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Rock-a-Cha-Cha

The Erased Impact of Latin American Music on the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2021

Samuel J. Flynn

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

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Table of Contents List of Musical Examples ....................................................................................................................... 4 List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................... 7 List of Graphs .......................................................................................................................................... 7 List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... 7 Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... 8 Declaration ............................................................................................................................................... 9 Copyright Statement ............................................................................................................................. 10 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction: ‘Nobody Writes About This!’ ..................................................................................... 12

‘A Rhythmic Revolution in Rock’ .................................................................................................. 14 ‘Nobody Writes About This’ .......................................................................................................... 22 Two Approaches .............................................................................................................................. 25 Chapter Outline ................................................................................................................................ 27 A Note on Terminology .................................................................................................................. 29

Chapter 1: Two Research Contexts on Rhythmic Trends in Post-War US Popular Music ...... 32 Corpus Analyses of Rhythm in Post-War US Popular Music ................................................... 32 Influences on the Rhythmic Trends .............................................................................................. 36

Funky Drummer .......................................................................................................................... 37 The Latin Tinge ............................................................................................................................ 44

The Erasure of Afro-Latin Influences on a Rhythmic Transformation .................................. 48 Socio-Political Interpretations of the Rhythmic Trends ............................................................ 50 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 52

Chapter 2: Two Approaches to the Analysis of Rock 'n' Roll Rhythm………………………54 Corpus Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 54

Criticisms of Empirical Musicology and the Issue of Theorising Influence ..................... 54 The Analytical Corpus ............................................................................................................... 56 Aural Analysis and ‘Verbal Description’ ................................................................................. 60 Aurally Determining Quavers and Barlines ............................................................................ 61 Categorising Rhythmic Subdivisions ....................................................................................... 68 Categorising Rhythmic Textures .............................................................................................. 71 Critical Reception ............................................................................................................................. 84 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 86

Chapter 3: Longitudinal Findings of the Corpus Analysis ............................................................. 88 Rhythmic Trends .............................................................................................................................. 89 Tipping point .................................................................................................................................... 94 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 95

Chapter 4: Musical Influences on the Rhythmic Trends ................................................................ 96 ‘Lucille’ ............................................................................................................................................... 97

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Boogie-Woogie Eight-to-the-Bar Patterns ............................................................................. 99 Metrically Malleable Reiterated-Onset Rhythmic Patterns ................................................. 102 Afro-Latin Musics ..................................................................................................................... 105 ‘Diana’ .............................................................................................................................................. 109 Straight-Quaver Polyrhythm after ‘Diana’ ............................................................................ 120 ‘Rock-a-Cha-Cha’ ........................................................................................................................... 122 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 125

Chapter 5: The Erasure of Afro-Latin Influences on the Rhythmic Trends ............................. 127 The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race ............................................................................... 127 The Christ-like Narrative of Rock ’n’ Roll History ................................................................... 130 The Latin Tinge .............................................................................................................................. 135 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 138

Chapter 6: Interpreting the Rhythmic Trends……………………………………………...140 Evaluating Socio-Political Interpretations of the Rhythmic Transitions ............................... 140 Meanings of the Afro-Latin Influences on the Rhythmic Transformation ........................... 147 Creolisation and Mass Migration ............................................................................................ 148 Intercultural Identification ...................................................................................................... 151 ‘Cashing in on the Craze of the Day’ ..................................................................................... 154 Alternative Historicisation of Rock ’n’ Roll ............................................................................... 157 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 162

Conclusion: More than Just a Tinge ................................................................................................ 164 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 169 Discography ......................................................................................................................................... 180 Appendices ........................................................................................................................................... 185

Appendix 1. Drum legend/notation key .................................................................................... 185 Appendix 2. Rhythmic characteristics of the sample of year-end hits on the Billboard mainstream singles chart from 1950 to 1965 ............................................................................. 185 Appendix 3. Rhythmic characteristics of the sample of year-end hits on the Billboard R&B singles chart from 1950 to 1965 ................................................................................................... 197 Appendix 4. Rhythmic characteristics of the sample of year-end hits on the Billboard country & western singles chart from 1954 to 1957 ................................................................................ 209

Word count: 66,358

List of Musical Examples

Ex. 1 The metrically malleable isoriff as a) mid-tempo triple quavers, b) up-tempo straight quavers, and c) extremely up-tempo crotchets. ................................................................................ 41 Ex. 2 a) Two-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b and c) variations in notation. ........................................................................................................................... 62 Ex. 3 a) Six-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b and c) variations in notation. ........................................................................................................................... 62 Ex. 4 a) Four-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b, c, and d) variations in notation. ........................................................................................................................... 62 Ex. 5 a) Eight-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b and c) variations in notation. ........................................................................................................................... 62 Ex. 6 ‘Standard rock beat’. .................................................................................................................. 63 Ex. 7 Standard waltz drumbeat. ......................................................................................................... 64 Ex. 8 Allowable backbeat variations suggested by Tamlyn and Biamonte. ................................ 65 Ex. 9 a) A swung-quaver polka feel and b) a jump blues feel. ...................................................... 65 Ex. 10 a) ‘Bo Diddley beat’, mid-tempo straight-quaver hearing following De Clercq’s two-second method; b) ‘Bo Diddley beat’ up-tempo swung-quaver hearing following the extension of Moore’s method. .............................................................................................................................. 67 Ex. 11 Common rhythmic textures without a backbeat accent and how they are conceived in terms of notation in this thesis: a) a 1950s ballad texture, b) a tango and chachachá rhythm, c) an Afro-Cuban bolero-influenced texture, d) an Afro-Cuban son-influenced texture, and e) a Motown-associated crotchet snare drumbeat. .................................................................................. 67 Ex. 12 Seven bars of fixed rhythm in the verse melody of Carl Smith’s ‘Loose Talk’ (1955). . 69 Ex. 13 Three with two polymetre. ..................................................................................................... 72 Ex. 14 a–d) examples of the 4/4 definition of crossrhythm. ......................................................... 73 Ex. 15 a) 1930s US-American ‘beat-level’ walking bass and ride-cymbal patterns and b) late-1950s Cuban-influenced ‘bar-level’ bass (tacitly the straight-quaver bass-vocal riff of Richard Berry’s 1957 single ‘Louie Louie’) and drum-kit pattern. ............................................................... 75 Ex. 16 A comparison of the accompanimental rhythmic patterns in the first six bars of the A section of two recordings of Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Night in Tunisia’: a) Sarah Vaughan, ‘Interlude’ (1944), an example of swung-quaver monorhythm comprising one bar-level pattern and three beat-level patterns; and b) Dizzy Gillespie, ‘Night in Tunisia’ (1946), an example of straight-quaver polyrhythm featuring five bar-level patterns. ....................................................................... 76 Ex. 17 a) A common jump-blues rhythmic texture, which is considered to be monorhythmic (specifically contrarhythmic); and b) a common Afro-Cuban bolero rhythmic texture, which is considered to be polyrhythmic. .......................................................................................................... 79

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Ex. 18 Exceptions where bar-level rhythmic patterns are not categorised as polyrhythmic textures: a) ‘alternation’ between the saxophones and brass in the chorus of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Baby Workout’ (1963), b) ‘alternation’ in the introduction of Shirley and Lee’s ‘Let the Good Times Roll’ (1956), c) ‘containment’ in the vocal and piccolo introduction of Bobby Day’s ‘Rock-In-Robin’ (1958), and d) ‘oscillation’ (which is considered to be polyrhythm) in the piano part of Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954). ........................................................................ 81 Ex. 19 a) Bolero bass pattern; b) habanera bass pattern; c) tresillo bass pattern. ....................... 82 Ex. 20 Boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar bass patterns in: a) Lloyd Price’s ‘Walkin’ the Track’ (1953), b) Bill Haley’s ‘Mambo Rock’ (1955), c) Little Walter’s ‘My Babe’ (1955), d) ‘Lucille’, and e) ‘Jailhouse Rock’. ...................................................................................................................... 101 Ex. 21 Seemingly boogie woogie-influenced reiterated straight-quaver patterns in: a) Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ (1955), b) Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ (1956), and c) Johnny Burnette’s ‘Lonesome Train’ (1956). ................................................................................................ 101 Ex. 22 a) Duple-quaver isoriff in Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ (1956), verse and b) crossrhythm variant in Chuck Berry, ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (1958), introduction. ....................... 102 Ex. 23 Comparison of inter-onset intervals (IOIs) of a) the reiterated triplet-quaver chords in Little Richard’s ‘Directly from My Heart to You’ (1955) and b) the reiterated duplet-quaver chords ‘Lucille’ (1956). ....................................................................................................................... 104 Ex. 24 Little Richard, ‘Lucille’ (1957), alternation between reiterated triplet- and duplet-quaver chords in the last four bars of the introduction. ............................................................................ 104 Ex. 25 Comparison of extremely up-tempo reiterated crotchet patterns in a) Ray Charles’s ‘Mess Around’ (1953) and b) Chuck Berry’s ‘Oh Baby Doll’ (1957) with the up-tempo reiterated straight-quaver patterns in c) Paul Peek and Esquerita’s ‘The Rock-a-Round’ (1958) and d) Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’ (1957). ................................................................................. 105 Ex. 26 Typical rhumba-blues straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture. ......................................... 106 Ex. 27 Comparison of the a) Texas or Chicago shuffle drumbeat on Eddie Bo’s ‘I’m Wise’ (1955) and b) the reiterated straight-quaver/backbeat drumbeat on Little Richard’s ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’)’ (1956). .......................................................................................... 107 Ex. 28 A straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture associated with the Afro-Cuban style bolero, comprising two bar-level rhythmic patterns: the ‘bolero bass pattern’ and the ‘bolero percussive pattern’. ............................................................................................................................. 112 Ex. 29 Paul Anka, ‘Diana’ (1957), A section, straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture. .............. 113 Ex. 30 a) Standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern, b) ‘rotated’ conga pattern, c) heard accents of the rotated conga pattern handclapped in Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954), d) handclap-fingerclick variation in the Shirelles’s ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’ (1958), e) open-rimshot snare-drum variation in the Ventures’s ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ (1960). ....................................................... 116 Ex. 31 Son clave in 3-2 and ‘rotated’ 2-3 forms. ........................................................................... 116 Ex. 32 Precursors to the tresillo variation in ‘Diana’: 1) Elvis Presley’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ (1956); and b) Mickey & Sylvia’s ‘Love Is Strange’ (1956). ........................................................................ 117

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Ex. 33 a) bolero bass pattern, b) habanera pattern, and c) baião bass pattern. ........................ 118 Ex. 34 a) ‘Tresillo right-hand’ pattern, e.g. ‘Carnival Day’ and ‘Loose Talk’; and b) bolero-inflected variation, e.g. ‘Hello Little Girl’ and ‘Mambo Baby’. .................................................... 119 Ex. 35 Common Afro-Latin and American-Latin bar-level patterns in straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample. ................................................................................................... 122

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List of Tables

Table 1. Table to show verbal description of the first A section of Elvis Presley, ‘Hound Dog’ (1956). ..................................................................................................................................................... 61

Table 2. Categories and subcategories of rhythmic subdivisions. ................................................ 71

Table 3. Categories and subcategories of rhythmic texture. ......................................................... 77

Table 4. Categories and subcategories of rhythmic schema. ........................................................ 78

Table 5. Summary of rhythmic terminology employed in this thesis. ......................................... 83

List of Graphs Graph 1. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature crotchet and triple-quaver monorhythm and duple-quaver polyrhythm on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.............................................90 Graph 2. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature crotchet monorhythm, triple-quaver monorhythm (not statistically significant), and duple-quaver polyrhythm on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.....................................................................................................................................90 Graph 3. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature crotchet, triple-quaver (not statistically significant), and duple-quaver rhythmic patterns on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.............................91 Graph 4. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature commetre, contrarhythm (not statistically significant), and polyrhythm on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965......................................91 Graph 5. The percentage of year-end hits that feature the RSQB paradigm on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.........92

List of Figures Fig. 1. Translational symmetry. .......................................................................................................... 74

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Abstract This thesis interrogates the eminent Afro-Cuban musical director Mario Bauzá’s claim that the impact of Afro-Latin musics on a fundamental change in the rhythm of US-American music has been written out of history. Academics assume that rhythmic trends towards straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythm occurred in US popular music between the 1950s and the 1960s. However, insufficient evidence has been provided to support this hypothesis. Moreover, Bauzá’s claim of Latinx erasure continues to be overlooked as do the possible meanings of the rhythmic trends in relation to Latinx Americans. A corpus analysis and reception study of rock ’n’ roll rhythm is therefore conducted, focusing on Little Richard and Paul Anka as case studies. Chapter 3 establishes empirically that a rhythmic transformation from crotchet or swung-quaver ‘monorhythm’ – that is, a rhythmic texture comprising onbeat rhythmic patterns – to straight-quaver polyrhythm occurred in post-war popular music in the United States, culminating in 1961. Chapter 4 demonstrates that the predominant influence on this rhythmic shift was Afro-Latin musics, via the ‘American-Latin’ hybrid styles ‘rhumba blues’ and ‘rock-a-cha-cha’. Chapter 5 argues that this Afro-Latin influence was erased by rock historians – who were almost all White, male, and non-Latinx – for three main reasons: the Black/White binary paradigm of race, the gendered marginalisation of late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll, and the characterisation of the impact of Afro-Latin musics on US popular music as a superficial ‘tinge’. Chapter 6 exposes the assumptions behind the common interpretation of the rhythmic transformation as representing the progressive politics of the 1960s. Instead, drawing on an alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll, the chapter interprets the Afro-Latin influence on the rhythmic change as the product of both successive mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Black rhythm and the mass migration of Latin Americans to the United States during the Jim-Crow era. This research demands a significant revision of popular-music historiography, which needs to acknowledge this substantial but neglected contribution of Latinx Americans to US popular culture.

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Declaration No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.

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Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses

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Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester for financially supporting this research. I am eternally grateful to my supervisors Rebecca Herissone and Roddy Hawkins. This research has benefitted greatly from Rebecca’s methodological rigour and her generosity with her time – as demonstrated in her meticulous and perceptive feedback – as well as from Roddy’s illuminating observations, patience, and great tact. In particular, I would like to thank Roddy for his encouragement to broaden the purview of this thesis to encompass historiographical concerns, a reception study, and cultural theory. This led to much more significant findings. I would also like to thank James Garratt for this perceptive feedback and cheerful support as Independent Reviewer. Special thanks to James Vail and Richard Gillies for proofreading the thesis and for many fruitful discussions throughout this research. Last but by no means least, I am indebted to my parents Barbara and Tony Flynn for their love, encouragement and emotional support as well as for their hospitality during the Covid-19 lockdowns in which this thesis was written.

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Introduction ‘Nobody Writes About This!’

‘THERE HAS BEEN A RHYTHMIC REVOLUTION IN ROCK […] The basic patterns

are now in even 8ths (as opposed to the traditional triplet feeling of most jazz). This has made another extremely important development possible: some very complex polyrhythms. The

rhythms the typical rock and R&B band plays today would have scared the bebop inventors half to death! . . . This does not invalidate bebop, but it certainly does make it “old

fashioned”.’

Don Ellis, 19691

‘The Cubans, we came here and changed your American music from the bottom up! And

nobody knows this! NOBODY WRITES ABOUT THIS!’

Mario Bauzá, 19882 This thesis interrogates Mario Bauzá’s claim that the impact of Afro-Cuban music and

migration on a fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war popular music in the United

States has been written out of history. Specifically, the eminent Afro-Cuban musical director

suggests that a rhythmic transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet ‘monorhythm’ to

duple-quaver polyrhythm occurred between the 1940s and the 1960s, culminating in rock ’n’

roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s: a period in which rock ’n’ roll was purportedly ‘dead’.3

This overarching rhythmic transformation is comprised of two coalescing rhythmic

transitions: a shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions and a move from

monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures. The former is often expressed as the adoption of a

rhythmic paradigm in which a stream of straight-quaver subdivisions is articulated in a pitched

or unpitched instrument (or both) against a backbeat in an unpitched percussion instrument.

This is referred to as the reiterated straight-quaver/backbeat paradigm in this project

(henceforth the RSQB paradigm). Thus, four related rhythmic trends are hypothesised in this

project. Existing corpus analyses intimate that there was a shift from swung- to straight-

quaver subdivisions between the 1950s and the 1960s (remaining in effect up to the

millennium) and Afro-Latin musics (including Afro-Brazilian styles) are the most commonly

1 Don Ellis, ‘Music Workshop: Rock: The Rhythmic Revolution’, Down Beat, 36 (27 November 1969), 32–33. 2 Mario Bauzá as quoted in Robert Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, Spin, 4 (1988), 26–30, 84–85, 103; here, 28. 3 The expression ‘triple-quaver’ is employed in this thesis to encompass swung-quaver and triplet-quaver subdivisions in 4/4 as well as quavers in compound time signatures such as 12/8, 9/8, and 6/8. In reference to the hypothesised rhythmic transitions, the term ‘swung-quaver’ is used as a synonym of triple-quaver. ‘Swung-quaver’ is also employed more specifically to refer to long-short quaver subdivisions. ‘Monorhythm’ is a term employed by the African-American jazz bandleader Dizzy Gillespie to denote the antithesis of polyrhythm. Gillespie does not explicitly define monorhythm. Based on an analysis of two versions of Gillespie’s ‘Night in Tunisia’, an original method of distinguishing between monorhythm and polyrhythm is employed in this project. This definition based on a novel distinction between ‘beat-level’ and ‘bar-level’ rhythmic patterns which is detailed in Chapter 2.

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identified influences on the four rhythmic trends. The independent researcher Ned Sublette

cites Bauzá’s contention and posits that, among other explanations, an Afro-Cuban influence

on a rhythmic transformation of US popular music has been forgotten because of the

Black/White binary paradigm of race: that is, a conception of race in binary terms that

marginalises Latinx-American peoples and cultures, which are typically understood as neither

Black nor White in the United States.4 The rhythmic trends are commonly interpreted as

representing the progressive politics of the 1960s.

Bauzá’s claim has not been questioned by scholars. The hypothesised rhythmic transitions and

the significance of a possible Afro-Latin influence on them have been overlooked in recent

monographs on popular-music analysis. No empirical evidence has been provided to suggest

that the rhythmic trends towards polyrhythm and the RSQB paradigm occurred, that Afro-

Latin musics were the predominant influence on the overarching rhythmic transformation,

nor that this influence has been written out of history. Similarly, the possible influence of

‘rock-a-cha-cha’ – a portmanteau term denoting a mixture of rock ’n’ roll and Afro-Cuban

chachachá that was regularly employed by the music-industry trade paper Cash Box during the

late 1950s and early 1960s – has not been assessed by scholars. Moreover, commentators have

not investigated the meanings that an Afro-Latin impact on a rhythmic transformation of US

popular music would have in relation to Latinx Americans. Simply put, this study seeks to

establish whether Bauzá was right: has the impact of Latinx-American music and musicians on

a rhythmic transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver

polyrhythm in 20th-century popular music in the United States been written out of history? If

so, why and what meanings does this have in relation to Latinx Americans? Answering these

questions is significant because, as the journalist Robert Palmer states, if Bauzá’s claim is

persuasive ‘then the history of American music is in need of serious revision’.5

In order to respond to these questions, this thesis conducts a corpus music analysis and a

reception study of rock ’n’ roll rhythm – two methodological approaches which are rarely

employed together. In terms of theory, the reception study discusses notions of mass culture

within popular music and how these relate to identity politics and the ideology of the

commentator, drawing on the work of Keir Keightley and Ronald Radano. The rhythm and

4 ‘Latinx American’ is a gender-neutral term which denotes a US-American with Latin-American ancestry. The racial terms ‘Black’ and ‘White’ are capitalised in this study to acknowledge the fact that race is bound up with notions of national identity: for example, Blackness as a transnational identity in the African diaspora and in the racist notion that to be American is to be White. Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘The Case for Capitalizing the B in Black’, The Atlantic [18 June 2020] https://www.theatlantic.com (accessed 21 September 2021). 5 Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 30.

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reception of two case studies, which represent two types of rock ’n’ roll and periods in rock

historiography, are analysed – Little Richard’s reiterated straight-quaver hits of the mid-1950s

‘golden age’ of rock ’n’ roll and Paul Anka’s straight-quaver polyrhythmic 1957 hit ‘Diana’ of

the historically marginalised period from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. In this sense, the

project represents a historically informed study of genre over time as advocated by David

Brackett.6

This chapter provides an overview of the research context of the thesis, the research questions

and the rationale for the project, and the methodology employed before providing a chapter

outline and defining some key terminology around Latinx-American peoples and musics.

‘A Rhythmic Revolution in Rock’

Musicians, journalists, and scholars have posited that rhythmic transitions from triple- to

duple-quaver rhythmic patterns and from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures occurred in

US popular music between the 1940s and the 1960s. A shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions is suggested more often than a move from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic

textures. Of course, neither straight-quaver subdivisions nor polyrhythmic textures were brand

new rhythmic ideas in the 1950s. However, neither was the norm in US-American popular

music during the swing era from the 1920s to the mid-1940s. The two transitions have not

been expressed as a single transformation from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to

straight-quaver polyrhythm, which is the focus of this project.7 Commentators have not

considered songs that do not feature rhythmic subdivisions and are instead based on crotchet

divisions: for example, the oompah polka feel that was popular in the early 1950s. Similarly,

the rhythmic texture that the African-American jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie refers to

as monorhythm is not named by others. Instead reports refer to a trend towards polyrhythm

from an unspecified, opposing rhythmic texture. This project is more concerned with the

adoption of straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures than the decline in

the usage of swung-quaver subdivisions, crotchet divisions, and monorhythm.

6 David Brackett, Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). 7 Note the subtle distinction between the use of the terms ‘transformation’ and ‘transition’ here. Unlike Alexander Stewart’s use of the word, ‘transformation’ is employed in this project to denote to the fundamental change from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Whereas ‘transition’ is utilised to designate the shifts from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions and from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures that coalesce in the overarching ‘transformation’. Alexander Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music’, Popular Music, 19 (2000), 293–318.

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The two coalescing rhythmic transitions were first identified in November 1969 in articles

written by two European Americans – the jazz-fusion bandleader Don Ellis and the music

educator Thomas MacCluskey.8 In the following two decades, the rhythmic transformation

was posited by three renowned Afro-Latin jazz bandleaders. Specifically, the Puerto Rican-

American conga player Ray Barretto suggests that a shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions happened, Dizzy Gillespie intimates that there was a move from monorhythm to

polyrhythm, and Mario Bauzá claims that a fundamental change occurred in the bass and

drum patterns – implicitly a transformation from crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver

polyrhythm.9 From the mid-1980s onwards the rhythmic transitions (principally a swung-to-

straight shift) have been posited in literature on funk, rock ’n’ roll drumming, Afro-Latin

influences on US popular music, and – following Alexander Stewart’s pioneering scholarly

study on the subject published in 2000 – musicology more generally.10 Additionally, seven

corpus analyses of rhythm published between the late 1980s and the mid-2000s find that most

US popular hits feature swung-quaver subdivisions in the 1950s and straight-quaver

subdivisions from the 1960s to the 1990s (see Chapter 1).11 More recently, drawing on decades

of analytical research rather than a formalised corpus analysis, Allan Moore and David

Brackett both suggest that straight-quaver subdivisions have remained a norm until the early

2010s.12

The hypothesised transition from triple- to duple-quaver rhythmic patterns is often expressed

as a trend towards the RSQB paradigm.13 When the reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions are

8 Ellis, ‘Rock: The Rhythmic Revolution’, 32–33. Thomas MacCluskey, ‘Rock in its Elements’, Music Educators Journal, 56 (1969), 49–51; here, 49. 9 Dizzy Gillespie as quoted in Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 28. Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop: Memoirs (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), 318 and 490. 10 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”. 11 Randall G. Pembrook, ‘A Stylistic Analysis of Selected Pop Songs, 1965–1984’, College Music Symposium, 27 (1987), 117–140. In a 1991 article, Pembrook extended the corpus to 1990: Randall G. Pembrook, ‘Exploring the Musical Side of Pop’, Music Educators Journal, 77 (1991), 30–34. Paul D. Friedlander, ‘A Characteristics Profile of Eight “Classic Rock and Roll” Artists, 1954–1959: As Measured by the “Rock Window’”, PhD diss., University of Oregan, 1987. Charles E. Sykes, ‘A Conceptual Model for Analyzing Rhythmic Structure in African-American Popular Music’, PhD diss., Indiana University, 1992. George W. Schaefer, ‘Drumset Performance Practices on Pop and Rhythm and Blues Hit Recordings, 1960–1969’, PhD diss., Arizona State University, 1994. Jon Fitzgerald, ‘Popular Songwriting 1963–1966: Stylistic Comparisons and Trends within the U.S. Top Forty’, PhD diss., Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW (1996), which was subsequently published as five articles. Garry N. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat: Origins and Development of Snare Backbeat and other Accompanimental Rhythms in Rock ’n’ Roll’, PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1998. Richard J. Ripani, The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 2006). 12 Allan F. Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 52–53. David Brackett, ‘Soul Music’ [2013], Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 27 December 2020). 13 Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996), 60–62. Tony Scherman, Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 85. Ned Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, in Eric Weisbard (ed.), A Momentary History of Pop Music (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 69–94; here, 78–86. Steve Smith and Daniel Glass (eds.), The Roots of Rock

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performed in a harmonic instrument this paradigm is most often associated with mid-1950s

rock ’n’ roll, particularly Little Richard’s piano chords and Chuck Berry’s electric-guitar

‘boogie’ pattern. Commentators note that reiterated straight-quaver patterns in pitched

instruments were often performed against a shuffle in the drums: for example, Richard’s 1955

breakthrough hit ‘Tutti Frutti’ and Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’. When the reiterated straight-

quaver subdivisions are performed in the hi-hat with a backbeat in the snare drum, this

paradigm is often referred to as the rock (’n’ roll) drumbeat and is most associated with

Richard’s drummer Earl Palmer and with James Brown.

Commentators often suggest that the rhythmic transitions (particularly the trend towards

polyrhythm) culminated in mid-to-late-1960s rock, soul, and funk.14 However, MacCluskey

and Bauzá suggest that the trends towards straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythm

respectively came to a head in late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll.15 Similarly, in his 1998

corpus analysis, Garry Tamlyn finds that most recordings by canonical rock ’n’ roll artists

feature straight-quaver cymbal patterns by 1960 while Keir Keightley, like MacCluskey,

suggests that a transition from triple- to duple-quaver subdivisions culminated in the early-

1960s twist ‘craze’.16

Keightley also discusses the marginalisation of the period from the late 1950s to the early

1960s in popular-music historiography, which suggests a possible reason why a swung-to-

straight shift has been overlooked. He outlines the conventional historiography of rock ’n’

roll. This is referred to in this project as the Christ-like narrative: rock ’n’ roll was ‘born’ in

around 1955 (followed by a ‘golden age’), ‘died’ in around 1959, and was ‘resurrected’ in 1964

by the so-called British Invasion.17 Keightley refers to the overlooked period that lies between

the mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll of Elvis Presley and the mid-1960s rock ’n’ roll of the Beatles as

the ‘in-between years’. This period was dominated by teen idols (e.g. Paul Anka), girl groups

(e.g. the Shirelles), male-vocal groups (e.g. the Drifters), songwriters of the ‘Brill Building’ who

were actually based at 1650 Broadway (e.g. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller), the twist ‘craze’ (e.g.

Chubby Checker), and surf rock (e.g. the Ventures). Keightley also discusses the rock/pop

opposition as an art/commerce distinction within popular music, which he formulates as an

Drumming: Interviews with the Drummers Who Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll Music (New York: Hudson Music, 2013), 41 and 83, Matt Brennan, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 187. 14 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 86. 15 MacCluskey, ‘Rock in its Elements’, 49. Mario Bauzá as quoted in Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 28. 16 Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 351. Keir Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, in Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 109–142; here, 116–117. 17 Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, 116.

17

anti-mass culture/mass culture binary where the former is seen as alienated and the latter as

authentic.18 Although Keightley does not make this explicit, his study implies that the

rock/pop distinction has been employed to distinguish between rock ’n’ roll of the mid-1950s

as anti-mass culture and rock ’n’ roll of the in-between years, in which the rhythmic

transformation reportedly culminated, as mass culture.19

The Christ-like narrative has been critiqued by more recent scholarship which has sought to

reappraise the late-1950s and early-1960s period from a feminist and anti-racist perspective.

Keightley suggests that the rock ’n’ roll of this era has been disparaged as feminine and Elijah

Wald states that the period was side-lined because most rock critics were men.20 Both

Keightley and Wald also note that female and African-American performers had more

mainstream chart success in the late 1950s and early 1960s than in the preceding mid-1950s

rock ’n’ roll period or the subsequent British Invasion, rock, and soul eras.21 This is backed up

by two empirical studies by the sociologists Timothy Dowd, Kathleen Liddle, and Maureen

Blyler.22 Moreover, recent scholarship on women in rock has argued that the girl groups, who

were typically African-American, were precursors to second-wave feminism and the Civil

Rights Movement.23 Thus, it is possible that the rhythmic transformation from swung-quaver

and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm has been overlooked because it

apparently culminated during the in-between years in which rock ’n’ roll was understood to

have been ‘emasculated’, ‘killed’ and replaced with a pale mass-culture imitation.

Afro-Latin musics are the most commonly posited influence on the rhythmic transformation

by practitioners, critics, and academics. The impact of Afro-Latin (principally Afro-Cuban)

styles on the rhythmic trends seems to have been reported for the first time in the 18 ‘Mass culture’ is a pejorative term denoting the mass-produced culture of an industrialised urban ‘mass society’, in which Romantic and Modernist ideology fears that people have become alienated workers who are divorced from community, tradition, and nature. Mass-culture critiques are often expressed with the language of a Fordist assembly line: for example, the notion of ‘manufactured’ artists in popular music. Derek B. Scott, ‘Other Mainstreams: Light Music and Easy Listening, 1920–70’ in Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (eds.), The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 307–335; here, 308. 19 Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, 116–117. 20 Ibid.. Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 223. 21 Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, 2001; Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 224. 22 Timothy J. Dowd, Kathleen Liddle, and Maureen Blyler, ‘Charting Gender: The Success of Female Acts in the U.S. Mainstream Recording Market’, Transformation in Cultural Industries, 23 (2005), 81–123; here, 84–85. Timothy J. Dowd, and Maureen Blyler, ‘Charting Race: The Success of Black Performers in the Mainstream Recording Market, 1940 to 1990’, Poetics, 30 (2002), 87–110; here, 99. 23 Laurie Stras (ed.), She’s So Fine: Reflections on Whiteness, Femininity, Adolescence and Class in 1960s Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 8. Will Stos, ‘Bouffants, Beehives, and Breaking Gender Norms: Rethinking “Girl Group” Music of the 1950s and 1960s’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 24 (2012), 117–154; here, 126. Mary E. Rohlfing, ‘“Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby”: A Re-Evaluation of Women’s Roles in the Brill Building Era of Early Rock ’n’ Roll’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 13 (1996), 93–114; here, 112. Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994), 14 and 95.

18

aforementioned interviews with Barretto, Gillespie, and Bauzá. Barretto is quoted in the

independent researcher John Storm Roberts’s foundational 1979 text The Latin Tinge as stating

that ‘[t]he whole basis of American rhythm . . . changed [in the 1960s] from the old dotted-

note jazz shuffle rhythm to a straightahead straight-eighth approach, which is Latin.’24 In his

autobiography of the same year Gillespie states that, prior to the 1940s, African-American

music was monorhythmic whereas Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, African-Trinidadian, and

Afro-Haitian music was polyrhythmic.25 Gillespie then states that ‘[m]y conception was, “Why

can’t our music be more polyrhythmic?” In 1941, I wrote, “Night in Tunisia,” where the bass

says, “do-do-do-do-do-do,” and “daanh-da-da-da-da-da” was being played against that. That

was the sense of polyrhythm.’26 Gillespie therefore implies that Afro-Latin musics as well as

African-diasporic styles from the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean influenced his

adoption of polyrhythm citing the 1946 recording of his composition ‘Night in Tunisia’ as an

early example of polyrhythm in African-American music. Gillespie is later quoted in a 1988

article by the journalist Robert Palmer as stating ‘the whole funk feel, in fact, comes out of

Cuban music’.27 Given that funk is associated with polyrhythm, Gillespie implies that Afro-

Cuban music influenced a transition from monorhythm to polyrhythm in African-American

jazz and popular music.28 In the same article, as cited above, Bauzá claims that Cuban

musicians and music influenced a foundational shift in the rhythm of post-war popular music

in the United States: tacitly a transformation from crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver

polyrhythm. Subsequently scholars and journalists have posited Afro-Latin influences on the

rhythmic trends. Alongside African-American and European-American influences, Stewart

suggests the impact of African-Caribbean musics (specifically, Afro-Cuban mambo and

African-Trinidadian calypso) on a swung-to-straight shift via the R&B of musicians from New

Orleans such as Professor Longhair.29 Thus, three Afro-Latin jazz bandleaders as well as

researchers such as Stewart posit Afro-Latin (primarily Afro-Cuban) influences on the

coalescing transitions from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions and from monorhythmic to

polyrhythmic textures in post-war popular music and jazz in the United States.

Clearly Barretto, Gillespie, and Bauzá, have vested interests in positing the impact of Afro-

Latin musics on a fundamental change in the rhythm of US popular music and jazz because

24 Ray Barretto as quoted in John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 160. 25 Gillespie with Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop, 318, 483, and 490. 26 Ibid.. 27 Gillespie in Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 28. 28 For example, Vincent, Funk. 29 Stewart, “‘Funky Drummer”’. The term ‘African-Caribbean’ is generally employed in this project to distinguish African-Trinidadian calypso from Afro-Latin musics but is occasionally used to group together Afro-Cuban and African-Trinidadian musics as in this instance.

19

this casts themselves as modernists within the jazz tradition.30 However, Afro-Latin influences

on the hypothesised rhythmic trends are plausible for three main reasons. First, while US-

American swing featured swung-quaver subdivisions and four-to-the-bar rhythmic patterns in

the 1930s and early 1940s, Afro-Latin musics (such as Afro-Argentine tango, Afro-Brazilian

samba, and particularly Afro-Cuban mambo) characteristically featured straight-quaver

polyrhythm in 4/4.31 Second, the mass migration of Latin Americans to the twin centres of the

music industry in the United States in the 20th century (predominantly Puerto Ricans to New

York and Mexicans to Los Angeles) led to Afro-Latin musics influencing mainstream US

popular music.32 For example, in New York, three Latinx-American mambo bandleaders held

residencies at the New York Palladium – namely, the Afro-Cuban Frank ‘Machito’ Grillo and

the light-skinned Puerto-Rican Americans Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez – a few blocks

away from where the ‘Brill Building’ songwriters wrote Latin-influenced rock ’n’ roll.33 Third,

Afro-Latin styles were omnipresent in the United States at the time due to a succession of

mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Afro-Latin rhythm: Afro-Argentine tango in the 1910s and 1920s,

Afro-Cuban ‘rhumba’ in the 1930s (e.g. the oft-recorded song ‘The Peanut Vendor’ and the

conga line ‘craze’ of 1937),34 Afro-Brazilian samba in the 1940s (e.g. Carmen Miranda), Afro-

Cuban mambo and chachachá (e.g. Pérez Prado) in the 1950s, and Brazilian bossa nova (e.g.

João Gilberto) in the early 1960s.35 Indeed, this succession of ‘crazes’ equates to an unbroken

presence of Afro-Latin musics, and particularly Afro-Cuban styles, in the US during the early

part of the 20th century. Relatedly, in the 1950s and early 1960s live performers had to satisfy

dancing audiences more than they did in the late 1960s when rock was often made for sit-

down listening: for example, the Beatles’s 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Thus, in the 1950s and early 1960s live musicians had to be able to play all popular dance

styles, including the Afro-Cuban mambo and chachachá which were hugely popular in the

30 Jairo Moreno discusses how Gillespie constructs drawing on the past as modernist in: Jairo Moreno, ‘Bauza –Gillespie–Latin/Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2004), 81–99; here, 93. 31 Howard Spring, ‘Swing’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 8 January 2020). Gerard Béhague and Robin Moore, ‘Cuba, Republic of’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 22 October 2019). Gerard Béhague, ‘Brazil’, Grove Music Online (accessed 22 October 2019). Gerard Béhague, ‘Tango’, Grove Music Online (accessed 15 March 2021). For example, Barry Kernfeld writes that ‘In striking contrast to most genres of jazz, in which triple subdivisions of the beat are prevalent, Latin jazz utilizes duple subdivisions. Barry Kernfeld, ‘Latin Jazz’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 8 January 2020). Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 79. 32 Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!: Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010). Irving Kolodin et al., ‘New York’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 20 August 2019). Ripani, The New Blue Music, 63. 33 Ken Emerson, Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 123. 34 ‘Rhumba’ is used in the US to refer to the Afro-Cuban styles son and bolero and is not to be confused with ‘rumba’, a percussion style of the secretive Afro-Cuban syncretic religion santería. 35 Roberts, The Latin Tinge. Shane Vogel, Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 4 and 13.

20

1950s: for example, the late-1950s rock ’n’ roll singer Conway Twitty said that he was

requested chachachás in live performances.36 Consequently, Afro-Latin influences on a

rhythmic transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver

polyrhythm are plausible.

Citing Bauzá’s claim, Sublette suggests several explanations for an amnesia of Afro-Cuban

influences on a rhythmic transformation in US popular music, the most persuasive of which is

the Black/White racial binary.37 This binary racial conception in the United States goes back to

the ‘one-drop rule’: that is the 20th-century notion that ‘one drop’ of African ‘blood’ makes a

person Black.38 The dichotomy is influenced by the fact that African Americans and European

Americans were the two largest racial groups in the US until the 21st century and there was not

a substantial Latinx-American population in the United States until the 20th century.39

Although Native Americans precede African Americans, Blackness features in this binary

because of the centrality of slavery to the economic wealth of the United States.40 Latinx-

studies scholars suggest that the racial dichotomy is the main reason for the marginalisation of

Latinx-American contributions to US culture.41 For example, Latinx participants are scarcely

mentioned in Ken Burns’s fourteen-hour docuseries on the Second World War nor in his

nineteen-hour docuseries on jazz.42 The American studies scholar Reebee Garofalo states that

this binary racial conception is seen in the conventional wisdom that rock ’n’ roll is product of

rhythm and blues and country & western (hereafter R&B and C&W) and argues that this

marginalises Afro-Latin influences on rock ’n’ roll.43

The absence of an acknowledgement of Afro-Latin musics as precursors in Ellis’s and

MacCluskey’s accounts of these rhythmic developments is perhaps an example of the

Black/White racial binary. Ellis and MacCluskey both posit that a trend towards polyrhythm

was facilitated by a shift to straight-quaver subdivisions. This arguably implies that they

associate polyrhythm with Afro-Latin musics, which are characteristically in 4/4 with straight

36 Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 211–212. 37 Sublette, Cuba and its Music, vii. 38 Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!, 5. For a discussion of the Black/White binary see: Katherine T. Gines, ‘Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Race Beyond the Black/White Binary’, Critical Philosophy of Race, 1 (2013), 28–37. 39 Paul C. Taylor, Race: A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 143. 40 Ibid.. 41 Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!, 7. 42 Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (Producers), The War [television documentary miniseries] (Arlington: PBS, 2007). Ken Burns (Producer), Jazz [television documentary miniseries] (Arlington: PBS, 2000). 43 Reebee Garofalo. ‘Off the Charts: Outrage and Exclusion in the Eruption of Rock and Roll’ in Rubin R, Melnick,. American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 111–126; here, 118–119.

21

quavers, rather than West-African drumming, which is typically in 12/8.44 Thus, Ellis and

MacCluskey suggest that Afro-Latin styles are precursors to the trend towards straight-quaver

polyrhythm but do not mention these styles. Moreover, the racial dichotomy is evident in their

articles. MacCluskey states that ‘[a]lthough there are other roots, rock basically grew out of

rhythm and blues and country music’ and similarly, Ellis only mentions Black-associated styles

(jazz, bebop, and R&B) and White-associated rock.45 Thus, Sublette’s suggestion that the

Black/White racial binary contributed to an amnesia of Afro-Latin influences on a rhythmic

transformation in post-war US popular music seems probable.

However, terms like ‘forgotten’ and ‘amnesia’ that are used by Sublette imply that no one is to

blame for the overlooking of the impact of Afro-Latin musics on rhythmic trends in US

popular music. However, it seems almost certain that Afro-Latin influences would not have

been ‘forgotten’ if most music critics and historians had been Latinx Americans. Thus, the

predominantly White male authors of rock historiography are responsible for this ‘amnesia’.

