Music

Music Traditional MusicClassical MusicPopular Music
Traditional Music American popular entertainers, such as the blackface minstrels of the early nineteenth century, have always utilized ballads, songs, and dances of no known origins. No conscious concept of “traditional music” emerged, however, until the late nineteenth century. The first published collection of slave spirituals (1867) by William Francis Allen and others, Francis James Child's compendium of English and Scottish popular ballads (1882–1898), and the founding of the American Folklore Society (1887) signaled a growing impulse among academicians to preserve traditional ballads and folk songs. Convinced that such music was becoming a casualty of modernization, scholars and collectors undertook a search for remnants of the British tradition in America. The most significant product of this quest was English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917), compiled by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp. After that time, the study, preservation, and popularization of traditional music assumed many, and often conflicting, forms. Scholars and other collectors preserved versions of old music in books and articles; “interpreters” (that is, performers from outside the tradition) presented adaptations in concerts, recitals, and recordings; and “the folk” themselves (singers from traditional communities) continued to make music in ways only peripherally related to the expectations of scholars and interpreters.

Interpreters of folk music first appeared in the 1870s after the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Nashville popularized “Negro Spirituals” among northern audiences, and again during World War I when such musicians and composers as Elaine Wyman, Howard Brockway, and Edna Thomas gave concerts, often in period costumes, of Appalachian ballads, Creole songs, and African‐American spirituals. Musicians like John Jacob Niles, Richard Dyer‐Bennett, and Burl Ives continued such performances through the 1930s and 1940s, and this approach survived thereafter in the music of Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Odetta, Bob Dylan, and other popular singers. Under the impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s and later of the civil rights movement, authentic folk singers like Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), “Aunt Molly” Jackson, and Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter (1885–1949), linked traditional music with working‐class aspirations. Pete Seeger (1919–) and other socially conscious interpreters went further and lent to the music a strong left‐wing cast, encouraging the equation of folk music with protest.

Genuine folk musicians began to appear on radio broadcasts and commercial recordings in the 1920s when the entertainment industry first exploited such genres as hillbilly, cowboy, mountain, blues, Cajun, and gospel. In the later 1920s and early 1930s, other traditional musicians having styles more conservative or archaic than the “commercial” entertainers began to appear on Library of Congress recordings, or at the newly emergent folk festivals in Asheville, North Carolina, and White Top Mountain, Virginia. Eventually, many of these musicians, such as Texas Gladden, Hobart Smith, and Horton Barker, appeared on commercial recording labels aimed at an urban, largely nonfolk audience.

The urban folk‐music revival of the late fifties and early sixties triggered an explosion of interest in folk or folklike music. Although interpreters dominated the revival, authentic folk musicians such as Jean Ritchie, Elizabeth Cotton, and Almeda Riddle contributed as well. Gradually, many participants in the revival recognized the affinity between commercial country, blues, Cajun, gospel, and older traditional forms. The term “folk” itself, however, was appropriated by a contingent of musicians and fans who believed that they constituted a “folk community,” not because they performed traditional material, but because they liked or performed newly created songs that had a “folk” feeling or ambience.
See also Appalachia; Folklore; Gospel Music, African American; Minstrelsy; Sixties, The; Working‐Class Life and Culture.

Bibliography

Bill C. Malone , Southern Music/American Music, 1979.
Neil V. Rosenberg, ed., Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, 1993.
Robert Cantwell , When We Were Good: The Urban Folk Music Revival, 1996.

Bill C. Malone

Classical Music When the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák arrived in the United States in 1892 to become director of New York City's National Conservatory of Music, his dual mandate was to create a world‐class educational institution for American musicians and to help foster an indigenous American musical high culture. Previously, leading American composers and performers had studied in Europe; such gifted German‐trained composers as John Knowles Paine (1839–1906) and George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) wrote German‐sounding symphonies. Antonín Dvořák's search for an American folk music led him to African Americans and Native Americans, and to the composition of his symphony From the New World (1893). Simultaneously (and unknown to Dvořák), Charles Ives, who spurned European training, was creating a body of concert music saturated with the sounds of his New England boyhood.

Notwithstanding the efforts of Dvořák and Ives, turn‐of‐the‐century American classical music essentially remained what it had been: borrowed European goods. The “New World” Symphony—a Central European symphony with an American accent—spawned countless “Indianist” works by Americans, many based on actual Native American melodies, and nearly all more or less forgettable. Ives's achievement remained obscure until after World War I. Of America's symphonic composers, the most celebrated was Edward MacDowell (1860–1908), who had made his name in Germany. In opera, American composers, including many Indianists, produced nothing of enduring interest.

If, in fact, the emerging history of classical music in America was primarily a history of music in performance, however, this history was impressive. Three strains are traceable from the mid–nineteenth century: ballyhoo, symphony, and opera.

Ballyhoo.

The American passion for pageantry and display, circuses and parades, produced a native species of musical celebrity tour: New World entrepreneurs promoted Old World singers and instrumentalists in a manner common to sideshow freaks and blackface minstrels. The acme was P.T. Barnum's presentation of the “Swedish Nightingale,” Jenny Lind, in 1850–1851—accurately described in Barnum's autobiography as “an enterprise never before or since equalled in managerial annals.” Leopold de Meyer, known as the “Lion Pianist,” was the first celebrity pianist to tour America, arriving in 1845; his programs featured his own sleight‐of‐hand concoctions, larded with such Americana as “Yankee Doodle.” New Orleans's Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) was the first important American‐born pianist and a significant composer whose Creole sources were homegrown.

Symphony.

Massive German immigration, peaking in the 1880s, spread trained musicians throughout many parts of the United States. The resulting symphonic culture—propagating Germanic masterworks, rejecting ballyhoo—was devotional; it resonated with New England church music reform. In this regard, the educator/composer Lowell Mason (1792–1872) was a major force. His hymn tunes, based on European sources including Mozart and Haydn, dominated nineteenth‐century American hymnals. Mason campaigned to promote higher standards in church music and to democratize music education. Another New Englander, the critic John Sullivan Dwight (1813–1893), influentially espoused the moral purity of instrumental music; Beethoven was his godhead. Meanwhile, in New York, the Philharmonic was founded by German Americans in 1842, the same year as the Vienna Philharmonic. The German‐born Theodore Thomas, who joined the New York Philharmonic's violinists in 1854, later created his own orchestra and began touring with it in 1869. Preaching that a symphony orchestra “shows the culture of a community,” Thomas took over the New York Philharmonic (1877), then the new Chicago Orchestra (1891). By 1903, orchestras had also been started in Boston, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. The Boston Symphony, founded in 1881, outstripped all others in frequency and caliber of performance. Its early conductors included Arthur Nikisch and Karl Muck, both towering figures abroad. Its supporters proclaimed, “A symphony orchestra pure and simple does not exist in all of Europe. In no city in Germany, Italy, France or Russia is there an orchestra which is made up of players whose only business it is to perform such music as is to be found on programmes of symphony concerts.” In fact, the American penchant for concert orchestras, versus the opera orchestras of Europe, was a singular phenomenon. The term “symphony orchestra” is itself an American coinage, dating from 1878.

Opera.

America's operatic culture was vigorous and diverse by 1850. Opera was variously elevated and elegant, popular and cheap. In New York, where the world's great vocalists clustered, the Academy of Music, opened in 1854, was the leading opera house for nearly three decades. Its paucity of boxes dictated a larger, more opulent venue for a new elite: the 3,615‐seat Metropolitan Opera House, opened in 1883. In certain respects, the Met's pre–World War I achievements were not later equaled. As in subsequent decades, illustrious vocal talent was regularly showcased. At the same time, the house was ruled (as never after) by master conductors: Anton Seidl (1885–1898), Gustav Mahler (1908–1909), and Arturo Toscanini (1908–1915). In these years, as well, the repertoire incorporated a higher percentage of important new and recent works than subsequently. Between 1889 and 1891, with Wagnerism at its height, the entire repertoire was given in German. Thereafter, a tradition was established of presenting operas in the language in which they were written—usually German, Italian, or French. In Europe, by contrast, opera in translation—in the language of the audience—was more the custom. American resistance to opera in the vernacular discouraged the emergence of a body of important American operas; it also served to deemphasize the theatrical dimension of opera. Compared to its nineteenth‐century diversity, opera in America more preponderantly became a glamorous vocal medium.

