1950s in music

For music from a year in the 1950s, go to 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59

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List of popular music genres

This article includes an overview of the major events and trends in popular music in the 1950s.

In the First World, Rock 'n' Roll, Pop music, Swing music, R&B, Blues, Country music and Rockabilly dominated and defined the decade's music.

The U.S.

See also: Music history of the United States (1940s and 50s)#1950s

Rock and roll

Elvis Presley, 1957

Chuck Berry

Rock and roll dominated popular music in the 1950s. The musical style originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; in addition to country and western. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.

Artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene Vincent released the initial early rock and roll hits.

The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.

Chuck Berry, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of Rock and roll music, refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Rock and roll has also been seen as leading to a number of distinct sub-genres, including rockabilly (see below) in the 1950s, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley, who began his career in the mid 1950s, soon became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial during that period.

Acts like The Crows, The Penguins, The El Dorados and The Turbans all scored major hits, and groups like The Platters, with songs including "The Great Pretender" (1955), and The Coasters with humorous songs like "Yakety Yak" (1958), ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the period.

In 1958 the American musician of Mexican descent Ritchie Valens also gained much success in the United States with his adaptation of the Mexican folk song "La Bamba" which he transformed with a Rock and roll rhythm and beat, which made Valens a pioneer of the Spanish language Rock music throughout Latin America.

Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with most notably the death of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens in a tragic plane crash in 1959 and the departure of Elvis for the army.

Blues

Ray Charles

Blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music in the 1950s with the enthusiastic playing styles of popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, departed from the melancholy aspects of blues and influenced Rock and roll music.

Ray Charles and Fats Domino help bring blues into the popular music scene. Domino provides a boogie-woogie style that heavily influences rock 'n' roll.

Big Mama Thornton records the original versions of "Hound Dog" and "Ball and Chain."

R&B

In 1951, Little Richard Penniman began recording for RCA Records in the jump blues style of late 1940s Joe Brown and Billy Wright. However, it wasn't until he prepared a demo in 1954, that caught the attention of Specialty Records, that the world would start to hear his new, uptempo, funky rhythm and blues that would catapult him to fame in 1955 and help define the sound of rock 'n' roll. A rapid succession of rhythm and blues hits followed, beginning with "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally", which would influence performers such as James Brown, Elvis Presley, and Otis Redding.

At the urging of Leonard Chess at Chess Records, Chuck Berry had reworked a country fiddle tune with a long history, entitled "Ida Red". The resulting "Maybellene" was not only a #3 hit on the R&B charts in 1955, but also reached into the top 30 on the pop charts.

Stax Records was founded in 1957 as "Satellite Record". The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul music styles.

In 1959, two black-owned record labels, one of which would become hugely successful, made their debut: Sam Cooke's Sar, and Berry Gordy's Motown Records.

Pop

Popular music stars in the early 1950s included Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Patti Page, Judy Garland, Johnnie Ray, Kay Starr, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin, Georgia Gibbs, Eddie Fisher, Teresa Brewer, Dinah Shore, Kitty Kallen, Joni James, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Toni Arden, June Valli, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Arthur Godfrey, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Guy Mitchell, Nat King Cole, and vocal groups like The Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, The Four Lads, The Four Aces, The Chordettes, Fontane Sisters, The Hilltoppers and The Ames Brothers.

Classic Pop declined in popularity as Rock and roll entered the mainstream and became a major force in American record sales. Crooners such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the first half of the decade, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed by the decade's end.

Doo Wop entered the pop charts in the 1950s . Its popularity soon spawns the parody "Who Put the Bomp."

Novelty songs come into popularity, such as "Beep Beep"

Country music

Country music stars in the early 1950s included Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Bill Monroe, Eddy Arnold, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Jim Reeves, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Loretta Lynn, and Chet Atkins.

In 1955, Ozark Jubilee nearly began a nearly six-year run on ABC-TV, the first national TV show to feature country's biggest stars.

In 1958, the Nashville sound became country music's response to continued encroachment of genre by rock artists.