The term ‘erasure’ therefore seems more suitable. Anton Allahar defines erasure as ‘the act of

neglecting, looking past, minimizing, ignoring or rendering invisible an other’.46 Erasure is

construed in this project as a result of systemic prejudice rather than as a result of individual

prejudice. The intention is not to imply that every commentator, Black or White, who has

overlooked an Afro-Latin impact on rhythmic trends in US popular music is a bigot but rather

that we all hold subconscious biases that can lead to a neglect of the cultural contributions of

marginal groups. The term ‘erasure’ is therefore employed henceforth.

Commentators typically interpret the rhythmic transitions as representing countercultural

revolution, in reference to a swung-to-straight shift in White-associated rock, and the Civil

Rights Movement, in relation to a move from monorhythm to polyrhythm in African-

American styles from Cubop to funk. For example, although Ellis does not mention youth

revolt explicitly, there are several reasons to infer from his comments that he sees the shift to

straight-quaver subdivisions as representing a countercultural revolution. First, Ellis referred

to these rhythmic developments as a ‘rhythmic revolution’. Second, he interprets the transition

from triple-quaver rhythmic patterns (and implicitly monorhythm) to duple-quaver rhythmic

patterns and polyrhythm as a move from the ‘old-fashioned’ to, implicitly, the new and

youthful. Third, rock was associated with countercultural revolution. This is illustrated in the

44 Kofi Agawu, Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 165. 45 MacCluskey, ‘Rock in its Elements’, 49. 46 Anton Allahar, ‘Identity and Erasure: Finding the Elusive Caribbean’, Revista europea de estudios latinoamericanos y del Caribe/European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 79 (2005), 125–134; here, 125.

22

lyrics of rock songs from the late 1960s – for example, the Beatles’s ‘Revolution’ (1968) and

Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Something in the Air’ (1969) – as well as in the titles of two rock

histories published in 1969.47 Moreover, Ellis was writing in 1969: the year after what is often

called ‘the year of revolution’. The most prominent example of ‘revolution’ in 1968 in the

West – the May ’68 student protest in Paris – was associated with the youth counterculture.

Countercultural revolution remained in the zeitgeist in 1969 as evidenced by journalistic

articles discussing revolution that were published in the United States in this year.48 Thus, in

1969 employing the word ‘revolution’ in relation to youth culture implied countercultural

revolution. Ellis therefore implicitly interprets a swung-to-straight shift as representing a

countercultural revolution.

Conversely, as Jairo Moreno highlights, Gillespie’s adoption of polyrhythm was motivated by

a feeling of cultural loss:49

If you go to Brazil, to [B]ahia where there is a large black population, you find a lot of African in their music; you go to Cuba, you find they retained their heritage; in the West Indies, you find a lot […] when they took our drums away, our music [African-American music] developed along a monorhythmic line. It wasn’t polyrhythmic like African music.50

Here Gillespie implies that European music is monorhythmic and that African music is

polyrhythmic. Elsewhere, he states that African-American music lost its polyrhythm after the

European-American authorities banned drums in the US from the mid-1700s onwards. Thus,

Gillespie sees the transition from monorhythm to polyrhythm that is implied in his accounts

as representing a re-Africanisation of African-American music.

‘Nobody Writes About This’

Despite this body of literature, the hypothesised rhythmic transitions, influences on them, and

interpretations of them continue to be overlooked. In his 2009 monograph The Foundations of

Rock – a corpus analysis of six parameters including rhythm in ‘well over sixty-five hundred

[popular] songs’ from 1955 and 1969 – Walter Everett does not state whether or not a trend

47 Arnold Shaw, The Rock Revolution (London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1969). Jonathan Eisen, The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1969). 48 Richard H. Sangar [interviewee], ‘Is Insurrection Brewing in U.S.? An Expert’s Appraisal’, U.S. News & World Report (25 December 1967), 32–37. Louis Kampf, ‘Riots: Schools for Revolution? Comparative Study of the French Revolution of 1848 and the Current Negro Revolutions’, The Nation (14 August 1967), 117–118. Andrew Kopkind, ‘Are We in the Middle of a Revolution?’, New York Times Magazine (10 November 1968), 54. Edward Kern, ‘Can It Happen Here?’, Life, (17 October 1969), 67. 49 Moreno, ‘Bauza-Gillespie-Latin/Jazz’, 93. 50 Gillespie with Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop, 290.

23

towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures occurred.51 None of the

seven corpus analyses of rhythm interrogate a trend towards polyrhythm, including Randall

Pembrook’s study which aims to test MacCluskey claims but neglects his identification of the

adoption of ‘polyrhythms’ in soul and hard rock.52 Similarly, scholars have not questioned a

trend towards the RSQB paradigm. Thus, no ‘tipping-point’ year has been suggested in

relation to the hypothesised trends towards straight-quaver polyrhythm, polyrhythm, and the

RSQB paradigm, although it is typically implied that these trends culminate in rock and funk

of the mid-to-late 1960s.53

No empirical evidence has been presented to support the assertions that Afro-Latin musics

were the predominant influence on the overarching rhythmic transformation nor that this

impact has been overlooked. Indeed, Bauzá’s claim that an Afro-Cuban influence on this

rhythmic transformation has been written out of popular-music and jazz history has not been

discussed by scholars. Recent music analysis has even minimised the significance of this

argument. Specifically, Allan Moore states that a swung-to-straight shift occurred in mid-

century US popular music and notes Stewart’s suggestion that African-Caribbean styles

influenced it. However, Moore states that ‘[w]hile these issues have some importance, in that a

norm can always carry the sense of its originary location, straight rhythms have subsequently

become so normative as, now, to seem simply “normal” in almost all contexts.’54 Indeed,

straight subdivisions do seem normal nowadays but that does not mean that they did not

‘sound Latin’ at the time (see Chapter 5). Both Stewart and Moore overlook the significance

of African-Caribbean influences on a fundamental shift in the rhythm of US popular music

for Spanish- and English-speaking Caribbean Americans who are routinely erased in accounts

of US cultural history.

Additionally, scholars have not considered the effect that the marginalisation of the in-

between years, in which the rhythmic change reportedly occurred, might have had on an

erasure of Afro-Latin influences on the hypothesised rhythmic transformation. Indeed, the

style descriptor ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ has scarcely been discussed by scholars. The style is

overlooked by Latinx studies scholars.55 The musicologist Albin Zak discusses the related term

51 Walter Everett, The Foundations of Rock: From ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ to ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), vi. 52 Pembrook, ‘A Stylistic Analysis of Selected Pop Songs, 1965–1984’. 53 For example, Vincent, Funk. 54 Moore, Song Means, 52–53. 55 Exceptions include: Paul Austerlitz, ‘The Afro-Cuban Impact on Music in the United States: Mario Bauzá And Machito’, in Paul Austerlitz and Jere Laukkanen (eds.), Machito and His Afro-Cubans: Selected Transcriptions (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2016), xi–l; here, xlviii. Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va, 44.

24

‘rock-a-ballad’ and mentions rock-a-cha-cha in passing.56 However, despite citing Stewart’s

article, which suggests an African-Caribbean influence on a shift from swung- to straight-

quaver subdivisions, Zak overlooks rock-a-cha-cha as a possible influence on this rhythmic

transition.

Finally, excepting Jairo Moreno’s analysis of the Afro-modernist ideology behind Gillespie’s

adoption of Afro-Latin polyrhythm, the ideological assumptions behind the interpretations of

the rhythmic transitions as representing progressive politics have not been critiqued.57

Moreover, the meanings that an Afro-Latin influence on a rhythmic transformation in US

popular music might have in relation to Latinx Americans are yet to be assessed.

Thus, the following questions remain unanswered and form the four main research questions

of this study:

1. Did a rhythmic transformation from swung-quaver (and crotchet) monorhythm to

straight-quaver polyrhythm occur, culminating in the rock ’n’ roll of the historically

marginalised late-1950s and early-1960s period?

2. Do Afro-Latin musics seem to have been the predominant influences on the adoption

of straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures?

3. Did contemporaneous and subsequent critics suggest that Afro-Latin musics

influenced examples of these rhythmic elements and if so why was this erased?

4. What can the rhythmic trends towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and

polyrhythmic textures be seen to represent?

This research is needed because if Afro-Latin musics represent the predominant influence on

a fundamental change in the rhythm of US popular music which has been erased then this

conclusion would demand a significant revision of popular music historiography, which

scarcely mentions Afro-Latin influences. This research is also timely since the Latinx

American community has grown from 3.5% of the US population in 196058 to approximately

56 Albin J. Zak III, I Don't Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 195–196. 57 Moreno, ‘Bauza –Gillespie–Latin/Jazz’. 58 Antonio Flores, ‘2015, Hispanic Population in the United States Statistical Portrait: Statistical portrait of Hispanics in the United States’, Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2017/09/18/2015-statistical-information-on-hispanics-in-united-states/ (accessed 24 October 2019).

25

18% by 2019.59 It would therefore be problematic for musicology to continue to overlook

possible Latinx-American cultural contributions to US popular music history.

Two Approaches

In order to answer these questions, the project presents a corpus analysis and a reception

study. The corpus analysis examines the rhythm of 431 year-end hits on Billboard’s

mainstream, R&B, and C&W singles charts from 1950 to 1965. The objective is to establish

whether a rhythmic transformation occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s and, if so,

whether Afro-Latin musics were the predominant influences on it.60 The critical reception of

the songs in the sample that feature the RSQB paradigm and straight-quaver polyrhythm is

compared in the contemporaneous trade press (specifically Billboard and Cash Box) and

thirteen early rock histories. The aim here is to ascertain whether Afro-Latin influences on a

rhythmic transformation were identified at the time and, if so, why they have been erased. The

socio-political interpretations of the hypothesised rhythmic trends – in accounts by musicians,

journalists, and scholars – are also interrogated. In the reception study, critical discourse

analysis is employed in order to reveal the veiled mass-culture critiques associated with the

rhythmic shifts and how these relate to gender and age, drawing on the work of Keir

Keightley, as well as race, drawing on Ronald Radano’s theoretical lens ‘hot rhythm’.61 The

present project therefore contributes to scholarship on music analysis, popular music studies,

Latinx studies, critical race theory, and gender studies.

Although the Afro-Latin-jazz bandleaders posit that the rhythmic transitions occurred in jazz

as well as in popular music, rock ’n’ roll is the focus of this thesis. This reason behind this

decision is that – although jazz featured straight-quaver polyrhythm from the late 1940s

onwards in styles such as Cubop, hard bop, and jazz bossa nova – commentators such as Ellis,

MacCluskey, Bauzá, and Gillespie suggest that the rhythmic shifts culminated in rock ’n’ roll,

59 Luis Noe-Bustamante, Mark Hugo Lopez and Jens Manuel Krogstad, ‘U.S. Hispanic Population Surpassed 60 Million in 2019, But Growth Has Slowed’, Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/07/u-s-hispanic-population-surpassed-60-million-in-2019-but-growth-has-slowed/ (accessed 15 March 2021). 60 Although both African-Trinidadian calypso and Afro-Dominican merengue often feature straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures and were popular in the US during the 1950s, neither are part of the focus of this study. Although Gillespie and Stewart suggest a calypso influence on the rhythmic transitions, compared to Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian styles, commentators rarely posit the impact of calypso and merengue on the rhythmic transformation. Note that calypso is not an Afro-Latin style because Trinidad is English-speaking rather than Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking. 61 Keir Keightley, ‘Music for Middlebrows: Defining the Easy Listening Era, 1946-1966’, American Music, 26 (2008), 309–335. Ronald Radano, ‘Hot Fantasies: American Modernism and the Idea of Black Rhythm’ in Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Music and the Racial Imagination (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), 459–480.

26

rock, and soul rather than in forms of jazz. Indeed, straight-quaver subdivisions and

polyrhythmic textures do not seem to have become a norm in jazz until fusion in the late

1960s and 1970s, which was influenced by rock and funk.62 It should be noted that jazz

historians acknowledge the impact of Afro-Latin musics on jazz more often than popular-

music historians do on rock ’n’ roll. However, as the above quotation of Ellis illustrates, jazz

commentators have still overlooked a possible Afro-Latin influence on the overarching

rhythmic transformation, as asserted by Bauzá.

Two areas that are beyond the scope of this thesis are subsequent rhythmic trends in US

popular music and the Latinx-American reception of the Afro-Latin influences on the

hypothesised rhythmic transformation of US popular music.63 Scholars such as Stewart posit

that a rhythmic transition occurred from quavers to semiquavers as the ‘density referent’ –

that is, the densest layer of rhythmic (sub)division that is consistently employed in a song64 –

of African-American popular music between the 1960s and 1970s.65 Richard Ripani states that

this rhythmic change was facilitated by a slowing down of tempo.66 These trends implicitly

coalesced with a trend towards polyrhythm with semiquavers as the density referent given that

Stewart and Ripani are writing about funk and disco. Although these trends are plausible, no

empirical evidence has been provided to support these claims. Thus, in order to interrogate

whether or not these rhythmic trends occurred one would have to sample popular hits

through to the mainstream popularity of disco in the late 1970s. This would add another 200

to 300 songs to the sample rendering it unmanageably large. Similarly, in order to investigate

the Latinx-American reception of the Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic transformation

one would have to analyse the reception of American-Latin styles in the contemporaneous

Spanish-language press (for example, La Prensa) or conduct an ethnography of Latinx

Americans. On top of the corpus analysis and critical reception of the trade press and early

rock histories, this would lead to an unmanageable amount of data collection and analysis.

There is therefore room for further research in these two areas.

62 Mark Gilbert, ‘Jazz-Rock (Jazz)’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 18 October 2019). Mark Tucker and Travis A. Jackson, ‘Jazz’ Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 31 March 2020). 63 The aforementioned quotations of Barretto and Bauzá indicate that at least some Latinx Americans perceive an Afro-Latin influence on rhythmic trends in US-American music. 64 J.H. Kwabena Nketia, The Music of Africa (London: Gollancz, 1975). Logan, ‘The Ostinato Idea in Black Improvised Music’, 196 and 200. Vincent, Funk, 60–62. Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”. Ripani, The New Blue Music, 73 and 143. Munro, Different Drummers, 209. 65 Ramal, The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’, 150. Sykes, ‘A Conceptual Model for Analyzing Rhythmic Structure in African-American Popular Music’, 164. Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”’. Ripani, The New Blue Music, 106 and 151. Guilherme Schmidt Câmara and Anne Danielsen, ‘Groove’, in Alexander Rehding and Steven Rings (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 271–294; here, 277. 66 Ripani, The New Blue Music, 106 and 151.

27

This project synthesises the methodological approaches of three recent monographs into an

original approach. Following David Brackett’s 2016 history of genre in 20th-century US

popular music Categorizing Sound, Chapters 4 and 5 of this project conduct a historically

informed study of genre over time drawing on both music analysis and reception theory.67

Specifically, the rhythm and reception of rock ’n’ roll is analysed between the supposed mid-

1950s ‘golden age’ and the historically marginalised period of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Drawing on Matt Brennan’s 2017 revisionist history of the construction of jazz and rock as

distinct genres by the jazz press and the rock press When Genres Collide, Chapters 4 and 5 of

this thesis also compare the reception of rock ’n’ roll in two areas of the music press (the trade

press and the rock press) in order to interrogate the exclusionary construction of genre by

critics.68 Finally, following Anne Danielsen’s 2006 analysis of the rhythm and reception of

funk Presence and Pleasure, this research employs corpus analysis and a comparative reception

study alongside cultural theory, including Ronald Radano’s ‘hot rhythm’.69 While Danielsen

compares the reception of funk among African Americans and White Northern Europeans,

Chapter 6 of this thesis contrasts the interpretation of the hypothesised rhythmic trends in

relation to Black-associated styles from Cubop to funk and White-associated rock. More

broadly, in considering the politics of rhythm, this thesis contributes to a body of analytical

scholarship on rhythm that draws on Radano’s analysis of the racialised discourse on rhythm.70

Brackett and Brennan do not employ corpus analysis and it is unclear what the sample is for

Danielsen’s musical analysis and reception study. Thus, the approach of this project builds on

the methodologies employed in Brackett, Brennan, and Danielsen’s books, by employing a

formalised corpus analysis alongside a reception study drawing on cultural theory.

Chapter Outline The main body of the thesis comprises six chapters. These can be split into three groups of

two: Chapters 1 and 2 on contexts and approaches; Chapters 3 and 4 on musical analysis; and

5 and 6 on the relationship between popular-music ideology, mass culture, and identity

67 Brackett, Categorizing Sound. 68 Matt Brennan, When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle Between Jazz and Rock (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017). 69 Anne Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006). 70 For example, Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure. Matthew W. Butterfield, ‘Race and Rhythm: The Social Component of the Swing Groove,’ Jazz Perspectives, 4 (2010), 301–335. Robert Fink, ‘Goal-Directed Soul? Analyzing Rhythmic Teleology in African American Popular Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 64 (2011), 179–238.

28

politics. However, Chapters 4 and 5 are also connected since collectively they represent a

comparative critical reception study.

In Chapter 1, two research contexts on the hypothesised rhythmic transitions are reviewed:

corpus analyses and literature positing influences on and interpretations of the rhythmic

trends. In Chapter 2, two methodological responses to the absences in these research contexts

are discussed: corpus analysis and a comparative critical reception study. Principally, Chapter 2

outlines the methods of categorising rhythmic subdivisions and rhythmic texture that are

employed in the corpus analysis and therefore determine the sample for the critical reception

history. The chapter also contributes an original model for the analysis of the rhythmic texture

of popular music which could be applied and adapted to other styles: for example, the

polyrhythmic styles funk, disco and electronic dance music.

In Chapter 3, the longitudinal findings of the corpus are presented and any rhythmic trends

and ‘tipping-point’ years are identified. In Chapter 4, the reported influences on the adoption

of straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures are assessed. However, Chapters 4

and 5 also form a pair by comparing the reception of rock ’n’ roll in the trade press (Chapter

4) and the thirteen early rock histories (Chapter 5). These two chapters also assess the rhythm

and reception of two types of rock ’n’ roll and two periods of rock ’n’ roll through two case

studies both of which were released in 1957: the reiterated straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll of the

mid-1950s ‘golden age’ through Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’ and the straight-quaver polyrhythmic

rock ’n’ roll of the historically marginalised late 1950s and early 1960s through Paul Anka’s

‘Diana’.

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on ideology in popular music discourse and how this relates to mass-

culture critiques and the politics of gender, age, race, and ethnicity. In Chapter 5, this informs

the discussion of the reception of the two types and periods of rock ’n’ roll in the rock press.

In Chapter 6 this theory is employed to interrogate the two most commonly reported socio-

political interpretations of the adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic

textures and to question what meanings Afro-Latin influences on the hypothesised rhythmic

trends might have. In order to answer this question two musical styles that are key examples in

the uptake of these rhythmic elements are interpreted: ‘rhumba blues’ and ‘rock-a-cha-cha’.

Adopting a term coined by John Storm Roberts, these styles are referred to as ‘American-

29

Latin’ in this project: denoting hybrids of US-American and Latin-American styles that were

not created by Latinx Americans.71

A Note on Terminology Popular music is usually defined, in contradistinction to art musics and folk musics, by its

degree of popularity (e.g. high sales), mass distribution (e.g. recordings and radio), and

associated social audience (i.e. music for a non-elite, typically not musically educated, mass

audience).72 In practice, popular music is defined in this project as chart hits. This largely

excludes jazz although the sample includes some big-band hits: for example, Bobby Darin’s

1959 version of ‘Mack the Knife’. Rock ’n’ roll is defined here as it was at the time, that is, as a

category of popular music from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s that had origins in African-

American R&B but was associated with a young, European-American audience.73 Rock is then

defined as a term coined in around 1967 to denote youth-orientated popular music made from

1965 onwards, particularly that made by White male guitar-based bands such as the Beatles.

While ‘Latin American’ refers to someone or something from Latin America (that is, the

Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas), ‘Latinx American’ denotes

someone or something from the United States of America that has Latin-American heritage.74

In this project the expression ‘Latinx American’ is distinguished from ‘European American’

and African American. This is done in order to acknowledge the fact Latinx Americans can be

light- or dark-skinned (which would be conceived as White or Black in their country of

heritage). The term Afro-Latinx is also occasionally used to signify dark-skinned Latinx

Americans.

The adjective ‘Latin’ is commonly employed in popular music and jazz discourse to describe

any element of music or dance that is deemed to be of Latin-American origin.75 The descriptor

‘Latin’ is therefore also used to describe songs performed by non-Latinx artists that feature

Latin-associated elements: for example, Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Mambo Italiano’ (1954).76

71 Roberts, The Latin Tinge, xi. 72 Charles Hamm, Robert Walser, Jacqueline Warwick and Charles Hiroshi Garrett ‘Popular Music’ and Richard Middleton, ‘I. Popular music in the West’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 18 August 2019). 73 Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 74 Catalina (Kathleen) M. De Onís, ‘What’s in an “x”?: An Exchange about the Politics of “Latinx”’, Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, 1 (2017), 78–91. 75 Anonymous, ‘Latin, adj. and n.’, The Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com (accessed 1 April 2020). 76 Ibid..

30

However, the expression ‘Latin music’ is typically reserved for music in a Latin style that is

performed by people of Latin-American origin and encompasses everything from Afro-Cuban

jazz produced by dark-skinned Cubans like Machito and his Afro-Cubans to mainstream

samba recordings made by the light-skinned Brazilian Carmen Miranda.

The expression ‘Afro-Latin musics’ is employed throughout this project for three reasons.

First, the term is used in order to group together distinct national styles that nonetheless share

significant rhythmic characteristics – namely, a greater use of straight-quaver subdivisions and

polyrhythmic textures than was common in the US prior to the 1950s. Indeed, as the

ethnomusicologist Gerard Béhague has argued, the term ‘Latin America’ is politically

problematic; however, he noted that drawing boundaries between the musical traditions

encompassed by the term is equally problematic.77 The Afro-Cuban styles ‘rhumba’, mambo,

and chachachá were the most prevalent Afro-Latin styles in the US at the time.78 However,

Afro-Argentine tango and the Afro-Brazilian styles samba, baião, and bossa nova were also

popular. Second, Puerto-Rican Americans and Mexican Americans often performed and

identified with Afro-Cuban styles: for example, Tito Puente and Trio Los Panchos

respectively. Thus, referring to mambo and bolero as Afro-Cuban would erase the Puerto-

Rican and Mexican-American contributions to the styles. Third, musicians and the

contemporaneous reception often employ the term ‘Latin’ rather than referring to national

styles specifically, and thus use of the term Latin is unavoidable as seen in the earlier quotation

of Ray Barretto.

The prefix ‘Afro-’ is employed in order to acknowledge the fact that Latin musics such as

Argentine tango, Cuban mambo and Brazilian samba were largely developed by African

descendants in these countries.79 It is worth noting that Afro-Latinx Americans are

marginalised within both the Black (tacitly non-Latinx) and Latinx (tacitly non-Black) US

ethnic categories.80 However, Afro-Latin musics were widely popular in the United States and

are not as invisible as Afro-Latinx Americans who made up around a quarter of the 3.5% of

the population that were Latinx-American at the time.81 Indeed, despite the predominance of

Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian styles in the US, the Latinx-American community was 77 Gerard Béhague, ‘Bridging South America and the United States in Black Music Research’, Black Music Research Journal, 22 (2002): 1–12. 78 Roberts, The Latin Tinge. 79 The one exception is bossa nova, which was developed by light-skinned Brazilians. 80 Miriam Jime nez Roma n and Juan Flores, The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). 81 Antonio Flores, ‘2015, Hispanic Population in the United States Statistical Portrait: Statistical portrait of Hispanics in the United States’, Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2017/09/18/2015-statistical-information-on-hispanics-in-united-states/ (accessed 24 October 2019).

31

predominantly made up of light-skinned people. Both groups identified with and performed

Afro-Cuban music and to a lesser extent Afro-Argentine tango.82 However, there were few

Brazilians in the US and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans do not appear to have identified with

Afro-Brazilian music.83 The term ‘Afro-Latin’ is therefore employed in this thesis in order to

encompass Afro-Argentine and Afro-Cuban styles – which were patronised and performed by

Puerto-Rican American and Mexican Americans – as well as Afro-Brazilian styles. However,

the intention is not to homogenise the different cultures referenced in these terms and the

most specific term is employed wherever possible. Moreover, when employing an expression

such as ‘the Afro-Latin influence on US popular music’, the intention it not to imply that

Afro-Latin musics such as mambo were not also a type of US popular music. Instead, the aim

is to suggest that this represents an influence from the margins of US popular music to the

mainstream of US popular music, akin to the similar expression ‘the African-American

influence on US popular music’.

This thesis therefore responds to Bauzá’s claim by conducting a corpus analysis and reception

study of rock ’n’ roll in order to establish whether Latinx-American music and musicians

influenced a transformation from triple-quaver or crotchet monorhythm to duple-quaver

polyrhythm in post-war US popular music that has been erased from the history of popular

music, why this might have been erased, and what this means in relation to Latinx Americans.

In the following chapter, the two main research contexts for this thesis are reviewed.

82 Flores, Salsa Rising, 6 and 9. Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!, 40. 83 Ibid..

Chapter 1 Two Research Contexts on Rhythmic Trends in Post-War US

Popular Music

This chapter provides a review of the scholarly and journalistic literature surrounding the four

main research questions of this thesis, which correspond to the four core chapters (Chapters 3

to 6). The first section reviews the findings and absences of corpus analyses of rhythm in

post-war popular music in the US. The second section assesses the plausibility of reported

influences on the hypothesised rhythmic transitions. The third section evaluates explanations

for an erasure of Afro-Latin influences on a rhythmic transformation of US popular music.

Finally, the fourth section critiques the most common socio-political interpretations of the

rhythmic trends.

These four areas of inquiry are discussed in two types of literature: corpus analyses of rhythm

and studies suggesting influences on and interpretations of the hypothesised rhythmic trends,

which are referred to as the interpretative literature here. These two areas of literature are for

the most part mutually exclusive. Typically work from one is not cited in the other: the corpus

analyses tend not to discuss the influences on and interpretations of the trends while the

interpretative literature does not provide empirical evidence to back up its claims. 1 The first

section of this chapter reviews corpus analyses of rhythm while the second, third, and fourth

sections appraise the interpretative literature. There is more scholarship on a shift from

swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions than there is on a move from monorhythm to

polyrhythm. Thus, in practice, this chapter focuses on the former trend.

Corpus Analyses of Rhythm in Post-War US Popular Music

Seven corpus analyses published between the late-1980s and the mid-2000s analyse rhythmic

subdivisions in post-war US popular music: an article by Randall Pembrook; five doctoral

theses, respectively by Paul Friedlander, Charles Sykes, George Schaefer, Jon Fitzgerald, and

Garry Tamlyn; and a monograph based on the doctoral thesis of Richard Ripani.2 While all of

1 Examples of corpus analyses that do discuss influences are Richard J. Ripani’s The New Blue Music and Benadon and Gioia’s ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie’. Ripani is discussed in both sections while Benadon and Gioia’s article is reviewed in the section on influences because its emphasis is on one possible influence rather than on trends over time. Richard J. Ripani, The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 2006). Fernando Benadon and Ted Gioia, ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie: A Rhythmic Analysis of a Classic Groove’, Popular Music, 28 (2009), 19–32. 2 Randall G. Pembrook, ‘A Stylistic Analysis of Selected Pop Songs, 1965–1984’, College Music Symposium, 27 (1987), 117–140. Paul D. Friedlander, ‘A Characteristics Profile of Eight “Classic Rock and Roll” Artists, 1954–1959: As Measured by the “Rock Window’”, PhD diss., University of Oregan, 1987. Charles E. Sykes, ‘A

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the seven studies discuss a shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions, only Ripani

discusses a trend towards polyrhythm. None explicitly discusses reiterated straight-quaver

subdivisions. The analysis of rhythmic trends towards straight-quaver subdivisions and

polyrhythmic textures is not the central objective of these studies. However, it is these

findings that are reviewed below since they are of the most relevance to this project.

Additionally, these scholars rarely cite each other’s work.3 The below summary is therefore the

first time that the findings of the empirical scholarship on the shift from swung- to straight-

quaver subdivisions has been collated.

Five of the seven studies sample Billboard’s mainstream or R&B singles chart while Friedlander

and Tamlyn instead sample ten canonical rock ’n’ roll artists.4 The sample sizes of the above

studies range from very small (tens of songs), to medium (hundreds of songs), to

unmanageably large (thousands of songs) and the largest sample is a hundred times the size of

the smallest: Tamlyn samples around 2,500 songs while Pembrook presents a preliminary

analysis of 24 songs.5 Taken together the date ranges sampled span from 1949 to 1999.

Collectively the corpus analyses suggest that a transition from triple- to duple-quaver rhythmic

patterns occurred between the 1950s and the 1960s. Friedlander and Tamlyn find that most

recordings by rock ’n’ roll artists of the ‘golden age’ feature swung-quaver subdivisions in the

1950s while Pembrook, Schaefer, and Fitzgerald discover that the majority of Billboard hits

exhibit straight-quaver subdivisions in the 1960s.6 Indeed, Sykes and Ripani find that a shift in

subdivisions occurred in Billboard R&B hits.7

Conceptual Model for Analyzing Rhythmic Structure in African-American Popular Music’, PhD diss., Indiana University, 1992. George W. Schaefer, ‘Drumset Performance Practices on Pop and Rhythm and Blues Hit Recordings, 1960–1969’, PhD diss., Arizona State University, 1994. Jon Fitzgerald, ‘Popular Songwriting 1963–1966: Stylistic Comparisons and Trends within the U.S. Top Forty’, PhD diss., Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW (1996). Garry N. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat: Origins and Development of Snare Backbeat and other Accompanimental Rhythms in Rock ’n’ Roll’, PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1998. Ripani, The New Blue Music. 3 Exceptions include Schaefer (who cites Friedlander’s thesis), Fitzgerald (who cite Sykes’s thesis and a 1995 conference paper by Tamlyn), and Tamlyn (who cite Sykes’s thesis). 4 Both Friedlander and Tamlyn sample the following seven rock ’n’ roll performers: Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. Friedlander then also samples the Everly Brothers while Tamlyn samples Carl Perkins and the Platters. 5 Tamlyn refers to his sample size as ‘not that practical’ and overly ‘time consuming’. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 361. 6 Friedlander, ‘A Characteristics Profile of Eight “Classic Rock and Roll” Artists, 1954–1959’, 62. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 65, 68, and 351. Pembrook ‘A Stylistic Analysis of Selected Pop Songs, 1965–1984’’ 139 and ‘Exploring the Musical Side of Pop’, 32. Schaefer, ‘Drumset Performance Practices on Pop and Rhythm and Blues Hit Recordings, 1960–1969’, 59. Fitzgerald, ‘Popular Songwriting 1963–1966’, 264. Jon Fitzgerald, ‘Creating Those Good Vibrations: An Analysis of Brian Wilson's US Top 40 Hits 1963–66’, Popular Music and Society, 32 (2009), 3–24; here, 13. 7 Sykes, ‘A Conceptual Model for Analyzing Rhythmic Structure in African-American Popular Music’, 163. Ripani, The New Blue Music, 87.

34

Schaefer’s thesis is the only study that employs statistics. In his analysis of the drum-kit parts

in 145 Billboard year-end top ten mainstream and R&B singles between 1960 and 1969,

Schaefer finds that in the second half of the 1960s triple-quaver subdivisions appear less often

and duple-quaver subdivisions appear more often than they did in the first half of the decade.

His results are statistically significant (p = .000) which means that the probability that this

result can be explained by pure chance is only one in 1,000. In inferential statistics, a

statistically significant result means that it can be inferred that it is likely that the same trend

would be found with a larger or different sample. Thus, Schaefer’s result would probably be

found with another sample of US hits. Taken together, the seven corpus studies suggest that a

shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions occurred between the 1950s and the 1960s.

The occurrence of a rhythmic transition from triple- to duple-quaver rhythmic patterns is

therefore tested as a hypothesis in Chapter 3.

Tamlyn demonstrates that by 1960 the majority of his sample of rock ’n’ roll recordings

feature duple-quaver subdivisions, implying that this year might represent a ‘tipping point’:

that is, the year in which the transition from the most hits featuring one rhythmic category to

the majority exhibiting another occurs.8 Moreover, Sykes, Pembrook, and Ripani suggest that

straight-quaver subdivisions remained the norm beyond the 1960s in Billboard mainstream and

R&B hits: until 1979, 1990, and 1999 respectively. Although these studies employ a small

sample of each decade, these findings tentatively suggest that both Allan Moore and David

Brackett’s claims (each published in the early 2010s) that straight-quaver subdivisions continue

to be the norm today are accurate. Thus, a rhythmic shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions would seem to represent a fundamental and lasting change in the rhythm of 20th-

century popular music in the United States.

However, neither Friedlander, Pembrook, Schaefer, Fitzgerald, nor Tamlyn individually

demonstrate that a shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions occurred between the

1950s and the 1960s. Although Sykes and Ripani do illustrate this transition, they employ very

small sample sizes and only analyse R&B hits.9 Thus, their findings cannot be seen to be

representative of a broader sample of mainstream singles as well as R&B hits. The fact that

these studies do not demonstrate that rhythmic transitions from triple- to duple-quaver

subdivisions and from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures occurred is significant because

8 Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 351. 9 Sykes samples 24 songs over a 30-year period, which is less than one song per year. However, this is understandable since Sykes states that the intention is to test his ‘conceptual model’ rather than make claims about the music more generally. Ripani samples 50 hits from the 1950s and the 1960s. Sykes, ‘A Conceptual Model for Analyzing Rhythmic Structure in African-American Popular Music’, 1.

35

this would represent a foundational shift in the rhythm of 20th-century popular music that is

worthy of an in-depth scholarly study.

Similarly, a tipping point in a swung-to-straight shift is yet to be identified. There are two

reasons for this absence: first, because Sykes and Ripani group their findings by decade and

style respectively rather than year-by-year; and second, because Tamlyn does not sample

beyond 1960, it is unclear whether this year represents a tipping point or an anomaly in his

sample, after which swung-quaver subdivisions continued to be the norm. Thomas

MacCluskey and Tamlyn state that a shift to straight-quaver subdivisions culminated in rock

’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which is routinely disparaged in rock historiography.

If a tipping point in this transition did occur in this marginalised period, then this concurrence

might in part explain an erasure of Afro-Latin influences on the hypothesised rhythmic

transition.

Only Ripani suggests that a trend towards polyrhythm occurred. Based on his analysis of

Billboard’s R&B hits, he states that late-1960s and 1970s funk is characterised by the use of

numerous ‘overlapping and interlocking’ but ‘different’ rhythmic patterns that ‘collectively

create a rhythmically complex sound’ and that funk influenced a ‘fundamental shift’ towards

‘interlocked rhythms’ in African-American popular music.10 Moreover, he notes that because

hip hop often sampled funk, polyrhythm characterised much 1990s African-American popular

music.11 Thus, Ripani suggests that a foundational change from monorhythmic to

polyrhythmic textures occurred in African-American popular music culminating in late-1960s

and 1970s funk and remaining common in 1990s hip hop. However, he does not provide any

empirical evidence for this claim. Consequently, it is not known whether a trend towards

polyrhythm occurred, as claimed by Dizzy Gillespie and Mario Bauzá, and if so when a

tipping point in such a trend might have taken place.

As noted, this scholarship does not discuss possible influences on the hypothesised rhythmic

transitions. Nor does it cite the claims of Afro-Latin influences on these trends made by Afro-

Latin-jazz bandleaders. Moreover, the scholars often overlook possible Afro-Latin influences.

Both Tamlyn and Ripani suggest that Afro-Latin musics were characterised by straight-quaver

subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures but neither questions whether Afro-Latin styles might

have influenced the rhythmic trends.12 Tamlyn posits that Afro-Latin styles and funk

10 Ripani, The New Blue Music, 90, 91, 99, and 157. 11 Ibid., 143. 12 Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 63, Ripani, The New Blue Music, 47, 90 and 157.

36

influenced an equivalent trend to straight-quaver subdivisions in jazz from the 1960s

onwards.13 But he does not consider whether Afro-Latin styles might have influenced this

transition in popular music. Similarly, Ripani asserts that the implicitly polyrhythmic approach

of funk was ‘somewhat new in R&B’ and that ‘precedents in American music, R&B or

otherwise […] are difficult to find’.14 But he links funk’s ‘overlapping and interlocking

rhythms’ to African-Caribbean and West-African music which he describes as polyrhythmic

earlier in his book15 implying an impact of these styles on a trend towards polyrhythm and

funk. Thus, the corpus analyses do not posit musical influences on the swung-to-straight shift

but imply Afro-Latin musics as well as West-African styles as precursors and therefore

possible influences on these trends.

In summary, the seven corpus analyses present some evidence to suggest that a shift from

swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions occurred in US popular music between the 1950s and

the 1960s with a tipping point in around 1960. However, an empirical and statistical study

does not yet exist that has a representative sample size (including mainstream as well as R&B

hits) and covers both decades and identifies a tipping-point year in this transition. Similarly, no

empirical evidence has been provided for a trend towards polyrhythm in post-war US popular

music. Moreover, excepting Ripani (discussed below), possible influences on or interpretations

of these rhythmic trends have not been questioned by these studies. There is therefore a need

for an empirical study questioning whether a transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet

monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm occurred between the 1950s and the 1960s, if the

tipping point occurred in the late-1950s and early-1960s period, and whether Afro-Latin

musics were the predominant influence on the hypothesised rhythmic change. These absences

are addressed further in Chapters 3 and 4.

Influences on the Rhythmic Trends

Literature positing influences on and interpretations of the hypothesised rhythmic transitions

has been published from the late 1970s to the present day. This literature can be broken down

into two main categories, with some crossover: research that emphasises the impact of

European-American and African-American styles on the trends and studies that highlight the

influence of Afro-Latin musics on the trends (henceforth the ‘Latin-tinge literature’). The

13 Ripani, The New Blue Music, 156. 14 Ibid., 76 and 143. 15 Ibid., 33.

37

former comprises studies of funk16 and four books on drumming17 as well as scholarship

suggesting other possible influences.18 The interpretative literature mostly discusses a swung-

to-straight shift and a trend towards polyrhythm is rarely considered. Excepting Fitzgerald and

Tamlyn’s work, the above corpus analyses are rarely cited in this literature, despite the fact that

this body of work represents the only empirical evidence for claims that the rhythmic

transitions occurred.

Funky Drummer

The studies of funk collectively suggest that James Brown influenced three rhythmic trends in

US popular music from the 1950s to the 1960s: a transition from triple- to duple-quaver

subdivisions (particularly, a trend towards reiterated straight-quaver hi-hat patterns), which

facilitated a move towards polyrhythm, and was followed by a shift from quavers to

semiquavers as the ‘density referent’. Brown probably did influence the trends towards

polyrhythm and semiquaver subdivisions in funk. However, the books on drumming, as well

as two of the above corpus analyses, posit that mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll musicians influenced a

trend towards reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions while Brown was still releasing triple-

quaver ballads such as his 1956 debut single ‘Please, Please, Please’.19 This area of literature

emphasises the recordings of Little Richard featuring the drummer Earl Palmer: for example,

his debut 1955 hit ‘Tutti Frutti’. Uncharacteristically, Little Richard does not claim credit for

spearheading a shift in subdivisions but Palmer’s biographer does. Specifically, Tony

Scherman argues that while Palmer may not have been the first drummer to swap the ‘old-

fashioned’ jazz-associated shuffle of R&B for the ‘headlong thrust’ of the ‘new’, ‘proto-typical 16 Wendell Logan, ‘The Ostinato Idea in Black Improvised Music: A Preliminary Investigation’, The Black Perspective in Music, 12 (1984), 193–215. Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996). Alexander Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music’, Popular Music, 19 (2000), 293–318. Ripani, The New Blue Music. Martin Munro, Different Drummers: Rhythm and Race in the Americas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 17 Geoff Nicholls, The Drum Book: A History of the Rock Drum Kit (London: Balafon Books, 1997). Tony Scherman, Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999). Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”. Steve Smith and Daniel Glass (eds.), The Roots of Rock Drumming: Interviews with the Drummers Who Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll Music (New York: Hudson Music, 2013). Steven Baur, ‘Backbeat’, Grove Music Online https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 4 March 2021). Matt Brennan, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 18 Bill Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’, College Music Symposium, 21 (1981), 147–153. Benadon and Gioia, ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie’. Charles Hamm, Robert Walser, Jacqueline Warwick and Charles Hiroshi Garrett, ‘Popular Music’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 31 March 2020). Andy Bennett and Jon Stratton, Britpop and the English Music Tradition (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 41. Albin J. Zak III, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 233. Allan F. Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 52. Brennan, Kick It, 187. 19 Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and other mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll artists are also cited as examples of the trend towards straight-quaver subdivisions in the literature on drumming. However, only Richard is mentioned in all of these books.