With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the rise of European fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, a plethora of great performing artists became residents of the United States. During and after World War I, Germanophobia diminished the predominance of Germanic performers. One infamous episode was the 1918 internment of Boston's Karl Muck as an enemy alien; upon leaving for Europe (permanently) following the Armistice, he called the United States a country “controlled by a sentiment which closely borders on mob rule.” Of the non‐Germans who now took over, Arturo Toscanini, with his New York Philharmonic (1926–1936) and NBC Symphony (1937–1954), symbolized classical music for Americans. Called “priest of music” and “vicar of the immortals,” he personified the continued moral rectitude of the European symphonic canon (its uses in Hitler's Germany notwithstanding). Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia (1912–1936) and Serge Koussevitzky in Boston (1924–1949) were also famous non‐Germanic leaders of remarkable American orchestras. Such phenomenal immigrant Russians as the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the violinist Jascha Heifetz were fervently embraced and celebrated. Such inspired proponents of the Germanic tradition as the pianists Artur Schnabel and Rudolf Serkin, if less famous, were notably influential, not least on colleagues and students. After World War II, important American‐born and ‐trained performers emerged, the most notable being Leonard Bernstein, a Koussevitzky protégé. No previous American classical musician had exercised such influence at home, or achieved such renown abroad, as an interpreter of both American and European works.

Compared to the impact of a Toscanini, Horowitz, or Heifetz, twentieth‐century American composers occupied a back seat. Dvořák's “New World” Symphony remains the most popular composed on American soil; Ives's achievement, cresting before World War I, proved less a starting point than a solitary summit. As in performance, the Germanic influence on composing waned with World War I; an important new generation of Americans, whose most prominent representative was Aaron Copland, was schooled in France. Koussevitzky proclaimed, “The next Beethoven vill [sic] from Colorado come.” Although a significant school of interwar symphonists emerged, the great American symphony was not composed, and America's core creative contributions in music during these decades came in popular music and jazz. A bridge between popular and classical traditions was attempted, most auspiciously by George Gershwin, whose early death in 1937 aborted a major legacy. An antipopulist influence was exerted by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Paul Hindemith, all Europeans who emigrated to the United States.

After World War II, the multitalented Bernstein, among others, anticipated fresh American achievements outside the European genres. Bernstein's own West Side Story (1957) notably melded opera and Broadway. Other late twentieth‐century American composers of world reputation included Elliott Carter, a formidable modernist. Younger composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams, all born after 1936, challenged traditional distinctions between popular and classical, Eastern and Western cultures. For them, “classical music” became a defunct category of artistic experience.
See also Gilded Age; Museums: Museums of Art; Musical Theater.

Bibliography

Gilbert Chase , America's Music, 1955, reprint 1987.
Wilfrid Mellers , Music in a New Found Land, 1964.
H. Wiley Hitchcock , Music in the United States: An Historical Introduction, 1969, reprint 1988.
Charles Hamm , Music in the New World, 1983.
Joseph Horowitz , Understanding Toscanini: A Social History of American Concert Life, 1987.
John Dizikes , Opera in America, 1993.
Joseph Horowitz , Wagner Nights: An American History, 1994.

Joseph Horowitz

Popular Music The first popular music in the American colonies consisted of hymns, psalms, ballads, and patriotic airs imported from Europe. From the Colonial Era to the present, popular music has remained a vital and constantly evolving feature of American culture.

Early National and Antebellum Eras.

After the Revolutionary War, political and patriotic themes dominated the new nation's popular songs, although sacred music persisted and melodies from English ballad operas remained in vogue among the urban classes. Battles, heroes, frontier life, social crusades, current events, disasters, fads, and follies were all favorite subjects for singing in young America. Sentimentality and melodramatic expression pervaded these lyrics, and many told of human suffering with melancholy emphasis. Songs that spoke of piety, morbidity, and grief were deemed suitable for the family parlor, whereas humorous songs, common in taverns and other such venues, were viewed skeptically inside genteel circles.

