“Machines, Music and Music Makers” Part 3: The Music

     In the early days of the 20th century, no one had much time to sit around and listen to music or to play music. Earning enough money to buy food, or growing your own, required long hours of hard work.
     When my dad was born in 1884, almost all music was homemade music. The types of music that were popular then were: male “barbershop” quartet songs, “parlor” songs, minstrel music, ragtime, comedy and brass bands.  Stephen Foster was the first American to earn his living (meager as it was) writing songs. He wrote parlor ballads and minstrel songs in the 1850s and 1860s.  John Phillip Sousa, the “March King” wrote marches that are classics now.  We hear Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” every 4th of July and on other patriotic holidays.  Ragtime music became even more popular as the century developed.  Irving Berlin, America’s most popular composer ever, was just getting started with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and other songs that are now standards.
     The “roaring” 1920s brought us great prosperity and our first jazz music.  In the 30s Americans tightened their belts and the “big band” era began.   Everyone was dancing to the great tunes.  Singers were featured performers, but the band was the thing.  Then singers became the stars and the bands became secondary in the 40s.  We went to movie musicals and learned the songs, which could be described as “city music,” written by composers in New York City for an urban audience.  That changed in the 1940s when the radio stations started broadcasting country and rock and roll music.  We listened to country music on the “Grand Ole Opry” every Saturday night.   In the 1950s, Ray Charles and other pop artists recorded their revolutionary albums of country songs.  Recently, Willie Nelson and other country and rock  artists  have recorded albums of old pop standards.  
     Delta blues has gradually won a larger audience, along with other American original forms of music, like cowboy songs, “Dixieland” jazz, bluegrass and southern gospel.  In fact, 8 distinctly different types of American music grew out of a 6-state area: Texas , Oklahoma , Arkansas , Louisiana , Tennessee and Mississippi  2 of these, rock and roll and rockabilly music took the country by storm in the 1950s, led largely by the “King,” Elvis Presley.
     The 1960s brought us the great, innovative songs of the Beatles and their “wanna-be” copier groups.  By the 1970s there were still ballads and some instrumental groups had hits, like Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass and Chuck Mangione.
     American music is ever changing and the industry continues to grow exponentially. Vintage American guitars, especially electrics. built in the 1950s are bringing 6-digit figures because they are the icons of the many new types of American music that developed in the 20th century.  Now,  music fans cross over lines between types of music that have become almost invisible.  American music is alive and well!

View Bob's previous column.