38

rock-and-roll beat’ (that is the RSQB drumbeat), he was ‘easily’ the first drummer to play it on

widely disseminated and popular recordings and that ‘his achievement was to overhaul pop

music’s rhythmic foundation’.20 Little Richard, Earl Palmer and mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll artists

like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry therefore seem more likely to have influenced the initial

trend towards reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions than James Brown.

In the 2013 book The Roots of Rock Drumming, Steve Smith, the drummer for the band Journey,

asks four early rock ’n’ roll drummers (in addition to Earl Palmer) about the shift from swung-

to straight-quaver subdivisions and whether Little Richard and Palmer influenced their

adoption of straight-quaver patterns. The two other drummers from the first generation of

rock ’n’ roll drummers – namely, Elvis Presley’s drummer D.J. Fontana and Jerry Lee Lewis’s

drummer J.M. Van Eaton – state that they were not influenced by Richard and Palmer’s

usage.21 However, the two drummers of the second generation of rock ’n’ roll artists – namely,

the Everly Brothers’s drummer Buddy Harman and Buddy Holly’s drummer Jerry Allison –

state that they first heard a straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll drumbeat in Richard’s recordings and

that this influenced their adoption of duple-quaver subdivisions.22 This suggests that Richard

and Palmer’s adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions did not influence the first generation of

rock ’n’ roll drummers but did influence the second generation. Moreover, in his 2020 social

history of the drum kit, Matt Brennan writes that the first example of the straight-quaver rock

’n’ roll drumbeat is arguably Little Richard’s 1957 hit ‘Lucille’, with Palmer on drums.23

Consequently, Richard’s early rock ’n’ roll hits, particularly ‘Lucille’, seem a probable influence

on the swung-to-straight shift and are analysed as a case study in Chapter 4.

Drawing on the funk literature, Alexander Stewart’s article from the year 2000 is the first and

only study (until the present thesis) to interrogate a shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions from the 1950s to the 1960s, as well as a subsequent trend towards semiquaver

subdivisions as the density referent by late-1960s funk.24 In addition to Little Richard and

James Brown, Stewart posits that six musical styles and one social dance influenced the

20 Scherman, Backbeat, 85. Earl Palmer states that he adopted this straight-quaver drumbeat because he was trying to match Little Richard’s reiterated straight-quaver piano patterns and Palmer states that Little Richard ‘was a really exciting character’ and ‘just gravitated’ towards straight quavers driven by his personality and that Palmer liked the feel because it was new. Palmer as in quoted Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 40. 21 Smith and Glass. The Roots of Rock Drumming, 57 and 69. 22 Ibid., 82 and 94. 23 Brennan, Kick It, 188. ‘Lucille’ is mentioned as an influence on the swung-to-straight shift in the following studies: Scherman, Backbeat, 85; Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”’, 295; Jerry Allison as quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 93. The Specialty files suggest that Charles Connor, Richard’s live drummer, played drums on ‘Lucille’ rather than Palmer. However, Connor does not claim to have played on ‘Lucille’. Charles White, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock (New York: Harmony Books, 1984). 24 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”’, 293.

39

swung-to-straight shift (citing nineteen songs), some of which have been proposed by other

commentators: boogie woogie,25 gospel, country blues,26 bluegrass,27 African-Caribbean musics

(he discusses Afro-Cuban mambo and Afro-Trinidadian calypso but not Afro-Brazilian styles),

New Orleans ‘second line’ (a Mardi-Gras drumming style), as well as the early-1960s dance

‘crazes’ such as the twist. Additional influences are suggested by other scholars: for example,

the theory that the introduction of the bass influenced the use of reiterated straight-quaver

subdivisions28 and the belief that straight-quaver subdivisions were easier to play than shuffles

which led amateur rock musicians to adopt them.29 These reported influences are discussed

below in turn except African-Caribbean musics which are discussed in the subsequent section

on the Latin-tinge literature.

The impact of boogie woogie on a trend towards straight-quaver subdivisions is posited by

both Stewart and Bill Ramal.30 Boogie woogie is an African-American piano-based genre that

emerged in the 1920s and became a ‘craze’ in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The style is

characterised by ‘eight-to-the-bar’ piano left-hand ostinati, that is, reiterated straight-quaver

bass patterns: for example, Champion Jack Dupree’s ‘Cabbage Greens No. 1’ and ‘No. 2’

(1940), and Ray McKinley’s ‘Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar’ (1940). Ramal states that

reiterated straight-quaver patterns moved from the bassline in boogie woogie to repeated high

chords in the piano and guitar in 1950s rock ’n’ roll.31 This seems plausible since reiterated

straight-quaver high-pitched piano chords do feature in several of his boogie woogie

examples: for instance, Count Basie’s ‘Red Bank Boogie’ (1944) (for two bars from 0:09 and

from 2:09). Thus, boogie woogie seems a probable influence on the adoption of straight-

quaver subdivisions, particularly on the pitched used of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns.

Stewart also states that gospel influenced an adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions. His

three examples of gospel do feature some straight-quaver subdivisions.32 However, they are a

25 Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’. 26 Benadon and Gioia, ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie’. 27 Hamm et al, ‘Popular Music’, Grove Music Online https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 4 March 2021). 28 Roy Brewer, ‘Electric Bass Guitar’ in John Shepherd (ed.), Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Volume II, Performance and Production (London: Continuum, 2003), 292. 29 Fontana as quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 57. 30 Stewart, “‘Funky Drummer”’, 294–295. Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’. 31 Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’, 148. 32 Norfolk Jubilee Singers, ‘Jonah in the Belly of the Whale’ (1938; for example, at 0:36); the Dixie Hummingbirds, ‘Book of the Seven Seals’ (1944; for example, on the line ‘a watchful eye’ at 0:40); and Rosie Hibler, ‘Move, Members, Move’ (1950; for example, at 0:11).

40

cappella and, as he states, gospel was usually accompanied by swung-quaver instrumental

parts.33 His gospel examples therefore do not seem indicative of a widespread influence on a

swung-to-straight shift. Gayle Wald and Larry Birnbaum assert that the gospel guitarist and

vocalist Sister Rosetta Tharpe influenced rock ’n’ roll rhythm.34 Indeed, Tharpe did employ

reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions. However, the only example of a recording by Tharpe

that features a straight-quaver rhythmic pattern that has been encountered in this research is

an eight-to-the-bar bassline in Tharpe’s 1948 version of ‘Everybody’s Gonna Have a

Wonderful Time (Gospel Boogie)’ (0:52). This intimates that the 1940s style gospel boogie

might have reinforced a boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar influence on the adoption of straight-

quaver subdivisions. Indeed, Tharpe and gospel boogie were reportedly an influence on the

mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll musicians Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, adding

credence to this theory.35

A country-blues influence is proposed on a shift to straight subdivisions by Stewart as well as

by Fernando Benadon and Ted Gioia. In a 2009 article, Benadon and Gioia conduct a corpus

analysis of ‘180-plus’ recordings made by the country-blues guitarist and vocalist John Lee

Hooker between 1948 and 1951. Benadon and Gioia state that Hooker employed a metrically

malleable ‘isoriff’. The isoriff is a stock rhythmic pattern in blues in which equal-length notes

or chords are reiterated starting with a slide up a semitone. The pattern is ‘metrically malleable’

in that it can be employed as different note values in different tempo ranges: for example, as

slow triplet-quavers, mid-tempo duple-quavers, or extremely up-tempo crotchets (see Ex. 1).36

The authors then argue that Hooker’s use of the duple-quaver version of this isoriff (for

example, in his 1949 R&B hit ‘Boogie Chillen’) influenced a swung-to-straight shift. However,

they do not provide any evidence for the influence of Hooker’s use of this pattern on

seemingly significant artists in this transition: for example, Little Richard. Moreover, none of

the rock ’n’ roll drummers that Smith interviews mention country blues as an influence on the

adoption of straight-quaver rhythmic patterns. Nevertheless, the duple-quaver isoriff of

country blues remains a possible influence on the adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions.

33 Stewart, “‘Funky Drummer”’, 294. 34 Gayle F. Wald, Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 70. Larry Birnbaum, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ’n’ Roll (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 19. 35 White, The Life and Times of Little Richard, xii. Wald, Shout, Sister, Shout!, 70. Craig Mosher, ‘Ecstatic Sounds: The Influence of Pentecostalism on Rock and Roll’, Popular Music and Society, 31 (2008), 95–112; here, 100–102. J. M. Van Eaton as quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 66. Joe Stuessy, Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 51. 36 The expression ‘metrically malleable’ was coined by Justin London. Justin London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 15.

41

Ex. 1 The metrically malleable isoriff as a) mid-tempo triple quavers, b) up-tempo straight quavers, and c) extremely up-tempo crotchets.

Bluegrass and C&W are also reported to have influenced the adoption of straight-quaver

subdivisions by Stewart and in the Grove Music Online entry for ‘Popular Music’.37 However,

Stewart’s only example of bluegrass is Chuck Berry’s ‘Maybellene’ (1955), which is a rock ’n’

roll cover of western-swing hit that features straight-quaver subdivisions in the maracas rather

than a bluegrass recording. Similarly, the dictionary entry does not cite any examples.

Bluegrass is typically performed at an extreme up-tempo and often between 200 and 300 bpm

at which the difference between swung- and straight-quaver subdivisions becomes increasingly

indiscernible.38 A bluegrass influence on the rhythmic transition therefore seems unlikely.

Indeed, none of the rock ’n’ roll drummers that Smith interviews mention bluegrass as an

influence on the adoption of straight-quaver rhythmic patterns. However, following Benadon

and Gioia, the extremely up-tempo crotchet patterns of bluegrass, and other styles, seem more

likely to have influenced the half-speed mid-to-up-tempo straight-quaver patterns of rock ’n’

roll than the indiscernible quaver subdivisions of bluegrass. Indeed, Jon Stratton and Andy

Bennett suggests that the very fast crotchets of Lonnie Donegan’s skiffle influenced this

rhythmic trend.39 Thus, extremely up-tempo crotchet patterns seem to be a more likely

influence on a swung-to-straight shift than bluegrass itself.

Stewart also asserts that New Orleans second-line drumming influenced a trend towards

straight-quaver subdivisions via the parade-influenced drumbeats of R&B songs recorded in

the city. The examples that he cites all feature a series of ghosted snare-drum quavers

interspersed with regular snare-drum accents (usually on the backbeat): for example, ‘Lucille’.

37 Stewart, “‘Funky Drummer”’, 295. Charles Hamm et al., ‘Popular Music’. 38 Neil V. Rosenberg revised by Joti Rockwell [2013], ‘Bluegrass Music’, Grove Music Online https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 4 March 2021). Matthew W. Butterfield, ‘Why Do Jazz Musicians Swing Their Eighth Notes?’, Music Theory Spectrum, 33 (2011), 3–26; here, 5. 39 Bennett and Stratton, Britpop and the English Music Tradition, 41.

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42

Similarly, Scherman states that second-line drumming influenced Earl Palmer’s playing, also

citing ‘Lucille’, while Palmer himself states in his interview with Smith that second line

influenced his drumming on another New Orleans hit (namely Fats Domino’s ‘I’m Walkin’’)

which he refers to as ‘strictly straight eighths, with a big, big afterbeat’. Thus, a second-line

influence on the shift in subdivisions via Palmer’s use of reiterated straight-quaver snare

patterns is plausible.40 Moreover, Stewart’s study suggests that New Orleans R&B – including

the influence of second line and African-Caribbean musics on it – was the predominant

influence on the adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions. New Orleans-based musicians such

as Little Richard do seem to have been a significant influence on this transition. However, this

overemphasises the city’s influence given that artists like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley were

recording straight-quaver subdivisions around the same time as Little Richard in Chicago and

Memphis respectively. Thus, while the impact of second line is possible, it should not be

assumed that New Orleans music represents a predominant influence on a swung-to-straight

shift in subdivisions.

Early-1960s dance ‘crazes’ are reported to have influenced an adoption of straight-quaver

subdivisions by Stewart and Roy Brewer.41 Indeed, Chubby Checker’s hit version of ‘The

Twist’ does feature reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions in the piano and open hi-hat.

However, this recording was released in 1960: five years after Little Richard began recording

reiterated straight-quaver piano chords in ‘Tutti Frutti’ and three years after Earl Palmer first

recorded the RSQB drumbeat patterns in ‘Lucille’. Thus, the twist ‘craze’ could not have

influenced the early adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions. However, the dance ‘craze’ that

was inspired by ‘The Twist’ popularised rock ’n’ roll with parents and therefore widened its

market.42 Consequently, it may have had an effect on a shift to straight-quaver subdivisions as

the norm by the early 1960s.43

40 Military drumming might also have influenced the trend towards straight-quaver subdivisions. Early rock ’n’ roll drummers such as J.M. Van Eaton and Jerry Allison learnt drums by playing rudiments, which often featured duple quavers, and subsequently played straight-quaver patterns on influential hits. However, neither Eaton nor Allison suggests the influence of military drumming on their use of straight subdivisions. Instead, Allison posits the impact of mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll by Little Richard and Chuck Berry as well as Latin-American musics on his use of duple-quaver rhythmic patterns with the Crickets. Allison as quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 100. 41 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”’, 296. Brewer, ‘Electric Bass Guitar’, 314. Ed Morales, The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots of Latin Music from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2003), 281. 42 Keir Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, in Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 109–142; here, 117. Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 215–217. 43 Thomas MacCluskey, ‘Rock in its Elements’, Music Educators Journal, 56 (1969), 49–51; here, 49. Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, 117

43

Relatedly, in an encyclopedia entry on the bass guitar, Brewer claims that the instrument’s

ability ‘to produce fast, clear, repeated notes at a competitive volume’ led musicians to play

up-tempo repeated notes on twist-era recordings and implies that this influenced a shift to

straight-quaver subdivisions.44 Indeed, reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions were not

common on the double bass45 but were idiomatic on the electric bass, which became

increasingly prominent through the 1950s: for example, the eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie

bassline in Chuck Berry’s ‘I’m Talking About You’ (1961). That being said, ‘Lucille’ featured a

reiterated straight-quaver bassline on double bass four years previously. As with the twist, this

suggests that the bass guitar did not influence the early adoption of straight-quaver

subdivisions but that its popularity might have helped to popularise reiterated straight-quaver

rhythmic patterns.

Stewart, Sublette, and Stratton all suggest that straight-quaver subdivisions were easier to play

(and to dance to) than shuffles and Sublette states that the supposed straightforwardness of

straight subdivisions was a factor in the swung-to-straight shift.46 Specifically, he argues that

the younger generation employed straight-quaver subdivisions ‘because that easy-sounding

[shuffle] feel is tricky to play—that is to say, the white kids couldn’t swing.’47 Here he

intimates that the shift to straight subdivisions was also influenced by two purported types of

incompetence: the amateur musicianship of rock instrumentalists and the rhythmic ineptitude

of White people. These assumptions are unfounded. D.J. Fontana – who was also young,

White, and had had little professional experience before becoming Elvis Presley’s drummer in

1955 – stated that ‘I never was a good [straight] eighth note man’.48 Thus, it was evidently

difficult for a musician who grew up playing swung-quaver music to play the RSQB drumbeat

of rock ’n’ roll. Consequently, Sublette’s contention that the supposed ease of performing

straight-quaver subdivisions influenced the rhythmic transition is not persuasive.

In summary, of the influences that have been reported on a trend towards straight-quaver

subdivisions by Stewart and other scholars so far, five seem probable: boogie woogie (perhaps

via gospel boogie), the duple-quaver country-blues isoriff, and second line, as well as the

popularity of the bass guitar and the twist in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

44 Brewer, ‘Electric Bass Guitar’, 292. 45 Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’, 148. 46 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”’, 293. Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 86. Bennett and Stratton, Britpop and the English Music Tradition, 41. 47 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 86. 48 D.J. Fontana suggests that younger players played with straight-quaver subdivisions. However, whether this had to do with the youth of the player or merely the increasing popularity of straight subdivisions is unclear. As quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 57.

44

The Latin Tinge

The most commonly reported influence on a shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions across all the above literatures is Afro-Latin musics.49 For example, Jerry Allison

states that he and Buddy Holly adopted straight-quavers influenced by Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’

as well as Afro-Latin styles.50 Similarly, Stewart concludes that mambo and calypso influenced

the shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions via New Orleans R&B.51 Indeed, a body

of literature that is mainly written by journalists posits Afro-Latin influences on both the

trends towards straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures. This area of research

was primarily instigated by John Storm Roberts’s 1979 monograph The Latin Tinge: The Impact

of Latin American Music in the United States, which laid the groundwork for subsequent studies.52

In chronologically ordered chapters, Roberts outlines the presence of Afro-Latin musics in the

US from the mid-19th century through to the 20th century and argues their influence on US

popular music and jazz alongside relevant socio-political contexts.53 Robert Palmer’s 1988

magazine article ‘The Cuban Connection’ then represents a call to arms, with Palmer writing

that: ‘the history of American music is in need of serious revision’ and that ‘we can no longer

afford to think of la musica Cubana as something alien and exotic’.54 Sublette then answers this

call, identifying possible Afro-Cuban influences and suggesting explanations as to why these

have not been discussed in the literature before. Research on this area is conducted by fellow

journalists55 as well as scholars.56 Generally speaking, Latinx studies scholarship in this area

focuses on the direct participation of Latinx musicians in rock ’n’ roll, in order to combat their

invisibility in most histories of the genre.57 Latinx studies scholars rarely discuss the often

indirect influences of Afro-Latin rhythms on US popular music.58

49 For example, Barretto as quoted in Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 160. Scherman, Backbeat, 85. Allison in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 93, 95, 100. Stewart, “‘Funky Drummer”’, 295. Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 81–82 and 86. 50 Allison in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 93, 95, 100. 51 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”’, 312. 52 Roberts, The Latin Tinge. 53 Although Jairo Moreno criticises the linear narrative of The Latin Tinge, Latinx studies scholars generally see it as foundational for being the first history of Latin-American musics in the United States: for example, Juan Flores describes it as ‘pathbreaking’. Jairo Moreno, ‘Bauza –Gillespie–Latin/Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2004), 81–99; here, 82. Juan Flores, Salsa Rising: New York Latin Music of the Sixties Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), xiv and 6. 54 Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’. 55 For example, Dave Marsh, ‘Rock and Roll’s Latin Tinge’ in Dave Marsh (ed.), Rock and Roll Confidential Report (New York: Pantheon: 1985), 110-112. Morales, The Latin Beat. Ken Emerson, Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (London: Fourth Estate, 2006). 56 For example, Peter Narváez, ‘The Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures on African-American Blues Musicians’, Black Music Research Journal, 14 (1994), 203–224. 57 For example, Anthony Macías, Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935–1968 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 124 and 132. Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!:

45

Sublette posits the impact of Afro-Cuban styles on the trend towards straight-quaver

subdivisions and suggests two examples of this influence. First, he states that ‘Manteca’

(1947), the first Latin-jazz collaboration between Dizzy Gillespie and the Afro-Cuban conga

player Chano Pozo, influenced a trend towards straight-quaver subdivisions in African-

American music.’59 Second, he claims that the straight-quaver maraca pattern of Don Azpiazú

and his Havana Casino Orchestra’s 1930 hit ‘El manisero’ (‘The Peanut Vendor’) influenced

the reiterated hi-hat straight quavers of 1960s rock.60 Although both are possible, Sublette

offers no evidence for these claims. Scholars agree that ‘El manisero’ and ‘Manteca’ were

highly significant songs in the history of Afro-Cuban music in the United States.61 However,

Sublette’s suggestion that these two recordings influenced the shift from swung to straight-

quaver subdivisions would seem to have more to do with the focus of the edited collection in

which his chapter is published on the influence of moments in the history of popular music.

This focus seems to have led Sublette to overstate the influence of individual songs rather

than Afro-Cuban styles more generally. Nevertheless, an influence of Afro-Cuban music on

the swung-to-straight transition, is certainly plausible – particularly regarding unpitched

percussion parts – and is therefore interrogated throughout the present thesis.

Roberts, Stewart, Morales, and Sublette all posit Afro-Latin influences on a trend towards

polyrhythm (via Afro-Latin jazz and R&B from New Orleans), which they say culminated in

funk and disco from the late 1960s and 1970s.62 Roberts reports that a fundamental shift

occurred towards ‘Latinized rhythm’ in funk and disco of the 1970s, citing Earth, Wind and

Fire as well as War and Mandrill (who featured Latinx members) as precursors for a trend that

became more common in around 1976.63 Although Stewart does not mention the term

‘polyrhythm’, he notes that both ‘Latin styles’ and funk feature ‘textures [that] typically consist

of independent interlocking parts that combine to make complex rhythms and resultant

patterns’, implying that both musics feature polyrhythmic textures. This, in combination with

Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 38–49. One exception is Robert Avant-Mier, ‘Latinos in the Garage: A Genealogical Examination of the Latino/a Presence and Influence in Garage Rock (and Rock and Pop Music)’, Popular Music and Society, 31 (2008), 555–74. 58 Exceptions include scholars such as Paul Austerlitz and Deborah Pacini Hernandez who suggest Latin influences on Bobby Darin and Betty Everett in passing. Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!, 44. Paul Austerlitz, ‘The Afro-Cuban Impact on Music in the United States: Mario Bauzá and Machito’ in Paul Austerlitz and Jere Laukkanen (eds.), Machito and his Afro-Cubans: Selected Transcriptions (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2016), xi–l; here, xlviii. 59 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 81. 60 Ibid., 78. 61 Flores, Salsa Rising, 2 and 19. 62 Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 209; Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 308; Morales, The Latin Beat, 281; Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 91. 63 Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 209.

46

his implication that African-Caribbean styles influenced funk via 1950s New Orleans music,

suggests that Stewart believes that African-Caribbean musics influenced a trend towards

polyrhythm.64 Morales states that Afro-Latin music influenced the ‘syncopated polyrhythms’

on bass guitar in funk and that these elements continued into disco.65 Sublette writes that

‘funk polyrhythmicized the R&B combo the way the mambo had earlier polyrhythmicized the

jazz band’, intimating that Afro-Cuban musics influenced a trend towards polyrhythm from

Afro-Latin jazz through to funk.66 Like Ripani, none of the commentators listed above

provide any empirical evidence for these assertions. However, Afro-Latin musics seem to have

been the most prevalent precursor to the use of polyrhythm in US popular music and

therefore an Afro-Latin influence on a trend towards polyrhythm seems to be plausible.

West-African musics have also been suggested as an influence on the trend towards

polyrhythm by Ripani, specifically in reference to funk.67 Academics do not typically argue that

West-African polyrhythm was retained in African-American music. Indeed, scholars posit two

explanations as to why African-American music was monorhythmic in the early half of the

20th century, which are not mutually exclusive. First, folklorists such as Dena Epstein and

Eileen Southern argue that the drumming traditions of enslaved Africans in the United States

were all but eradicated after British colonialists prohibited Blacks from playing drums, due to

fears that this could inspire revolution: for example, a 1740 law passed in South Carolina

following a 1739 revolt.68 Indeed, although in New Orleans enslaved Africans were permitted

to play drums in ‘Congo Square’ on Sundays, this was outlawed in 1851 and the received

wisdom that African rhythms influenced jazz via Congo Square is not based on demonstrable

evidence.69 Conversely, African drumming was not banned in Latin-American countries such

as Cuba. Second, Ned Sublette argues that while the majority of enslaved Africans in Cuba

were from West Africa where traditional musics are often polyrhythmic and feature many

percussion instruments, the majority of enslaved Africans in the US descended from Sudanic

Africa where traditional musics are often monodic and feature a vocalist accompanied by

64 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 308. Sublette also likens the polyrhythmic texture of funk to Afro-Cuban styles: Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 91. 65 Morales, The Latin Beat, 281. 66 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 91. 67 Ripani, The New Blue Music, 94. 68 Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 59. Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971). Scholars also suggest that ‘pattin’ juba’ – the African-American tradition of playing rhythms on one’s thighs with one’s hands – is a retention of African rhythmic practices. Both pattin’ juba and clave have been posited as influences on the Bo Diddley beat. However, ‘Bo Diddley’ is categorised as an example of swung-quaver contrarhythm in this study. Thus, there is no evidence to suggest the influence on pattin’ juba on the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm. 69 Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), 286–287.

47

stringed instruments and a single percussion instrument.70 Sublette speculates that this

explains why Afro-Cuban son was polyrhythmic and featured many percussion instruments

while African-American blues featured a singer accompanied by guitar and a drumbeat.71

Instead, a West-African influence is plausible both via the impact of West-African musics on

Afro-Latin styles and via the mainstream popularity in the US of the Nigerian percussionist

Olatunji Babatunde’s 1960 album Drums of Passion, which comprises West-African

polyrhythmic percussion and chanting. Five of the album’s nine tracks featured straight-

quaver polyrhythm in 4/4. Drums of Passion influenced jazz: for example, John Coltrane

recorded ‘Tunji’ as a tribute to Olatunji on his 1962 album Coltrane. West-African drumming

might have influenced the adoption of polyrhythmic textures, particularly by African-

American musicians, in the early 1960s. However, Afro-Latin styles were much more

prominent than West-African drumming in the US in the early half of the 20th century and

would therefore seem likely to have been the predominant influence on such a trend.

Collectively, the four literatures posit nine musical influences on a shift from swung- to

straight-quaver subdivisions: boogie woogie, gospel, country blues, bluegrass, Afro-Latin and

African-Caribbean musics, second line, the twist, the bass guitar, and the purported ease of

performing straight-quaver subdivisions. The literatures also propose two musical influences

on a trend towards polyrhythm: Afro-Latin styles and West-African drumming. In pitched

instruments, the adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions seems likely to have been influenced

by the eight-to-the-bar rhythmic patterns of boogie woogie, perhaps via gospel boogie, and

the duple-quaver country-blues isoriff. In unpitched instruments, the shift in subdivisions was

probably influenced by the reiterated straight-quaver snare-drum patterns of second line as

well as by Afro-Latin musics, perhaps via R&B and jazz in both cases. Moreover, a swung-to-

straight shift was possibly propelled by the popularity of the bass guitar and the twist in the

late 1950s and early 1960s. Conversely, the impact of a cappella gospel, bluegrass, and the

supposed ease of performing straight-quaver subdivisions on the hypothesised rhythmic

transition do not seem convincing.

In reference to a trend towards polyrhythm, Afro-Latin musics and West-African drumming

are both possible influences. Afro-Latin musics seem likely to have been the more salient of

the two because Afro-Latin styles were consistently popular in the US since at least the 1870s

70 Ibid.. Paul Oliver, Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues (New York: Stein and Day, 1970). 71Ned Sublette, Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004).

48

whereas West-African drumming only achieved mainstream popularity from 1960 onwards.

Overall, Afro-Latin styles seem likely to have been the predominant influence on the

coalescence of the two trends in a transformation from swung-quaver monorhythm to

straight-quaver polyrhythm. This hypothesis is questioned in Chapter 4. This is significant

because a substantial Afro-Latin influence on these transitions would mean that most popular

music of the last 60 years bears the rhythmic vestige of an Afro-Latin influence which is

scarcely discussed by scholarship.

The Erasure of Afro-Latin Influences on a Rhythmic Transformation

As noted, in an interview published in a 1988 article by Robert Palmer, the Afro-Cuban

musical director Mario Bauzá claims that a Cuban influence on a fundamental change in the

rhythm of post-war US popular music has been erased from the historiography of US popular

music and jazz. Bauzá and Palmer do not posit any explanations for an erasure of Afro-Cuban

influences on a rhythmic transformation of US popular music. Although Latinx studies

scholarship often discusses the erasure of Latinx Americans within US history and cultural

history, it scarcely discusses the erasure of, often indirect, Afro-Latin influences on US

popular music. In addition to the Black/White racial binary that is discussed in the previous

chapter, Sublette suggests three possible reasons for an erasure of Afro-Latin influences on a

rhythmic transformation of US popular music. First, he states that a language barrier inhibited

Spanish-speaking Latinx musicians from articulating Afro-Latin influences on US popular

music to English-speaking US-Americans.72 Second, he claims that there a ‘collective amnesia’

of Cuba among US-Americans following the 1959 Cuban revolution and the subsequent US

embargo of the island, despite very close links before the revolution.73 Third, he asserts that,

following the embargo, there was an ignorance among younger 1960s rock musicians

regarding the Afro-Latin origins of the rhythms they were playing. Here, Sublette cites the

Kingsmen, who did not know that the straight-quaver riff from their 1963 cover of Richard

Berry’s ‘Louie Louie’ was lifted by Berry from a chachachá recording, as an example.74

72 Reebee Garofalo. ‘Off the Charts: Outrage and Exclusion in the Eruption of Rock and Roll’ in Rubin R. Melnick,. American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 126. Ned Sublette, Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004), 398. 73 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Cha’, 69 and 91. 74 Ibid., 87. Similarly, Bauzá states that young Latinx musicians are not aware of an Afro-Cuban influence on a fundamental change in the rhythm of US-American music. Mario Bauzá as quoted in Robert Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, Spin, 4 (1988), 26–30, 84–85, 103; here, 28.

49

While the Black/White racial binary is a probable explanation for an erasure of Afro-Latin

influences on the hypothesised rhythmic trends, Sublette’s three other explanations do not

seem plausible. A language barrier does not seem to be a persuasive explanation because all of

the most successful Latinx bandleaders of the 1950s spoke fluent English: namely, the Cubans

Frank ‘Machito’ Grillo, Mario Bauzá, Xavier Cugat, Desi Arnaz, and Pérez Prado and the

Puerto-Rican Americans Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez. Although a language barrier might

have been an issue for Brazilian musicians such as Carmen Miranda and João Gilberto who

did not speak fluent English, it would not seem a plausible explanation on the overlooking of

Afro-Cuban influences.

There are also two problems with the notion that the US embargo of Cuba in 1960 led to an

‘collective amnesia’ among US-Americans of Afro-Latin influences on US popular music.

First, this account overlooks the fact that there was no embargo of Brazil. Bossa nova was

hugely popular in the US during the early-to-mid 1960s and yet Afro-Brazilian influences on

US popular music are also overlooked. While the embargo might have been a factor in an

erasure of Afro-Cuban influences it would not have affected the recognition of Afro-Brazilian

influences. This also highlights the Cuba-centric nature of much of the Latin-tinge literature.75

Second, the notion that a younger generation of musicians did not recognise Afro-Latin

influences on 1960s rock because of the US embargo of Cuba seems to be overstated. This is

because early rock musicians grew up in the 1950s with the ‘crazes’ for Afro-Cuban mambo

and chachachá. Indeed, in a 1980 interview, Paul McCartney states that in the late 1950s and

early 1960s, before the Beatles were signed, they ‘were trying to find the next beat’ and that

the British trade paper the New Musical Express thought that it was going to be ‘rock calypso’

and ‘Latin rock’ but that it turned out to be Merseybeat.76 This suggests that early rock

musicians were aware of Afro-Latin influences on rock ’n’ roll but did not emphasise them for

other reasons. Thus, although the US embargo of Cuba might have been a factor in an

‘amnesia’ of Afro-Cuban influences on rhythmic trends in US popular music, this explanation

does not account for the marginalisation of Afro-Brazilian influences and the fact that 1960s

rock musicians grew up during the Afro-Cuban mambo and chachachá ‘crazes’ of the 1950s.

Consequently, beyond the effect of the Black/White racial binary, we still do not have a full

account of why Afro-Latin influences on the trends might have been erased. This is significant

because it would represent the erasure of the contribution of Latin-American musicians on a

75 For example, Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’ and Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Cha’. 76 Paul McCartney, ‘Creating the Beatles’ Sound Love Me Do & Early Songs’, The McCartney Interview (Columbia PC 36987, 1980).

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fundamental change in the rhythm of 20th-century popular music in the United States. There is

therefore a need for a comparative critical reception study questioning whether the impact of

Afro-Latin musics on a rhythmic transformation of US popular music was identified at the

time and subsequently erased, featuring a thorough discussion of why this erasure might have

occurred. This need is addressed in Chapters 4 and 5.

Socio-Political Interpretations of the Rhythmic Trends

Socio-political interpretations of the rhythmic trends are most common in the literature on

funk: specifically, in studies by Rickey Vincent (cited by Stewart and Martin Munro) and

Ripani. Like Don Ellis, Stewart links the shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions in

White-associated rock with countercultural revolution. Similarly, like Dizzy Gillespie, Vincent

and Ripani associate the move from monorhythm to polyrhythm in African-American funk

and soul with the Civil Rights Movement. For example, in his article on the swung-to-straight

shift, Stewart links the straight-quaver rhythms of rock with a ‘vague proletarian yearnings’ of

White middle-class youth, citing the popular-music critic Peter Guralnick.77 Relatedly, Rickey

Vincent interprets the trend from swung-quaver subdivisions to straight-quaver polyrhythm as

representing a ‘black music revolution’ which was influenced by the ‘social revolution’ of the

Civil Rights Movement.78 Citing Vincent, Stewart and Munro suggest similar interpretations.

Stewart links the straight-quaver rhythms of soul with ‘the sense of urgency felt by many

African Americans during an era of aspirations toward upward mobility’ and to ‘[r]ising black

consciousness’ in the 1950s and 1960s while Munro states that the transition from triple- to

duple-quaver subdivisions represented ‘a new confidence of African Americans’.79 Similarly,

Ripani, citing the African-American writer Amiri Baraka’s 1963 book Blues People, sees the

African-American adoption of straight-quaver subdivisions as a reaction against the

European-American appropriation of swung-quaver subdivisions in rock ’n’ roll rather than

representing a ‘Westernisation’.80 Thus, the rhythmic trends towards straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns and polyrhythmic textures are interpreted as representing youth revolt and Black

liberation respectively.

The interpretation of a swung-to-straight shift as representing countercultural revolution

would to seem to be based on the association of the shift with a move from jazz rhythm to 77 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 313 citing Peter Guralnick, Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues, Country, and Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Omnibus Press, 1971), 15. 78 Vincent, Funk, 62. 79 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 312–313. Munro, Different Drummers, 208. 80 Ripani, The New Blue Music, 156 and 169. LeRoi Jones [Imamu Amiri Baraka], Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: Morrow Quill, 1963).

51

rock rhythm which is understood as a transition from the old to the young and from the old

to the new.81 The association of youth with the counterculture, innovation with revolution,

and rock with both the counterculture and revolution appears to be the basis of this

interpretation. While this reading might initially appear persuasive, it is based on subjective

ideological assumptions that are exposed in Chapter 6.

Conversely, Vincent, Stewart, and Munro’s interpretation of the transition from triple- to

duple-quaver subdivisions as representing ‘[r]ising black consciousness’ is based on an

obviously spurious argument. Vincent associates swung-quaver subdivisions with the shuffle

dance step, and this dance step with slavery, minstrelsy, and segregation.82 He then states that

the shuffle connotes ‘brow-beaten blacks, never looking whites in the eye’.83 However, he

does not provide any evidence to suggest that contemporaneous African Americans associated

shuffle rhythms with the shuffle dance step nor whether the average African American was

aware of the use of term ‘shuffle’ to denote swung-quaver subdivisions and could identify a

shuffle from a straight-quaver feel. Similarly, Ripani’s explanation is also insufficient since

European-Americans had been playing swung-quaver subdivisions for decades before mid-

1950s rock ’n’ roll and yet straight-quaver subdivisions were reportedly only taken up in the

1950s. Thus, the arguments behind Vincent and Ripani’s interpretation of the swung-to-

straight shift as representing Black liberation are weak.

In these accounts the possible meanings of the trends in relation to Latinx Americans are not

discussed. Moreover, with the exception of Jairo Moreno’s rich analysis of the Afro-modernist

ideology behind Dizzy Gillespie’s interpretation of the move from monorhythm to

polyrhythm as representing African pride, the assumptions behind these interpretations are

not critiqued by scholarship. A study critiquing the ideologies behind the interpretations of the

trends before considering what meanings the trend might have in relation to Latinx-American

peoples is therefore needed.

81 Don Ellis, ‘Music Workshop: Rock: The Rhythmic Revolution’, Down Beat, 36 (27 November 1969), 32–33. Ray Barretto as quoted in Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 160. Scherman, Backbeat, 85. Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 296. Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 86. D. J. Fontana as quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 57. 82 Vincent, Funk, 61. 83 Ibid..

52

Conclusion In summary, two of the seven corpus analyses find that most hits featured swung-quaver

subdivisions in the 1950s, three discover that the majority of hits exhibited straight-quaver

subdivisions in the 1960s, while the remaining two indicate that a transition from triple- to

duple-quaver subdivisions occurred between the 1950s and the 1960s. These studies suggest

that 1960 might have represented a tipping point in this rhythmic transition. Literature

reporting influences on the rhythmic trends posits the impact of eight factors on a swung-to-

straight shift and two on a trend towards polyrhythm. In both cases, Afro-Latin musics are the

most commonly identified. Sublette states that Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic

transitions have been erased for four reasons: the Black/White binary paradigm of race, a

language barrier between Latinx Americans and other US-Americans, the US embargo of

Cuba, and generational change. The two most common socio-political interpretations of the

trends are countercultural revolution, in reference to the shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions in White-associated rock, and the Civil Rights Movement, in relation to the move

from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures in African-American musics from Cubop to

funk.

However, no corpus analysis demonstrates that a shift from swung- to straight-quaver

subdivisions occurred between the 1950s and the 1960s with a sufficient sample size including

mainstream as well as R&B hits. Moreover, no tipping point in such a trend is identified and

no corpus analysis questions a trend towards polyrhythm. Similarly, an influence of Afro-Latin

musics (and of other styles) on the trends as well as an erasure of these influences is not

empirically investigated, either with a corpus analysis or a critical reception study. Finally, the

ideological assumptions behind the two dominant socio-political interpretations of the

transitions are scarcely considered. These problems are significant because the rhythmic

transformation would represent a fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war popular

music in the United States. Moreover, the erasure of Afro-Latin on this rhythmic change

would represent the deletion of a substantial influence of Latinx Americans to US popular

culture which is problematic given the continued marginalisation of the Latinx peoples in the

United States.

Thus, existing scholarship has not established whether or not Mario Bauzá was correct to

suggest that Afro-Cuban music and musicians influenced a fundamental change in the rhythm

of post-war popular music in the United States that has been erased from historiography.

Consequently, this thesis conducts a corpus analysis of the rhythm in a representative sample

53

of post-war mainstream, R&B and C&W hits and a critical reception study. The following

chapter details these complementary methodologies.

54

Chapter 2

Two Approaches to the Analysis of Rock ’n’ Roll Rhythm

Two methodological approaches are employed in this thesis: corpus musical analysis and

reception theory. The two approaches are a response to absences in the two research contexts

reviewed in the previous chapter. Specifically, neither the seven corpus analyses of rhythm nor

the interpretative literature interrogates Mario Bauzá’s claim that Afro-Latin influences on a

trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm have been erased from US popular-music

historiography.

This chapter is structured in two main sections. First, the analytical methodology is outlined.

The following areas are discussed: criticisms of empirical musicology, theorising influence, the

rationale behind the analytical corpus, the reliability of aural analysis and of ‘verbal description’

rather than transcription, the method of aurally determining quavers and bar lengths, the

means of categorising both rhythmic subdivisions, and a novel definition of monorhythm and

polyrhythm.1 Second, the sources of the reception study are reviewed: that is, the trade press

and thirteen early rock histories. The latter section is shorter than the former because less

terminology needs to be defined in order to comprehend the reception study.

Corpus Analysis Criticisms of Empirical Musicology and the Issue of Theorising Influence

In Categorizing Sound, David Brackett asserts that ‘genres are not static groupings of empirically

verifiable musical characteristics, but rather associations of texts whose criteria of similarity

may vary according to the uses to which the genre labels are put.’2 Brackett’s definition is

persuasive. However, corpus analysis would seem to go hand in hand with Brackett’s

recommendation of a historically informed study of musical genre over time. Indeed, given his

accounts of the stylistic traits of African-American popular music in different periods, it

would seem that Brackett has conducted an informal empirical analysis of his own.3 Corpus

analysis is therefore employed in this thesis alongside critical reception. The aim here is not to

define rock ’n’ roll rhythmically but to track changes in the musical traits referred to as rock ’n’

1 The analytical methodology was revised during the analysis process and there are therefore some references to the analytical findings here in order to explicate the rationale behind aspects of the methodology. 2 David Brackett, Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 4–5. 3 For example, Brackett, Categorizing Sound, 236 and 255–6.

