Rock and Roll in the Mid-1950s
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Traditional pop or Classic pop or Standards music denotes, in general, Western (and particularly American) popular music that either wholly predates the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950s, or to any popular music which exists concurrently to rock and roll but originated in a time before the appearance of rock and roll, and its offshoots, as the dominant commercial music of the United States and Western culture. (For a definition of “Traditional pop” see [1].) The terms pop standards or (where relevant) American standards are used to denote the most popular and enduring songs from this style of music.
Contents [hide]
1 Origins
2 The Advent of Rock and Roll
3 Current Adherence to Traditional Pop
4 Singers and groups generally associated with Traditional Pop
5 See also
6 References
[edit] Origins
Classic pop embraces the song output of the Broadway and Hollywood show tune writers from approximately World War I to the 1950s, such as Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer, Dorothy Fields, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter and a host of others. The works of these songwriters and composers are usually considered part of the canon known as the “Great American Songbook”.
The big band era further developed the genre of “pop standards”. Bandleaders like Tommy Dorsey, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie continued to innovate. Big band singers, who had previously been considered instrumentalists and were rarely singled out, now became huge stars, like Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Shore.
The genre was embodied by a remarkable and diverse group of singers, writers and stylemakers. Jazz pioneers Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Paul Whiteman first popularized jazz music among a diverse audience. Meanwhile the Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriters popularized the “Great American Songbook”. Soon afterward, radio introduced millions of Americans to the same songs, often written by artists like Hoagy Carmichael, or sung in a more soothing, personal style by crooners like Rudy Vallee or Bing Crosby.
The distinction between pop standards and the broader popular music of the aforementioned time period lies in an enduring appeal of the greatest of these songs, long after their time of being “chart hits,” although methods for measuring commercial appeal changed greatly over the course of the twentieth century. The songs of classic pop may also be said to possess certain ineffable qualities, including but not limited to an ease and memorability of melody, along with wit and charm of lyric. The greatest of the classic pop writers achieved this with regularity; at the same time, many classic pop standards, such as “Learning the Blues” by Dolores Silver, “Willow Weep for Me” by Ann Ronell were that eras version of the one-hit wonder: songs from writers who never again delivered an eventual standard.
In later decades, the standard-bearers were bands and orchestras led by such luminaries as Guy Lombardo, Nelson Riddle, and television friendly singers like Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin, and the cast of Your Hit Parade. Many artists made their mark with pop standards particularly interpreters like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett,