MUSIC? IT WENT THAT-A-WAY!
I have been an ear-witness to some vast changes in American “popular” music in the past quarter of a century or so.
The trends have been gradual ever since the mid-1930’s, I suppose and as I think back over the music we had on our racks during the Big Band Era, I realize it was rather restricted. We played. mostly stock
orchestrations of ballads of the day, and jazz favorites from decades past. Occasionally, specific bands would do versions of classical favorites, general songs and even a folk melody now and then. It became easy to distinguish
between music by The Dorsey Brothers, then Tommy and Jimmy apart, Goodman, Glen Gray and The Casa Loma Band, Bob Crosby, Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Glen Miller and other favorites and the “sweeter” type of music
featured by Guy Lombardo, Jan Garber, Sammy Kaye, and waltzes by Wayne King. All of these and many more had replaced former groups which I remember such as the Coon-Sanders Band, The Six Brown Brothers, The Paul
Whiteman Band, B. A. Rolfe and a score of Dixieland groups, out of both New Orleans and Chicago. There was also a significant flow of popular music in such groups as Cab Calloway, Jimmy Lunceford, Lucky Miliinder, Fats Waller, Earl
Hines, Louis Armstrong ... plus many others.
I realize I am treading on dangerous ground when I start listing favorites. There are sure to be some of you who feel I have purposely eliminated your favorites from those I’ve been rattling off from the top of my
increasingly bare skull. Frank Dailey, Kay Kyser, Ace Brigode, Ray Pearl, Oliver Naylor, Little Jack Little, Ray McKinley for instance. There was a zany school, as well as fabulous stage band with a hyphanated name which escapes me at
the moment; Spike Jones, Red Engle and others doing pariodies and take-offs.
I have run off at the cartridge here it seems, so I’ll have to outline what I had in mind to write about - how pop music has divided into a set of individual types of music.
We now have ethnic or folk music, country and C&W music, we have those elements which evolved into rock through the rock-’n-roll transitional doorway with numerous sub-groups such as acid and punk. We also
have divisions of music called gospel, contemporary religious, gospel, nostalgia material echoing the recent past and referred to as “classics”, plus a growing category of what could be called “personality” music. This occurs on so
many CD’s today and all the tunes on a specific side are “generated”, if not actually written, by the individual featured on the CD. They are usually done with a set theme in mind which is the title of the CD.
Each of these, and others have, I feel, become individual classifiications on their own - and rightfully so.
Perhaps we can a talk about other such changes again soon, if you like.
A.L.M. September 14, 2002 [c499wds]