55

roll over time in order to interrogate the style labels applied to late-1950s and early-1960s rock

’n’ roll at the time, particularly ‘rock-a-cha-cha’.

Although corpus analysis is employed, the outlook of this thesis is not the positivism and

reductionism of post-war musicology nor empiricism as an epistemology. The aim of the

corpus analysis is not to posit rhythmic ‘facts’ but to ascertain whether the hypothesised

rhythmic transitions occurred and whether Afro-Latin musics seem to have been the

predominant influence on them. The reduction of rhythmic data into trends in this study

represents, as music psychologist David Huron argues, ‘a potentially useful strategy for

discovery rather than a belief about how the world is.’4 Similarly, as Eric Clarke and Nicholas

Cook assert in their 2004 edited collection Empirical Musicology, the present project is empirical

rather than empiricist, which is to say that the employment of empirical methods is pragmatic

rather than ideological.

In the absence of a suitable theory of influence, David Brackett’s formulation of Jacques

Derrida’s notion of citation (or iteration) is drawn upon in this project.5 Citationality (or

iterability) is one aspect of Brackett’s theorisation of genre in 20th-century US popular music.

He states that one must be able to ‘cite’ a musical genre – that is, to evoke it out of context as

in a pastiche or parody – for the genre to be ‘legible’.6 Adapting a passage of Mikhail Bakhtin’s

work to music, Brackett writes that:

Musical texts, in the process of citing the conventions of genre, are ‘shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with’ the musical texts of others working in similar genres. Each musical text ‘is filled with echoes and reverberations of other’ musical texts ‘to which it is related by the communality of the’ musical genre. Every musical text ‘must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding’ musical texts of the given genre [emphasis original].7

4 David Huron, ‘Methodology: On Finding Field-Appropriate Methodologies at the The Intersection of the Humanities and the Social Sciences’, Ernest Bloch Lectures (University of California at Berkeley, #3, 1999). 5 Harold Bloom’s anxiety of influence does not apply to 1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll because the discourse around the style did not develop a historical consciousness until the late 1960s and 1970s. Henry Louis Gates Junior’s Signifyin(g) does not apply because it was developed for African-American literature and it would be problematic to apply the theory to European-American and Latinx-American popular music. Diffusion of innovations theory is not employed because the question here is not when individual musicians adopted a rhythmic innovation but what musical styles influenced the adoption of that rhythmic innovation. Social network analysis cannot account for a culture in which musicians encountered an unknowable number of musical texts throughout their lives. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Jacques Derrida, ‘Signature, Event, Context’ in Margins of Philosophy [trans. Alan Bass] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 307–330. 6 Brackett, Categorizing Sound, 11–13. 7 Brackett, Categorizing Sound, 15.

56

Bakhtin and Brackett’s understanding of citationality is applied to the study of musical

influence in this project. When a song in the sample features a given rhythmic element that is

also found in an earlier recording, the assumption is not that the later recording must have

been influenced by the earlier but that the both are citing a generic convention. When this

generic convention appears to have featured in Afro-Latin musics before it was employed in

US hits then this is deemed to be an Afro-Latin influence even if a specific chain of influence

cannot be demonstrated: although every effort is made to establish direct lines of influence

where possible. Brackett states that this emphasis on citation (or iteration) moves the

understanding of genre away from autonomous authors breaking with tradition to collective

creativity working within tradition in what Howard Becker terms an Art World. Similarly, in

this project, early examples in the sample of given rhythmic elements are not assumed to be

the result of individual innovation but of widely disseminated examples of a given rhythmic

feature that was likely in much wider use. Because this theorisation of influence is based on

collective creativity rather than autonomous artists, corpus analysis (alongside a critical

reception study) is well suited as a means of identifying rhythmic influence.

The Analytical Corpus

In this subsection, the rationale behind the selection of the analytical corpus is outlined. The

following areas are addressed: the size, date range, and geography of the sample; the recording

medium, charts, and publication sampled (namely, Billboard mainstream, R&B, and C&W

singles), including a discussion of problems with the representativeness of Billboard’s singles

charts in terms of popularity and gender; and the use of statistical analysis and the avoidance

of a random sample.

The corpus analysis was conducted in two phases analysing two parts of the sample which are

of roughly equivalent size. In Phase 1, 241 year-end top-twenty hits from 1954 to 1957 on

Billboard’s mainstream, R&B, and C&W singles charts were analysed. In Phase 2, 230 year-end

top-ten hits in the surrounding years from 1950 to 1953 and from 1958 to 1965 on Billboard’s

mainstream and R&B singles charts were investigated.8 The C&W charts were omitted in

Phase 2 because the Phase 1 analysis revealed that none of the 80 year-end C&W hits sampled

8 This consists of 311 hits rather than the expected 320 because, Billboard did not publish an R&B singles chart in 1964 and because both sides of Elvis Presley’s double A-side single ‘Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel’ were ranked joint top in the top ten mainstream hits of 1956.

57

from 1954 to 1957 feature straight-quaver polyrhythm. The source of the chart hits was Joel

Whitburn’s compendia.9

Ten songs per chart, per year was chosen as a minimum sample. The sample was deepened

from 1954 to 1957 in order to draw out more possible case studies in this central period in

which preliminary research suggested the RSQB paradigm and straight-quaver polyrhythm

emerged in rock ’n’ roll. Together, these two parts of the corpus provide a longitudinal sample

of 471 hits from 1950 to 1965. However, it was fairly common for a hit to ‘cross over’ from

one chart to another, usually from the R&B or C&W charts to the mainstream chart. Once

‘crossover’ records are factored in and one spoken-word recording is removed, the sample

includes 431 unique recordings, with 218 from the period from 1954 to 1957, and 213 from

the surrounding years. This is seen to be a representative sample size: bigger than the medium

sample sizes of Richard Ripani (125 recordings), George Schaefer (145 songs), and Jon

Fitzgerald (349 hits), but manageable, unlike the huge samples of Garry Tamlyn and Walter

Everett’s aforementioned studies.

Unlike five of the seven corpus analyses of rhythm, both the 1950s and the 1960s were

sampled. A narrower date range was employed than Ripani’s study (1950 to 1999) in order to

bolster the sample size during this period. Although some commentators suggest that the

hypothesised rhythmic transformation occurred between the 1940s and the mid-1960s,10 the

longitudinal date range of 1950 to 1965 was chosen because no scholars assert that most hits

featured straight-quaver polyrhythm by the early 1950s and because a 26-year date range

would lead to an unmanageably large sample size.

Following five of the corpus analyses of rhythm, hit singles were sampled. The rationale for

this decision is that the popularity charts represent a contemporaneous sample of popular

music of the era, reducing authorial and historiographical bias, and because singles, which

were more affordable and received more radio play than albums, were the primary means of

the dissemination of rock ’n’ roll.11 It might be presumed that chart hits represent a canonical

corpus. However, perhaps counter-intuitively, a contemporaneous sample of hits makes for a

9 Joel Whitburn, Pop Annual 1955-2011 (Menomonee Falls: Record Research, 2012), Pop Hits Singles & Albums 1940–1954 (Menomonee Falls: Record Research, 2002), Top 10 Country Hits 1944–2010 (Menomonee Falls: Record Research, 2011), and Top 10 R&B Hits 1942–2010 (Menomonee Falls: Record Research, 2011). 10 For example, Ned Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, in Eric Weisbard (ed.), A Momentary History of Pop Music (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 69–94; here, 86. 11 Randall J. Stephens, ‘“Where Else Did They Copy Their Styles but from Church Groups?”: Rock ’n’ Roll and Pentecostalism in the 1950s South’, Church History, 85 (2016), 97-131; here, 98. Consequently, album- and adult-orientated genres such as easy listening, jazz, music theatre, film soundtracks, and classical music are less well represented in the sample.

58

less canonical corpus than one based on a present-day understanding of rock ’n’ roll, which is

shaped by the assumptions of rock ideology. For example, both Paul Friedlander and Garry

Tamlyn’s samples feature artists that are considered to be representative of rock ’n’ roll today.

Consequently, Friedlander and Tamlyn almost exclusively analyse up-tempo mid-1950s rock

’n’ roll while excluding girl groups and teen idols that were considered rock ’n’ roll at the time,

leading to a ‘great men’ approach. Moreover, while some chart hits are also canonical in rock

histories, others have been derided: for example, late-1950s and late-1960s rock ’n’ roll, such

as Paul Anka’s ‘Diana’ (see Chapter 5).

Another reason for sampling chart hits is that they were likely to have been influential on

musical producers for five reasons. First, hits were marketed nationally and often

internationally and were therefore widely disseminated. Second, hits sold in high volumes and

were regularly played on radio and jukeboxes and were therefore well known. Third, because

they were financially successful, hits were likely to have been influential on musical producers

who sought chart success in this period more consistently than musicians did from the late

1960s onwards when rock started to be constructed as art.12 Fourth, musicians often recorded

covers of hits: for example, Pat Boone and Elvis Presley’s recordings of Little Richard’s ‘Tutti

Frutti’. Fifth, musicians had to cover popular hits in live performances to satisfy dancing

audiences in this era in which popular music was still primarily made for dancing and in which

live performance was still integral to an artist’s career.13 This is in contrast to late-1960s rock

where recordings were increasingly made for listening while sitting down, rather than for

dancing audiences.14 Indeed, because the rhythm of recordings is closely connected to how

audiences dance, the rhythmic aspects of chart hits were likely to have influenced groups who

sought to record a danceable hit. The argument here is not that only hits were influential,

merely that hits were perhaps more likely to be influential in this era than a sample of less

popular songs. Initially, mainstream, R&B, and C&W charts were sampled because rock ’n’

roll appeared on each of the charts: for example, Elvis Presley’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ was number

one on all three charts in 1956. The R&B and C&W charts were sampled because Alexander

Stewart suggests the influence of various African-American styles as well as bluegrass on a

swung-to-straight shift.15

12 For example, Jerry Wexler, a producer at the R&B label Atlantic, stated that ‘We lusted for hits’: Albin J. Zak III, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 209. 13 Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 212. 14 Ibid.. 15 Neither Billboard nor Cash Box produced a Latin chart at the time.

59

There are three main problems with Billboard’s chart methodology. First, there is a circularity

in their method. ‘One stop’ shops sell to ‘retailers’ and yet both are sampled. Similarly,

Billboard sampled ‘exposure’ – that is, the number of radio stations that playlist a song – while

radio playlists were influenced by the charts, engendering a feedback loop.16 Second, Billboard’s

data were based on a description of sales provided by retailers rather than the actual number

of units sold and whether or not a song was playlisted on the radio rather than how many

times it was played. Third, Billboard was more concerned with the charts being useful to the

industry than that they accurately represented popularity, leading to processes such as ‘early

deletion’ and ‘smoothing’ which privilege newer and faster selling recordings. Peter

Hesbacher, Robert Downing, and David G. Berger, note that these shortcomings prevent

Billboard’s charts from accurately measuring popularity but conclude that, despite the above

issues, the Billboard charts are a ‘methodologically acceptable’ database that academics

interested in style analysis should use to empirically test their hypotheses.17 Indeed, no better

contemporaneous sample is available since record companies did not release sales figures.18

The Billboard charts were therefore sampled in this project.

As discussed in the Introduction, female artists have consistently been underrepresented in

Billboard’s singles charts.19 However, even a sample with an equal number of male and female

acts would not address the dominance of male songwriters, session musicians, and producers

in this period. The present thesis makes up for the underrepresentation of women in its

sample by focusing on late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll in which female artists and

songwriters were more successful and in which girls were more actively sought after as an

audience.20 Although the main case study of late-1950s and early-1960s straight-quaver

polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll period is a man (namely, Paul Anka), chart hits that were performed

and written by women are regularly discussed in Chapter 4.

A statistical analysis is conducted of the data collected from the corpus analysis in order to

identify the strength and ‘statistical significance’ of rhythmic trends (employing the software

SPSS). In inferential statistics a random sample of data garnered from a population is required

in order to discuss statistical significance and make predictions about the population.

However, in a 2019 article entitled ‘Can P-Values Be Meaningfully Interpreted Without

16 Peter Hesbacher, Robert Downing, and David G. Berger, ‘Sound Recording Popularity Charts: A Useful Tool for Music Research’, Popular Music and Society, 4 (1975), 3–18; here, 7–8. 17 Ibid., 14 and 96. 18 Timothy J. Dowd, Kathleen Liddle, and Maureen Blyler, ‘Charting Gender: The Success of Female Acts in the U.S. Mainstream Recording Market’, Transformation in Cultural Industries, 23 (2005), 81–123; here, 99. 19 Ibid., 84–5. 20 Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 207.

60

Random Sampling?’, Norbert Hirschauer et al. state that inferences based on statistical

significance can be discussed without random sampling if a plausible argument is given for

this deviation from the norm.21 A random sample of the year-end charts was not employed in

this project because this would weaken the above argument for sampling the popularity charts

in the first place – namely, that the rhythmic elements of top hits are more likely to have been

emulated by other musicians than less popular songs and were therefore more likely to have

been influential on the rhythmic trends in question. Moreover, a sample of the most popular

hits is not seen to be problematic because a random sample of year-end hits would also be

biased towards popular songs. Thus, statistical inference is employed in this project without a

random sample.

Aural Analysis and ‘Verbal Description’

In this project, aural analysis is employed and the analysis is recorded employing ‘verbal

description’ rather than transcription.

Although aural analysis is somewhat subjective,22 it is employed rather than computational

analysis because, unlike the trained human ear, existing computational systems cannot

distinguish between the rhythmic parts played by two or more instruments simultaneously

based on a master recording.23 Thus, systems such as the Aubio Onset Detector plugin in the

academic music-analysis software Sonic Visualiser are unable to identity instances in which

straight-quaver subdivisions appear in a harmonic instrument against a shuffle drumbeat –

which was common in mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll – and are incapable of detecting a polyrhythmic

texture.

Following Tamlyn, ‘verbal description’ was employed as a means of recording the aural

analysis because unlike transcription, which is used by George Schaefer and Fitzgerald, verbal

description is time-efficient, searchable, and suitably representative of the rhythmic elements

21 Norbert Hirschauer, Sven Gruener, Oliver Mußhoff, Claudia Becker, and Antje Jantsch, ‘Can P-Values Be Meaningfully Interpreted Without Random Sampling?’, Statistics Surveys, 14 (2020), 71–91; here, 72. 22 Multiple ‘annotators’ (that is, analysts) were not utilised to mitigate against this issue because, unlike with John Burgoyne’s thesis, a budget was not available to employ additional annotators. Instead, my analysis is compared with that of other scholars wherever possible. John Ashley Burgoyne, ‘Stochastic Processes & Database-Driven Musicology’, PhD diss., McGill University, 2011. 23 Tim Crawford, email correspondence, March 2017. Simon Dixon, email correspondence, April 2017. Chris Cannam, Christian Landone, and Mark Sandler, ‘Sonic Visualiser: An Open Source Application for Viewing, Analysing, and Annotating Music Audio Files’ in Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia 2010 International Conference.

61

being analysed.24 However, transcription was employed on an informal case-by-case basis in

order to determine whether a song featured polyrhythm, and is employed throughout the

thesis to illustrate musical examples. Around 15 minutes was spent analysing each song in the

sample. Assuming an average song length of 3 minutes, this equates to about five listens per

song.

Table 1. Table to show verbal description of Elvis Presley, ‘Hound Dog’ (1956), A section.

Chart, year

Rank: song –artist

Section Explicit beat layer

Functional bass layer

Harmonic filler layer

Melodic layer (instrument-al)

Melodic layer (vocal)

Main-stream, 1956

1: ‘Hound Dog’ – Elvis Presley

A Drums: hi-hat swung-quaver 1 2+3 4+, snare backbeat, bass drum indiscernible. Handclaps: swung-quaver 1 (2)+ +4

Double bass: swung-quaver 1 (2)+ 4, some walking-bass fills.

Piano: swung-quaver 1 (2)+ 4.

Electric guitar: reiterated straight-quaver chords.

Male lead vocals: swung-quaver melody, sometimes sounds straight e.g. ‘never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine’.

Aurally Determining Quavers and Barlines

Post-war popular music was primarily produced and consumed as audio recordings rather

than as sheet music.25 Thus, a consistent means of aurally determining what ‘onsets’ (rhythmic

attacks in an audio recording) to consider to be quavers is needed in order to establish what

onsets to consider to be crotchets and quavers across metres and tempo ranges. This is

necessary before a verbal description like the above can be completed in order to establish

whether the hypothesised rhythmic transitions occurred.

24 Garry N. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat: Origins and Development of Snare Backbeat and other Accompanimental Rhythms in Rock ’n’ Roll’, PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1998. George Schaefer transcribes 75% of his sample. Jon Fitzgerald uses some transcription. Jon Fitzgerald, ‘Black Pop Songwriting 1963–1966: An Analysis of U.S. Top Forty Hits by Cooke, Mayfield, Stevenson, Robinson, and Holland-Dozier-Holland’, Black Music Research Journal, 27 (2007), 97–140; here, 103. Jon Fitzgerald, ‘Creating Those Good Vibrations: An Analysis of Brian Wilson’s US Top 40 Hits 1963–66’, Popular Music and Society, 32 (2009), 3–24; here, 6. 25 Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 240. Published sheet music from the era is not consulted because rock ’n’ roll songwriters such as Little Richard and Paul Anka would not have notated the publications of their 1950s hits.

62

The distinction between crotchets and quavers in an oral tradition might seem academic but it

is essential that we distinguish between four types of relationship between the density referent

and the backbeat – namely, a two-to-one relationship (see Ex. 2), a six-to-one relationship (see

Ex. 3), a four-to-one relationship (see Ex. 4), and an eight-to-one relationship (see Ex. 5).

Thus, the hypothesised shift from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions is defined more

specifically as a transition from the six-to-one to the four-to-one relationship between the

density referent and the backbeat.

Ex. 2 a) Two-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b and c) variations in notation.

Ex. 3 a) Six-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b and c) variations in notation.

Ex. 4 a) Four-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b, c, and d) variations in notation.

Ex. 5 a) Eight-to-one relationship between the density referent and the backbeat, b and c) variations in notation.

The principal method of determining the metre and tempo of non-notated popular music in

scholarship is Allan Moore’s ‘standard rock drumbeat’, in which quaver subdivisions are

identified according to their relationship to the backbeat.26 The backbeat, which is usually

accented by the snare drum, is always considered to be on the second and fourth crotchet

beats of a bar of 4/4 and quaver subdivisions are identified correspondingly (see Ex. 6; see

26 De Clercq, ‘Measuring a Measure: Absolute Time as a Factor for Determining Bar Lengths and Meter in Pop/Rock Music’, Music Theory Online, 22 (2016), paragraph 1.2.

63

Appendix 1 for a drum legend/notation key).27 Although Moore refers to this as the ‘standard

rock beat’, it applies to any music with a backbeat including rock ’n’ roll, soul, and funk.28

Ex. 6 ‘Standard rock beat’.

In a 2016 article, Trevor de Clercq argues that Moore’s method is insufficient for three

reasons. First, it does not apply to songs in time signatures other than 4/4.29 Second, when a

drummer switches to a double- or half-time feel, it requires a complete change in the

perception of the bar lengths even when other musical parameters stay constant: for example,

the harmonic rhythm or a song form associated with a set number of bars such as 12-bar

blues or 32-bar AABA form.30 Third, it does not work for songs that do not feature drums.31

Drawing on scholarship on music perception and corpus analysis, de Clercq presents an

alternative method in which absolute time (that is ‘clock time’ measured in seconds) is

considered alongside harmony and drumbeats in the determination of bar lengths in popular

songs and suggests two seconds – for example, one bar of 4/4 at 120 beats per minute (bpm)

– as the ideal bar length for popular music.32

De Clercq’s first criticism is valid for late 20th-century popular music in which irregular metres

such as 5/4 and 7/4 are employed. However, only 4/4 and 3/4 appear in this project and

Moore’s method can easily be expanded to 3/4 through reference to the standard waltz

drumbeat (see Ex. 7). Similarly, de Clercq’s second point is pertinent when harmony or form

is the subject of analysis. But, given that rhythm is the focus of this project, all categorisations

regarding metre and tempo as well as the rhythmic patterns and rhythmic texture are based

exclusively on rhythmic elements with no recourse to other parameters such as melody and

harmony. De Clercq’s third argument overlooks the fact that instruments other than the snare

drum, including pitched instruments, can articulate a backbeat: for example, Ben E. King’s

‘Stand by Me’, in which beat two is accented by a güiro and beat four by a triangle, and the

27 Allan F. Moore, Rock, the Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of Rock (London: Ashgate, 1993), 35–36. A similar method is outlined in Ken Stephenson’s What to Listen for in Rock: A Stylistic Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 2. None of the seven corpus analyses of rhythm that were reviewed in the previous chapter explicitly states whether any method of determining barlines was employed. 28 Moore, Rock, the Primary Text, 35–36. 29 De Clercq, ‘Measuring a Measure’, paragraph 1.3. 30 Ibid., paragraph 3.1. 31 Ibid., paragraph 1.3. 32 Ibid., paragraph 3.3.

Drum Kit

Drum Kit

2

Drum Kit

6

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Bass drum Snare drum Hi-hat

/

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Straight quavers Straight quavers Straight quavers Straight quavers

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64

common polka-derived oompah rhythmic pattern in which the backbeat is accented by

chords. Consequently, Moore’s method is utilised in this project, adapted to encompass 3/4

and instances in which a drum kit is not employed.

Ex. 7 Standard waltz drumbeat.

Following this adaptation of Moore’s method, only two time signatures are considered in this

project: 4/4 and 3/4. Conventionally, slow and mid-tempo popular songs in which the beat is

subdivided into three are considered to be in 6/8 or 12/8 while mid-to-up-tempo swung-

quaver songs are conceived of as 4/4 shuffles. Consequently, different terminology is used to

refer to quavers in 12/8 and triplet quavers in a 4/4 shuffle despite the fact that the two are

broadly synonymous. The same is also true of 9/8 and 3/4. In order to avoid having to

translate between two sets of terms when comparing the rhythmic subdivisions of songs in

different tempi, every song in this study is considered to be in either 4/4 or 3/4 and the

subdivisions specified as either triple- or duple-quaver so that the terms ‘quaver’ always refers

to the same unit of subdivision. Rock ’n’ roll and Afro-Latin musical styles were often notated

in 2/4 at the time;33 however, it is now normative to notate these styles in common (or cut)

time, and therefore 4/4 is employed almost exclusively in this project.34 Thus, the concepts of

metre and subdivisions are disentangled in this project so that metre only refers to the number

of crotchets in a bar: four or three (or occasionally two).

Following Tamlyn and Nicole Biamonte, backbeat variations are accepted within Moore’s

method. Tamlyn and Biamonte identify instances in which beats two or four (or both) are

accented twice with two quaver utterances (see Ex. 8) and when only one of the two

‘backbeats’ (that is beat two or beat four) is accented.35 An additional backbeat variation that is

overlooked by Tamlyn and Biamonte is the snare-drum pattern more associated with 6/8

marches. This pattern occurs in six songs in the sample but only features throughout two of

33 Otto Fuchs, Bill Haley: The Father of Rock & Roll, (Gelnhausen: Wagner Verlag, 2011), 848. Ned Sublette, Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004), xiv. 34 Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’. Julian Gerstin, ‘Comparisons of African and Diasporic Rhythm: The Ewe, Cuba, and Martinique’, Analytical Approaches to World Music, 5 (2017), 1–90; here, 6. 35 Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 57. Nicole Biamonte, ‘Rhythmic Functions in Pop-Rock Music’, in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches (London: Routledge, 2018), 191.

65

the recordings.36 In the other four songs,37 the pattern provides a double-time feel to the

sections in which it is performed in contrast to the six-to-one backbeat relationship of the

other sections. In order that that this long-short oompah pattern can be compared to other

triple-quaver patterns without translation, as discussed above, this pattern is notated here in

4/4 with the backbeat as swung-quaver offbeats. This is the only exception to Moore’s

method in which the backbeat is not notated on beats two and four of the bar in this project.

Although Moore’s ‘standard rock beat’ and the ‘standard waltz beat’ adaptation are applied to

instruments other than drums in this project, the above swung-quaver backbeat variation must

feature in the snare drum. This is done in order to distinguish this variation from ‘jump blues’,

which is characterised by swung-quaver chordal offbeats but features a snare backbeat on

beats two and four (see Ex. 9). Moore’s method, when expanded to apply to the standard

waltz pattern and the above backbeat variations, identifies the quavers for 80% of the sample.

Ex. 8 Allowable backbeat variations suggested by Tamlyn and Biamonte.

Ex. 9 a) A swung-quaver polka feel and b) a jump blues feel.

Although around a fifth of the songs in the sample cannot be categorised through recourse to

the backbeat, De Clercq’s two-second method is not employed here. This is because this

method leads to the categorisation of many 1950s and early-1960s songs as featuring straight-

quaver and swung-semiquaver subdivisions. Although no empirical evidence is provided to

back up the claim, the plausible consensus in the literature on funk is that semiquaver

subdivisions against a backbeat accent in 4/4 were hardly ever employed as the density

36 Phil Harris’s ‘The Thing’ and B.B. King’s ‘Please Love Me’. 37 Elvis Presley’s ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’ (A section) and ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ (B section), Pat Boone’s ‘Don’t Forbid Me’ (B section), and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s ‘Farther Up the Road’ (introduction).

66

referent in US popular music until the late 1960s and 1970s.38 Following De Clercq’s method,

Bo Diddley’s self-titled 1955 hit (which does not feature a backbeat accent) would be

categorised at a mid-tempo (around 109 bpm; see Ex. 10a) with straight quavers and swung

semiquavers (and approximately two-second bar lengths)39 rather than as an extremely up-

tempo shuffle (around 217 bpm; see Ex. 10b).40 However, early songs to emulate the ‘Bo

Diddley beat’ feature up-tempo backbeat accents41 and this hearing is evident in a

contemporaneous review of the single which refers to its ‘fast tempo’.42 Indeed, popular

musicians would not seem to have performed the ‘Bo Diddley beat’ with straight quavers and

swung semiquavers against a backbeat accent until the 1970s: for example, the guitar and

piano groove in Shirley & Co’s 1975 hit ‘Shame Shame Shame’. Thus, empirical evidence

suggests that contemporary listeners heard the Bo Diddley beat as an up-tempo shuffle.

Consequently, swung subdivisions in the sample are assumed to be swung quavers rather than

swung semiquavers.43 It is therefore proposed that Moore’s method does not merely provide a

consistent way of notating popular music for analytical comparison but provides an insight

into how musicians conceived of metre in the 1950s and early 1960s. Adding this assumption

to the aforementioned expansion of Moore’s method identifies the quavers in 93% of the

songs in the sample..

38 Wendell Logan, ‘The Ostinato Idea in Black Improvised Music: A Preliminary Investigation’, The Black Perspective in Music, 12 (1984), 193–215; here, 200. Alexander Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music’, Popular Music, 19 (2000), 293–318; here, 293. Richard J. Ripani, The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 2006), 98. Guilherme Schmidt Câmara and Anne Danielsen, ‘Groove’, in Alexander Rehding and Steven Rings (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 271–294; here, 277. 39 Michael Hicks, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 36. 40 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 83. 41 For example, Johnny Otis’s ‘Willie and the Hand Jive’ (1958) and the Strangeloves’ ‘I Want Candy’ (1965), both of which feature a swung-quaver ‘Bo Diddley beat’ against an up-tempo backbeat. 42 Author unknown, ‘The Cash Box Award o’ the Week’, Cash Box (9 April 1955), The Cash Box Rhythm ’n Blues Reviews, 2. 43 That is, unless other rhythmic patterns suggest otherwise: for example, Tony Bennett’s ‘Rags to Riches’ is the only song in the sample to feature swung-semiquaver subdivisions (in the horn parts) against slow crotchet and swing-quaver accompaniment.

67

Ex. 10 a) ‘Bo Diddley beat’, mid-tempo straight-quaver hearing following De Clercq’s two-second method; b) ‘Bo Diddley beat’ up-tempo swung-quaver hearing following the extension of Moore’s method.

For the remaining 7% of the sample (30 songs), the tempo and metre can usually be deduced

by the rhythmic patterns that are present and how they relate to the backbeat in other

recordings in the sample. Five rhythmic textures appear in the sample without a backbeat

accent and without any swung subdivisions to indicate what onsets to consider quavers.

However, these rhythmic textures are found in conjunction with a backbeat elsewhere in the

sample and are therefore categorised as illustrated in Ex. 11.

Ex. 11 Common rhythmic textures without a backbeat accent and how they are conceived in terms of notation in this thesis: a) a 1950s ballad texture, b) a tango and chachachá rhythm, c) an Afro-Cuban bolero-influenced texture, d) an Afro-Cuban son-influenced texture, and e) a Motown-associated crotchet snare drumbeat.

Four songs in the sample evade categorisation according to the above methods: namely, two

male-vocal ballads accompanied by acoustic guitar and strings (Nat ‘King’ Cole’s ‘Mona Lisa’

and the Beatles’s ‘Yesterday’) and two Ray Charles singles (‘A Fool for You’ and ‘Drown in

My Own Tears’). It is therefore unclear whether to consider these songs to be slow with

q = ca. 217

swung quavers

5

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straight quavers, swung semiquavers

9

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swung quavers

12

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4

4

4

4

4

4

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a) Basic accents of 'Bo Diddley beat': up-tempo hearing

∑ ∑

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a) 'Bo Diddley beat': mid-tempo hearing

∑ ∑

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b) 'Bo Diddley beat': up-tempo hearing

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68

quaver and semiquaver subdivisions or up-tempo with crotchet and quaver rhythms. Since all

of these songs feel slow, they are categorised as such. Indeed, Cash Box received ‘A Fool for

You’ as a ‘slow wailing blues’, and not, for example, as a mid-tempo swung-quaver waltz.44

Moreover, when the Beatles performed ‘Yesterday’ live in 1966 with full-band

accompaniment, Ringo Starr employed a mid-tempo, rather than an up-tempo, backbeat.45

Categorising Rhythmic Subdivisions

In order to test whether the hypothesised swung-to-straight shift occurred, it is necessary to

determine how to categorise songs that feature swung- and straight-quaver subdivisions

simultaneously in different instrumental parts, songs that alternate between swung and straight

sections, and songs that are broadly swung-quaver but feature straight-quaver subdivisions

momentarily in a melodic line. None of the seven corpus analyses outlines a method of

categorising the subdivisions of the songs contained in their respective samples.

The first point is easily answered and also applies to distinguishing between monorhythm and

polyrhythm. Given that this project is more interested in the adoption of straight-quaver

subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures than in the decline of swung subdivisions and

monorhythm, it is specified that a song must feature straight-quaver rhythmic patterns or a

polyrhythmic texture throughout at least one section for it to be categorised as ‘straight’ or

‘polyrhythmic’. Thus, songs that predominantly feature swung-quaver subdivisions or

monorhythmic textures can be still categorised as ‘featuring’ straight-quaver rhythmic patterns

or polyrhythm, including instances in which swung and straight subdivisions occur

concurrently.

The second problem is addressed by adopting Olly Wilson’s distinction between ‘fixed’ and

‘variable’ rhythm.46 ‘Fixed’ rhythm refers to rhythmic patterns which are usually played in the

accompaniment and are largely unchanging throughout the song, while ‘variable’ rhythm

denotes the changing rhythms that are typically played by lead instruments. 47 In mid-century

US popular music, the fixed rhythm is usually found in the rhythm section (that is drums,

44 Anonymous, ‘The Cash Box Rhythm ’n Blues Reviews’, Cash Box, 11 June 1955, 32. 45 Josh S, ‘The Beatles - "Yesterday" live in Munich, 1966’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YWyFIzSeXI (accessed 4 March 2021). 46 Olly Wilson, ‘The Significance of the Relationship between Afro-American Music and West African Music’, The Black Perspective in Music, 2 (1974), 3–23; here, 9, 11, and 12. Agawu makes a similar distinction between ‘less fixed’ accompanimental patterns and the ‘relatively “free”’ master drumming in Ewe Agbadza: Agawu, The African Imagination in Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 168–9. 47 Wilson, ‘The Significance of the Relationship between Afro-American Music and West African Music’, 9, 11, and 12.

69

bass, guitars, keyboards) while variable rhythm typically consists of vocal and instrumental

melodies (pre-composed or improvisatory), countermelodies, improvised instrumental solos

and fills, and arranged orchestral backings. A single instrument can switch freely between

fixed and variable rhythm: for example, a repeated drumbeat is fixed rhythm while a drum fill,

no matter how brief, is variable rhythm. Lee Cronbach and Kyle Adams have seen the

distinction between variable and fixed rhythm as synonymous with that between melody and

accompaniment in the context of African-American music.48 However, in this project, a

melody line can take part in fixed rhythm if it repeats a rhythmic pattern enough: for example

the chorus melody of Carl Smith’s ‘Loose Talk’ (see Ex. 12).

Ex. 12 Seven bars of fixed rhythm in the verse melody of Carl Smith’s ‘Loose Talk’ (1955).

In order to have a consistent means of distinguishing between fixed rhythm and variable

rhythm, a set number of bars is required for both the length of the rhythmic cell and the

number of times it has to be repeated. This is tantamount to a definition of the term ‘rhythmic

pattern’. A rhythmic pattern is defined in this project as a rhythmic cell of up to two bars in

length that is repeated. It is specified that the rhythmic cell has to be two bars or less in length

before being repeated in order to help to distinguish rhythmic patterns from melodic phrase

structure: that is, fixed rhythm from variable rhythm. A rhythmic pattern can be performed in

an individual instrument or by several instruments in unison. This definition therefore differs

from that employed by Anne Danielsen who refers to ‘the rhythmic pattern’ in funk as ‘often

consist[ing] of several layers’.49 Moreover, only the onset is considered in a rhythmic pattern.

Thus, when rhythmic patterns occur in instruments that can sustain, articulation and note

length are ignored. Pitch is generally not considered in the fixed rhythm. However, a

distinction is made between the bass register and the treble register within an instrument.

48 Lee Cronbach, ‘Structural Polytonality in Contemporary Afro-American Music,’ Black Music Research Journal, 2 (1981–82), 15–33; here, 19 and 32. Kyle Adams ‘Aspects of the Music/Text Relationship in Rap,’ Music Theory Online, 14 (2008), paragraph 11. 49 Anne Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006), 43.

q = 226

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70

Namely, the left-hand and the right-hand parts on keyboard instruments are considered to be

separate patterns as are the bass voice and the higher voices in a doo wop group.

Unlike the fixed rhythm in West-African polyrhythm, which Wilson suggests is largely

unchanging throughout a song, the fixed rhythm in mid-century US popular music often

changes between sections. Four, eight, twelve, and sixteen bars is the most common lengths

of sections in this period. However, often the fixed rhythm of a section is interrupted by fills

and stops, shortening the length of period for which the rhythm pattern is repeated. It is

therefore stipulated in this project that if a rhythmic cell is a bar or less in length it must be

performed for three bars in succession in order to be considered an example of fixed rhythm.

If the rhythmic cell is two-bars long, then it must be repeated for six bars in succession. This

allows for the fixed rhythm in a section to be cut short by fills and stops whilst excluding the

repeated two-bar ‘basic idea’ that initiates a ‘sentence’ melodic structure in William Caplin’s

terminology.50

A song is only categorised as ‘straight’ in this project if it features straight-quaver subdivisions

in the fixed rhythm: that is, if it features straight-quaver rhythmic patterns. Thus, the project is

about a transition from swung- to straight-quaver rhythmic patterns. Consequently, songs such as

Kitty Kallen’s ‘Little Things Mean a Lot’ which feature straight-quaver subdivisions in the

variable rhythm (in the string section) but not in the fixed rhythm are excluded from the

‘featuring straight’ category. Conversely, Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’, which features swung

and straight-quaver subdivisions in the fixed rhythm simultaneously, is categorised as featuring

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns. Of course, there is a microrhythmic grey area between

swung and straight-quaver subdivisions: for example, the banjo strumming in the Weavers’s

‘On Top of Old Smokey’. Songs that feature rhythmic patterns in this grey area but which

seem closer to straight than to swung (such as the reiterated straight-quaver electric-guitar

bassline in Little Walter’s ‘My Babe’) are included in the overall ‘featuring duple-quaver

rhythmic patterns’ category.51 Relatedly, four empirical analyses find that the swing feel of jazz

musicians moves increasingly towards straight-quaver subdivisions as the tempo increases,

because of the physiological challenge of maintaining swung quavers at tempos between 200

50 William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 35 and 257. 51 In analytical scholarship on jazz, computer-assisted analysis of the microrhythmic aspects of the swing feel is common, following Charles Keil’s work on ‘participatory discrepancies’. This approach is not employed to analyse examples in the sample that seem to occupy this ‘grey area’ because a waveform or spectrogram analysis cannot reliably isolate the rhythmic patterns of an individual instrument in recordings of this era.

71

and 300.52 Since songs in the present corpus range from 45 bpm to around 282 bpm, songs

were categorised as being too quick for subdivisions to be discerned on a case by case basic

from 230 bpm upwards.

Four categories of rhythmic subdivisions are therefore employed: 1) songs that broadly exhibit

triple-quaver rhythmic patterns, 2) songs that feature duple-quaver rhythmic patterns

throughout at least one section, 3) songs that feature few or no subdivisions in rhythmic

patterns (the aforementioned ‘two-to-one relationship’), and 4) songs in which the tempo is

too quick (over around 230 bpm) to reliably discern rhythmic subdivisions (see Table 2).

Table 2. Categories and subcategories of rhythmic subdivisions.

Rhythmic subdivision category Triple-quaver rhythmic patterns Featuring duple-quaver rhythmic patterns No or few subdivisions in rhythmic patterns Tempo too quick to tell

Categorising Rhythmic Textures Dizzy Gillespie does not define ‘monorhythm’ but he defines polyrhythm as ‘four or five

different musicians playing different rhythms at the same time.’53 Except for the number of

rhythmic patterns, this is how polyrhythm is defined in recent scholarship. For example, in his

2016 monograph The African Imagination in Music, Kofi Agawu defines polyrhythm as a musical

texture that exhibits two or more different rhythmic patterns simultaneously.54

There is much scholarship on polyrhythm, typically in reference to West-African drumming

and transformations of West-African ‘timelines’ (rhythmic keys) in Afro-Cuban music.55

52 Mark C. Ellis, ‘An Analysis of “Swing” Subdivision and Asynchronization in Three Jazz Saxophonists’, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 73 (1991), 707–713. Geoffrey L. Collier and James Lincoln Collier, ‘The Swing Rhythm in Jazz’, in Bruce Pennycook and Eugenia Costa-Giomi (eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (Montreal: McGill University, 1996), 477–480. Anders Friberg and Andreas Sundström, ‘Swing Ratios and Ensemble Timing in Jazz Performance: Evidence for a Common Rhythmic Pattern’, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19 (2002), 333–349. Henkjan Honing and W. Bas de Haas, ‘Swing Once More: Relating Timing and Tempo in Expert Jazz Drumming’, Music Perception, 25 (2008), 471–476. 53 Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop: Memoirs (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), 485. 54 Kofi Agawu, The African Imagination in Music, 176. 55 Gerstin, ‘Comparisons of African and Diasporic Rhythm’. Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure. Mark J. Butler, Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

72

However, in the context of 4/4 popular music, the type of rhythmic patterns that contribute

to a polyrhythm are unclear. Polymetre and crossrhythm are both specific types of

polyrhythm.56 Polymetre denotes the superimposition of several metres, achieved by dividing

the bar into several metres concurrently: for example, triplet crotchets in 4/4, implying 6/4

against 4/4 (see Ex. 13).57 Crossrhythm refers to rhythmic groupings that overlap the main

beats of the bar: for instance, threes crossing over twos in 4/4 (see Ex. 14a and b).58 Most

definitions of crossrhythm in 4/4 encompass rhythmic patterns that prematurely realign with

the main pulse, which Anne Danielsen calls ‘counter-rhythm’, for example the 3-3-2 quaver

pattern that ‘crosses’ over the main beats and the 3-3-3-3-4 quaver pattern that ‘crosses’ over

the barline (see Ex. 14c and d). A rhythmic texture can be polymetric or crossrhythmic by

featuring one specific type of rhythmic pattern that goes against the main pulse. However,

while polymetre and crossrhythm are types of polyrhythm, not all polyrhythm is polymetric or

crossrhythmic. For example, Gillespie describes ‘Night in Tunisia’ as polyrhythmic but none

of the five rhythmic patterns that are employed concurrently are polymetric or crossrhythmic.