Music publishing increased during the Antebellum Era, and in the 1840s Stephen Foster emerged as the country's most celebrated songwriter. Foster's first published song, Open Thy Lattice, Love, was written in 1843, but he quickly won fame with minstrel tunes such as Camptown Races, Old Folks at Home, My Old Kentucky Home, and Old Black Joe. At his best, Foster was a master of melody and nostalgic narration. Although his songs for blackface performers enjoyed greater popularity, the composer considered his love songs, among them Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair and Beautiful Dreamer, better efforts since they conformed to genteel standards of decorum.

The minstrel stage served as a major vehicle for spreading the popularity of songs. Dan Emmett (1815–1904), one of the Virginia Minstrels, wrote Dixie (1859) and Old Dan Tucker for blackface performers, and the tradition continued after the Civil War with such songwriters as James A. Bland, composer of Carry Me Back to Old Virginny and Oh Dem Golden Slippers.

Gilded Age to World War I.

The commercial music business grew during the late nineteenth century with New York City becoming its headquarters. The popular music business, known as Tin Pan Alley, centered first around Fourteenth Street, then moved to Twenty‐eighth Street, and eventually beyond Times Square, as publishers followed the theaters up Broadway. Charles K. Harris, whose After the Ball (1892) became the first popular song to sell more than a million copies, is often regarded as the father of Tin Pan Alley. Later, Harris's Hello Central, Give Me Heaven combined three prevalent themes in contemporary songwriting: children, the death of a parent, and new technology. Another turn‐of‐the‐century tunesmith, Paul Dresser, brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser, won fame with sentimental ballads such as The Pardon Came Too Late, My Gal Sal, and On the Banks of the Wabash, adopted as the Indiana state song.

During the late nineteenth century, vaudeville, burlesque, musical comedy, and operetta supplied much of the nation's popular music. Vaudeville performers were courted by music publishers like T. B. Harms and M. Witmark and Sons, since they could introduce songs and stimulate the sale of sheet music. Turn‐of‐the‐century headliners such as Eva Tanguay, George M. Cohan, and Nora Bayes attracted loyal followings on national tours and were in constant need of fresh material. Bayes wrote Shine on Harvest Moon with her husband, Jack Norworth; Cohan composed such favorites as Give My Regards to Broadway and You're a Grand Old Flag after he graduated to writing story‐line musicals as opposed to plotless revues.

Operettas supplied a loftier variety of popular music, patterned after central European models. Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow proved a sensation when it opened in New York in 1907, inspiring dozens of imitations. Irish‐born Victor Herbert arrived in the United States in 1886 and within two decades had established himself as Broadway's foremost composer of light operas. Herbert filled his scores for The Fortune Teller, Mlle. Modeste, The Red Mill, and Naughty Marietta with such numbers as Gypsy Love Song, Kiss Me Again, and Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life, many of which were later revived by Hollywood.

Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg, both central European immigrants, extended the vogue for operetta into the 1920s. Friml's scores for Rose Marie, The Vagabond King, and The Three Musketeers contain such popular hits as Indian Love Call, Only a Rose, and Love Me Tonight. Romberg established himself with Maytime in 1917 but achieved even greater popularity in the 1920s with The Student Prince, The Desert Song, and New Moon. Such songs as Lover Come Back to Me, One Kiss, Deep in My Heart, Dear and Serenade illustrate Romberg's lasting appeal.

Popular music became big business in America in the early twentieth century, aided by recordings, radio, and film. A copyright law passed in 1909 provided for a payment of two cents to the copyright holder for each phonograph record or piano roll sold containing a copyrighted song. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) was founded in 1914 to collect royalties more effectively.

Although an increased sense of professionalism infused Tin Pan Alley, old formulas persisted. Harry von Tilzer carried the sentimental tradition into the new century with numbers like A Bird in a Gilded Cage and Wait till the Sun Shines Nellie. Gus Edwards, closely linked to vaudeville, proved equally sentimental; his songs School Days and By the Light of the Silvery Moon became perennials.

