From Race Records to Rock 'N' Roll: Elvis, Sun
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FROM RACE RECORDS TO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL: ELVIS, SUN, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE PERSPECTIVE _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by JOSHUA COCHRAN Dr. Michael J. Budds, Thesis Supervisor JULY 2017 The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled FROM RACE RECORDS TO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL: ELVIS, SUN, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE PERSPECTIVE presented by Joshua Cochran, a candidate for the degree of master of arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Michael Budds Professor Judith Mabary Professor Andrew Hoberek Professor Stephanie Shonekan ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to sincerely thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Michael J. Budds for his vast knowledge, firm guidance, and extreme patience during a long process of false starts, slow progress, and small victories that led to the completion of this thesis. His passion for music and teaching were my original inspiration to pursue my formal musicological education, and he inspired me continually throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. Secondly, I would like to thank Dr. Judith Mabary. She has likewise been an invaluable source of insight, inspiration, and support throughout my musicological studies, both in class and out. Her unmatched insight and her warm encouragement were invaluable for seeing the current study through to its finish. Finally, I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Andrew Hoberek, Dr. Stephanie Shonekan, Jeffery Stilly, and Dr. Neil Minturn for serving on my thesis committee. Their incisive reading and challenging questions have sharpened my own insight and have pointed me toward exciting new avenues for future research, which I could not have found otherwise. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES .................................................................................v Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................1 Literature Survey Theoretical Materials Musicological Materials: The Six-Facet Model Musicological, Biographical, and Historical Background Methodology The Production of Culture Perspective Focus and Objective Methods and Materials 2. TECHNOLOGICAL REORIENTATION AND THE POP CULTURE MOMENT ......................................................................................................................38 Introduction of the Electric Guitar Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Amateur Aesthetic Recordings and Radio Electronic Media and Tradition Rock ‘n’ Roll, Technology, and New Practices Conclusion 3. THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS: LAW, REGULATION, AND RESOURCE INTERDEPENDENCE ..................................................................................................83 Resource Interdependence: Power Dynamics in Commercial Media Systems Copyright Law: Publishers vs. Broadcasters iii Musicians’ Unions: NAPA and AFM vs. Broadcasters Patent Law: The War of the Speeds FCC Deregulation: The Independents Take Over Black Radio, White Audience Conclusion 4. INDUSTRY AND ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE: EFFECTS OF MARKET CONCENTRATION ON MUSICAL DIVERSITY AND INNOVATION ................128 Postwar Industry Structure Concentration and Diversity: The Cyclical Account Concentration and Diversity: The Open System Account Occupational Careers Conclusion 5. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................179 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................186 DISCOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................................201 VIDEOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................................205 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. 2.1. Sun 201 by Hardrock Gunter and Sun 202 by Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers ........................................................................................................................52 2. 3.1. Growth of AM Radio, 1942-1951 ...............................................................................108 LIST OF TABLES Figure Page 1. 2.1. List of Sun Singles by Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black (1954-1955) and Artists of Previous Versions ............................................................................................72 2. 4.1. Number of Firms and Market Shares in the Billboard Weekly Top Ten of the Popular Music Single Record Market by Year ...........................................................................135 3. 4.2. Number of Records and Experience of Performers in the Billboard Weekly Top Ten of the Popular Music Single Record Market and Change in Aggregate Sales by Year ....140 v Chapter One INTRODUCTION Statement of Research Problem The object of this thesis is to understand the role of the commercial recording and broadcast radio industries in increasing acculturation between black and white musical traditions as made manifest in the rise of Elvis Presley and the national explosion of rock ‘n’ roll during the mid-1950s. As both the most commercially successful of the first generation of rock ‘n’ roll performers as well as one of its most controversial for his heavy reliance on unmistakably “black” performance practice and musical material, Elvis provides an illuminative figure for study. Rather than attributing the revolutionary aesthetic and cultural transformations of rock ‘n’ roll to the single stroke of genius of a gifted individual (e.g., Elvis), or, conversely, to the “inevitable” emergence of the musi- cal manifestation of underlying social or political energies (e.g., the Civil Rights Move- ment) in the American public, I argue that the practices that spawned the hybridized rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic may be understood more accurately when viewed in detailed historical contexts in which they developed and were implemented. To this end I employ Richard Peterson’s six-facet production of culture perspective to show how the overlap of tech- nological, legal and regulatory, structural, organizational, market, and occupational factors facilitated increased cross-cultural exchange between black and white musicians in the postwar popular music industry. 1 Historical Background The oft-repeated quotation—“If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars”—credited to producer and Sun Records founder Sam Phillips by his secretary Marion Keisker has come to be one of the most famous lines in rock ‘n’ roll lore. 1 Although Phillips himself later denied ever having actually made the statement, it has since been enshrined as a quasi-prophetic vision of his discovery of Elvis Presley (1935-1977) and the commercial frenzy of the mid-1950s rock ‘n’ roll explosion.2 Regardless of the quotation’s veracity, the issues it encapsulates concerning race, authenticity, ownership, and exploitation in the popular music industry in the Jim-Crow South are woven deeply into the historical fabric of rock ‘n’ roll. A number of familiar questions surrounding these issues continue to generate debate among historians, musicologists, and fans alike. Was rock ‘n’ roll a black or white creation? Should it be perceived as the result of genuine acculturation and innova- tion or of stylistic plagiarism by whites copying blacks? Were Elvis and Phillips sym- pathetic toward the music of black Americans or did they just cash in? Arguments in this arena have tended to reinforce a dialectical view of white and black music in the postwar South. Closer interrogation of this dialectic, however, brings up further questions that the above-mentioned debate has often only skirted. By which structures and mechanisms was the separation between black and white styles established and maintained? Through which processes and channels did stylistic interchange occur? Why would some of the most intense interchange occur in one of the most violently racist areas in the country at 1 Sam Phillips, quoted in Peter Guralnick, Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll 2 Robert Palmer, “Sam Phillips: The Sun King,” Blues and Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer, ed. Anthony DeCurtis (New York: Scribner, 2009), 130-31. 2 that time? In this study I contend that significant insight into these underlying questions can be obtained through examination of shifting conditions and practices in the American record and radio industries after World War II. From 1954 and 1955 Elvis Presley cut five singles for Sam Phillips’s small inde- pendent company, Sun Records. With each of the releases featuring a rhythm-and-blues song on one side and a country song on the other, the records physically—as well as musically—represented a meeting of white and black styles at a time when black music was systematically excluded from mainstream radio programming and when the “speci- alty” record and radio markets were segregated along black and white racial lines. After receiving radio play