Thus, songs in the sample are not categorised as polyrhythmic purely because the feature one

rhythmic pattern that is polymetric (for example, triplet crotchets) or crossrhythmic (for

example, a 3-3-2 pattern).59

Ex. 13 Three with two polymetre.

56 Anonymous, ‘Polyrhythm’ [2001], Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 11 July 2020). Justin London, ‘Rhythm’ [2001], Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 11 July 2020). 57 Justin London, ‘Rhythm’ [2001], Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 11 November 2018). 58 Justin London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 59 This exclusion does not affect the statistical results since the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm (and that towards polyrhythm) is strongly correlated with high statistically significance whether or not songs that feature one polymetric or crossrhythmic pattern are categorised as polyrhythm.

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73

Ex. 14 a–d) examples of the 4/4 definition of crossrhythm.

Scholars of polyrhythm have distinguished between types of rhythmic patterns based on

syncopation and ‘symmetry’: for example, Mieczyslaw Kolinski’s 1973 distinction between

‘contrametric’ and ‘commetric’ patterns and Jay Rahn and Mark Butler’s discussions of

‘asymmetrical’ (or ‘diatonic’) patterns respectively.60 In both cases, the implication is that a

rhythmic texture would not be polyrhythmic without the use of syncopated or ‘asymmetrical’

rhythmic patterns. Indeed, Thomas MacCluskey defines polyrhythm as the superimposition of

syncopated-quaver and syncopated-semiquaver rhythmic patterns in relation to late-1960s soul

and hard rock.61 However, as illustrated below, the Cuban-influenced bass pattern that Mario

Bauzá gives as an example of a fundamental change in the rhythm of US popular music is not

syncopated. Thus, syncopation is not employed in the definition of monorhythm and

polyrhythm that are employed in this project.

However, the rhythmic patterns in both Bauzá’s examples of Cuban-influenced rhythm-

section parts and Gillespie’s 1956 recording of ‘Night in Tunisia’ could be seen to be

‘asymmetrical’. The type of symmetry evoked here is not mirror or rotational symmetry but

the lesser known translational symmetry. Translational symmetry refers to instances in which

an object is ‘translated’ (that is, moved without rotation) and repeated, creating the kind of

symmetry seen in a honeycomb or wallpaper pattern (see Fig. 1). Thus, a rhythmic unit that is

one-to-two bars in length and can be divided into a repeating cell of one-to-two beats in length

could be seen to be symmetrical. Similarly, a bar-long rhythmic unit that cannot be divided

into a recurring beat-long rhythmic cell could be seen to be asymmetrical. Rahn and Butler

60 Mieczyslaw Kolinski, ‘A Cross-Cultural Approach to Metro-Rhythmic Patterns’, Ethnomusicology, 17 (1973), 494–506. Jay Rahn, ‘Asymmetrical Ostinatos in Sub-Saharan Music: Time, Pitch and Cycles Reconsidered’, Theory Only, 9 (1987), 23–36. Jay Rahn, ‘Turning The Analysis Around: Africa-Derived Rhythms and Europe-Derived Music Theory’, Black Music Research Journal (1996), 71–89. Mark J. Butler, ‘Turning The Beat Around: Reinterpretation, Metrical Dissonance, And Asymmetry in Electronic Dance Music’, Music Theory Online, 7, (2001). Butler, Unlocking the Groove, 2006. 61 Don Ellis, ‘Music Workshop: Rock: The Rhythmic Revolution’, Down Beat, 36 (27 November 1969): 32–33. Thomas MacCluskey, ‘Rock in its Elements’, Music Educators Journal, 56 (1969), 49–51; here, 49.

74

each present three-part categorisations of rhythmic patterns based on asymmetry. Rahn

employs the terms ‘pulsating’, ‘divisive’, and ‘asymmetrical’ while Butler uses ‘even’, ‘diatonic’,

and ‘syncopated’. Rahn’s ‘pulsating’ patterns and Butler’s ‘even’ patterns are symmetrical

rhythmic patterns while Rahn’s ‘divisive’ and ‘asymmetrical’ patterns and Butler’s ‘diatonic’

and ‘syncopated’ patterns are specific types of asymmetrical patterns.

Fig. 1 a) ‘symmetrical’ rhythmic pattern (walking bassline with translational symmetry) and b)

‘asymmetrical’ rhythmic pattern (Afro-Cuban tresillo bassline without translational symmetry).

This symmetry metaphor is convoluted because, as illustrated, it is based on the notion of a

rhythmic pattern repeating at two different levels: the level of the bar and the level of the beat.

Thus, the implied distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical rhythmic patterns in

Rahn and Butler’s work is reformulated as an original distinction between ‘beat-level’ and ‘bar-

level’ rhythmic patterns.

Based on a closer reading of Bauzá’s and Gillespie’s musical examples than has been

conducted in previous studies, it is suggested that the Afro-Latin-jazz bandleaders define

monorhythm and polyrhythm in terms of beat-level and bar-level rhythmic patterns. Bauzá

states that Afro-Cuban music influenced a change in the bass and drum parts of US-American

music from the on-beat crotchet rhythmic patterns of swing to the more off-beat straight-

quaver rhythmic patterns of Afro-Cuban music between the 1940s and the late 1950s.62

Specifically, he claims that:

We [Cuban musicians] made changes [to US music] starting from the bottom—the bass, the drums, […] Before they started to listen to us in the 1940s, all the American bass players played nothing but dum-dum-dum, 1-2-3-4, “walking” bass. Then they heard the Cuban tumbaos (bass riffs) Cachao was playing, and they started to go da-da-dat—stop and rest—da-dat! Da-da-dat—stop and rest—da-dat! And the American drummers, the same. They were playing this even swish-swish-swish-swish on the ride cymbal, you know? Then they hear us, and the snare and the tom-tom start talking back and forth, like Cuban congas and bongos. When the electric bass guitar comes in, around 1957, the style people develop for that instrument, the patterns, the whole feel, it’s Cuban.63

62 Mario Bauzá as quoted in Robert Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, Spin, 4 (1988), 26–30, 84–85, 103; here, 28. 63 Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 28.

75

Bauzá’s illustrations of 1930s US-American bass and drum patterns (a walking bassline and a

crotchet ride pattern) are ‘beat-level’ rhythmic patterns. Beat-level rhythmic patterns are

defined here as rhythmic cells that are less than a bar (of 4/4 or 3/4) in length and which are

repeated (see Ex. 15a). Conversely, Bauzá’s vocalisations of Afro-Cuban bass and percussion

patterns are ‘bar-level’ rhythmic patterns. The latter examples are implicitly the straight-quaver

bass-vocal riff of Richard Berry’s 1957 composition ‘Louie Louie’, which was lifted from the

Cuban bandleader René Touzet’s 1956 chachachá ‘El Loco Cha Cha’, and a common

adaptation of the standard straight-quaver Afro-Cuban conga pattern to the drum kit. Bar-

level rhythmic patterns are defined here as rhythmic cells that are one-to-two bars in length

and which are repeated (see Ex. 15b). A novel definition of monorhythm and polyrhythm is

presented below based on this distinction.

Ex. 15 a) 1930s US-American ‘beat-level’ walking bass and ride-cymbal patterns and b) late-1950s Cuban-influenced ‘bar-level’ bass (tacitly the straight-quaver bass-vocal riff of Richard Berry’s 1957 single ‘Louie Louie’) and drum-kit pattern.

Extrapolating from a comparison of two recordings of ‘Night in Tunisia’, Gillespie would

seem to define monorhythm as a musical texture in which no more than one bar-level

rhythmic pattern is employed simultaneously, and polyrhythm as a musical texture in which

two or more different bar-level rhythmic patterns are employed concurrently. This is implied

when Gillespie states that ‘where the bass says, “do-do-do-do-do-do,” and “daanh-da-da-da-

da-da” was being played against that. That was the sense of polyrhythm’.64 ‘Night in Tunisia’

was first recorded in 1944 by Sarah Vaughan as a vocal number entitled ‘Interlude’ in a small-

band swing style. The A section of this recording, which features Gillespie, exhibits one bar-

64 Gillespie with Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop, 318, 483, and 490.

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76

level rhythmic pattern in the horns and three beat-level patterns in the rhythm section. This

would seem to be an example of monorhythm (see Ex. 16a). Conversely, the same section in

Gillespie’s 1946 recording of ‘Night in Tunisia’ features five bar-level rhythmic patterns and

no beat-level patterns and is described by Gillespie as polyrhythmic (see Ex. 16b). In this

project, both monorhythm and polyrhythm may feature any number of beat-level rhythmic

patterns, although these are more characteristic of monorhythm than polyrhythm.

Ex. 16 A comparison of the accompanimental rhythmic patterns in the first six bars of the A section of two recordings of Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Night in Tunisia’: a) Sarah Vaughan, ‘Interlude’ (1944), an example of swung-quaver monorhythm comprising one bar-level pattern and three beat-level patterns; and b) Dizzy Gillespie, ‘Night in Tunisia’ (1946), an example of straight-quaver polyrhythm featuring five bar-level patterns.

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77

Bauzá’s musical examples of US-American and Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns are also

monorhythmic and polyrhythmic respectively (see again Ex. 15a and b). However, there is a

difference between the type of monorhythm seen in the layering of Bauzá’s two illustrations

of US-American rhythmic patterns and that seen in the A section of Gillespie’s 1944 recording

of ‘Night in Tunisia’ (that is, Sarah Vaughan’s ‘Interlude’). Specifically, the monorhythmic

texture that arises from the combination of Bauzá’s two vocalisations of US-American

rhythmic patterns does not exhibit any bar-level rhythmic patterns whereas Gillespie’s initial

recording of ‘Night in Tunisia’ features one bar-level pattern. Monorhythm is therefore split

into two subcategories in this project: ‘commetre’, which exclusively features beat-level

patterns (e.g. Bauzá’s US-American rhythmic texture); and ‘contrarhythm’, in which one bar-

level pattern is employed (e.g. the A section of Gillespie’s 1954 version Gillespie’s of ‘Night in

Tunisia’). The term ‘commetre’ is borrowed from Kolinski.65 The descriptor ‘contrarhythm’ is

coined in this study and is not synonymous with Kolinski’s contrametre nor Anne Danielsen’s

counter-rhythm (that is, truncated crossrhythm in 4/4). As ‘Interlude’ exemplifies, US-

American music did feature bar-level rhythmic patterns that do not seem to have been

influenced by Afro-Latin musics.66 However, these patterns typically feature in a

contrarhythmic texture rather than a polyrhythmic texture. For a summary of the above

terminology see Table 3.

Table 3. Categories and subcategories of rhythmic texture.

Rhythmic texture category

Rhythmic texture subcategory Rhythmic texture criteria

Monorhythm Commetre Featuring exclusively beat-level rhythmic patterns

Contrarhythm Featuring one bar-level pattern and any number of beat-level patterns

Featuring polyrhythm

N/A Featuring two or more bar-level rhythmic patterns and any number of beat-level patterns

There is also a difference in the rhythmic (sub)divisions evoked in Bauzá and Gillespie’s

monorhythmic examples. Bauzá’s implied illustration of a US-American rhythmic texture

exhibits no quaver subdivisions and instead exclusively features crotchet rhythmic patterns.

Conversely, Gillespie’s 1954 recording of ‘Night in Tunisia’ features swung-quaver rhythmic 65 Two rhythmic patterns that Kolinski considered to be contrametric are categorised as commetric here: the backbeat and quaver offbeats. 66 For a discussion of a prominent US-American bar-level rhythmic pattern see Wayne Marshall, ‘Ragtime Country: Rhythmically Recovering Country’s Black Heritage’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 32 (2020), 50–62.

78

patterns. However, both Bauzá and Gillespie’s examples of Cuban-influenced rhythm are

straight-quaver and polyrhythmic. Thus, Bauzá intimates a move from crotchet commetre to

straight-quaver polyrhythm whereas Gillespie suggests a shift from swung-quaver

contrarhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Together they describe an Afro-Cuban influence

on a transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to duple-quaver

polyrhythm.

Thus, when Bauzá posits the erasure of an Afro-Cuban influence on a fundamental change in

the rhythm of post-war popular music and jazz in the United States he is seemingly referring

to a transformation from crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm culminating in

the rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a marginalised period in popular-music

historiography.67 The term ‘rhythmic schema’ is employed to describe this intersection of

rhythmic subdivisions and rhythmic texture. For a summary of this terminology see Table 4:

the two categories of relevance here are triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm as well as

straight-quaver polyrhythm.

Table 4. Categories and subcategories of rhythmic schema.

Rhythmic schema category

Rhythmic schema subcategory Rhythmic schema criteria

Triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm

Triple-quaver or crotchet commetre

Featuring exclusively beat-level triple-quaver and/or crotchet rhythmic patterns

Triple-quaver or crotchet contrarhythm

Featuring one triple-quaver or crotchet bar-level pattern and any number of triple-quaver or crotchet beat-level patterns

Straight-quaver monorhythm

Straight-quaver commetre Featuring exclusively beat-level straight-quaver rhythmic pattern

Straight-quaver contrarhythm Featuring one straight-quaver bar-level pattern and any number of beat-level patterns

Triple-quaver polyrhythm (crotchet polyrhythm not possible)

Featuring triple-quaver polyrhythm

Featuring two or more triple-quaver bar-level rhythmic patterns and any number of beat-level patterns

Straight-quaver polyrhythm

Featuring duple-quaver polyrhythm

Featuring two or more straight-quaver bar-level rhythmic patterns and any number of beat-level patterns

67 Mario Bauzá as quoted in Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 28.

79

Beat-level rhythmic patterns tend to be non-syncopated while bar-level patterns tend to be

syncopated. However, this is not always the case. For instance, the swung-quaver chordal

offbeats of jump blues are beat-level but syncopated (see Ex. 17a) while two rhythmic patterns

that typify the Afro-Cuban bolero are non-syncopated but bar-level (see Ex. 17b).

Consequently, songs in the sample featuring quaver offbeats – for example, jump-blues songs

– alongside one further syncopated pattern are not considered polyrhythmic.68

Ex. 17 a) A common jump-blues rhythmic texture,69 which is considered to be monorhythmic (specifically contrarhythmic); and b) a common Afro-Cuban bolero rhythmic texture,70 which is considered to be polyrhythmic.

Four rhythmic patterns and two rhythmic textures are permitted as exceptions to this method

respectively. First, two types of bar-level pattern are categorised as beat-level and two types of

beat-level are categorised as bar-level. The first bar-level pattern that is categorised as beat-

level is a repeated semibreve because this pattern has no rhythmic activity. The second is the

aforementioned oom-pah-pah waltz pattern. This pattern is characterised by a bass-register

note followed by two treble-register responses and is sometimes split between two or more

instruments. Based on the parameters defined above, this pattern would therefore be

categorised as two bar-level rhythmic patterns: ‘oom’ as one pattern and ‘pah-pah’ as another.

However, since this pattern merely accents the three beats of the bar but with a registral

distinction, this is considered an exception and is categorised as a beat-level pattern. This is in

line with the fact the similar oom-pah polka pattern is a two-beat pattern is thus categorised as

‘beat-level’. The rhythmic patterns that are two beats in length but feature syncopated

68 Alternative methods of categorising rhythmic subdivisions and rhythmic texture were employed in addition to the main methods for the statistical analysis presented in Chapter 3. The alternative method of categorising rhythmic subdivisions includes songs featuring straight-quaver subdivisions in the variable rhythm in the ‘straight’ category. The alternative method of categorising rhythmic texture was based on a distinction between syncopated and non-syncopated patterns, with quavers as the density referent. Variations of the two methods of categorising rhythmic texture were also employed in which songs that feature one crossrhythmic or polymetric pattern in the fixed rhythm without any other bar-level patterns were categorised as polyrhythm, in line with the definitions of crossrhythm polymetre as types of polyrhythm discussed above. However, the findings of the statistical analysis were broadly the same with the alternative methods and the main methods (including the variations) and it was therefore clear that the choice of method was not skewing the statistics. The results of these alternative methods are not included in the text because of the constraints of word count. 69 For example, Bobby Day’s ‘Rock-In-Robin’ (1958). 70 For instance, Georgia Gibbs’s ‘Kiss of Fire’ (1952) and Frankie Avalon’s ‘Venus’ (1959).

80

semiquavers are categorised as bar-level patterns so that they contribute towards a

polyrhythmic texture.71 The second example is crossrhythmic and polymetric patterns which

although often beat-level (for example, repeated dotted quavers and or triplet crotchets in

4/4) are categorised as bar-level, because of the association of these patterns with

polyrhythm.72 Although these four exceptions somewhat undermine the utility of the

expressions ‘beat-level’ and ‘bar-level’ patterns, they are all uncommon in this era and thus the

phrases beat- and bar-level are still useful.

Second, two rhythmic textures in which two or more bar-level rhythmic patterns are present

but are not heard simultaneously are categorised as monorhythmic rather than polyrhythmic.

These are referred to as ‘alternation’ and ‘containment’. ‘Alternation’ refers to instances in

which one pattern succeeds the other: for example, the horns in the chorus of Jackie Wilson’s

1963 hit ‘Baby Workout’ (see Ex. 18a). Not categorising alternating bar-level patterns as

polyrhythm prevents spurious examples as being considered polyrhythm: for instance, the

crotchet piano introduction of Shirley and Lee’s 1956 single ‘Let the Good Times Roll’ (see

Ex. 18b). ‘Containment’ refers to an instance in which one pattern is subsumed within another

with no concurrent onsets except for dovetailing: for example, the vocal and piccolo

introduction of Bobby Day’s 1958 recording ‘Rock-In-Robin’ (see Example 18c). However,

oscillation – that is instances in which onsets rapidly oscillate between two parts – is

considered polyrhythm: for instance, the accompanimental piano patterns in Ruth Brown’s

1954 hit ‘Mambo Baby’ (see Example 18d).

71 For example, the semiquaver tresillo melody in the C section of Patti Page’s ‘All My Love’, the semiquaver habanera in the tom-tom in the B section of the Four Seasons’s ‘Sherry’ (1962) and the rhythm guitar of Bruce Channel’s ‘Hey! Baby’ (1962), and the semiquaver cinquillo in the rhythm guitar in the Byrds’s ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ (1965). 72 Moreover, crossrhythm and polymetre are only required to repeat for three bars to be considered in the fixed rhythm.

81

Ex. 18 Exceptions where bar-level rhythmic patterns are not categorised as polyrhythmic textures: a) ‘alternation’ between the saxophones and brass in the chorus of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Baby Workout’ (1963), b) ‘alternation’ in the introduction of Shirley and Lee’s ‘Let the Good Times Roll’ (1956), c) ‘containment’ in the vocal and piccolo introduction of Bobby Day’s ‘Rock-In-Robin’ (1958), and d) ‘oscillation’ (which is considered to be polyrhythm) in the piano part of Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954) (all transposed to C major for comparison).

A method is needed in order to determine whether two or more bar-level rhythmic patterns

that appear simultaneously are different enough from one another for the resulting rhythmic

texture to be considered polyrhythmic. Such a method is presented in an article by music-

information-retrieval scholars Jouni Paulus and Anssi Klapuri; however, for the purposes of

the present project, this method is overly complicated and time-consuming to calculate.73 A

simple mathematical method is therefore employed here in which the number of onsets that

the two patterns have in common is added up and divided by the total number of unique

onsets. This produces a decimal between 0 and 1, where 0 would indicate that the patterns

were completely different while 1 would indicate that they were exactly the same. This degree

of similarity was calculated for the bar-level patterns in the sample that were alike. Based on

these examples, a cut-off point was determined that if there is a degree of similarity of two

thirds or over (0.66 recurring) then the two patterns are considered to be variations of the

same pattern whereas if the figure was lower than two thirds then the bar-level rhythmic

patterns would be considered discrete and therefore the resulting rhythmic texture classed as

polyrhythmic. For example, the Afro-Cuban bolero bass pattern and the ‘habanera’ pattern

have a 0.75 (3/4) degree of similarity and are thus considered variations of the same pattern

(Ex. 19a and b), as are the habanera and the tresillo (Ex. 19b and c). However, the degree of

similarity between the bolero bass pattern and the tresillo (Ex. 19a and c) is 0.5 (1/2) and these

73 Jouni Paulus and Anssi Klapuri, ‘Measuring the Similarity of Rhythmic Patterns’, Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (2002).

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two patterns are therefore considered distinct.74 Although the method of determining this

threshold was somewhat subjective, a fixed cut-off point is less subjective than judging on a

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then this process was repeated between every possible pair of patterns. For a summary of the

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Ex. 19 a) Bolero bass pattern; b) habanera bass pattern; c) tresillo bass pattern.

74 Crushed notes are considered to be ornamental rather than ‘rhythmic’ and therefore the snare-drum and guitar patterns in Lloyd Price’s ‘Personality’ are considered to be the same pattern despite the crushed notes in the snare-drum pattern.

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Table 5. Summary of rhythmic terminology employed in this thesis.

Term Definition Fixed rhythm The rhythmic patterns of a song, which are

usually played in the accompaniment and are performed largely unchanging throughout the song

Variable rhythm The changing rhythms of a song, which are typically played by lead instruments (e.g. melody)

Rhythmic pattern A rhythmic cell (in a single line) of up-to two bars in length that is repeated

Beat-level rhythmic pattern A repeated rhythmic cell that is less than a bar in length

Bar-level rhythmic pattern A repeated rhythmic cell that is one-to-two bars in length

Rhythmic texture The layering of numerous rhythmic patterns Monorhythm A musical texture in which no more than one

bar-level rhythmic pattern is employed simultaneously. Any number of beat-level rhythmic patterns may be employed.

Commetre A type of monorhythm that exclusively features beat-level patterns

Contrarhythm A type of monorhythm, in which one bar-level pattern is employed

Polyrhythm A musical texture in which two or more different bar-level rhythmic patterns are employed simultaneously. Any number of beat-level rhythmic patterns may be employed.

Polymetre A type of polyrhythm characterised by the superimposition of several metres, achieved by dividing the bar into several metres concurrently

Crossrhythm A type of polyrhythm characterised by rhythmic groupings that overlap the main beats of the bar: for example, twos crossing over threes in 12/8 and vice versa in 4/4

Rhythmic schema The intersection of rhythmic subdivisions and rhythmic texture, e.g. swung-quaver monorhythm, crotchet monorhythm, and straight-quaver polyrhythm

Reiterated straight-quaver/backbeat paradigm A musical texture in which straight-quaver subdivisions are repeatedly articulated in the fixed rhythm of a pitched or unpitched instrument against a percussive backbeat accent. By itself the paradigm is an example of straight-quaver commetre. However, it can be employed in a straight-quaver contrarhythmic or polyrhythmic context

84

Critical Reception

A comparative critical reception study is undertaken in order to determine how examples in

the sample of straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic textures were received by the

contemporaneous trade press (specifically, in singles reviews in Billboard and Cash Box)75 and

subsequently by a sample of thirteen rock histories.76 The objective is to establish whether the

adoption of straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures was associated with

Afro-Latin styles (interrogated in Chapter 4) and, if so, why this has been erased (questioned

in Chapter 5). Additionally, the reception of the rhythmic trends in journalistic and scholarly

literature in terms of mass culture and socio-politics is discussed in Chapter 6. In particular,

attention is paid to language that implies a mass-culture critique: for example, production-line

rhetoric, phrases like ‘selling out’, and terms like ‘craze’. Relatedly, heed is given to the

evocation of binaries such as hot/sweet, hard/soft, and aggressive/relaxed, which Keir

Keightley argues imply a distinction between art and commerce.77 Note is also taken of tropes

of Ronald Radano’s ‘hot rhythm’: principally, the racialised rhetoric of rhythmic contagion

seen in phrases such as ‘infectious rhythm’.78 It is hypothesised that this generational

difference in what popular music was considered mass culture will also be seen between the

trade press and the rock press in Chapters 4 and 5 of the present study.

The sample for the reception study comprises every song in the analytical corpus that features

a reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic pattern in a pitched instrument against a percussive

backbeat (35 songs), as well as all of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the corpus (58

songs). The former was limited to the pitched use of this paradigm because in the earliest

examples of this rhythmic texture in the sample, the reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions

75 Accessed through the freely accessible database World Radio History https://worldradiohistory.com. 76 The thirteen rock histories are: Royston Ellis, The Big Beat Scene: An Outspoken Exposé of the Teenage World of Rock ’n’ Roll (York: Music Mentor Books, 2010 [originally published in 1961]). John Rublowsky, Popular Music (London: Basic Books, 1967). Derek Johnson, Beat Music (Oslo: Norsk Musikforlag, 1969). Nik Cohn, Rock from the Beginning (New York: Stein and Day/Publishers, 1969). Carl Belz, The Story of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (London: Sphere, 1969). Jerry Hopkins, The Rock Story (New York: New American Library 1970). Richard Robinson (ed.), Rock Revolution: From Elvis to Alice Cooper—The Whole Story of Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Curtis Books, 1973). Mike Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1973). Brian van der Horst, Rock Music (New York: F. Watts, 1973). Albert Raisner, L'Aventure Pop (Paris: E ditions Robert Laffont, 1973). Tony Palmer (author) and Paul Medlicott (editor), All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976). Jim Miller (ed.), The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press, Random House). 77 Keir Keightley, ‘Music for Middlebrows: Defining the Easy Listening Era, 1946-1966’, American Music, 26 (2008), 309–335; here, 328. 78 Ronald Radano, ‘Hot Fantasies: American Modernism and the Idea of Black Rhythm’, in Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Music and the Racial Imagination (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000), 459–480.

85

appear in pitched instruments and this form seems to have characterised canonical mid-1950s

rock ’n’ roll.

Billboard was sampled for the reception study because, as David Brackett states, it was the

‘richest source of information about popular music making and the music industry’ in the

1950s and early 1960s.79 Cash Box was also sampled because it tended to feature longer single

reviews and greater coverage of R&B than Billboard, which relates to their closer links to the

R&B market and juke box operators.80 The sample of thirteen rock histories was adopted

from Michael Daley’s doctoral thesis: a study of how rock historiography changed over time.

Daley notes in his thesis that of the 3,797 songs mentioned in the thirteen rock histories, 62

are mentioned in seven or more histories and seven of these songs are case studies in the

present thesis: including Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ and Paul Anka’s ‘Diana’, which

preliminary analysis suggested were early examples of the RSQB paradigm and straight-quaver

polyrhythm in rock ’n’ roll respectively. The thirteen rock histories were therefore sampled

because they were guaranteed to be a useful source for the reception of these case studies as

well as the two types of rock ’n’ roll more generally. Although only three of the histories

remain in print and continue to be cited (namely those by Gillett, Palmer, and Miller) and

some are rarely cited (for example, those by Jahn and Johnson), out-of-print books are just as

indicative of the contemporaneous discourse as are periodicals, which are routinely sampled in

reception studies.81

The above authors had similar backgrounds in terms of employment and demographics. Most

of the authors were music critics.82 However, some had backgrounds in scholarship: Gillett’s

book was an adaptation of his Master’s thesis, Belz was an art historian by trade, and Miller is

an academic today, although he did not write any of the chapters in the collection that he

edited (which is not peer-reviewed). All the thirteen authors were white men and, based on

available biographical information, none would seem to be Latinx-American. Moreover,

excluding the history by Raisner, who was French, all of the histories were written by US-

79 Brackett, Categorizing Sound, 29. 80 John Broven, Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock 'n' Roll Pioneers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 194. The reviews are between 30 and 130 words long, and cover both A-side and B-side combined. For example, the Cash Box ‘Sleeper of the Week’ review of ‘Diana’ is 124 words long for A-side and B-side. The other reviews on this page are 70–80 words long. The Billboard Spotlight singles reviews are shorter around 30–60 words. 81 For example: Zak, I Don't Sound Like Nobody; Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll; and Brackett, Categorising Sound. 82 Exceptions include Ellis, who was a poet and popular culture pundit, Albert Raisner, who was a harmonica player and television host, and Palmer, who was primarily a filmmaker.

86

American or British authors about US and UK popular music. Similarly, the writers at Billboard

and Cash Box seem to have been non-Latinx White men.83

Daley also notes that from 1969 onwards, all of the rock histories portray late-1950s and early-

1960s rock ’n’ roll as a fallow period in which the mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll artists died or joined

the establishment and were replaced by the music industry with a mass-culture version of the

style, epitomised by the teen idols.84 Daley’s thesis therefore indicates that at least ten of the 13

rock histories follow the Christ-like narrative outlined in the Introduction of the present

project.

Although the present reception study of these rock histories also discusses the conventional

narrative and periodisation of rock ’n’ roll history and how this relates to mass-culture

critiques, it differs from Daley’s in several key ways. As Daley acknowledges, his thesis does

not discuss gender, race, sexuality in rock historiography.85 Conversely, the present project

analyses the language that is used to describe the two types and periods of rock ’n’ roll and

their associated rhythmic textures in terms of gender and race, and how these relate to notions

of mass and anti-mass culture (see Chapter 5). This study also differs from Daley’s by

comparing reception of songs in the thirteen rock histories to that in the trade press. Indeed,

the emphasis in this project is on the difference between the reception of rock ’n’ roll among

these two groups of critics rather than on differences in the reception of rock ’n’ roll among

rock critics over time, as is Daley’s emphasis.

Conclusion

This chapter contributes a methodological synthesis and an original model for the analysis of

rhythmic texture. A corpus analysis and a reception study of rock ’n’ roll rhythm are

conducted in order to interrogate Mario Bauzá’s claim that historians have erased the impact

of Afro-Cuban musics and musicians on a fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war

popular in the United States: implicitly a transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet

monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm culminating in late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’

roll. Specifically, a corpus analysis of the rhythmic subdivisions and rhythmic patterns in 431

Billboard mainstream, R&B, and C&W year-end hits from 1950 to 1965 is conducted (see

Chapters 3 and 4). This is contextualised within a comparative critical reception study of the 83 For example, Irv Lichtman and Ira Howard at Cash Box and Paul Ackerman, Seymour Stein, and Jerry Wexler at Billboard. Broven, Record Makers and Breakers. 84 Ibid.. 85 Ibid., 316.

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the music-industry trade press (specifically, reviews in Billboard and Cash Box) and of thirteen

early rock histories published between 1961 and 1976 (see Chapter 5) followed by an

interrogation of the possible meanings of the rhythmic trends in relation to Latinx Americans

(see Chapter 6). A novel means of defining monorhythm and polyrhythm is presented in this

chapter based on a distinction between beat-level and bar-level rhythmic patterns. This could

be adapted to instances in which semiquavers are the density referent and employed in the

analysis of other styles of polyrhythmic popular music: for example, funk, disco, and

electronic dance music. In the following chapter, the diachronic findings of the corpus

analysis are presented.

Chapter 3 Longitudinal Findings of the Corpus Analysis

This chapter presents a statistical analysis of the data collected from the corpus analysis of

rhythm in 431 year-end hits on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and C&W charts from 1950 to

1965. The chapter has two objectives. The primary aim is to test whether the four

hypothesised rhythmic trends are strongly correlated and statistically significant. If so, the ‘null

hypotheses’ (inverted forms of the hypothesised trends) can be rejected. This indicates that

one would probably find the same results with a different sample of the same ‘population’ (in

this case, US popular hits). The four hypothesised rhythmic trends are a transformation from

triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm, a shift from swung- to

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns, a move from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures, and

a trend towards the RSQB paradigm. A secondary objective is to interrogate whether the

trends culminated in the late-1950s and early-1960s period – as reported by Thomas

MacCluskey, Mario Bauzá and others – in which rock ’n’ roll was purportedly ‘dead’.

Before the findings are discussed, it is necessary to define the following statistical terms: null

hypothesis, correlation analysis, and statistical significance.1 A null hypothesis states that there

is no relationship between two variables. In inferential statistics, the null hypothesis must be

rejected in order for the alternative hypothesis to be accepted. That is, one must disprove the

absence of a link between two variables in order to suggest that there is a link between them.

The logic here is that one has to disprove received wisdom in order to posit a new theory. The

null hypotheses in this project are that there is no relationship between the year in which a

song was a hit and its use of: 1) straight-quaver polyrhythm, 2) straight-quaver subdivisions, 3)

a polyrhythmic texture, and 4) the RSQB paradigm. A null hypothesis is rejected when there is

statistically significant evidence for the hypothesis.

Correlation analysis is employed in this project in order to test whether the hypothesised

rhythmic trends occurred with statistical significance and therefore whether the null

hypotheses can be rejected. Correlation analysis describes the strength and the direction

(positive or negative) of a linear relationship between two variables. The most commonly used

form of correlation analysis is the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r), which

is employed in this project. The Pearson correlation coefficient is measured on a scale from –1 1 For an introduction to statistics for musicologists see W. Luke Windsor, ‘Data Collection, Experimental Design, and Statistics in Musical Research’, in Eric F. Clarke and Nicholas Cook (eds.), Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

88

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to +1 where +1 indicates perfect positive correlation (variable y increases as variable x

increases), –1 indicates perfect negative correlation (variable y decreases as variable x

increases), and 0 indicates no correlation between the two variables.

The statistical significance of the result of a given statistical procedure is the probability that

this result can be explained by pure chance. Statistical significance is measured with a

probability (p) value, which is usually set at 0.05. A p value that is equal to or lower than 0.05

indicates that there is less than a 5% chance that a given result is a mere coincidence. A more

stringent significance level of p ≤ 0.001 is employed in this project to account for two factors.

First, although around 60 songs were sampled per year in Phase 1 of the analysis (1954 to

1957), a smaller sample of 20 songs per year was analysed in Phase 2 (1950 to 1953 and 1958

to 1965) and 10 songs were sampled in 1964 because of Billboard’s temporary discontinuation

of its R&B chart. Thus, the annual sample size for approximately half of the corpus is lower

than 30 ‘cases’, which is often cited as a rule of thumb for a minimum sample size in statistical

research.2 Second, the sample does not meet the independence of observations ‘assumption’

(that is, a condition) of Pearson’s r. This assumption stipulates that the cases do not have an

influence on one another: for example, if one was studying the political views of students, one

would not sample two students who lived together as their political views might influence one

another.3 Musicians often performed on numerous year-end hits and therefore the cases in the

corpus did have an influence on one another: for instance, there are fourteen songs by Elvis

Presley in the sample. Indeed, the identification of musicians who seem to have influenced the

adoption of these rhythmic elements is desirable in this project. The stricter significance level

compensates for these methodological considerations.

Rhythmic Trends

The following graphs show the longitudinal findings of the corpus analysis in reference to

rhythmic schema, (sub)divisions, texture, and paradigm respectively (see Graphs 1 to 5). The

trends that are strongly correlated and statistically significant are coloured blue and red in the

below graphs. Blue is employed for descending trends and red for ascending trends. The

trends that are coloured green are neither strongly correlated nor statistically significant.

2 For example, Elliot Hogg and Robert Tanis, Probability and Statistical Inference, 9th edn. (Boston: Pearson, 2015). 3 James Stevens, Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences, 3rd edn. (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996), 24.

90

Graph 1. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature crotchet and triple-quaver monorhythm (r = −0.848; p = 0.000) and duple-quaver polyrhythm (r = 0.872; p = 0.000) on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.

Graph 2. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature crotchet monorhythm (r = −0.881; p = 0.000), triple-quaver monorhythm (not statistically significant), and duple-quaver polyrhythm (r = 0.872; p = 0.000) on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.

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Crotchet and Triple-Quaver Monorhythm Duple-Quaver Polyrhythm

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80

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Graph 3. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature crotchet (r = −0.881; p = 0.000), triple-quaver (not statistically significant), and duple-quaver (r = 0.913; p = 0.000) rhythmic patterns on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.

Graph 4. A comparison of the percentage of year-end hits that feature commetre (r = −0.883; p = 0.000), contrarhythm (not statistically significant), and polyrhythm (r = 0.834; p = 0000) on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.

0

10

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30

40

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80

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Rhythmic (Sub)divisions in the Fixed Rhythm

Crotchet Triple-Quaver Duple-Quaver

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40

50

60

70

80

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Rhythmic Texture

Commetre Contrarhythm Polyrhythm

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Graph 5. The percentage of year-end hits that feature the reiterated straight-quaver/backbeat paradigm (r = 0.915; p = 0.000) on the Billboard mainstream, R&B, and country & western singles charts combined from 1950 to 1965.

As Graphs 1 to 5 illustrate, the hypothesised rhythmic trends towards duple-quaver

polyrhythm, straight-quaver subdivisions, polyrhythmic textures, and the RSQB paradigm all

show very strong positive correlation (r = 0.834 to 0.915) and high statistical significance (p ≤

0.001) when the data from all three charts are combined (with duplicate recordings resulting

from ‘crossover’ removed).4 Correspondingly, the hypothesised trends away from crotchet

monorhythm, crotchet rhythmic patterns, and commetre show very strong negative

correlation and high statistical significance. Thus, the shift towards straight-quaver

polyrhythm, duple-quaver subdivisions, polyrhythmic textures, and the RSQB paradigm did

occur, as did the move away from crotchet monorhythm, crotchet rhythmic patterns, and

commetre in post-war popular music in the United States.

The hypothesised trends away from triple-quaver monorhythm, swung-quaver subdivisions,

and contrarhythm are not statistically significant by themselves.5 Instead, as Graphs 2 to 4

4 The data for the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm does not exhibit ‘normal distribution’: that is, it does not map onto a bell-curve shape. This data therefore ‘violates’ the ‘normality’ assumption of the Pearson’s r procedure. However, a chi-square test for independence was conducted: a correlation-like procedure for analysing categorical data which does not assume a normal distribution. The results still featured a ‘medium effect’ (Cramer’s V = 0.361) with high statistical significance. 5 Although a shift away from swung-quaver rhythmic patterns was statistically significant at the less strict 0.01 level on the R&B chart, the mainstream and C&W charts bucked this trend and the use of triple-quaver rhythmic

0

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Rhythmic Paradigm

Reiterated Straight-Quaver/Backbeat Paradigm

93

demonstrate, the use of triple-quaver monorhythm, swung-quaver rhythmic patterns, and

contrarhythm remains relatively consistent from 1950 to 1965. Indeed, a fifth of the songs in

the early half of the sample (1950 to 1957) scarcely feature subdivisions in the fixed rhythm

while only one song did not feature any subdivisions in rhythmic patterns in the latter half of

the sample (1958 to 1965). However, when triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm are

combined, the data shows strong inverse correlation and high statistical significance (see

Graph 1). The same is true when swung-quaver and crotchet subdivisions are merged and

when commetre and contrarhythm are consolidated.6 Thus, there was not so much a shift

from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions between the 1950s and the early 1960s, as

reported by scholars such as Alexander Stewart, but a rhythmic transition from triple-quaver

and crotchet rhythmic patterns to duple-quaver rhythmic patterns.7

All four of the null hypotheses are therefore rejected. There is very strong statistical evidence

to suggest that the hypothesised rhythmic trends from triple-quaver and crotchet

monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm, straight-quaver and crotchet rhythmic patterns to

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns, monorhythm to polyrhythm, and a trend towards the

RSQB paradigm all occurred during this period. This thesis therefore establishes that the

hypothesised rhythmic transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to duple-

quaver polyrhythm did occur in mid-century US popular music, as did the constituent

transitions from swung-quaver and crotchet rhythmic patterns to straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns and from monorhythm to polyrhythm, as well as the related trend towards the RSQB

paradigm.8 Because these results are statistically significant, it can also be inferred that one

would probably find these results with a larger or different sample of mid-century Billboard

mainstream and R&B year-end hits.

patterns on the two charts peaked in the mid-1950s, seemingly influenced by rock ’n’ roll: for example, triple-quaver songs by rock ’n’ roll artists on both the mainstream and C&W charts from 1956 to 1957 include ‘Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Love Me Tender’, and ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’. 6 These two trend lines are not illustrated in the graphs above because these rhythmic categories are in a binary relationship with straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and with polyrhythm respectively. Consequently, the correlation and the statistical significance is the same for the trend away from triple-quaver and crotchet rhythmic patterns as it is for the trend towards duple-quaver rhythmic patterns, except the correlation is inverted for the former. Similarly, the r and p values for the move away from monorhythm is the same as the move towards polyrhythm, except the r value for the former is in the negative. 7 Alexander Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music’, Popular Music, 19 (2000), 293–318. 8 As Schaefer finds in reference to the use of straight-quaver subdivisions in his sample of Billboard mainstream and R&B hits from 1960 to 1969, there is no significant difference between the use of the four rhythmic elements on the mainstream and R&B charts. George W. Schaefer, ‘Drumset Performance Practices on Pop and Rhythm and Blues Hit Recordings, 1960–1969’, PhD diss., Arizona State University, 1994, 59.