During the 1890s a more rambunctious commercial music resulted from the black exodus to the north. These songs were syncopated and employed more natural wording than the stilted phrasing of the sentimental ballads. Many were initially sung by black vaudeville performers, but the impact of such songs soon reached white entertainers. Some of these songs were humorous; others, such as The Warmest Colored Gal in Town, contained sexual innuendoes. Still others spoke of the economic rise and growing sophistication of urban blacks.

Ragtime, another product of the black community in the 1890s, profoundly influenced popular songs and dance styles. The first ragtime piano number was probably William Krell's Mississippi Rag, published in 1897, but Scott Joplin (1868–1917) became the most famous of the ragtime composers with such numbers as Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer.

By 1910 classic ragtime was coming to an end, replaced by such Tin Pan Alley imitations as Put Your Arms around Me Honey and Ragtime Cowboy Joe. Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band, published in 1911, brought the ragtime craze to a peak, although the song was a corruption of the black idiom. The ragtime vogue revolutionized social dance. Syncopated rhythm made dancing simpler; anyone who could march could dance. The two‐step and the cakewalk soon spawned dances like the Grizzly Bear, the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot, and the Kangaroo Dip. As the rage continued, night clubs opened, and restaurants and hotels introduced dancing during meal hours. Vernon and Irene Castle emerged as the nation's dancing idols and in 1914 starred in the ragtime revue Watch Your Step, Irving Berlin's first complete Broadway score.

Berlin did much to liberate American popular music from the clichés of the previous century. Polished and versatile in style, Berlin's melodies were simple, yet his tunes possessed a haunting beauty and craftsmanship that lifted them beyond the ordinary. Romantic ballads like All Alone, Remember, and What'll I Do? proved Berlin's forte, yet he rose to fame during the ragtime era with such numbers as That Mysterious Rag, Everybody's Doin' It, and The International Rag.

Meanwhile jazz, having arisen in the South, began expanding north prior to World War I. After the success of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in New York in 1917, jazz musicians found themselves in demand both in the urban North and Europe. Black jazzmen, among them trumpeters King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, moved from New Orleans to Chicago and later to New York, while jazz staples like Tiger Rag, Livery Stable Blues, and High Society entered the popular music of the American middle class.

The 1920s to World War II.

Prohibition brought speakeasies during the 1920s, many of which hired jazz musicians to attract customers. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom became popular, although moralists condemned such gyrations. Indeed, conservatives viewed jazz itself as a threat to traditional values, since the music was improvised and often played by performers of dubious reputation. “Moral disaster is coming to hundreds of young American girls through the pathological, nerve‐irritating sex‐exciting music of jazz orchestras,” thundered the New York American in 1922.

By 1925, as jazz became more commercialized, New York drew the most successful artists, since Manhattan was the center of music publishing, the recording industry, and network radio stations. Harlem clubs, most notably the Cotton Club, which opened in 1927, became venues for such popular jazzmen as Edward (“Duke”) Ellington and Cab Calloway. Ellington, while maintaining ties with Tin Pan Alley, composed such classics as “Sophisticated Lady,” “Mood Indigo,” and “Solitude.”

Radio revolutionized the popular music business by cutting the length of time a song could remain popular. But radio also brought music to more consumers and stimulated the sale of sheet music and phonograph records—another electronic innovation. The 1920s was a golden age for American popular music with such great songwriters as Berlin, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers reaching maturity, along with adroit lyricists like Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Ira Gershwin.

Each of these celebrated composers wrote for the musical stage. Youmans's No, No, Nanette captured the flavor of the 1920s and reflects the buoyancy of the decade's middle‐class youth. Two of the show's best songs, I Want to Be Happy and Tea for Two, became international hits. For Hit the Deck (1927), Youmans wrote Hallelujah and Sometimes I'm Happy, both lasting favorites.