The late 1950s saw the emergence of the Lubbock sound, but by the end of the decade, backlash as well as traditional country music artists such as Ray Price, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Horton began to shift the industry away from the rock n' roll influences of the mid-50s.

Rockabilly

See also: Rockabilly

Johnny Cash

Rockabilly emerged in the early 1950s as a fusion of rock and roll and country music. Rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s. The music was propelled by catchy beats, an electric guitar and an acoustic bass which was played using the slap-back technique.

Rockabilly is generally considered to have begun in the early 1950s, when musicians like Bill Haley began mixing jump blues and electric country. In 1954, however, Elvis Presley truly began the popularization of the genre with a series of recordings for Sun Records. "Rock Around the Clock" (1955, Bill Haley) was the breakthrough success for the style, and it launched the careers of several rockabilly entertainers.

During this period Elvis Presley converted over to country music. He played a huge role in the music industry during this time. The number two, three and four songs on Billboard's charts for that year were Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel;" Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line;" and Carl Perkins, "Blue Suede Shoes".

Cash and Presley placed songs in the top 5 in 1958 with No. 3 "Guess Things Happen That Way/Come In, Stranger" by Cash, and No. 5 by Presley "Don't/I Beg Of You." Presley acknowledged the influence of rhythm and blues artists and his style, saying "The colored folk been singin' and playin' it just the way I'm doin' it now, man for more years than I know." But he also said, "My stuff is just hopped-up country."

By 1958, many rockabilly musicians returned to a more mainstream style or had defined their own unique style and rockabilly had largely disappeared from popular music.

Jazz

Nina Simone

Bebop, Hard bop, Cool jazz and the Blues gained popularity during the 1950s while prominent Jazz musicians who came into prominence in these genres included Lester Young, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Gil Evans, Jerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey, Max Roach, the Miles Davis Quintet, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday.

Other Trends

Harry Belafonte, 1954

In 1956 the American musician of Jamaican descent Harry Belafonte popularized the Calypso music Caribbean musical style which became a worldwide craze with the release of his rendition traditional Jamaican folk song "Banana Boat Song" from his 1956 album Calypso. The album later became the first full-length record to sell more than a million copies, and Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso".

Folk music

Main article: American folk music revival

The Kingston Trio, The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Odetta, and several other performers were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.

Billboard Artist of the Decade

In December 1959, the American music magazine Billboard named Elvis Presley as the best Artist of the Decade for the 1950s.

Europe

See also: Music of the United Kingdom (1950s)

During the 1950s European popular music give way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated through film and records. The significant change of the mid-1950s was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and recording, based on a youth market. Initially this was dominated by American acts, or re-creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly European Bands and individual artists began in early attempts to produce local Rock and roll music.

Latin America

• In 1958 The American musician Ritchie Valens's "La Bamba" popularized Spanish language rock music throughout Latin America.

• In 1958 Daniel Flores, who some call the "godfather of Latin Rock", performed his hit song "Tequila".

• Argentinian band Los Cinco Latinos released their first album Maravilloso Maravilloso, which was met with success in Latin America and the United States.

Hispanics, young and old, could find comfort in the popular rhythmic sounds of Latin music that reminded them of home; mambo, cha-cha, meringue and salsa. Tito Puente, an American born Boricua (Puerto Rican), revolutionized the Latin music of the time. He incorporated many new percussion and woodwind instruments into the popular Latin sound. The Hispanics in the U.S. certainly were able to conform with the popular vibes.

Australia and New Zealand

By the end of the decade, as the Rock n Roll style had spread throughout the world, it soon caught on with Australian teens. Johnny O'Keefe became perhaps the first modern rock star of the country, and began the field of Australian rock.

New Zealand was introduced to Rock n Roll by Johnny Cooper's cover of "Rock around the Clock."

After Rock n Roll had been introduced the most famous of New Zealand's cover artists were: Johnny Devlin, Max Merit and the Meteors, Ray Columbus and the Invaders and Dinah Lee.

See also

• 1960s in music
• 1990s in music
• 1940s in music