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Tipping point

The tipping point was in 1961 for three of the rhythmic trends: the trends towards duple-

quaver rhythmic patterns, polyrhythm, and the reiterated straight-quaver backbeat paradigm

(see Graphs 3 to 5). Although the majority of songs in the sample feature straight-quaver

polyrhythm by 1965, it is not clear whether this represents a tipping point because 1966 and

beyond is not sampled. However, the trend lines for triple-quaver monorhythm and duple-

quaver polyrhythm intersect in 1961, which indicates that straight-quaver polyrhythm became

the predominant rhythmic schema in this year. Thus, 1961 was a pivotal year in all four of the

rhythmic trends.

As noted, Garry Tamlyn’s findings indicate that the tipping point in the trend towards

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns was in 1960 in canonical rock ’n’ roll recordings. This earlier

tipping point might suggest that rock ’n’ roll influenced the adoption of straight-quaver

subdivisions in the fixed rhythm of hits, as is posited by scholars.9 Indeed, the RSQB

paradigm and duple-quaver polyrhythm seem to characterise two types and periods of rock ’n’

roll respectively. The RSQB paradigm was popularised by ‘golden-age’ mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll

(for example, Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’) while the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm

culminated in historically marginalised late-1950s and early 1960s rock ’n’ roll (for instance,

Paul Anka’s ‘Diana’). These two types and periods of rock ’n’ roll, and these two case studies

are therefore analysed in more depth in the following chapter.

This chapter demonstrates that a foundational change in the rhythm of 20th-century popular

music culminated in the late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll, contributing a further

challenge to the conventional wisdom that rock ’n’ roll was ‘dead’ in this period (discussed

further in Chapter 5 and 6).10

9 Stewart, ‘Funky Drummer’, 294. Andy Bennett and Jon Stratton, Britpop and the English Music Tradition (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 41. Albin J. Zak III, I Don't Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 233. Allan F. Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 52. Matt Brennan, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 187. 10 For example, Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Laurie Stras (ed.), She’s So Fine: Reflections on Whiteness, Femininity, Adolescence and Class in 1960s Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Will Stos, ‘Bouffants, Beehives, and Breaking Gender Norms: Rethinking “Girl Group” Music of the 1950s and 1960s’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 24 (2012), 117–154. Mary E. Rohlfing, ‘“Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby”: A Re-Evaluation of Women’s Roles in the Brill Building Era of Early Rock ’n’ Roll’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 13 (1996), 93–114. Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994).

95

Conclusion In summary, statistical analysis of the data collected from the corpus study establishes that the

four hypothesised rhythmic transitions did occur in mid-century US popular music and

culminated in 1961. Specifically, the statistical procedures show very large correlation and high

statistical significance for rhythmic transitions from triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm

to duple-quaver polyrhythm, swung-quaver and crotchet to straight-quaver rhythmic patterns,

monorhythm to polyrhythm, and a trend towards the RSQB paradigm. The null hypotheses

can therefore be rejected. For statisticians, this is sufficient evidence to accept the four

hypotheses of this chapter. It can therefore be extrapolated that one would probably find

these trends with a larger or different sample of Billboard mainstream and R&B hits of the

period. Consequently, Mario Bauzá, Thomas MacCluskey, and others were correct to suggest

that a fundamental change in the rhythm of popular music in the United States culminated in

the late 1950s and early 1960s: a period that is marginalised in popular-music historiography as

representing the emasculation and death of rock ’n’ roll. This is not demonstrated in existing

scholarship. The following chapter interrogates the possible influences on the rhythmic

transitions.

Chapter 4 Musical Influences on the Rhythmic Trends

This chapter presents a close musical analysis of early examples of rock ’n’ roll in the sample

to feature the reiterated straight-quaver backbeat paradigm and straight-quaver polyrhythm

respectively. The critical reception of the two rhythmic textures in the contemporaneous trade

press is also assessed. The objective is to interrogate which musical styles seem to have

influenced the coalescing rhythmic trends towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and

polyrhythmic textures in order to establish whether Mario Bauzá and others are right to

suggest that Afro-Latin musics were the predominant influence on the foundational rhythmic

shift to straight-quaver subdivisions.

This chapter also provides an analysis of two types of rock ’n’ roll and two periods in rock

historiography. These are associated with the above two rhythmic textures respectively and are

assessed through two case studies. The chapter is structured in three sections. The first section

analyses eight early examples in the sample of the RSQB paradigm in mid-1950s ‘golden-age’

rock ’n’ roll: five songs by Little Richard, two by Elvis Presley, and one by Larry Williams, all

released between 1955 and 1957.1 While Little Richard’s 1957 hit ‘Lucille’ is the principle case

study in this section, other influential instances of the paradigm from outside the sample are

also considered, including some of Chuck Berry’s hits. The second section analyses the first

instance in the corpus of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic style of rock ’n’ roll that came to

characterise the historically marginalised late-1950s and early-1960s period: Paul Anka’s 1957

hit ‘Diana’. Specifically, this section investigates the influences on the bar-level rhythmic

patterns that are employed in ‘Diana’, which became characteristic of late-1950s and early-

1960s straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll more generally. Although both ‘Lucille’ and ‘Diana’ were

released in 1957, ‘Lucille’ represents a crystallisation of the RSQB paradigm popularised by

mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll whereas ‘Diana’ is a seemingly pioneering example of straight-quaver

polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll that became characteristic of late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll.

Thus, the two case studies are associated with two periods in rock ’n’ roll history.

Reported influences on the rhythmic trends that were deemed to be plausible in Chapter 1 are

discussed: boogie-woogie, the country-blues isoriff, Afro-Latin styles, and West-African

musics. The third section discusses the contemporaneous critical reception of the two

1 Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ (1955), ‘Long Tall Sally’ (1956), ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’)’ (1956), ‘Rip It Up’ (1956), and ‘Lucille’ (1957). Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ (1956) and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ (1957). Larry Williams’s ‘Short Fat Fannie’ (1957).

96

97

rhythmic textures and the associated types and periods of rock ’n’ roll. This chapter and the

next therefore provide an analysis of a musical category (specifically rock ’n’ roll) as it

developed over time based on music analysis and reception theory, as has been advocated by

David Brackett.

Given the rhetoric of autonomy evident in Little Richard’s interviews and a lack of published

interviews of Don Costa who arranged ‘Diana’, it is impossible to establish a specific line of

influence from the use of a given straight-quaver rhythmic pattern in one song to its use in

another. Consequently, the presumption in this chapter is not that the specific songs that are

cited represent an exact path of influence but that the rhythmic patterns that are discussed

were generic conventions that were well known and widely disseminated and therefore seem

probable influences on the case studies.

‘Lucille’

In this section, three reported musical influences on the shift to straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns and implicitly on the trend towards the RSQB paradigm are evaluated: boogie-woogie

‘eight-to-the-bar’ rhythmic patterns, metrically malleable reiterated-onset rhythmic patterns,

and Afro-Latin musics.2 The focus is on instances in which reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns are performed in pitched instruments because the paradigm first appears in this form.

Of the first fourteen songs in the sample that feature this paradigm between 1954 and 1957,

twelve feature a reiterated straight-quaver pattern in a pitched instrument.3 Eight of the twelve

hits are regularly received as rock ’n’ roll, three are conventionally categorised as R&B, and

one is an example of light music. It is the eight rock ’n’ roll recordings that are analysed here.

The earliest examples of the paradigm in the sample are the three R&B hits from 1954 and

1955: the Midnighters’s ‘Annie Had a Baby’, Faye Adams’s ‘I’ll Be True’, and Little Walter’s

‘My Babe’. In all three of the songs the reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns are

performed in a harmonic instrument (the electric guitar) against a snare-drum backbeat like

the eight rock ’n’ roll recordings. However, unlike the rock ’n’ roll recordings, the reiterated

straight-quaver subdivisions sound somewhere in between swung- and straight (although

closer to straight) rather than ‘emphatically’ straight. Thus, these R&B songs are considered to 2 Bill Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’, College Music Symposium, 21 (1981), 147–153. Fernando Benadon and Ted Gioia, ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie: A Rhythmic Analysis of a Classic Groove’, Popular Music, 28 (2009), 19–32, Ned Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, in Eric Weisbard (ed.), A Momentary History of Pop Music (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 69–94. 3 The remaining two hits exclusively feature the reiterated straight-quaver patterns in unpitched instruments.

98

be precursors and possible influences on the paradigm’s use in rock ’n’ roll recordings rather

than case studies.

The light-music example is Les Baxter’s 1956 instrumental ‘The Poor People of Paris’ which

features reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns in the harp and muted trumpet

accompaniment against a brushed snare backbeat (at 0.02 and 1:47). Given the use of

orchestral instruments, the paradigm’s use in ‘The Poor People of Paris’ was probably

influenced by the Western classical tradition. Indeed, Les Baxter was a concert pianist before

his arranging career. However, ‘The Poor People of Paris’ was a hit after the paradigm first

featured in rock ’n’ roll recordings. There is no evidence to suggest that reiterated straight-

quaver subdivisions in classical music – for example, the celli and bass part in pieces by

Mozart such as ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’ – influenced the paradigm’s use in rock ’n’ roll.

Of the eight rock ’n’ roll songs in the sample that exhibit the paradigm in the mid-1950s, six

feature a reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic pattern in the piano,4 four in the drum kit,5 four

in the electric guitar,6 and one in the double bass.7 These are found in four canonical up-

tempo hits: Little Richard’s piano playing in his 1955 hit ‘Tutti Frutti’, Earl Palmer’s drumbeat

in Richard’s 1956 B-side ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’)’, Scotty Moore’s electric-

guitar part in Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ later the same year, and Olsie Robinson’s double-

bass pattern in Richard’s mid-tempo 1957 hit ‘Lucille’.8 This confirms the suggestion made by

Tony Scherman that Richard’s ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ is an early example of the RSQB drumbeat

and that, while Earl Palmer might not have been the first drummer to play this drumbeat, he

seems to have popularised it.9 Earl Palmer subsequently played this drumbeat on Little

Richard’s ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ (1956) and ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ (1958), Larry 4 ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’)’, ‘Rip It Up’, ‘Lucille’, and ‘Short Fat Fannie’. Jerry Lee Lewis employs reiterated straight-quaver piano chords: for example, in the variable rhythm at the beginning of his solo in ‘Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On’ (1957). Lewis’s use of reiterated straight-quaver piano chords in the fixed rhythm seems to have been influenced by Little Richard. For example, in the piano solo in ‘Great Balls of Fire’ (1957), Lewis quotes the bass ostinato of ‘Lucille’ in the left-hand while playing reiterated straight-quaver chords in the right hand. Thus, Little Richard is the case study in this chapter rather than Jerry Lee Lewis. 5 ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’, ‘Lucille’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Short Fat Fannie’. 6 ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Lucille’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, and ‘Short Fat Fannie’. 7 ‘Lucille’. 8 There is some disagreement as to whether ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ features swung- or straight-quaver subdivisions. Larry Birnbaum and Matt Brennan suggest that is a shuffle while Tony Scherman and Steven Smith state that it is straight. Although it is difficult to discern the subdivisions of the repeated-quaver snare-drum ghost notes, the bass drum is audibly straight and therefore the song is categorised as straight-quaver in this project. Larry Birnbaum, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ’n’ Roll (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 337. Matt Brennan, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 187. Tony Scherman, Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 85. Steve Smith and Daniel Glass (eds.), The Roots of Rock Drumming: Interviews with the Drummers Who Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll Music (New York: Hudson Music, 2013), 82. 9 Scherman, Backbeat, 85 and 171.

99

Williams’s ‘Bony Maronie’ and ‘Short Fat Fannie’ (both 1957), as well as Sheb Wooley’s ‘The

Purple People Eater’ (1958). The drumbeat on ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ and ‘Lucille’ also features

on hits recorded in New Orleans and Los Angeles on which Palmer may have been playing:

for example, Richard Berry’s ‘Have Love Will Travel’ (1959), Ernie K. Doe’s ‘Mother-In-Law’

(1961) and Bobby Pickett’s ‘Monster Mash’ (1962) respectively. In four of the eight rock ’n’

roll recordings and the three R&B precursors, the reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic pattern

is played against a shuffle drumbeat. The first example of the paradigm in the sample in which

commentators agree that all of the rhythmic patterns feature straight-quaver subdivisions is

Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’. Consequently, ‘Lucille’ is the principal case study in this section.

Outside the sample, reiterated straight-quaver electric-guitar patterns feature in three mid-

1950s rock ’n’ roll recordings made before Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’; Chuck Berry’s guitar

playing in his 1956 single ‘Roll Over Beethoven’; and Paul Burlison lead-guitar playing in

Johnny Burnette and the Rock ’n’ Roll Trio’s ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’’ and ‘Honey Hush’,

which were apparently recorded on the same day as ‘Hound Dog’ (2 July 1956).10 Chuck

Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’, which was recorded in 1957 after ‘Hound Dog’, was the first

instance of Berry’s trademark reiterated straight-quaver boogie-woogie pattern and is therefore

also discussed. Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry’s recordings are the focus here.

The possible influences on the use of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns on these

instrumental parts is assessed below.

Boogie-Woogie Eight-to-the-Bar Patterns

From the mid-1980s onwards, Little Richard claimed that the reiterated straight-quaver bass

pattern of ‘Lucille’ was inspired by the sound of train wheels.11 In a 2005 interview, Charles

Connor, the drummer in Richard’s mid-1950s live band, corroborates this locomotive

narrative, suggesting that in 1954 Richard asked him to play a drumbeat that emulated the

sound of a train and that Connor played a straight-quaver drumbeat.12 However, in a 1970

interview in Rolling Stone, Richard contradicts the notion of any influence on ‘Lucille’ stating

that ‘really, I didn’t know what inspired me to write “Lucille,” I could tell you a lie, but I gotta

10 Vince Gordon and Peter Dijkema argue that the reiterated straight-quaver pattern was played by Nashville session guitarist Grady Martin rather than the trio’s lead guitarist Paul Burlison in Rockabilly: The Twang Heard 'Round the World: The Illustrated History (Blaine: Voyageur Press, 2011), 99. 11 Charles White, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock (New York: Harmony Books, 1984), 76. Elizabeth Deane (Executive Producer), ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’’ [television broadcast] (15 June 1996), Dancing in the Street (London: BBC, 1997). 12 ‘Charles Connor’, NAMM Oral History Program, https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/charles-connor (accessed 4 March 2021).

100

be truthful—I don’t know what inspired me to write it, it may have been the rhythm.’13 It

therefore seems likely that Richard fabricated the locomotive influence on ‘Lucille’ in order to

make his interviews more interesting and that Connor endorses the story in order to cast

himself as the drummer who pioneered the RSQB drumbeat that has been the norm in

popular music since the early 1960s. Indeed, the first sentence of the biography on Connor’s

website states that Connor: ‘created the unique “Choo Choo Train” style of successive eighth

notes with a loud backbeat used by nearly all subsequent Rock ’n’ Roll drummers.’14 Thus, a

direct locomotive influence on the RSQB drumbeat of ‘Lucille’ is dubious.

Instead, the reiterated straight-quaver patterns of ‘Lucille’ seem to have been influenced by

boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar patterns. ‘Lucille’ features the same first three notes and

ascending contour as the reiterated straight-quaver bass patterns in Lloyd Price’s ‘Walkin’ the

Track’ (1953), Bill Haley’s ‘Mambo Rock’ (1955), Little Walter’s ‘My Babe’ (1955), and

subsequently Elvis Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’, all of which appear to originate in boogie-

woogie eight-to-the-bar basslines (see Ex. 20). Indeed, Billboard described the riff in the Everly

Brothers’s 1960 cover of ‘Lucille’ as a ‘Yancey bass blues figure’, referencing the boogie-

woogie pianist Jimmy Yancey.15 The eight-to-the-bar bass patterns of boogie woogie are often

said to have been influenced by trains.16 This narrative was circulated by at least 1970. In The

Land Where the Blues Began, the folklorist Alan Lomax states that African-American musicians,

emulated the rhythms of stream trains and created boogie woogie.17 Indeed, the link between

locomotives and eight-to-the-bar basslines can be seen in ‘Walkin’ the Track’, in which Price

references trains in the lyrics and vocally emulates a train whistle in the intro. Thus, in positing

a locomotive influence on the rhythm of ‘Lucille’, Richard seems to have been drawing on the

familiar notion that boogie woogie was influenced by the sound of trains rather than stating a

genuine influence on the song’s genesis. The intention here is presumably to cast his song as

modernist within the rock tradition and a product of ‘divine’ inspiration rather than continuity

with a tradition that went back decades. Thus, if one accepts Lomax’s contention that the

sound of train wheels influenced the eight-to-the-bar patterns of boogie woogie, then one

could argue that there was an indirect influence of locomotives on the RSQB paradigm.

13 David Dalton, ‘Little Richard: Child of God’, Rolling Stone [San Francisco] (28 May 1970) https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/little-richard-child-of-god-2-177027/ (accessed 4 March 2021). 14 ‘About Me’, Charles Connor Drummer, https://www.charlesconnordrummer.com/bio (accessed 4 March 2021). 15 Anonymous, [review of the Everly Brothers’s ‘Lucille’], Billboard [New York] (22 August 1960), 35. 16 Burgin Mathews, “When I Say Get It”: A Brief History of the Boogie’, Southern Cultures, 15 (2009), 24–52; here, 31–32 and 45. 17 Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: The New Press, 1993), 170.

101

However, contrary to received wisdom, there would not seem to have been a direct

locomotive influence on the paradigm.

Ex. 20 Boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar bass patterns in: a) Lloyd Price’s ‘Walkin’ the Track’ (1953), b) Bill Haley’s ‘Mambo Rock’ (1955), c) Little Walter’s ‘My Babe’ (1955), d) ‘Lucille’, and e) ‘Jailhouse Rock’ (all transposed to C major for comparison).

Furthermore, as Bill Ramal argues, Richard’s reiterated straight-quaver piano chords might

also have been influenced by boogie woogie, early recordings of which often feature this

pattern (see Ex. 21a).18 Similarly, Chuck Berry’s trademark reiterated straight-quaver rhythm-

guitar pattern is widely referred to as a boogie-woogie pattern (see Ex. 21b).19 Indeed, Chuck

Berry stated that ‘[t]he nature and backbone of my beat is boogie […] Call it [rock ’n’ roll]

what you may . . . it’s still boogie as far as I’m concerned with it’.20 Moreover, Johnny Burnette

and the Rock and Roll Trio’s ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’’ and their subsequent single

‘Lonesome Train (On a Lonesome Track)’ also mention locomotives and features a reiterated

straight-quaver electric-guitar pattern. Although the pattern in ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’’ is

not a boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar pattern, the pattern in ‘Lonesome Train’ is (see Ex. 21c).

Consequently, boogie-woogie eight-to-the bar rhythmic patterns seem to have been an

influence on the adoption of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns in pitched

instruments against a snare backbeat in mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll.

Ex. 21 Seemingly boogie woogie-influenced reiterated straight-quaver patterns in: a) Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ (1955), b) Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ (1956), and c) Johnny Burnette’s ‘Lonesome Train’ (1956) (transposed to C major for comparison).

18 Ramal, ‘The Evolutionary Development of the Disco Bass Line in History and Practice’, 148. 19 Walter Everett, The Foundations of Rock: From ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ to ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 61. Allan F. Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 22. An earlier example of this pattern in the sample is Faye Adams’s ‘I’ll Be True’ (1954). 20 Chuck Berry as quoted in Birnbaum, Before Elvis, 96.

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Metrically Malleable Reiterated-Onset Rhythmic Patterns As Fernando Benadon and Ted Gioia suggest, the metrically malleable country-blues isoriff

seems to have influenced the adoption of the RSQB paradigm and the trend towards straight-

quaver rhythmic patterns.21 For example, in Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’, Scotty Moore plays a

reiterated straight-quaver isoriff on the electric guitar that does not feature in ‘Big Mama’

Thornton’s original recording of the song (see Ex. 22a). Similarly, Chuck Berry performs the

isoriff as a crossrhythm in the variable rhythm in his influential lead-guitar style: for example,

the introductions of ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (see Ex. 22b).

Consequently, this country-blues lick seems to have influenced the adoption of reiterated

straight-quaver subdivisions in mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll.

Ex. 22 a) Duple-quaver isoriff in Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ (1956), verse and b) crossrhythm variant in Chuck Berry, ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (1958), introduction.

More broadly, metrically malleable reiterated-onset rhythmic patterns seem to have influenced

the adoption of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns: specifically, mid-tempo reiterated

triplet-quaver patterns and extremely up-tempo reiterated-crotchet patterns. Little Richard

does not employ the duple-quaver isoriff in his hits. However, the reiterated straight-quaver

piano chords in his up-tempo hits seem to have been influenced by reiterated triplet-quaver

piano chords that were common in mid-tempo 1950s R&B: for example, Fats Domino’s hits

such as ‘Ain’t that a Shame’ (1955, ca. 120 bpm).22 Indeed, ‘Lucille’ began life as a mid-tempo

21 Benadon and Gioia, ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie’. 22 Tamlyn’s research indicates that the earliest examples of reiterated triplet-quaver piano chords in Fats Domino’s output are ‘Detroit City Blues’ and ‘Hide Away Blues’ from 1949. Domino’s producer Dave Bartholomew states that Domino learnt this pattern from Little Willie Littlefield’s hit ‘It’s Midnight’ from the

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103

triple-quaver song entitled ‘Directly from My Heart to You’ (ca. 90 bpm) and the inter-onset

intervals (the time, in milliseconds, between two onsets) of the mid-tempo reiterated triplet-

quaver piano chords are the same as Richard’s up-tempo reiterated duplet-quaver piano

chords in ‘Lucille’ (ca. 148 bpm): that is, ca. 228 milliseconds (see Ex. 23).23 Additionally,

Richard recorded ‘Directly from My Heart to You’ in the same 1955 session that he recorded

‘Tutti Frutti’ (ca. 184 bpm). This indicates that Richard was aware of the reiterated triplet-

quaver piano-chord pattern when he first recorded reiterated straight-quaver piano chords.24

Although the inter-onset intervals of the piano pattern in ‘Tutti Frutti’ (ca. 163 milliseconds)

are shorter than that in ‘Directly from My Heart to You’ and ‘Lucille’, they are broadly the

same as those in Domino’s ‘Ain’t that a Shame’ (ca. 167 milliseconds), which was recorded

before ‘Tutti Frutti’ and which Richard would probably have known since he recorded in the

same city and with the same musicians as Domino. Richard did not play piano on either

recording of ‘Directly from My Heart to You’. However, as a pianist he would surely have

been aware of the rhythmic patterns that were employed in the piano parts.

Similarly, Presley recorded a mid-tempo song with reiterated triplet-quaver piano chords

before he recorded up-tempo reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns: ‘I Want You, I

Need You, I Love You’ (1956). Furthermore, like John Lee Hooker who alternates between

different versions of the isoriff in one song,25 Richard switches between reiterated duple-

quaver chords and reiterated triplet-quaver chords in ‘Lucille’ (0:12–0:20), suggesting that he

perceived the two rhythmic patterns as related (see Ex. 24).26 Thus, in addition to boogie-

woogie eight-to-the-bar patterns, reiterated triplet-quaver rhythmic patterns seem to have

influenced the adoption of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns by Richard, Presley,

and Berry.

same year. Garry N. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat: Origins and Development of Snare Backbeat and Other Accompanimental Rhythms in Rock ’n’ Roll’, PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1998, 541. John Broven, Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans (Gretna: Pelican, 1983), 11. 23 An earlier 1953 recording of ‘Directly from My Heart to You’ features the triplet-quaver isoriff on the piano (1:14–1:23). 24 White, The Life and Times of Little Richard, 227. 25 Benadon and Gioia, ‘How Hooker Found His Boogie’, 25. 26 Similarly, Jerry Lee Lewis switches between reiterated duple- and triplet-quaver piano chords in the solo in ‘Great Balls of Fire’ (1957).

104

Ex. 23 Comparison of inter-onset intervals (IOIs) of a) the reiterated triplet-quaver chords in Little Richard’s ‘Directly from My Heart to You’ (1955) and b) the reiterated duplet-quaver chords ‘Lucille’ (1956) (transposed to C major for comparison).

Ex. 24 Little Richard, ‘Lucille’ (1957), alternation between reiterated triplet- and duplet-quaver chords in the last four bars of the introduction.

Two recordings by Little Richard’s piano teacher Esquerita and Chuck Berry respectively

indicate that extremely up-tempo reiterated-crotchet patterns (200 to 300 bpm) might also

have influenced the adoption of up-tempo reiterated straight-quaver patterns. In ‘The Rock-a-

Round’ (1958), Paul Peek and Esquerita reinterpret the extremely up-tempo, reiterated-

crotchet, boogie-woogie motif that begins Ray Charles’s ‘Mess Around’ (1953, ca. 300 bpm) as

reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions at half the speed (ca. 147 bpm) (see Ex. 25a and c).27

Similarly, Chuck Berry recorded ‘Oh Baby Doll’, which features an extremely up-tempo

reiterated-crotchet version of his trademark boogie pattern, in the same 1957 session as ‘Rock

and Roll Music’, his first single to feature the reiterated straight-quaver version of this pattern

(see Ex. 25b and d). Although reiterated straight-quaver piano and electric-guitar patterns

predate these recordings, the fact that John Lee Hooker alternated between mid-tempo triplet-

quaver, up-tempo straight-quaver, and extremely up-tempo crotchet versions of the isoriff in

1949 suggests that reiterated-crotchet patterns may also have influenced the uptake of

reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions in the recordings of rock ’n’ roll musicians.

27 An example in the sample of up-tempo reiterated crotchet rhythmic patterns being interchanged with mid-tempo reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns is Brook Benton and Dinah Washington’s 1960 mid-tempo reiterated straight-quaver version of the Spaniels’s 1958 up-tempo reiterated-crotchet shuffle ‘A Rockin’ Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love)’.

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Ex. 25 Comparison of extremely up-tempo reiterated crotchet patterns in a) Ray Charles’s ‘Mess Around’ (1953) and b) Chuck Berry’s ‘Oh Baby Doll’ (1957) with the up-tempo reiterated straight-quaver patterns in c) Paul Peek and Esquerita’s ‘The Rock-a-Round’ (1958) and d) Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’ (1957) respectively (transposed to C major for comparison).

Consequently, both the country-blues isoriff and reiterated-onset rhythmic patterns more

generally also influenced the adoption of the RSQB paradigm in mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll and

therefore the trend towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns.

Afro-Latin Musics

Afro-Latin musics were also reportedly influential. In particular, the impact of ‘rhumba blues’

is evident. ‘Rhumba blues’ denotes a hybrid of Afro-Cuban rhumba and African-American

R&B.28 Although rhumba blues draws on the rhythm of 1930s rhumba (son and bolero), it

seems to have been motivated by the popularity of mambo in the 1950s: for example, Johnny

Otis’s ‘Mambo Boogie’ (1951) and Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954). The style typically

features a straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture made up of adaptations of Afro-Cuban bar-

level rhythmic patterns – principally, a tresillo bassline and a ‘rhumba drumbeat’ (see Ex. 26).29

28 The style descriptor ‘rhumba blues’ is evident in the production and reception of the style. For example, in 1949 Professor Longhair released a straight-quaver polyrhythmic song entitled ‘Longhair’s Blues Rhumba’ (1949) while Billboard received ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ as a ‘rhumba blues’ in 1953. 29 Richard Spence (Director), The Real Buddy Holly Story [film] (1987).

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The ‘rhumba drumbeat’ is an embellished reiterated straight-quaver pattern which is played on

the maracas, bongos, and timbales in Afro-Cuban bolero.30 In rhumba blues this pattern is

performed with improvised syncopated accents and semiquaver embellishments on the snare

drum (with the snares disengaged), tom-toms, and cross-stick snare, reportedly emulating the

timbre of Afro-Cuban congas and claves.31 This drumbeat is first heard in New Orleans R&B:

for example, Dave Bartholomew’s ‘Carnival Day’ (1950). The style also features African-

American elements: chiefly, the 12-bar blues form and harmonic progression. Rhumba-blues

recordings often alternate between ‘rhumba’ and ‘blues’ sections: that is, between straight-

quaver polyrhythm and swung-quaver monorhythm.

Ex. 26 Typical rhumba-blues straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture.

Little Richard’s ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ and Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ were covers of rhumba-

blues recordings and the songs were originally performed by Richard and Presley in a rhumba-

blues style. ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ is a rewrite of Eddie Bo’s 1956 shuffle blues ‘I’m Wise’, which

is itself a version of Al Collins’s 1955 rhumba blues ‘I Got the Blues for You’. Richard was

aware of ‘I’m Wise’ and probably knew ‘I Got the Blues for You’ given that Collins received a

writing credit on ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’.32 ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ retains the tresillo bassline that is

employed in the previous two versions of the song, and in an early piano and drum-kit demo

of the song the drummer on the session (reportedly Oscar Moore) plays the rhumba drumbeat

that features in ‘I Got the Blues for You’.33 On another demo of ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’, Moore

plays the drumbeat that was played on ‘I’m Wise, which is variously known as a ‘Texas shuffle’

and a ‘Chicago shuffle’ and which is characterised by repeated swung-quaver ghost notes on

30 Chuck Sher, Latin Real Book: The Best Contemporary & Classic Salsa, Brazilian Music, Latin Jazz (Petaluma: Sher Music Co., 1997), 555. 31 Jerry Allison as quoted in Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 100. Mario Bauzá as quoted in Robert Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, Spin, 11 (1988), 26–30, 84–85, 103; here, 28. 32 Dalton, ‘Little Richard’. Al Collins was originally credited as only songwriter on ‘Lucille’, although it is unclear from reports what he contributed to the song. 33 Little Richard, ‘Piano & Drums Demo’, Here’s Little Richard (Deluxe Edition) (Specialty CR00012, 2017). White, The Life and Times of Little Richard, 227.

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107

the snare with a backbeat accent (see Ex. 27).34 However, on this demo the drummer gradually

straightens out the subdivisions creating a seemingly new drumbeat that amalgamates the

straightness of the Cuban-influenced drumbeat on ‘I Got the Blues for You’ with the repeated

snare ghost notes and backbeat accent of the shuffle drumbeat on ‘I’m Wise’.35 This drumbeat

is used on the final recording, with Earl Palmer drumming, and on ‘Lucille’, with either Palmer

or Charles Connor on the drums.36 This suggests that the RSQB drumbeat was influenced by

the straightness of the rhumba drumbeat, Little Richard’s reiterated straight-quaver piano

patterns, and the repeated snare-drum ghost notes of the Texas or Chicago shuffle drumbeat.

Alexander Stewart states that Earl Palmer’s use of repeated snare-drum quavers on ‘Slippin’

and Slidin’’ was influenced by second line. Since Oscar Moore reportedly played drums on the

demos, so this might have been the case. However, evidence indicates that the Latin-

influenced straightening of Texas or Chicago shuffle is the immediate precursor.

Ex. 27 Comparison of the a) Texas or Chicago shuffle drumbeat on Eddie Bo’s ‘I’m Wise’ (1955) and b) the reiterated straight-quaver/backbeat drumbeat on Little Richard’s ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’)’ (1956).

As noted, Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ was a cover of ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s 1953 rhumba-

blues hit, and Presley’s first recorded performance of the song was in a rhumba-blues style.

Presley’s cover was reportedly based on Freddie Bell and the Bellboys’s shuffle version of the

34 Little Richard, ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Take 2 With Brushes)’, The Specialty Sessions (Ace ABOXLP 1, 1989). More easily accessible via YouTube: Little Richard, ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Take 2)’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCctjkYEgKM (accessed 16 March 2021). 35 Jerry Lee Lewis’s drummer J. M. Van Eaton states that he might have introduced this reiterated straight-quaver snare drumbeat with ‘Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On’ (1957). This song was released after ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ but it is not clear which was recorded first. However, unlike Earl Palmer’s drumming with Little Richard, Eaton’s drumming is not cited by other rock ’n’ roll drummers as having influenced their adoption of straight-quaver drumbeats. Smith and Glass, The Roots of Rock Drumming, 68. 36 Earl Palmer reportedly played on the single version of ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’. However, there are conflicting reports as to whether Charles Connor or Earl Palmer played drums on ‘Lucille’. The Specialty session notes state that Connor played on the recording while Scherman suggests that Palmer did. Palmer seems more likely to have played on ‘Lucille’ for three reasons: Connor does not claim to have played on ‘Lucille’, Connor’s ‘Choo Choo beat’ drumbeat on ‘Ooh! My Soul’ features a reiterated straight-quaver pattern on open hi-hat as oppose to the snare-drum ghost notes on ‘Lucille’, and Connor does not play this ‘Lucille’ drumbeat on a modern recording of the song. However, the argument of this thesis does not depend on which drummer played on ‘Lucille’. The intention is not to argue that either drummer pioneered a new drumbeat. Instead, the argument is that these recordings seem to have popularised the drumbeat. White, The Life and Times of Little Richard, 228–229. Scherman, Backbeat, 85.

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108

song.37 Presley’s single version retained the tresillo bass pattern from both of these versions but

features the swung-quaver contrarhythmic texture of Bell’s version rather than the straight-

quaver polyrhythmic texture of Thornton’s recording. However, Presley performed the song

as a straight-quaver polyrhythmic rhumba blues live on television on the Milton Berle show

before he recorded it.38 Consequently, the straight-quaver rhythmic patterns of Presley’s initial

rhumba-blues arrangement of this recording might have influenced the use of the straight-

quaver electric-guitar isoriff in the single version of the song.

Subsequently, two additional reiterated straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll hits were originally

recorded in a rhumba-blues style. An early demo of Chuck Berry’s 1957 single ‘Rock and Roll

Music’ employs a rhumba-blues feel in the verses. Although Berry had recorded a reiterated

straight-quaver electric-guitar pattern in ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ the previous year, the B-side of

this record was a rhumba blues entitled ‘Drifting Heart’.39 Thus, in addition to boogie-woogie

eight-to-the-bar rhythmic patterns and perhaps reiterated crotchet-rhythmic patterns, Berry’s

use of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns was perhaps influenced by rhumba blues.

Thus, the straight-quaver subdivisions of rhumba blues seem to have influenced the

incorporation of reiterated straight-quaver patterns in the rock ’n’ roll recordings by Richard,

Presley, and Berry. However, the only vestiges of the rhumba-blues influence on ‘Slippin’ and

Slidin’’ and ‘Hound Dog’ are the tresillo basslines. Moreover, in subsequent hits by these artists

such as ‘Lucille’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ the reiterated straight-quaver

patterns are retained but the tresillo basslines are eschewed, erasing the audibility of an Afro-

Cuban influence. It is therefore possible that Afro-Latin musics were an inaudible influence

on the adoption of reiterated straight-quaver subdivisions more generally. Thus, Afro-Cuban

musics were a structural influence on the adoption of reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns in mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll, but few surface indicators of that influence remain. This

inaudibility might in part explain why this influence is not identified more often (see Chapter 5

for a detailed discussion).

37 Birnbaum, Before Elvis, 234 38 In reference to the slow coda in this performance of ‘Hound Dog’, Roy Brewer cites Robert Fink’s argument that many rockabilly musicians associated the tresillo with striptease music rather than Afro-Cuban music. However, this overlooks the other Afro-Latin rhythmic patterns employed in this performance. Fink as cited in Roy Brewer, ‘The Use of Habanera Rhythm in Rockabilly Music’, American Music, 17 (1999), 300–317; here, 303. 39 Similarly, Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’ originally featured a ‘rhumba beat’ and J. M. Van Eaton plays a bolero percussive pattern on the ride cymbal in Jerry Lee Lewis’s reiterated straight-quaver hit ‘Great Balls of Fire’. Spence, The Real Buddy Holly Story.

109

In summary, Little Richard’s, Elvis Presley’s, and Chuck Berry’s adoption of the RSQB

paradigm seems to have been influenced by boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar patterns,

metrically malleable reiterated-onset patterns, and Afro-Latin musics. As illustrated, several of

these influences are often apparent in the same song: for example, all three are evident in

‘Lucille’ and ‘Rock and Roll Music’.40 In pitched instruments, African-American styles seem to

have been the principal influence on the adoption of reiterated straight-quaver patterns. In

unpitched instruments, Afro-Latin musics seem to have been more influential. Overall, Afro-

Latin musics seem to have been a prominent but not predominant influence on the adoption

of the pitched RSQB paradigm. However, because mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll was typically

monorhythmic, the Afro-Latin influence on the trend was often inaudible. This is one reason

why the Afro-Latin influence on the often reiterated straight-quaver rock tradition is

overlooked. Although these influences have been reported by scholars, this is the first study to

employ corpus analysis in order to investigate them in detail.

In the mid-1960s, the reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns discussed above influenced

the British-Invasion groups, most notably the Beatles. When the Beatles covered mid-1950s

rock ’n’ roll, Ringo Starr relocated reiterated straight-quaver patterns to other drum-kit

timbres: for example, open hi-hat in ‘Lucille’ (following Chubby Checker’s ‘The Twist’) and

crash cymbal in ‘Rock and Roll Music’. The Beatles also incorporated reiterated straight-

quaver patterns from mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll recordings into their original hits: for instance,

Chuck Berry’s boogie-woogie guitar pattern in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ (1964), the

bassline from Berry’s ‘I’m Talking About You’ in ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ (1963), and

Little Richard’s piano-chord style in ‘I’m Down’ (1964). Thus, the RSQB paradigm is

fundamental to rock. Consequently, an Afro-Latin influence on the foundations of rock has

been overlooked.

‘Diana’

From mid-1957 onwards it became increasingly common for straight-quaver bar-level patterns

to be layered on top of the newly straight-quaver foundation of rock ’n’ roll. This created a

straight-quaver polyrhythmic type of rock ’n’ roll. This section assesses the two reported

influences on this style and therefore the influences on the coalescing trends towards straight-40 Similarly, precursors to this paradigm in mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll feature pitched African-American reiterated straight-quaver patterns alongside pitched or unpitched Afro-Latin reiterated straight-quaver patterns. For example, Champion Jack Dupree’s ‘Mexican Reminiscences’, Joe Swift’s ‘That’s Your Last Boogie!’ (1948), Johnny Otis’s ‘Mambo Boogie’ (1951), Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954), Bill Haley’s ‘Mambo Rock’ (1955), the Robins’s ‘Smokey Joe’s Café’ (1955), and Titus Turner’s Big John’ (1955). ‘Mambo Rock’ and ‘Smokey Joe’s Café’ were therefore also early examples of the RSQB paradigm in rock ’n’ roll.

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quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures. Specifically, possible influences on the

five straight-quaver bar-level rhythmic patterns employed in Paul Anka’s 1957 hit ‘Diana’ are

evaluated. ‘Diana’ was chosen as a case study because out of the 58 straight-quaver

polyrhythmic songs in the sample it is the earliest example of this style of straight-quaver

polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll41 and because three of the song’s five straight-quaver bar-level

rhythmic patterns feature in around a third (specifically, between 28% and 37%) of the

straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits in the sample. First, the influence of West-African

drumming is briefly discussed.

West-African musics do not seem likely to have been a predominant influence on the trend

towards straight-quaver polyrhythm for three reasons. First, while most West-African

polyrhythm is in 12/8, most Afro-Latin polyrhythm is in 4/4 with straight-quaver

subdivisions, as are most examples of polyrhythm in the sample.42 Second, West-African

drumming was not well known in the United States until the release of Babatunde Olatunji’s

Drums of Passion in 1960, three years after the release of ‘Diana’.43 Indeed, Billboard and Cash

Box mentioned the term ‘polyrhythm’ thirteen times between 1950 and 1965 and none of

these instances were in reference to African music. Conversely, four were in reference to

Afro-Cuban jazz by artists such as Machito and His Afro-Cubans.44 Third, none of the

straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample seem to feature any specific West-African

instruments or techniques: for example, the chanting heard on Drums of Passion is not heard in

the sample. Such sub-Saharan African influences are not audible in US popular music until the

late 1960s and early 1970s: for instance, Miriam Makeba ‘Pata Pata’ (1967) and Manu Dibango

‘Soul Makossa’ (1972). However, as noted in the previous chapter, straight-quaver polyrhythm

became the dominant rhythmic schema in 1961. Thus, while this might have been influenced

by the popularity of West-African drumming this is not audible in the sample.