George Gershwin capitalized on the growing popularity of jazz in such Broadway shows as Lady Be Good, Oh, Kay, and Funny Face, which included such perennials as Fascinating Rhythm, Someone to Watch over Me, and 'S Wonderful. Gershwin's musical idol, Jerome Kern, helped modernize the musical theater with his scores for Princess Theatre productions between 1915 and 1918. In 1927 Kern altered the course of the big Broadway musical with Show Boat, which contained Make Believe, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, and Ol' Man River. Gershwin died young, but Kern's career lasted for another two decades. His score for Roberta in 1932 included Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, The Touch of Your Hand, Yesterdays, I Won't Dance, and I'll Be Hard to Handle, all popular standards.

Irving Berlin and Cole Porter wrote their own lyrics for the songs they composed, and both had strings of Broadway successes during careers that flourished until after World War II. Berlin reached his pinnacle with Annie Get Your Gun in 1946, and few scores have offered such a concentration of hits, among them The Girl That I Marry, Doin' What Comes Naturally, They Say It's Wonderful, I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night, and There's No Business Like Show Business. Cole Porter's masterwork came in 1948 with Kiss Me, Kate, for which he wrote So in Love, Were Thine That Special Face, Wunderbar, and Always True to You in My Fashion. Porter specialized in sophisticated, sometimes risqué lyrics, whereas Berlin was content to lift sentimentality to refined levels.

Richard Rodgers worked successfully with two lyricists, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. The songs he wrote with Hart were imaginative, melodic, and literate. Hart was a master of intricate rhymes and tart figures of speech, while Rodgers colored his music with the unexpected. Their collaboration resulted in such shows as The Girl Friend, A Connecticut Yankee, and Spring Is Here, which contained such songs as The Blue Room, Thou Swell, My Heart Stood Still, and With a Song in My Heart. Their partnership ended in 1942 with By Jupiter, but Rodgers's talent continued to develop after Hammerstein became his lyricist. Oklahoma! (1943), their first effort, proved the sensation of the World War II years and offered a score that included Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', People Will Say We're in Love, and a title number that became the state song of Oklahoma. Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music were equally rich in songs that won international renown.

Broadway musicals remained a major source of popular music until the 1960s. Various singers recorded numbers from Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls (1950), Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's The Pajama Game (1954), Allan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's My Fair Lady (1956), Meredith Willson's The Music Man (1957), and Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! (1964). The trend ended when young performers preferred to write their own music, thereby eliminating the need to pay outside royalties.

Swing, which dominated the American jazz scene from 1935 through World War II, brought respectability but increased commercialization to what had originally been an inventive, popular art form. Benny Goodman's orchestra is credited with launching the swing craze and thrusting American popular music into the big‐band era. Swing depended upon technically brilliant arrangers and virtuoso performers who could improvise solo passages and work from notation during ensembles. The big bands relied heavily on Tin Pan Alley songwriters and extensive publicity, but their music was heard on jukeboxes, over the radio, from the stage, and in movies around the globe. Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Harry James, Gene Krupa, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Ray Anthony became leaders in the big‐band movement, which eventually turned into something of a personality cult. By the late 1930s hundreds of dance bands were playing in hotels, ballrooms, nightclubs, and gymnasia across the country.

As the swing era progressed, the band vocalist became increasingly important. Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were two of the most celebrated black band singers, but such white vocalists as Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and Rosemary Clooney gained early recognition performing with swing bands. By the end of World War II many of these singers had become stars in their own right. Some developed an individual technique, and vocalizing moved from the soft stylings of Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby, both of whom gained fame in early radio, toward more dynamic approaches. Sinatra particularly showed an understanding of lyrics, which enabled him to outlive the “Bobby Soxer” mania of World War II and establish lasting fame in popular culture.

Although the finest and most innovative popular songs before 1960 had come from the theater, motion pictures—even before the advent of sound—contributed an impressive number of standards. Charmaine, interpolated into the film What Price Glory in 1926, was the first movie theme song to become an immediate hit. Diane for Seventh Heaven and Angela Mia for Street Angel followed. With the coming of sound, screen musicals were in demand, and such composers as Richard Whiting, Harry Warren, Nacio Herb Brown, and Johnny Mercer devoted much of their careers to motion pictures.

