

Please Mister Postman:  The Marvelettes hit, covered by the Beatles

Beatles Kansas City - Hey hey hey:  Lieber and Stoller's song, from early Beatles

Part B

Long Tall Sally:  The Beatles' cover of Little Richard's hit.

Roll Over Beethoven:  Beatles cover of Chuck Berry's hit.  The the vocal solo is by George Harrison.  (For the podcast, we have merged the recordings of the Beatles, and Chuck Berry.  My apologies if you hate it.)

You Really Got A Hold On Me:  A song originally by Smokey Robinson.  But the Beatles give it a somewhat unusually dark spin.

Matchbox:  Ringo Starr sings this Carl Perkins standard.

Jig Fuge:  This is the Swingle Singers singing a fugue by J. S. Bach, nicknamed the Jig.

Dizzy Miss Lizzy:  One of my favorites, the last cut on the Help album by the Beatles, written by Larry Williams, with John Lennon singing the vocals.  It must have given him a terrible sore throat.

Italian Concerto-1-Allegro:  A movement recalling an earlier broadcast, the Bach Italian concerto.  This is by Don Dorsey again.

Quam olim Abragae:  The Swingle Singers again, singing a movement from the Mozart Requiem.

Cecilia:  A rowdy piece by Simon and Garfunkel.

Don't let me down:  The B side of the Beatles single Hey Jude.

Part C

Revolution:  A rock 'n' roll number by the Beatles that deserves better recognition from younger listeners.

We Shall Not Be Moved:  A gentle protest number from the Sixties, sung by the Seekers

Love And Affection:  Joan Armatrading.  This is not R&B, but Joan Armatrading sang lots of rhythm 'n' blues.

Give Me One Reason: A signature song by Tracy Chapman

Look Don't Touch:  A goofy number by former Williamsport resident Uma de Silva, with Sock!Fight

Eat It:  Weird Al Yankovich!  Incidentally, Weird Al is coming to Wilpo in the summer.

Fiddle-Faddle:  by Leroy Anderson.  A fast-paced popular number from the late fifties.

Part D

Can't Buy Me Love:  If this isn't Rock 'n' Roll, I don't know what is.  It's funny how Rock purists keep insisting that the Beatles never sang Rock 'n' Roll.

Come Back Liza:  A bluesy calypso number by Harry Belafonte.

Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth):  George Harrison

The Purple People Eater:  I think this might be sort of bluesy, despite its doubtful pedigree.

Get Back:  One of the Beatles's last group performances.

Money:  An early Beatles cover.  This song was also covered by another group whose name eludes me.

Twist and shout:  An favorite Beatles live performance item.  A thinly disguised version of La Bamba.

Johnny B Goode:  Chuck Berry song, immortalized in Back to the Future.

Love Me Like A Man:  An awesome song by Bonnie Raitt

Mind Games:  John Lennon

[The podcast is slightly different from the broadcast; there is more information in the notes, too.]

Archie