There are two precursors to the polyrhythmic texture of ‘Diana’ in the sample: triple-quaver

polyrhythm and duple-quaver polyrhythm. Two thirds of the triple-quaver polyrhythmic hits

41 Although Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ could be construed as straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll, the subdivisions are not emphatically straight-quaver. ‘Diana’ is the first straight polyrhythmic song in the sample with emphatically straight subdivisions that is often received as rock ’n’ roll in the sample. 42 For example, in Gerstin’s exhaustive and recent survey of scholarship on polyrhythm, most of musical examples of West-African music are in 12/8 while most of the examples of Cuban music are in 4/4 with straight-quaver subdivisions. Julian Gerstin, ‘Comparisons of African and Diasporic Rhythm: The Ewe, Cuba, and Martinique’, Analytical Approaches to World Music, 5 (2017), 1–90. 43 Babatunde Olatunji, with Robert Atkinson, The Beat of My Drum: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 4–11. 44 Of the other nine references to the term ‘polyrhythm’, six were reviews of jazz musicians such as Art Blakey and Dave Brubeck, two describe 20th-century classical composers such as Charles Ives, and one referred to Middle-Eastern oud music.

111

are on the R&B charts. Although most triple-quaver polyrhythmic hits of the early-to-mid

1950s do not exhibit an Afro-Latin influence, almost all of the duple-quaver polyrhythmic hits

do. For example, only a fifth of the 23 triple-quaver polyrhythmic songs that appear in the

sample before the release of ‘Diana’ in July 1957 feature two or more seemingly Latin-

influenced bar-level patterns (discussed below). However, all but one of the thirteen straight-

quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample feature two or more of these patterns.45 Moreover,

as noted, most polyrhythmic songs in the sample feature straight-quaver rhythmic patterns.

The section below evaluates the reported impact of Afro-Latin musics, and other styles, on

the straight-quaver bar-level rhythmic patterns employed in ‘Diana’.

Straight-quaver polyrhythmic precursors to ‘Diana’ in the sample include bolero- and tango-

influenced mainstream hits as well as rhumba-blues recordings.46 The mainstream hits typically

feature two bar-level rhythmic patterns associated with the Afro-Cuban style bolero:47 a

crotchet bassline accenting beats one, three, and four of the bar (henceforth referred to as the

‘bolero bass pattern’) and the bolero pattern that underpins the rhumba drumbeat discussed

above (henceforth referred to as the ‘bolero percussive pattern’; see Ex. 28).48 These patterns

were associated with bolero in the US and were well known and widely disseminated in the

country before the 1950s. For example, both feature in Desi Arnaz’s 1948 recording of the

Cuban bolero ‘Quizás, Quizás, Quizás (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps)’, which was recorded by a

wide array of US-American artists in the 1950s and early 1960s: for example, Bing Crosby, Nat

King Cole, Ben E. King, and Doris Day. Together these two patterns give rise to a straight-

quaver polyrhythmic texture in five mid-tempo early-1950s hits in the sample: three bolero-

influenced songs and two tangos.49 Six straight-quaver polyrhythmic rhumba-blues recordings

feature in the sample in the early and mid-1950s.50 Two of these feature the bolero bass

45 The only straight-quaver polyrhythmic song in the sample that does not seem to have been influenced by Afro-Latin styles is Les Baxter’s 1955 instrumental arrangement of ‘Unchained Melody’. 46 Specifically, there was one chachachá, two mainstream tango hits, three bolero-influenced mainstream hits, and six rhumba-blues recordings. 47 Samuel Mello Araújo, ‘The Politics of Passion: The Impact of Bolero on Brazilian Musical Expressions’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, 31 (1999), 42–56; here, 48–49. Sher, Latin Real Book, 555. 48 The bolero percussive pattern is truncated in The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ and ‘Kiss of Fire’, embellished in ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’, and displaced by a crotchet beat in ‘No Other Love’. 49 Patti Page’s ‘All My Love (Bolero)’ (1950; the subtitle of which explicitly indicates the Afro-Cuban influence), Perry Como’s ‘No Other Love’ (1953), the Ames Brothers’s ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ (1954), Georgia Gibbs’s ‘Kiss of Fire’ (1952; an English language version of the Argentine tango ‘El Choclo’), and Archie Bleyer’s ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ (1954). The two tangos also feature two bar-level rhythmic patterns that are found in both Afro-Cuban and Afro-Argentine traditions: the habanera bassline and the aforementioned tango snare pattern. 50 Namely: the outro in Earl Bostic ‘Flamingo’ (1951), ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ (1953), the Drifters ‘Honey Love’ (1954), Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954), Mickey & Sylvia’s ‘Love Is Strange’ (1957), LaVern Baker’s ‘Jim Dandy’ 1957). Rhumba blues hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s include Cozy Cole’s ‘Topsy II’ (1958) and Ray Charles’s ‘You Are My Sunshine’ (1962).

112

pattern while four feature the bolero percussive pattern.51 However, as suggested above, a

tresillo bassline is more common alongside a rhumba drumbeat.

Ex. 28 A straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture associated with the Afro-Cuban style bolero, comprising two bar-level rhythmic patterns: the ‘bolero bass pattern’ and the ‘bolero percussive pattern’.

Like rhumba blues, ‘Diana’ features a straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture arising from

layered adaptations of Afro-Latin bar-level patterns. Unlike rhumba blues, ‘Diana’ features an

untrained teenage voice, AABA 32-bar popular song form, and the so-called ‘doo-wop’ chord

sequence (I-vi-IV-V) rather than gritty vocal timbres and the 12-bar blues of rhumba blues.52

The traits of ‘Diana’ were also characteristic of much late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll.

‘Diana’ is based on the mid-tempo groove (ca. 140 bpm) and RSQB drumbeat that seem to

have been popularised by ‘Lucille’ and ‘Short Fat Fannie’. However, the unpitched reiterated

straight-quavers are played on the hi-hat rather than on the snare drum as ghost notes. Indeed,

‘Diana’ is the first example in the sample of a reiterated straight-quaver hi-hat pattern over a

snare-drum backbeat which subsequently became a norm in rock and soul.53 While ‘Lucille’

and ‘Short Fat Fannie’ are contrarhythmic and feature reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns in pitched instruments, the drumbeat of ‘Diana’ is the only beat-level rhythmic

pattern employed in the song. Instead, in ‘Diana’ four straight-quaver bar-level rhythmic

patterns are layered over the RSQB drumbeat (see Ex. 29). The backing-vocal pattern is a

straight-quaver version of a bar-level pattern employed in swung-quaver R&B hits earlier in

the sample. The patterns in the electric guitar (‘Electric Guitar 1’), piano, and bass are among

the most common bar-level patterns in the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample.

These three patterns seem to derive from three Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns: a bolero

51 Specifically, the bolero bass pattern features in ‘Honey Love’ and in the outro in ‘Flamingo’ while the bolero percussive pattern features in the drums in ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Honey Love’. The bolero percussive pattern is also embellished in the piano in ‘Jim Dandy’ and ‘Love Is Strange’. 52 The repeated harmonic sequence perhaps facilitates the focus on rhythmic texture and therefore the use of bar-level patterns and polyrhythm. 53 Although ‘Jailhouse Rock’ features a reiterated straight-quaver hi-hat pattern, the quavers are not emphatically straight-quaver.

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percussive pattern, a ‘rotation’ of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern, a tresillo bass

pattern. Additionally, Anka’s 1963 re-recording of ‘Diana’ features an additional seemingly

Latin-derived bar-level pattern: a treble-register pattern that interlocks with a tresillo bassline.

The influence on the first pattern seems to have been bolero-influenced mainstream hits while

the predecessor for the remaining three patterns appears to have been rhumba blues.

Ex. 29 Paul Anka, ‘Diana’ (1957), A section, straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture.

The bar-level backing-vocal pattern in the middle of each A section of ‘Diana’ seems to derive

from African-American doo wop. This pattern appears with swung-quaver subdivisions in the

backing vocals of two earlier R&B hits: the Dominoes’s ‘Sixty-Minute Man’ (1951) and Shirley

& Lee’s ‘Feel So Good’ (1955). There is no obvious Afro-Latin or African-Caribbean

influence on this pattern. However, the remaining four bar-level patterns in ‘Diana’ seem to

derive from Afro-Latin patterns.

The electric-guitar part in ‘Diana’ is the earliest example in the sample of an arpeggiated

version of the bolero percussive pattern which became characteristic of late-1950s and early-

1960s rock ’n’ roll.54 The journalists Maury Dean and Larry Birnbaum imply that this

arpeggiated pattern descends from Afro-Latin styles.55 A truncated version of the arpeggiated

54 Other examples of this mid-tempo arpeggiated pattern include: Jackie Wilson’s ‘Lonely Teardrops’ (1958) and Jerry Butler’s ‘He Will Break Your Heart’ (1960) in the electric guitar on the R&B chart and Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ (1961) and Roy Orbison’s ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ (1964) in the piano on the mainstream chart. 55 Maury Dean states that arpeggiated pattern characterised ‘chalypso’ (a late-1950s dance ‘craze’ applying chachachá dance steps to calypso-influenced music) and cites ‘Diana’ as well as the following as examples: Buddy Holly’s ‘Heartbeat’ (1958), Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’ (1959), Neil Sedaka’s ‘Oh Carol’ (1959), and Frankie Avalon’s ‘Venus’ (1959). However, early-1950s hits that employ this pattern seem to have been influenced by

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114

electric-guitar pattern appears alongside a bolero percussive pattern in the bongos in the 1954

bolero-influenced mainstream hit ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ by the Ames Brothers.

After ‘Diana’, the bolero percussive pattern was employed on the ride cymbal (perhaps

emulating Afro-Cuban bell patterns),56 in the snare drum,57 and in a slow triple-quaver

variation.58 The bolero percussive pattern more generally (including the arpeggiated pattern

and the rhumba drumbeat) is the most common bar-level pattern employed in the straight-

quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample, featuring in over a third of this subsample.59

The piano pattern in ‘Diana’ was reportedly characteristic of late-1950s and early-1960s rock

’n’ roll as a snare-drum pattern (see again Ex. 29).60 Commentators associate the use of this

rhythm as a snare-drum pattern with four styles: surf rock, girl group, twist music, and Afro-

Cuban music.61 Albin Zak states that the Ventures’s 1960 surf instrumental ‘Walk, Don’t Run’

– which features a variation of this pattern that alternates between the snare drum played open

and with a rimshot – influenced the use of the snare-drum pattern in the Shirelles’s girl-group

hit ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ from later that year.62 Conversely, Jacqueline Warwick

notes that a handclap-fingerclick variation of this pattern was employed in the Shirelles’s

earlier 1958 hit ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’ and argues that this was influenced by the schoolyard

games of girls.63 Moreover, Yvetta Kajanová refers to this snare-drum pattern in the

Yardbirds’s 1965 hit ‘For Your Love’ as a ‘twist pattern’64 while Ed Morales, citing Robert

Palmer, suggests that the pattern’s usage in ‘For Your Love’ was influenced by Afro-Cuban

conga patterns.65

Afro-Latin musics rather than African-Trinidadian calypso. Larry Birnbaum refers to its use in Jackie Wilson’s 1960 hit ‘Lonely Teardrops’ as a ‘Latin-like beat plucked on muffled guitar strings [which] was widely imitated’. Maury Dean, Rock N Roll Gold Rush: A Singles Un-Cyclopedia (New York: Algora Publishing, 2003), 419. Birnbaum, Before Elvis, 307. 56 For example, the Everly Brothers’s ‘All I Want to Do Is Dream’ (1958). Indeed, in this context, Garry Tamlyn referred to the rhythm as a ‘Latin drum beat rhythm’. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 64. 57 For instance, the Diamonds, ‘Happy Days’ (1958) and Paul Anka’s 1963 version of ‘Diana’. 58 For example, the Jive Five’s ‘My True Story’ (1961; piano) and the Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’ (1964; electric guitar; 80 bpm). 59 The bolero percussive pattern is also a precursor to semiquaver subdivisions as the density referent. 60 Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat’, 57. 61 Additionally, Bronia Kornhauser suggests that this snare-drum pattern in Dick Dale’s 1962 surf-rock instrumental ‘Misirlou’ might have been influenced by a Middle-Eastern 4/4 Sombati pattern, given Dick Dale’s and the song’s Lebanese parentage. Although Sombati might have influenced Dale’s use of the rhythm, the pattern was employed in Latin-influenced recordings before surf rock emerged. Bronia Kornhauser, ‘Layers of Identity in the 1960s Surf Rock Icon Misirlou’, Musicology Australia, 32 (2010), 185–201; here, 189. 62 Albin J. Zak III, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 225. 63 Jacqueline Warwick, Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s (New York: Routledge, 2007), 35. Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 223. 64 Yvetta Kajanová, On the History of Rock Music (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 32. 65 Ed Morales, The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots of Latin Music from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2003), 280.

115

Of these four reported influences, the impact of Afro-Cuban conga parts on this pattern

seems the most plausible. The rhythm seems to originate in the heard accents of a ‘rotated’

version of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern. The standard conga pattern was widely

heard in the US from the late 1940s onwards through the popularity of Cubop, mambo, and

chachachá (see Ex. 30a).66 In early-1950s R&B the conga pattern is ‘rotated’, with the first and

second halves swapped, creating a new conga pattern which is not characteristic of Afro-

Cuban music (see Ex. 30b).67 Given that the ‘rotation’ of the two halves of Afro-Cuban clave

pattern is a central part of this fundamental organising principle in Afro-Cuban music,68 it is

not a stretch to suppose that musicians might have subjected other Afro-Cuban patterns to

this rotation technique (see Ex. 31).69 The heard accents of this rotated conga pattern are later

clapped throughout three twelve-bar breaks in Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’.70 ‘Mambo Baby’

explicitly links this rhythmic pattern to the ‘mambo’ mentioned in the lyrics as the

handclapped breaks follow the line ‘all my baby wants to do is the mambo […] he goes:

[rotated conga handclap pattern]’ (see Ex. 30c).71 Mambo Baby’ also features this pattern on

the snare drum, with the snares off, though this is hardly noticeable until towards the end of

the record (most audible from 1:18 onwards). Although the low-high timbral alternation

between the conga’s open and slap tones is erased in ‘Mambo Baby’, it is preserved in the

snare-drum and handclap patterns in ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ and ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’

respectively (see Ex. 30d and e), which Zak and Warwick do not note.72 Indeed, Cash Box

described ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’ as a ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ recording at the time.73 Overall, this

66 For example, Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Manteca’ (1947) as well as Pérez Prado’s ‘Mambo No 5’ (1950) and ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ (1955). 67 Examples of this rotated pattern include Lloyd Glenn’s ‘Chica Boo’ (1951), Percy Mayfield’s ‘Louisiana’ (1952), T-Bone Walker’s ‘Teenage Baby’ (1954), Joe Loco’s ‘El Baion’ (1954, performed on the cowbell). 68 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 80. 69 It is unclear whether Latinx-American musicians or African-American musicians popularised this rotation of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern. The name of the conga player that is listed for the first example of the pattern that has been encountered in this research does not sound Latinx: namely, Earl Burton who played on ‘Chica Boo’, which was recorded in Los Angeles. However, Latinx conga players did play on R&B recordings in L.A. in the early 1950s: for example, Emmanuel ‘Gaucho’ Vaharandes, who played on several Johnny Otis recordings. Thus, Latinx conga players like Vaharandes might have influenced seemingly non-Latinx conga players like Burton in his use of the rotated pattern. 70 The accents of the rotated conga pattern also outline three of the accents of the Afro-Cuban cinquillo rhythm. The cinquillo therefore may also have had some influence on the pattern. However, the only evidence of this is found in later examples: for instance, the combination of the two patterns that is handclapped in the Angels’s ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ (1963). 71 Similarly, Wynonie Harris’s ‘Good Mambo Tonight’ (1955) implicitly associates the rotated conga pattern with the ‘Mambo’ in the lyrics since the accompaniment beat is different from Harris’s earlier shuffle ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ (1954). 72 There are at least two examples in which the timbral alternation is performed the ‘wrong’ way around, that is high-high low rather than low-low high: T-Bone Walker’s ‘My Baby Is Now On My Mind’ (1954) and Paul Paree’s ‘Don’t You Scold Me’ (1959). However, in these cases the timbral alternation is arguably that of the original conga pattern, which was also in wide use as a snare pattern at this time: for example, the Bobbettes’ ‘Mr. Lee’ (1957; with rimshot-open snare alternation) and The Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’ (1964; with a tom-crossstick variation). Thus, these exceptions still suggest a possible Afro-Cuban influence on this pattern. 73 Anonymous, [review of the Shirelles’s ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’], Cash Box (15 February 1958).

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rotated conga pattern and its accents feature in over a third of the straight-quaver

polyrhythmic songs in the sample while the standard conga pattern featured in just less than a

fifth.

Ex. 30 a) Standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern,74 b) ‘rotated’ conga pattern, c) heard accents of the rotated conga pattern handclapped in Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954), d) handclap-fingerclick variation in the Shirelles’s ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’ (1958), e) open-rimshot snare-drum variation in the Ventures’s ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ (1960).

Ex. 31 Son clave in 3-2 and ‘rotated’ 2-3 forms.

The bassline in ‘Diana’ is a variation of the Afro-Cuban tresillo bass pattern.75 Alejo Carpentier

states that the tresillo was heard in Cuba as a bassline at least as early as 1856.76 From 1930,

tresillo basslines were widely disseminated in the US through the ‘craze’ for Cuban ‘rhumba’

and through the left-hand parts in the recordings of the Chicago-based boogie-woogie pianist

Jimmy Yancey.77 Tresillo basslines were employed in New-Orleans R&B from at least 1949:78

for example, Professor Longhair’s straight-quaver polyrhythmic ‘Hey Little Girl’ (1949) and

Dave Bartholomew’s swung-quaver contrarhythmic ‘Country Boy’,79 in which the tresillo is

74 H, T, S and O – heel, toe, slap and open – refer to different tones achievable on the conga, the last two of which are the loudest, while L and R denote the use of the left and right hand respectively. 75 The pattern is also common in Afro-Brazilian baião, Afro-Trinidadian calypso, as well as in Maghreb musical styles. However, given the greater prominence of rhumba, mambo and chachachá in the US than calypso, baião, and Maghreb musics, Afro-Cuban musics seem the most likely influence on the use of this pattern in the US. John P. Murphy, Music in Brazil: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 80. Samuel A. Floyd Jr., Black Music in the Circum-Caribbean, American Music, 17 (1999), 1–38; here, 25. Gerhard Kubik, ‘Africa’, Grove Music Online https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 16 March 2021). 76 Alejo Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 3rd edn (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1988), 128–129. 77 John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 38, 90, 136. Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 84. 78 Ned Sublette, Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004), 392–402. Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 84. 79 Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 103.

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doubled in the tenor and baritone saxophones. Both Longhair and Bartholomew assert that

they were influenced by Afro-Latin and African-Caribbean musics: the former stating that his

style was a mix of rhumba, mambo and calypso and the latter stating that he borrowed this

pattern from a ‘rumba record’.80 Straight-quaver tresillo basslines are employed in rhumba-blues

songs in the sample.81 The fact that the bass part in ‘Diana’ is doubled in the tenor and

baritone saxophones suggests that the use of this pattern was influenced by Dave

Bartholomew’s arrangements. This tresillo variation heard in ‘Diana’ is employed in two hits

from the previous year: Elvis Presley’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and in the first bar of the two-bar bass

pattern in Mickey & Sylvia’s ‘Love Is Strange’ (see Ex. 32).82 Both of these hits seems to have

been influenced by Afro-Cuban styles. ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ was recorded in the same session as

‘Hound Dog’, which, as noted, Presley originally performed as a rhumba blues and recorded

with a tresillo bassline. Similarly, ‘Love is Strange’ features a variation of a standard Afro-Cuban

bongo-bell pattern and contemporaneous review of the song in Cash Box described it as a

‘slow beat cha cha’.83 Consequently, the bassline in ‘Diana’ seems to have been influenced by

Afro-Cuban musics. Overall, the tresillo, including such variants, features in over a quarter of

the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample.

Ex. 32 Precursors to the tresillo variation in ‘Diana’: 1) Elvis Presley’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ (1956); and b) Mickey & Sylvia’s ‘Love Is Strange’ (1956).

Three similar Afro-Latin bar-level bass-register patterns feature widely in the straight-quaver

polyrhythmic hits in the sample. The Afro-Cuban bolero and habanera bass patterns feature in

20% and 30% of this subsample respectively (see Ex. 33a and b), while a bass-register pattern

popularised by the Afro-Brazilian style baião features in 15% of these hits (see Ex. 33c). Jerry

Leiber and Mike Stoller – the songwriting and production partnership that seem to have 80 Longhair says that he learnt to play these styles from a percussionist that he alternatively describes as ‘Hungarian’ and ‘Hindu’: Peter Narváez, Hispanic Music Cultures on African-American Blues Musicians’, Black Music Research Journal, 14 (1994), 175–196; here, 186. Cheryl L. Keyes, ‘Funkin’ with Bach: The Impact of Professor Longhair on Rock ’n’ Roll’, in Tony Bolden (ed.), The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives On Black Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 213–226; here, 216. Dave Bartholomew as quoted in Palmer, ‘The Cuban Connection’, 103. 81 Namely, ‘Mambo Baby’, ‘Love Is Strange’, and Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’. 82 This tresillo variation features in Mary Wells’s ‘Two Lovers’ (1963) and the Rolling Stones’s ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ (1965) after ‘Diana’. 83 Anonymous, ‘R & B Reviews’, Cash Box [New York] (17 November 1956), 38.

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introduced the baião bass pattern to rock ’n’ roll with the Drifters’ ‘There Goes My Baby’

(1959) – refer the baião pattern by name, as the ‘baión’ (a phonetic spelling of baião in

Spanish). Leiber and Stoller’s use of the baião bass pattern was widely imitated by the so-called

‘Brill-Building’ songwriters: for example, Phil Spector and Carole King.84 These bar-level bass

patterns (the bolero, habanera, tresillo, and baião) were also combined in two-bar patterns in

many of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits.

Ex. 33 a) bolero bass pattern, b) habanera pattern, and c) baião bass pattern.

Anka’s 1963 re-recording of ‘Diana’ features an additional straight-quaver bar-level electric-

guitar pattern which is not characteristic of Afro-Cuban music but reportedly derives from the

tresillo. Allan Moore refers to this pattern in the piano of Roy Orbison’s 1964 hit ‘Oh! Pretty

Woman’ as a ‘reverse habanera’. Moore uses ‘habanera’ to refer to the pattern more

commonly known as the tresillo. Thus, he sees the piano pattern in ‘Oh! Pretty Woman’ as a

retrograde tresillo: 2-3-3 instead of 3-3-2.85 Rather than emerging through retrograde, this

treble-register pattern seems to have arisen from pianists using their right hand to ‘to fill in the

gaps’ between the notes in a ‘tresillo right-hand’ pattern creating an interlocking polyrhythmic

texture that accents a Afro-Cuban cinquillo or bolero pattern between the hands (see Ex. 34a

and b respectively).86 Early examples of this pattern are found in New-Orleans rhumba blues:87

Professor Longhair’s ‘Hello Little Girl’ (1949) on piano and Dave Bartholomew’s ‘Carnival

Day’ (1950) on electric guitar.88 The pattern is found in rhumba blues and in a polyrhythmic

rhumba-influenced C&W song: ‘Mambo Baby’ (1954) and Carl Smith’s ‘Loose Talk’ (1955)

84 Ken Emerson, Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 60, 61, 123. 85 Moore, Song Means, 318. 86 In ‘Diana’ this pattern is somewhat divorced from the tresillo variation in the bass, and the two coincide on the ‘and’ of beat three rather than completely interlocking. 87 In a 2013 article on second line, ethnomusicologist Benjamin Doleac refers to this pattern as the ‘bamboula’ and states that it was employed in New Orleans’s Congo Square in the mid-1700s. It is possible that this pattern was still in use in New Orleans 200 years later, but given the wide dissemination of Afro-Cuban music at the time, a more recent Afro-Cuban influence on the use of this pattern seems more likely to be predominant than an African retention. Benjamin Doleac, ‘Strictly Second Line: Funk, Jazz, and the New Orleans Beat’, Ethnomusicology Review, 18 (2013), 2. 88 A variation of the ‘tresillo right-hand’ pattern is found in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1901 piano prelude in G minor. The prelude features an interlocking straight-quaver habanera and the ‘tresillo right-hand’ pattern with the semiquaver embellishment that characterises the bolero percussive pattern. Although the prelude is a march, it would still seem to have been influenced indirectly by Afro-Cuban styles since Rachmaninoff would have known the habanera pattern through conducting Bizet’s Carmen three years previously: Geoffrey Norris, ‘Rachmaninoff, Serge’, Grove Music Online, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 17 August 2020).

119

respectively. The additional electric-guitar pattern in the 1963 re-recording of ‘Diana’ therefore

seems to be have emerged in relation to the Afro-Cuban tresillo. This ‘tresillo right-hand’ pattern

features in over a tenth of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample.

Ex. 34 a) ‘Tresillo right-hand’ pattern, e.g. ‘Carnival Day’ and ‘Loose Talk’; and b) bolero-inflected variation, e.g. ‘Hello Little Girl’ and ‘Mambo Baby’.

In summary, four of the five bar-level patterns that are performed in the A section of the two

recordings of ‘Diana’ seem to derive from emblematic Afro-Cuban patterns while only one

seems to originate in African-American styles. Moreover, three of these patterns are the most

common bar-level rhythmic patterns that are employed in straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs

in the sample. Thus, Afro-Cuban musics seem to have influenced ‘Diana’ and late-1950s and

early-1960s rock ’n’ roll more generally, as well as the trends towards straight-quaver rhythmic

patterns, polyrhythmic textures, and the coalescence of these trends in a shift towards straight-

quaver polyrhythm. Three of the four patterns feature for the first time in the sample in

rhumba-blues recordings which suggests that the Afro-Cuban influence on ‘Diana’ and the

above rhythmic trends was primarily via rhumba blues. Although commentators occasionally

link the above bar-level patterns to Afro-Cuban musics, this is first study to argue that the

sum of all these Cuban-influenced bar-level rhythmic patterns was a Cuban-influenced trend

towards straight-quaver polyrhythm and therefore an Afro-Latinisation of rock ’n’ roll. This

argument also contests the conventional wisdom in Latinx studies that the impact of Afro-

Latin styles in the United States waned in the 1960s, between the popularity of early-1960s

bossa nova and mid-1970s salsa.89

89 Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 160. Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!: Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 29 and 40.

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Straight-Quaver Polyrhythm after ‘Diana’

‘Diana’ was written by Anka but arranged and produced by Dominick ‘Don’ Costa. Costa

does not seem to have arranged or produced any rock ’n’ roll before ‘Diana’ and no interviews

with Costa about ‘Diana’ were located. However, given the mainstream popularity of Afro-

Cuban styles like mambo and chachachá and R&B at the time, Costa would seem very likely

to have been aware of the precursors to the rhythmic patterns employed in ‘Diana’ that are

listed above.90 There is some evidence to suggest that he had been involved in the

arrangement of a mambo recording before arranging ‘Diana’. Costa received a composition

credit on Richard Hayman’s ‘Turkey Mambo’ (1954): a straight-quaver polyrhythmic mambo

version of the US folk tune ‘Turkey in the Straw’, which features the standard Afro-Cuban

conga pattern alongside other bar-level patterns. Since ‘Turkey in the Straw’ is a traditional

tune, it seems likely that the recording was arranged by Costa, Hayman, Luigi Creatore, and

Hugo Peretti who then listed themselves as composers in order to receive royalties. This

indicates that Costa was familiar with Afro-Cuban straight-quaver bar-level rhythmic patterns

and polyrhythmic textures before arranging ‘Diana’.

Anka suggests that Costa’s straight-quaver polyrhythmic arrangement in ‘Diana’ was

influential.91 He writes that ‘[w]hen Don Costa figured out how to orchestrate arrangements

for my songs he began to apply the same method to other singers. Carole King had a contract

with ABC-Paramount records. She worked with Costa, and some of her early stuff sounded a

little like my records’.92 Indeed, Costa was Carole King’s first producer and his arrangement of

‘Under the Stars’, the B-side of King’s second single ‘Baby Sittin’’, features the same

characteristics as ‘Diana’: a straight-quaver polyrhythmic texture comprising the three

seemingly Cuban-influenced bar-level patterns in the 1957 recording of ‘Diana’.93 Carole King

went on to co-write (with her lyricist husband Gerry Goffin), arrange, and produce many

straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll hits of the late 1950s and early 1960s including the

Shirelles’s ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ (1960), which features a tresillo bassline and the

accents of the rotated conga pattern on the snare drum, and Little Eva’s ‘The Locomotion’

(1962), which features ‘tresillo right-hand’ accents in the electric guitar. Moreover, similar

straight-quaver polyrhythmic arrangements which feature the four straight-quaver bar-level

patterns heard in ‘Diana’ are found in the sample: Frankie Avalon’s ‘Venus’, the Fleetwoods’s 90 None of the session musicians who played on ‘Diana’ was Latinx-American. 91 Costa arranged one more straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll single for Anka – ‘Just Young’ (1958) – and this features the four apparently Cuban-influenced bar-level rhythmic patterns employed in ‘Diana’. 92 Paul Anka and David Dalton, My Way: An Autobiography (New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2014), 46–47. 93 Mary E. Rohlfing, ‘“Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby”: A Re-Evaluation of Women’s Roles in the Brill Building Era of Early Rock ’n’ Roll’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 13 (1996), 93–114; here, 99.

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‘Come Softly to Me’, Elvis Presley’s ‘It’s Now or Never’, the Everly Brothers’s ‘Cathy’s

Clown’, the Drifters’s ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’, Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’, the Marcels’s

‘Blue Moon’, Ben E. King’s ‘Stand by Me’, and the Chiffons’s ‘He’s so Fine’. Thus, the

straight-quaver polyrhythmic arrangement of ‘Diana’ seems to have influenced at least one

significant songwriter and producer of late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll and perhaps

inspired more.

In total, 80% of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample feature two or more of

the Afro-Latin or ‘American-Latin’ bar-level patterns illustrated in Ex. 35 (including variations

of these patterns).94 Additionally, after ‘Diana’, most of the triple-quaver polyrhythmic songs

in the sample feature two or more of these patterns with swung-quaver subdivisions. This

strongly suggests that Afro-Latin musics represent the predominant influence on the trend

towards straight-quaver polyrhythm specifically, and polyrhythm more generally. Moreover,

since the majority of straight-quaver songs in the sample feature the RSQB paradigm and a

polyrhythmic texture and Afro-Latin musics seem to have been a prominent influence on the

former and the predominant influence on the latter, it is perhaps not a stretch to suggest that

Black Latin-American musics were the predominant influence on the shift from swung- to

straight-quaver subdivisions, which existing studies find was still in effect until at least the

millennium.95 Thus, although Afro-Latin musics represent one of several influences on the

trend towards the RSQB paradigm that was spearheaded by mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll recordings

such as ‘Lucille’, these styles seem to have been the predominant influence on the shift from

swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions, the move from monorhythmic to polyrhythmic

textures, and the overarching transformation from crotchet and triple-quaver monorhythm to

duple-quaver polyrhythm.

94 In Cuba, the rhythm of the chachachá dance step is not accented by musicians. Conversely, in American-Latin recordings, this rhythm is accentuated: for example, the rhythm of the chachachá dance step is played on the claves in Ritchie Valens’s ‘La Bamba’. The chachachá step can be danced ‘in one’ or ‘in two’. When the chachachá is danced ‘in one’, the dancer puts their left foot forward on beat one, creating a 1 2 3+4 pattern. When the chachachá is danced ‘in two’, the dancer puts their right foot forward on beat two, creating a 1 2 3 4+ pattern. Instances in which a rhythmic pattern was ‘in clave’ were included in the calculation of this statistic. ‘In clave’ refers to instances in which the accents of a rhythm line up with the accents of the 3-2 or 2-3 son clave timeline. For more see: Christopher Washburne, ‘The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic Foundation of American Music, Black Music Research Journal, 17 (1997), 59–80. Sher, The Latin Real Book, 554. 95 Note this is not the same ‘majority’, since some straight-quaver songs feature the RSQB paradigm while others feature polyrhythm and not all exhibit both.

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Ex. 35 Common Afro-Latin and American-Latin bar-level patterns in straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample.

Eleven of the songs in the sample that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm do not feature two

or more of the apparently Latin-influenced rhythmic patterns that are outlined above. Ten of

these were hits in the early or mid-1960s. It therefore seems that in the early 1960s European

Americans and African Americans became more accustomed to bar-level rhythmic patterns

and less dependent on variations and modifications of stock Afro-Latin patterns: for example,

the horn vamp in Stevie Wonder’s ‘Fingertips – Part 2’ (1963) and the guitar riff in the Rolling

Stones’s ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ (1965).96 This perhaps goes some way towards

explaining why Afro-Latin musics are not consistently posited as possible influences on

polyrhythmic rock, soul, and funk of the mid-1960s.

‘Rock-a-Cha-Cha’ The contemporaneous trade press did not posit Afro-Latin influences on the songs in the

sample that feature the RSQB paradigm, with the reiterated straight-quavers in a pitched

instrument, such as ‘Lucille’, except when bar-level rhythmic patterns were also employed.

Conversely, the trade press regularly suggests that straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of

the late 1950s and early 1960s was influenced by Afro-Latin styles. For example, a review of

96 This is particularly evident in five of the seven straight-quaver polyrhythmic R&B hits from 1965 which do not feature the seemingly Latin-influenced bar-level rhythmic patterns outlined above. Three of these are proto-funk – Jr Walker & the All Stars’s ‘Shotgun’ as well as James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ and ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’ – and two are early soul songs: the Temptations’s ‘My Girl’ and Fontella Bass’s ‘Rescue Me’.

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‘Diana’ in Cash Box describes it as ‘sport[ing] an exciting latin-beat arrangement’.97 More

generally, 40% of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample were received as

having been influenced by Afro-Latin musics, and in one case by African-Trinidadian calypso,

by either Billboard or Cash Box.98 These reviews do not mention other styles that have

subsequently been reported as influences on the adoption of straight-quaver bar-level

rhythmic patterns: for instance, schoolyard handclapping games, surf rock, Middle-Eastern

music, and West-African drumming. Thus, the trade-press reviews intimate that the trend

towards straight-quaver polyrhythm was perceived as the product of an Afro-Latin influence

at the time.

Cash Box describes one of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample as ‘rock-a-

cha-cha’: specifically, the Marcels’s 1961 hit version of ‘Blue Moon’. Despite the allusion to

Afro-Cuban chachachá, Cash Box describes rock ’n’ roll songs featuring any Afro-Latin

influences as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’. For example, the publication receives the Drifters’s ‘Save the

Last Dance for Me’ as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ but its producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller posit an

Afro-Brazilian baião influence on the song.99 Both ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ and ‘rock-a-billy’ (denoting

a mixture of Black-associated rock ’n’ roll and White-associated hillbilly music) were

reportedly coined by the Cash Box editor Ira Howard.100 Nowadays rockabilly is a well known

term and is in the Oxford English Dictionary. However, Cash Box mentioned rock-a-cha-cha a

third more often than it did rockabilly.101 The publication referred to the term on 629 pages

between 1958 and 1966 and it was occasionally mentioned as many as five times per page.102

All but eleven of the 629 references were made in the years between 1958 and 1963. Cash Box

therefore mentioned rock-a-cha-cha on an average of two pages a week during the late 1950s

and 1960s. The number of references peaked in 1961. Just less than of third of the total

number of mentions (193 pages) come from this year. Thus, Cash Box frequently identified an

Afro-Cuban influence on rock ’n’ roll, peaking in 1961: a year in which straight-quaver

97 Anonymous, ‘Record Reviews’, Cash Box (22 June 1957), 10 98 Cash Box suggests Afro-Latin influences more often than Billboard does, 43.9% compared to 17.6%. It is unclear whether the Cash Box reviewers were fonder of Afro-Latin and African-Caribbean styles than the were the Billboard reviewers. 99 Cash Box refers to the Drifters’ version of ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ in this review of Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘twist’ version: Anonymous, [review of Jerry Lee Lewis, ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’], Cash Box (16 September 1961). Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz, Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 157–8. 100 John Broven, Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock 'n' Roll Pioneers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 205. 101 Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Cash Box employed ‘rock-a-cha-cha’, ‘rockachacha’, ‘rock-a-cha’, and rockacha on 629 pages and ‘rock-a-billy’, ‘rockabilly’, ‘rockbilly’, and ‘rock-billy’ on 464 pages. WorldRadioHistory.Com https://www.americanradiohistory.com (accessed 16 March 2021). 102 Anonymous, ‘Record Reviews’, Cash Box (4 Nov 1961), 8.

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polyrhythm became the norm at the centre of the late-1950s and early-1960s period that has

been marginalised from the history of popular music.

While Cash Box mentions rock-a-cha-cha more frequently than it does rockabilly, Billboard

scarcely employs the term rock-a-cha-cha but refers to rockabilly (and its derivatives) at least

521 times between 1956 and 1966. That being said, Billboard does suggest that Afro-Latin

styles influenced straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll – for example, the publication

describes Jackie Wilson’s 1958 hit ‘Lonely Teardrops’ as a ‘Latinish effort’ – and Cash Box still

employs the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ more often than Billboard employs ‘rockabilly’.103 Moreover,

the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ was employed beyond Cash Box. For instance, three straight-quaver

polyrhythmic songs are named after the style in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Irving Ashby’s

‘Rock-a-Cha’ (1958), Oscar McLollie and Jeannette’s ‘Rock-a-Cha’ (1958), and Annette

Funicello’s ‘The Rock-a-Cha’ (1961). Consequently, the trade press consistently refers to

straight-quaver polyrhythm with reference to Afro-Latin musics and the descriptor rock-a-

cha-cha was employed regularly at the time.

An analysis of recordings described as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ by Cash Box indicates that the term was

used to denote Latin-influenced straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll. Cash Box described

39 recordings as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ in 1958 and 1959. Of the 36 that could be accessed, 34 of

these (94%) featured straight-quaver polyrhythm. Moreover, all of these recordings were in

the same musical style as ‘Diana’ and regularly feature the bar-level rhythmic patterns that are

outlined above. For example, the three Latin-influenced bar-level rhythmic patterns that are

the most frequently employed patterns in the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the

sample and which appear in ‘Diana’ are also the most common patterns in the songs described

as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’, featuring in between a third and half of these songs.104 Eight of the ‘rock-

a-cha-cha’ songs feature Afro-Cuban percussion, which might suggest that the style descriptor

refers to the timbre of these instruments rather than to rhythm. However, the majority of

songs do not feature Afro-Latin percussion. Thus, Cash Box consistently employed the label

‘rock-a-cha-cha’ to designate straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll in the style of ‘Diana’

in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

103 Anonymous, ‘Reviews of New Pop Records’, Billboard, (27 October 1958), 44. 104 The accents of the rotated conga pattern feature in fifteen of the 36 songs, typically in the snare drum or handclapped. The bolero percussion pattern featured in fourteen, four of which in the arpeggiated form heard in ‘Diana’. Tresillo basslines featured in eleven, five of which featured the rhythmic variation that was employed in ‘Diana’. Additionally, the bolero bass pattern featured in ten of the songs, the habanera in nine, the cinquillo in six, the accents of the standard Afro-Cuban conga pattern in six (including in one as semiquavers), the accents of the chachachá dance step in two, and the ‘tresillo right-hand’ pattern in one.

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With this in mind, the fact that the frequency of the use of the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ peaked in

1961 – the same year that the rhythmic transformation from swung-quaver and crotchet

monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm culminated – seems more than coincidental.

Although the supplementary sample of songs described as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ only covers 1958

and 1959, two straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll songs in the sample from 1961 were

described as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ in reviews of other recordings.105 Thus, the trends towards

straight-quaver polyrhythm and rock-a-cha-cha seem to have been one and the same.

This finding challenges received wisdom in Latinx studies. It is consensus in scholarship on

Latinx music that the impact of Afro-Latin styles on the United States faded in the 1960s.106

The mainstream popularity of Afro-Latin styles may have decreased between early-1960s

bossa nova and mid-1970s salsa. However, the culmination of a Latin-influenced rhythmic

transformation of US popular music by 1961 that continued until at least 1965 suggests that

the 1960s is the decade that exhibits the greatest, rather than the smallest, impact of Afro-

Latin musics on US popular music.