By 1930, radio had taken over the role once filled by vaudeville in plugging popular songs. Your Hit Parade, a Saturday night program that presented the “top ten” tunes of the week, began in 1935 and, having successfully made the transition to television, stayed on the air for twenty‐five years.

The 1950s to the Present.

By the end of the World War II the pivotal figure in promoting songs was the radio disc jockey, who spun records between news and weather reports on thousands of local stations. With the expansion of record production in the 1950s, a radio station might receive three hundred new releases a week. Major disc jockeys became powerful figures in keeping records before the public. During 1959 and 1960 “payola” (bribery) scandals shook the popular music field, and eventually 255 disc jockeys were convicted of accepting cash or expensive gifts from record companies and music publishers for promoting their material.

In the early 1950s rhythm and blues began to invade popular music, expressing some of the realities of the black ghetto. In 1954 “Gee,” recorded by the Crows, became the first rhythm‐and‐blues number to appear on the charts of bestselling songs. Soon white groups began to cover the more popular rhythm‐and‐blues hits, adapting them to mass audiences.

Such rock‐and‐roll performers as Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, and “Little Richard” (Richard Penniman) served as a connecting link between black and white audiences. But the single most important event in bringing rock‐and‐roll into the mainstream of American popular music was the appearance of Bill Haley's recording of Rock around the Clock in 1955. The next year Elvis Presley erupted onto the scene with his recording of Heartbreak Hotel. The younger generation was in a mood for its own music, and Presley became their musical idol despite parental protests about his tight pants, swaying hips, and long sideburns. A rash of Presley imitators soon appeared.

By 1962 Bob Dylan emerged as an important force in reviving folk music, and such groups as the Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four, and Peter, Paul, and Mary rose to prominence. In 1964, rock experienced a British invasion when the Beatles first toured the United States. Their recording of I Want to Hold Your Hand sold over a million copies in ten days. After 1965 the counterculture movement ushered in a harder form of rock, accompanied by the use of drugs and psychedelic light shows. The Grateful Dead, the Doors, and Grand Funk Railroad became leaders in what was termed acid rock, while groups like Jefferson Airplane showed musical sophistication.

The Motown sound, out of Detroit, spearheaded by Diana Ross and the Supremes, won acceptance within the American middle class, since the music was polished and mild mannered, yet furnished a firm, danceable beat. As the counterculture rebellion faded, disco became the fad of the late 1970s. Amid a farrago of strobe lights and deafening music, young dancers moved to recordings by Donna Summer, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and the Bee Gees.

In the 1980s American popular music showed the continuing impact of rock, but also a strong influence from country music. New Wave groups from Britain like Duran Duran hit the American market stressing pure electronics, although rhythm and sound became dominant over melody and lyrics in other trends. African‐American rap music in the 1990s reflected the anger of the inner city, while college students listened to contemporary jazz and alternative rock but danced to techno and rave.

Popular music, a lively feature of American life for two hundred years or more, has in each era mirrored the social, cultural, and technological realities of the age. As the twenty‐first century dawned, this ever‐evolving form of popular expression seemed certain to continue to underscore the nation's cultural moods, as each new generation adopts its own music.
See also Blues; Gospel Music, African American; Harlem Renaissance; Mass Marketing; Minstrelsy; Musical Theater; Urbanization.

Bibliography

Sigmund Spaeth , A History of Popular Music in America, 1948.
David Ewen , Panorama of American Popular Music, 1957.
Isaac Goldberg , Tin Pan Alley, 1961.
Neil Leonard , Jazz and the White Americans, 1962.
Lester S. Levy , Grace Notes in American History, 1967.
John Rublowsky , Popular Music, 1967.
Alec Wilder , American Popular Song, 1972.
Lester S. Levy , Give Me Yesterday, 1975.
Ronald L. Davis , A History of Music in American Life, 3 vols., 1980–1982.
Russell Sanjek , American Popular Music and Its Business, 1988.
Gunther Schuller , The Swing Era, 1989.
Kenneth J. Bindas, ed., America's Musical Pulse, 1992.

Ronald L. Davis