At 10:02 AM -0700 3/28/08, Michael Greensill wrote:
<<Of course, I cannot measure this, and I don't know all the the bad
songs, movie music, musicals, revues, and jazz compositions and
performances of this period, but the indelible impression remains
that this period of American popular music was an unusually fecund
one. >> Chuck
I agree with Chuck about this period and I think the reason is that,
this was the last time when professionals were in charge of all
aspects of the popular music industry. Even the performers of this
repertoire were much better because they were vetted by
professionals. Basic tenets like, a singer couldn't imagine being
asked to make a record unless they sang in tune! I have a great
affection for many songs of that era that, though they aren't
profound, are so well crafted that they stand the test of time.
The rise of the singer songwriter was the end of this. Now one is
expected to be a genius as a melodist, a lyric writer, a good singer
and a charismatic performer. Impossible! There were only 3
songwriters who could manage both words and music, never mind the
rest. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Frank Loesser.
No, not impossible, but clearly there will be fewer individuals who
can handle both the creativity and the re-creativity needed. And a
remarkable number of them started out as songwriters (or even session
sidemen), and only later on became well known as performers.
Needless to say, the songs by Lennon and McCartney have shown staying
power that I, for one, would absolutely never have predicted, while
the songs that made Elvis a household word--none of them written by
him--have faded into history.
Of course there's both sides to a story - the professionals in the
1950's, like Mitch Miller brought us amazing crap that probably
ushered in the excesses of the rock era.
Mitch Miller was a fine oboist. Let's leave it at that! But his
shows were enormously popular, as was (and perhaps still is in the
nostalgia circle) Lawrence Welk, and even Liberace. And if we want
to consider the '50s the last gasp of the professionals (which may
indeed be a valid observation), those of us who remember them also
have to remember that the MOR crap that made it to the hit parade was
almost uniformly dreadful, and that even the most successful of the
newcomers of the time faded into obscurity rather quickly, while
Sinatra and the other REAL professionals just continued doing their
thing to perfection, while growing old and cranky.
So it was really the bland MOR and Hit Parade scene taken all
together that left the ground fertile and ready for the positive
reaction to early R & B and then R & R, then the turn to folk and
neofolk music and finally the first twitches of true Rock in the
mid-'60s. The Four Freshmen and the Hi-Los (and later the Singers
Unlimited) were all fine musicians capable of amazing things, but a
lot of the groups that tried to break into that market did so with
bad arrangements of bad songs sung badly and out of tune, I have to
agree.
(None of that applies to The Four Saints, or to MY arrangements, of course!)
St. John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