Although ‘Diana’ is mentioned in eight of the thirteen rock histories, only Jerry Hopkins

suggests an Afro-Latin rhythmic influence on the recording.107 Indeed, as noted, while

rockabilly is celebrated, ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ has been forgotten. The following chapter therefore

asks why the reported Afro-Latin influence on straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of

the late-1950s and early-1960s has been erased.

Conclusion In summary, Afro-Latin musics seem to have been a prominent influence on the trend

towards the RSQB paradigm alongside boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar patterns and metrically

malleable reiterated-onset rhythmic patterns. They also appear to have been the predominant

influence on the transitions from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions and from

monorhythmic to polyrhythmic textures as well as on the overarching transformation from

crotchet and triple-quaver monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm. Moreover, the

105 Namely, the Drifters’s ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ and Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’. Anonymous, [review of Del Shannon, ‘Hats Off to Larry’], Cash Box (3 June 1961). Anonymous, [review of Jerry Lee Lewis, ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’], Cash Box (16 September 1961). 106 For example: Christina D. Abreu, Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 137. Anthony Macías, Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935–1968 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 279. 107 Jerry Hopkins, The Rock Story (New York: New American Library 1970), 35.

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contemporaneous trade press regularly identifies the impact of Afro-Latin musics (particularly

Afro-Cuban styles) on the adoption of straight-quaver polyrhythm, peaking in 1961 in which

this became the dominant rhythmic schema – as indicated by the consistent description of

straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll as ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ by Cash Box. Although Afro-

Latin influences on these trends have been suggested by scholars, this is the first study to draw

on a wealth of empirical evidence garnered from both a corpus analysis and a reception study

to conclude that Afro-Latin musics were the predominant influence on a transformation from

triple-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm. Consequently, Bauzá’s

claim that Afro-Latin musics influenced a fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war

popular music in the United States is persuasive.

This chapter also posits one possible explanation for the neglect of the impact of Afro-Latin

musics on the rhythmic trends: that is, the inaudibility of the Afro-Latin influence on the

RSQB paradigm and on the novel bar-level rhythmic patterns employed in mid-1960s straight-

quaver polyrhythmic rock and soul. The following chapter presents the contrasting reception

of rock ’n’ roll from the mid-1950s and from the ‘in-between years’ in order to interrogate

why this Afro-Latin influence has been erased, when this occurred, and who erased it. The

extent to which Latinx-American musicians directly influenced these trends is discussed in

Chapter 6. However, as this chapter suggests, the vehicle for an Afro-Cuban influence on rock

’n’ roll was principally through rhumba blues and ‘rock-a-cha-cha’. Thus, these styles are

interpreted in Chapter 6 in order to interpret the Afro-Latin influence on the rhythmic

transitions more generally.

Chapter 5 The Erasure of Afro-Latin Influences on the Rhythmic Trends

This chapter asks why Afro-Latin influences on straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of

the in-between years, and therefore on the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm have

been written out of history. It does so through a critical reception study of thirteen early

histories of rock published between 1961 and 1976.1 Three principal explanations, which are

not mutually exclusive, are discussed: the Black/White binary paradigm of race, the ‘Christ-

like narrative’ of rock ’n’ roll history, and the notion that Afro-Latin influences on the rhythm

of US popular music were superficial rather than structural. The last two of these explanations

are suggested for the first time in this thesis.

The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race

In this section, four possible explanations for the erasure of the impact of Afro-Latin musics

on the rhythmic trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm are discussed in relation to

evidence garnered from the corpus analysis and the critical reception study: the inaudibility of

Afro-Latin influences on the bar-level rhythmic patterns of the mid-1960s, an amnesia of

Cuba in the US following the US trade embargo of Cuba from 1960, the effect of a change in

the norms in the 1961, and the Black/White binary paradigm of race – which is the main

focus of the section.

First, it is necessarily to establish when the Afro-Latin influences on this trend seem to have

been erased. This exclusion occurred at different times in the different areas of the music

press: the trade press, the rock press, and the jazz press. In trade-press reviews of the straight-

quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample there is a decline in the frequency of the

identification of Afro-Latin influences after 1961. Between 1950 and 1961, just over half of

the straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits (for which at least one trade-press review was accessible)

were received as exhibiting an Afro-Latin influence by at least one of the two trade-press 1 Royston Ellis, The Big Beat Scene: An Outspoken Exposé of the Teenage World of Rock ’n’ Roll (York: Music Mentor Books, 2010 [originally published in 1961]). John Rublowsky, Popular Music (London: Basic Books, 1967). Derek Johnson, Beat Music (Oslo: Norsk Musikforlag, 1969). Nik Cohn, Rock from the Beginning (New York: Stein and Day/Publishers, 1969). Carl Belz, The Story of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (London: Sphere, 1969). Jerry Hopkins, The Rock Story (New York: New American Library 1970). Richard Robinson (ed.), Rock Revolution: From Elvis to Alice Cooper—The Whole Story of Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Curtis Books, 1973). Mike Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1973). Brian van der Horst, Rock Music (New York: F. Watts, 1973). Albert Raisner, L'Aventure Pop (Paris: E ditions Robert Laffont, 1973). Tony Palmer (author) and Paul Medlicott (editor), All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976). Jim Miller (ed.), The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press, Random House).

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publications. Conversely, only three of the 21 hits in this subsample from 1962 to 1965 were

received as having been influenced by Afro-Latin styles. Similarly, there was a decline in the

use of the style descriptor ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ by Cash Box from a peak of 193 references in 1961

to one in 1964 and none in 1967.2 Although the rock histories, which were published between

1961 and 1976, occasionally identify Afro-Latin influences on rock ’n’ roll rhythm, only Jerry

Hopkins suggests an Afro-Latin influence on late-1950s and early-1960s straight-quaver

polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll.3 Thus, in popular-music criticism, the Afro-Latin influence on

straight-quaver polyrhythm seems to have been largely erased between 1962 and the late

1960s. Conversely, in jazz discourse, the terms ‘straight’ and ‘Latin’ were used interchangeably

to describe duple-quaver subdivisions in two examples from the mid-1960s and the late

1980s.4

As noted in the previous chapter, the constituent bar-level rhythmic patterns within straight-

quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample became less dependent on Afro-Latin patterns in the

mid-1960s. While this was probably a factor in the erasure of Afro-Latin influences in this

period, the decline in the identification of Afro-Latin influences in trade-press reviews of

straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits from 1962 onwards precedes the adoption of less obviously

Latin-influenced bar-level rhythmic patterns in songs. Thus, this explanation would not seem

to be a significant factor in the erasure of Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic

transformation from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm.

Ned Sublette suggests that Afro-Cuban influences on the trends towards straight-quaver

rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures were ‘forgotten’ because of a ‘collective amnesia’

of Cuba in the US following the country’s trade embargo of Cuba, which was imposed in

1960. Neither the trade press nor the rock press mention the US embargo of Cuba. Thus, it is

difficult to assess whether the erasure of Afro-Latin influences on rock ’n’ roll in the trade

press and the rock histories was affected by this breakdown in diplomatic relations between

the US and Cuba. Although this remains a possibility, the decline in the identification of Afro-

Latin influences in trade-press reviews of straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits from 1962

onwards seems more likely to have been influenced by the fact that 1961 represents the

2 Similarly, the Puerto-Rican American vocalist Tony Orlando – who recorded straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll songs such as his 1961 single ‘Halfway to Paradise’ written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin – does not mention Afro-Latin influences on the rock ’n’ roll of this era in his autobiography. Tony Orlando with Patsi Bale Cox, Halfway to Paradise (New York: St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2003). 3 Hopkins, The Rock Story, 35. 4 For example, Dave Doubble, ‘Record Reviews – Nat Adderley: “Sayin’ Something’”’, Crescendo [London], November 1966, 6. Charles Dowd, A Funky Thesaurus for the Rock Drummer (Sherman Oaks: Gwyn Publishing Co., 1987), i.

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tipping point in the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm. Once straight-quaver

polyrhythm became a norm, consistently highlighting an Afro-Latin influence on that norm

perhaps seemed redundant to music critics. Thus, the decline in the association of straight-

quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll with Afro-Latin styles in trade-press reviews after 1961

would seem likely to have been influenced by the fact that once straight-quaver polyrhythm

had become normalised, the influences on it would perhaps have seemed unremarkable.

However, the African-American influence on the trends towards swung-quaver rhythmic

patterns in the 1930s and the backbeat in the early 1950s have not been forgotten even though

most music critics who wrote for the trade press and the rock press in the 1950s and 1960s

were White.5 This suggests that a change in norms does not account for the erasure of the

impact of Afro-Latin musics on the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm alone. Thus,

Sublette’s claim that the Black/White racial binary contributed to the erasure of the Afro-

Latin influences on US popular music seems persuasive. Specifically, African-American and

European-American contributions are acknowledged but Afro-Latin influences are

overlooked. Indeed, the trade-press reviews of straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits from 1962 to

1965 that do not reference Afro-Latin musics mention Black- and White-associated styles

such as rock and blues as well as racially non-specific terms like ‘teen’ and dance ‘crazes’ such

as the twist. As Reebee Garafalo suggests, the Black/White racial dichotomy is evident in

most of the histories of rock in the narrative that rock ’n’ roll is the product of R&B and

C&W.6 This R&B-plus-C&W origin myth also marginalises Afro-Latin influences on the

rhythmic trends in question. For example, none of the nine rock histories that mention Elvis

Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ notes the indirect Afro-Cuban influence on song via ‘Big Mama’

Thornton’s original rhumba-blues version. Given that Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ features

straight-quaver polyrhythm and Presley’s cover exhibits the RSQB paradigm, the Black/White

US racial binary seems to marginalise Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic trends towards

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures in the trade press and the rock

histories. The Black/White dichotomy is also implied in the term rockabilly, which is

mentioned in several of the rock histories, while rock-a-cha-cha is not mentioned in any.7

Thus, the Black/White racial binary influenced the erasure of the Afro-Latin influence on the

5 For example, Alexander Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music’, Popular Music, 19 (2000), 293–318. Garry N. Tamlyn, ‘The Big Beat: Origins and Development of Snare Backbeat and other Accompanimental Rhythms in Rock ’n’ Roll’, PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1998. 6 Reebee Garofalo. ‘Off the Charts: Outrage and Exclusion in the Eruption of Rock and Roll’ in Rubin R, Melnick,. American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 121. Rublowsky, Popular Music, 107–108. For example, Gillett, The Sound of the City, 23. Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 51. Hopkins, The Rock Story, 11. Horst, Rock Music. 7 For example: Ellis, The Big Beat Scene, 58; Belz, The Story of Rock, 72. Horst; Rock Music, 20.

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rhythmic transformation from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver

polyrhythm.

In summary, the effect of a change of stylistic norms in 1961, the inaudibility of Afro-Latin

influences on the bar-level rhythmic patterns of the mid-1960s, and an amnesia of Cuba in the

US following the US trade embargo of Cuba in 1960 are all plausible factors influencing the

erasure of Afro-Latin influences on straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll, and therefore

the trend towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures more generally.

However, of these factors, the Black/White binary paradigm of race seems to have been

predominant.

The Christ-like Narrative of Rock ’n’ Roll History

Almost all of the rock historians evoke the Christ-like narrative of rock ’n’ roll history in that

they marginalise late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll.8 Indeed, four of the historians

explicitly reference the purported ‘death’ of rock ’n’ roll during this period.9 Rock ’n’ roll is

either seen as dying of ‘natural causes’ or as being ‘murdered’. The ‘natural causes’ narrative is

that rock ’n’ roll died between 1957 and 1959 after Little Richard joined the ministry, Elvis

Presley enlisted in the army, Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin once removed,

Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, and Chuck Berry was imprisoned.10 The ‘murder’ narrative

most often suggests that rock ’n’ roll was ‘killed’ by the music industry.11 Specifically, the

culprit is often seen to be Dick Clark: the presenter of the Philadelphia-based Top of the

Pops-style television show American Bandstand who publicised the twist ‘craze’ and teen idols

such as Fabian.12 Consequently, reiterated straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll of the mid-1950s such

as Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’ is canonised as anti-mass culture by the rock historians, while

straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s such as ‘Paul

Anka’s ‘Diana’ is overlooked and disparaged as mass-culture.

8 Exceptions to this rule are four earlier rock histories: Ellis, The Big Beat Scene; Rublowsky, Popular Music; Johnson, Beat Music; and Belz, The Story of Rock. 9 Gillett stated that rock ’n’ roll was ‘left for dead’ by independent labels in 1958. Shaw refers to the ‘at least symbolic’ ‘death’ of rock ’n’ roll 1959–1963. Gillett, The Sound of the City, 3. Greg Shaw, ‘The Teen Idols’ in Miller, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 107. Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 72. Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 66. 10 Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 72. Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 67, Shaw ‘The Teen Idols’, 107. Raisner, L’Aventure Pop, 51, Palmer, All You Need Is Love, 227. 11 Gillett stated that rock ’n’ roll was ‘killed off’ by the music industry in around 1959. Cohn’s chapter on the late-1950s and early-1960s period is followed by a chapter entitled ‘Rue Morgue’, evoking Edgar Allan Poe’s murder mystery ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and therefore implying that rock ’n’ roll was murdered in this period. Gillett, The Sound of the City, 167–68. Nik Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 69–79. 12 Hopkins, The Rock Story, 44. Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 73 and 103. Shaw, ‘The Teen Idols’, 107. Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 53, John Morthland, ‘The Rock ’n’ Roll Fifties’ in Robinson, Rock Revolution, 18.

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Early rock historians typically express their mass-culture critique of rock ’n’ roll from the late

1950s to the early 1960s in terms of gender, age, and race. This appears to be a retrospective

application of the rock/pop distinction to rock ’n’ roll, distinguishing between mid-1950s rock

’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll of the in-between years. Keir Keightley argues that from the late 1960s

onwards rock discourse has construed rock as masculine anti-mass culture (e.g. the Beatles)

and pop as feminine mass culture (e.g. the Carpenters).13 Keightley historicises the rock/pop

distinction in the opposition of rock ’n’ roll and easy listening in the early 1960s (for example,

Chubby Checker and Acker Bilk respectively) and before that ‘hot jazz’ and ‘sweet jazz’ in the

1930s and early 1940s (for example, Duke Ellington and Paul Whiteman respectively): hot jazz

emphasises rhythm, raucous timbres (e.g. brass and drums), and improvisation while sweet

jazz foregrounds melody, soft timbres (e.g. strings), and notated arrangements. He argues that

recent jazz critics and rock critics have drawn on the feminine associations in the West of the

adjectives commonly used to describe sweet jazz, easy listening, and pop – including soft,

smooth, romantic, dreamy, sugary – as well as the music’s commercial success in order to

portray these styles as mass culture.14

Keightley presents a succession of binary oppositions that link melody to mass culture and

femininity and states that these binaries apply to sweet jazz, easy listening, and pop.

Specifically, he asserts that hot jazz emphasised syncopated rhythm while sweet jazz

emphasised hummable melody and asserts that these musical parameters could be understood

as ‘aggressive’ and ‘relaxed’ respectively.15 He claims that this aggressive/relaxed binary

morphs into a hard/soft dichotomy which leads to an association with femininity in two

ways.16 First, he contends that the hard/soft distinction moved from the timbral (for example,

the drum solos and brass instruments of hot jazz as oppose to strings of sweet jazz) to the

ethical (tough/weak) evoking stereotypes of masculine dominance and feminine

submissiveness. Second, he maintains that the hard/soft binary can be redeployed as

difficult/easy and then as resistant/complicit, anti-commercial/commercial and

masculine/feminine, presumably based on the stereotype of women as passive consumers.

Similarly, the musicologist Laurie Stras states that rock has been associated with social and

economic rebellion while pop is seen as inauthentic and meaningless because it is tarnished by

13 Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, 117. Keightley, ‘Music for Middlebrows’, 327. 14 Keightley, ‘Music for Middlebrows’, 326. 15 Ibid., 328. 16 Ibid..

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association with its supposedly ‘consumerist’ and ‘vacuous’ teenage female fans.17 Keightley’s

contention that the rock/pop distinction originates in the hot jazz/sweet jazz and rock ’n’

roll/easy listening oppositions suggests that the gendered binaries above also map onto race

and gender: Black/White and young/old.

Keightley discusses the marginalisation of rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Although he does not explicitly state that the side-lining of this era is a product of a gendered

mass-culture critique, this is readily inferred from his article. Early rock historians evidently

apply the rock/pop distinction and the above gendered binaries to distinguish between mid-

1950s rock ’n’ roll as masculine anti-mass culture and late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll

as emasculated mass culture. This can be seen in a comparison of the reception of ‘Lucille’

and ‘Diana’ in the rock histories, which evokes the gendered binary oppositions between

rhythm/melody, aggressive/soft, unacceptable to adults/acceptable to adults,

resistant/complicit, and anti-mass culture/mass culture.

Richard’s reiterated straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll is received with reference to the masculine

sides of the binaries (rhythmic, aggressive, and unacceptable to adults) whereas Anka’s

straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll is received with reference to the feminine sides

(melodic, soft, and acceptable to parents). Specifically, Richard’s piano playing is described as

rhythmic (‘pounding’ and ‘hammering’) and destructive. For example, in his 1970 rock history

Jerry Hopkins states that ‘the pounding theatrical celebrant of rock […] seemed to [have] a

desire to destroy every piano in sight’ while in his 1969 history Nik Cohn refers to Richard

‘hammering away with two hands as if he wanted to bust the thing apart’.18 Moreover,

Richard’s recordings are seen as being unacceptable to parents. For instance, in reference to

‘Tutti Frutti’, Langdon Winner writes that ‘[p]arents who might well tolerate Elvis Presley

balked at the prospect of having little Richard howl on the family phonograph’.19 Conversely,

‘Diana’ is described as melodic, soft, and feminised. For example, Albert Raisner refers to

‘Diana’ as featuring a ‘marshmallow melody’ and dismisses rock ’n’ roll of the in-between

years as ‘emasculated’.20 Anka, on the other hand, is considered to be ‘acceptable to adults’.21

The mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll of Little Richard is therefore considered to be resistant to mass

17 Laurie Stras (ed.), She’s So Fine: Reflections on Whiteness, Femininity, Adolescence and Class in 1960s Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 21. 18 Hopkins, The Rock Story, 21, Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 32. 19 Langdon Winner, ‘Little Richard’ in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 49 and 50. 20 ‘[U]ne mélodie-guimauve’ and ‘emasculé’ (translated by the author): Raisner, L’Aventure Pop, 54. Similarly, Shaw derides Anka’s music as sweet and therefore as feminised mass culture in the expression ‘teen schmaltz’. Shaw, ‘The Teen Idols’, 108. 21 Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 67. Similarly, Ellis refers to Anka’s ‘boy next door’ image, Ellis, The Big Beat Scene, 61.

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society while the late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll of Paul Anka’s is considered to be

complicit within mass society.

Consequently, Richard’s music is understood as anti-mass culture and as part of the ‘birth’ of

rock ’n’ roll, while Anka’s music is understood as mass culture and as part of the ‘death’ of

rock ’n’ roll. For example, Jahn notes that Richard wrote his own songs and describes them as

some of the ‘best rock has produced’. Similarly, Langdon Winner describes Richard’s

reiterated straight-quaver hits such as ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ as

‘establish[ing] Little Richard as one of the leading forces in the revolution which had

overtaken American pop music’ and says in reference to ‘Tutti Frutti’ as well as Presley’s early

sides for Sun records that ‘[r]ock ’n’ roll begins right here’.22 The references to creative

control, quality, and revolution indicate that Richard is understood as anti-mass culture. The

rock historians also highlight that, unlike most teen idols, Anka wrote his own songs including

‘Diana’.23 Brian van der Horst describes ‘Diana’ as ‘rather well-written’ and Shaw states Anka

was ‘a genuine prodigy’.24 However, Shaw concludes that ‘[Anka’s] songs were unbelievably

mechanical’.25 Thus, although Anka’s songwriting skills are lauded, ‘Diana’ is depicted as

Fordist mass culture. Moreover, Jahn claims that ‘Diana’ is responsible for the ‘lean period’ of

the late 1950s and early 1960s:

The years 1956 and 1957 comprised the First Golden Era of rock, but everything must end and by the latter part of 1957 one was able to suspect that a lean period was setting in. Seven lean years would pass before a musical group would appear which had the same aura as did Presley at the height of his power [the Beatles]. In any decline there has to be a starting point, and I prefer the release of “Diana,” by Paul Anka.26

Elsewhere Jahn describes this ‘lean period’ as an era in which rock ’n’ roll was ‘dead’.27 Thus,

evoking the Christ-like narrative, Jahn alleges that golden-age mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll (for

example, Elvis Presley) was ‘killed’ by ‘Diana’ leading to a fallow period before being revived

by the Beatles. Consequently, while reiterated straight-quaver rock ’n’ roll of the mid-1950s is 22 Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 25. Winner, ‘Little Richard’, 50. Jahn and Winner also describe Richard as influential and innovative. 23 Ellis, The Big Beat Scene, 62. Johnson, Beat Music, 28. Horst, Rock Music, 26–27. Raisner, L’Aventure Pop, 163–164. Shaw, ‘The Teen Idols’, 108–110. 24 Shaw, ‘The Teen Idols’, 108–110. Horst, Rock Music, 26–27. The historians also emphasise the financial success of ‘Diana’, noting that sold millions and that Anka was apparently ‘America’s youngest self-made millionaire’. This further links the song to commercial mass culture. Cohn, Rock from the Beginning, 53. Horst, Rock Music, 26. Raisner, L'Aventure Pop, 163–164. 25 Shaw, ‘The Teen Idols’, 108–110. 26 Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 66. 27 Jahn also suggests that girl groups and their fans – as well as the notion that rock ’n’ roll itself lived fast and died young – were responsible for the ‘death’ of rock ’n’ roll. Jahn, Rock from Elvis Presley to Alice Cooper, 66, 73 and 103.

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lauded as anti-mass culture, straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and

early 1960s is derided as mass culture.

Because of the gendered mass-culture critique implied by the Christ-like narrative of rock ’n’

roll history, late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll has been denied rock ’n’ roll status. For

example, Charlie Gillett maintains that ‘Diana’ was not real rock ’n’ roll. Specifically, he

describes Anka as the ‘prototypical’ teen idol and states that the recordings of the teen idols

featured ‘none of the qualities of rock ’n’ roll, except that the age of the singer was roughly the

same as that of real rock ’n’ roll singers’.28 This notion continues to influence scholarship.

Citing Gillett, Allan Moore refers to the rock ’n’ roll of this period as ‘rock and roll’ and

characterises the spelling correction as representing a sell out to the older ‘Silent Generation’,

overlooking the fact that this spelling was common in the mid-1950s period: for example, in

the title of Chuck Berry’s ‘Rock and Roll Music’.29 Scholars have also gendered the in-between

years as feminine. For example, in a late-1970s article, Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie

refer to rock ’n’ roll as being ‘emasculated’ during the late-1950s and early-1960s period,

echoing Raisner.30 Production-line rhetoric is also employed to disparage the style even by

scholars with an otherwise revisionist outlook: for example, Albin Zak refers to the teen idols

as ‘packaged’ and Elijah Wald as ‘airbrushed’.31 Thus, influenced by early rock histories,

scholars have excluded the youth-orientated popular music from the in-between years from

definitions of rock ’n’ roll drawing on a gendered mass-culture critique.

In summary, the rock press received reiterated straight-quaver mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll like

Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’ as masculine anti-mass culture but cast influential early examples of

straight-quaver polyrhythmic late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll such as Paul Anka’s

‘Diana’ as feminised mass culture. The gendered mass-culture critique levelled at late-1950s

and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll seen in the Christ-like narrative seems likely to have contributed

to the erasure of Afro-Latin influences on the trends towards straight-quaver polyrhythm in

rock ’n’ roll.

28 Gillett cites an emphatic backbeat and a blues-inflected melody as the musical characteristics of rock ’n’ roll. Gillett, Sound of the City, 167. 29 The ‘Silent Generation’ is the name given to the generation that preceded the Baby Boomers. This generation were born between the Great Depression and end of WWII (1928 to 1945). The group is supposedly defined by post-war conformity, amid fears of war and communism. The term ‘silent’ indicates a lack of protest compared to the Baby Boomers. Allan F. Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 134. 30 Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, ‘Rock and Sexuality’ in Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin (eds.), On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word (Routledge, 1990 [article originally published in 1978]), 326. 31 Albin J. Zak III, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 226. Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 169.

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The Latin Tinge When the impact of Afro-Latin musics on the rhythm of US popular music is identified, it is

often cast as superficial, minimising its significance, rather than fundamental, as Mario Bauzá

claims. Afro-Latin influences are often described as a colourful ‘tinge’ or a spicy ‘flavour’. This

notion goes back at least as far as 1938 when the early jazz pianist ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton told

Alan Lomax that ‘you’ve got to have these little tinges of Spanish in it, in order to play real

good jazz.’32 John Storm Roberts evokes Morton’s remark in the title of his 1979 monograph

The Latin Tinge. Although Roberts argues that the impact of Afro-Latin musics on US popular

music is substantial, the presence of the word ‘tinge’ in the title undermines this argument by

implying that the many Afro-Latin influences posited within – including Afro-Latin influences

on the trends towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and bar-level rhythmic patterns – are

also surface-level. This demonstrates that even commentators who identify Afro-Latin

influences on the rhythmic trends in question imply that these are superficial.

The perception of Afro-Latin rhythmic influences on US popular music as superficial has also

influenced scholarship.33 In the entry on ‘Popular Music of the West’ in Grove Music Online

(published in 2001 but revised in 2015), Richard Middleton cites Charles Hamm’s contention

that African-American influences on Tin-Pan-Alley songs were essentially superficial.34

Middleton highlights the problems with this argument but then states that Afro-Latin

influences on US popular music are ‘perhaps more susceptible to Hamm’s critique’.35

Middleton quickly acknowledges that ‘even here superficial exoticism is only a partial

explanation for what, more carefully considered, may be a symptom of deep-rooted cultural

ambivalence’. Thus, the notion that Afro-Latin influences on the rhythm of US popular music

are superficial has also influenced academia.

In addition to Bauzá, journalists and scholars have argued that the Afro-Latin influence on the

rhythm of US popular music is more than just a tinge. For example, in a 1984 article in the

32 Jelly Roll Morton, ‘The Spanish Tinge / “New Orleans Blues” / “La Paloma”’, Jelly Roll Morton: The Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax (Rounder Records ROUNDER 11661-1897-2, 2005). 33 Since the publication of Roberts’s book, the phrase ‘Latin Tinge’ has become widely employed in academia – see, for example, three articles on Afro-Latin influence with ‘Latin Tinge’ in the title: Robert Stevenson, ‘The Latin Tinge 1800–1900’, Inter-American Music Review, 2 (1980), 73–101; Alfred E. Lemmon, ‘New Orleans Popular Sheet Music Imprints: The Latin Tinge Prior to 1900’, The Southern Quarterly, 27 (1989), 41–57; Louise Stein, ‘Before the Latin Tinge: Spanish Music and the ‘Spanish Idiom’ in the United States, 1778–1940,’ in Richard L. Kagan (ed.), Spain in America: The Origin of Hispanism in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 193–245. 34 Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 358 and 385. 35 Richard Middleton and Peter Manuel, ‘Popular Music’, Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ (accessed 21 November 2017).

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Boston Phoenix, the rock critic Dave Marsh writes that ‘Latin music isn’t just a condiment in the

rock mixture—it’s a fundamental ingredient.’36 Similarly, Sublette – who suggests that Afro-

Cuban styles influenced the trend towards the reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns –

states that commentators consider the fact that the riff of ‘Louie Louie’ was taken from a

chachachá recording as an ‘exotic detail’ whereas he sees it as ‘central to what “Louie Louie”

was’, by which he presumably means a straight-quaver bar-level riff.37 Sublette then concludes

that ‘[w]ithout Cuban music, American music would be unrecognizable. Nor was the Cuban

influence merely one of many equally significant flavors’.38 Moreover, the Latinx studies

scholars Jairo Moreno states that the Afro-Cuban music was not a ‘tinge’ but ‘an explicit part

of musico-aesthetic experimentation by black Cubans and black North Americans’.39 Similarly,

in this project, the Afro-Latin influence on the rhythmic transitions to straight-quaver

rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures is seen as a significant influence on a structural

change in the rhythm of 20th-century popular music in the United States.

Afro-Latin influences on US popular music are perhaps seen as superficial because both the

trade press and the rock histories associate Afro-Latin styles with trivial mass-culture fads. For

example, Billboard describes ‘The Peanut Vendor’ – which kickstarted the ‘rhumba’ ‘craze’ in

the 1930s – as a novelty in their first review of the song.40 Decades later, in his early 1961 rock

history, Royston Ellis writes that Bill Haley released ‘Mambo Rock’ ‘[i]n an effort to cash in

on the mambo ‘craze’ that held some fans for a short while’ – casting the mainstream

popularity of mambo as a passing commercial fad.41 Rock-a-cha-cha is also considered to be

an inconsequential ‘craze’ both in contemporaneous critical reception and in more recent

journalism and scholarship. In 1958, Ren Grevatt wrote in Billboard that ‘[w]e have seen plenty

of the rock-a-cha-cha, rock-calypso and some rock-a-hula. It is possible in this crazy business

that we will see such things as rock-a-folkas, rock-a-polkas, rock-a-sambas and maybe even

rock-a-Indian war dances’.42 Similarly, in his 2010 book, Albin Zak cites Grevatt’s article and

refers to rock-a-cha-cha, rock-calypso and rock-a-hula as ‘oddities’.43 Similarly, Irv Lichtman

states that his colleague at Cash Box Ira Howard coined the term ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ and then

36 Dave Marsh, ‘Rock and Roll’s Latin Tinge: The Proof Is in the Salsa’, Boston Phoenix [Boston] (7 January 1984). 37 Ned Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, in Eric Weisbard (ed.), A Momentary History of Pop Music (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 69–94; here, 72. 38 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 72. 39 Jairo Moreno, ‘Bauza-Gillespie-Latin/Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2004), 81–99; here, 82. 40 As cited in Ned Sublette, Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004), 396. 41 Ellis, The Big Beat Scene, 35. 42 Ren Grevatt, ‘On the Beat’, Billboard [New York] (15 December 1958), 8. 43 Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 202.

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states that ‘[i]t was really part of the fun’.44 The use of terms like ‘crazy’ and ‘oddities’ as well

as the desperate and humorous tone of Grevatt and Howard’s quotations indicate that rock-a-

cha-cha is seen as one in a series of insignificant mass-culture fads. Afro-Latin influences on

the rhythm of US popular music would therefore seem to have been seen as superficial

because Afro-Latin musics are understood as mass-culture ‘crazes’. Jazz and rock ’n’ roll were

also initially received as mass-culture ‘crazes’. However, they were subsequently legitimised as

art forms, principally by White jazz critics and rock critics.45 Popular Afro-Latin styles, on the

other hand, have only been legitimated in the United States in specialist literature: for example,

in scholarly histories of salsa46 – and are still largely understood as mass-culture ‘crazes’. The

notion that rock-a-cha-cha was a passing fad is therefore another possible explanation as to

why Afro-Latin influences on the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm in rock ’n’ roll has

been erased.

There seem to be two reasons why Afro-Latin musics are associated with mass-culture

‘crazes’. First, Afro-Latin musics were popularised by light-skinned Latinx Americans who

often employed gimmicks:47 for example, the rhumba performer Xavier Cugat employed

dancers in banana costumes while samba performer Carmen Miranda wore a fruit-laden

headdress which, although based on Afro-Brazilian headdresses, was considered a novelty in

the United States.48 John Storm Roberts states that bandleaders like Cugat contributed to the

typecasting of all Afro-Latin musics as fun but trivial.49 However, although Afro-Latin styles

were popularised by light-skinned Latinx Americans in the United States, that does not mean

that Afro-Latin musics were associated with Whiteness. Second, Afro-Latin musics that

attained mainstream popularity in the United States were received by White critics as ‘crazes’:

a term which suggests that the critics thought that you would have to be insane, irrational, or a

maniac to think that Black rhythm (read Black culture) had value.50 Thus, the notion that

Afro-Latin influences on European-American and African-American popular music are

44 John Broven, Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 205. 45 Tony Palmer (author) and Paul Medlicott (editor), All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976), 39. Matt Brennan, When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle Between Jazz and Rock (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017). 46 Flores, Salsa Rising. 47 John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 84. 48 Christina D. Abreu, Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 23. Walter A. Clark, ‘Doing the Samba on Sunset Boulevard: Carmen Miranda and the Hollywoodization of Latin American Music’ in Walter Aaron Clark (ed.), From Tejano to Tango: Latin American Popular Music (New York: Routledge, 2002), 252–276; here, 256 and 262. 49 Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 84. Also Sublette, Cuba and Its Music, 398. 50 Radano, ‘Hot Fantasies’. Shane Vogel, Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018).

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superficial perhaps has its roots in this racially charged value judgment. Instances have not

been found in which a commentator describes popular Afro-Latin styles as ‘crazes’ and the

influence of these styles on US popular music as superficial. However, the explanation that the

impact of Afro-Latin musics on the rhythm of US popular music has been seen to be

superficial because these styles are associated with mass culture is plausible.

Thus, Afro-Latin influences on the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm in rock ’n’ roll

seem to have been erased because Afro-Latin influences are understood as superficial ‘tinges’,

Afro-Latin musics are understood as mass-culture ‘crazes’, and ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ is considered

an inconsequential fad.

Conclusion

In conclusion, three main factors seem to have contributed to the erasure of Afro-Latin

influences on rock ’n’ roll and the rhythmic trends towards the RSQB paradigm and straight-

quaver polyrhythm and thereby the broader transitions to straight-quaver rhythmic patterns

and polyrhythmic textures. First, as argued by Garofalo and Sublette and others, the

Black/White binary paradigm of race erases Afro-Latin influences on US popular music. As

Garofalo suggests, this is seen in the rock histories in the origin myth of rock ’n’ roll as the

progeny of R&B and C&W. However, in terms of race, the influences on rock ’n’ roll rhythm

are not simply Black and White. Afro-Latin musics influenced a structural change in the

rhythm of 20th-century popular music in the United States. The Black/White racial dichotomy

marginalises the influence of Afro-Cuban mambo and chachachá on rock ’n’ roll as seen in

styles like rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha and thereby the Afro-Latin influences on the four

rhythmic trends. Second, the Christ-like narrative of rock ’n’ roll history that is seen in the

early rock histories also contributes to the erasure of Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic

trends in question. This narrative marginalises the late-1950s and early-1960s period as an era

in which rock ’n’ roll purportedly died, or was ‘murdered’. However, the four rhythmic trends

and the Afro-Latin influence on rock ’n’ roll culminated in this period in the straight-quaver

polyrhythmic style of rock ’n’ roll that was regularly received by Cash Box at the time as ‘rock-

a-cha-cha’. The marginalisation of late-1950s and early-1960s rock ’n’ roll has therefore

marginalised the Afro-Latin influence on the rhythmic trends in question. Consequently, in

terms of rhythm, rock ’n’ roll was not emasculated and killed during the late-1950s and early-

1960s. It was Afro-Latinised. Third and finally, an association of Afro-Latin musics with fads

in the US seems to have contributed to the received wisdom that the rhythmic impact of

Afro-Latin musics on US popular music is superficial. Conversely, this chapter concludes that

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the Afro-Latin influences on the rhythm of 20th-century popular music in the United States

were structural. That is to say, the impact of Afro-Latin musics on the United States is much

more than just a tinge. Evidence suggests that all three explanations played a part in the

erasure of the impact of Afro-Latin musics on a rhythmic transformation of US popular

music. Of these three factors, the second and third are not identified elsewhere in scholarship.

Thus, White, male, non-Latinx rock historians have erased the impact of Afro-Latin musics on

a structural change in the rhythm of 20th-century popular music in the United States because

of the Black/White binary paradigm of race as well as racialised and gendered notions of mass

culture. The significance of this conclusion is clear. The ethnic, racial, and gender dynamics

that are involved are highly problematic particularly since the contributions of Latinx

Americans to US culture are often erased from history which is increasingly problematic given

that Latinxs now represent 18% of the US population.51 The following chapter asks what

meanings the Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic transformation might have for Latinx

Americans.

51 Luis Noe-Bustamante, Mark Hugo Lopez, and Jens Manuel Krogstad, ‘U.S. Hispanic Population Surpassed 60 Million in 2019, But Growth Has Slowed, Pew Research Centre https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/07/u-s-hispanic-population-surpassed-60-million-in-2019-but-growth-has-slowed/ (accessed 4 March 2021).

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Chapter 6 Interpreting the Rhythmic Trends

This chapter interrogates the socio-political interpretations of (and influences on) the

rhythmic transformation from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver

polyrhythm in post-war popular music in the United States. The first section critiques the two

most common readings of the rhythmic transformation: that it represents countercultural

revolution or the Civil Rights Movement. The aim is to interrogate the evidence base of

existing interpretations rather than to try to identity how listeners might interpret given

rhythmic traits. The second section questions the meanings of the impact of Afro-Latin

musics on the rhythmic change in relation to Latinx Americans, drawing on cultural theory,

through the case studies of rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha. Neither of these areas has been

addressed in existing scholarship. In response to the dominant historiographical narrative of

rock ’n’ roll inherited from the rock press (that is, the R&B-plus-C&W origin myth and the

Christ-like periodisation), an alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll is presented drawing on

the contemporaneous trade press as well as the work of Ronald Radano and Shane Vogel. It is

concluded that the Afro-Latin influence on this fundamental change in the rhythm of post-

war popular music represents a product of both successive mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Black

rhythm and the mass migration of Latin Americans to the United States during the era of

segregation.

Evaluating Socio-Political Interpretations of the Rhythmic Transitions

As noted, musicians such as Don Ellis and Dizzy Gillespie and researchers such as Alexander

Stewart and Rickey Vincent suggest that the trends towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns

and polyrhythmic textures represent (White) youth revolt and African-American liberation,

primarily in reference to White-associated rock and Black-associated styles from Cubop to

funk respectively.1 However, excepting Jairo Moreno’s analysis of the Afro-modernist

ideology behind Gillespie’s adoption of polyrhythm, these socio-political readings have not

been critiqued by scholars.

1 Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop: Memoirs (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), 290. Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996), 62. Stewart, Alexander, ‘“Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music’, Popular Music, 19 (2000), 293–318; here, 312–313. Richard J. Ripani, The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 2006), 156 and 169. Martin Munro, Different Drummers: Rhythm and Race in the Americas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 208.

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There are two problems with these interpretations. First, they are based on three debatable

assumptions of modernist rock ’n’ roll ideology (that is, the notion that rock ’n’ roll represents

anti-mass culture) with regards to notions of what constitutes mass culture within popular

music and how this relates to gender, age, and race. Second, these interpretations exemplify

the Black/White binary paradigm of race which marginalises the question of what meanings

the Afro-Latin influences on these trends might have with regards to Latinx Americans. These

problems are discussed in turn below.

The first of the three questionable assumptions on which the two interpretations of the

rhythmic transformation are premised is the perception that the rhythmic change represents a

move from old-fashioned mass culture to innovative anti-mass culture, which is then equated

to a transition from conservative establishment politics to progressive anti-establishment

politics.2 This is often expressed in terms of gender (feminine to masculine), age (old to

young), race (White to Black). The rhythmic transitions are then, in a rather facile manner,

seen to represent the progressive anti-establishment movements of the era that correspond to

the demographic that is associated with the musical style to which the transitions are primarily

related.3 Thus, the shift to straight-quaver subdivisions is interpreted as symbolising

countercultural revolution because the move is most associated with rock, which is linked to

White, youthful rebellion. Similarly, the move to polyrhythm is read as signifying the Civil

Rights Movement because the transition is most associated with funk which is connected to

African pride.

For example, in his 1996 history of funk, the journalist Rickey Vincent states that the shuffle

was ‘obsolete’ by the 1960s but describes the straight-quaver polyrhythm of funk as new and

globally influential.4 He also associates the shuffle with Black oppression (slavery, minstrelsy,

and segregation) and straight-quaver polyrhythm with Black liberation (the Civil Rights

Movement, African pride, and desegregation).5 Vincent then claims that ‘[i]t was the social

revolution in America that inspired the rhythm revolution [original emphasis]’.6 Hence Vincent

interprets the shift from swung-quaver monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm as a move 2 Keir Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, in Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 136. Indeed, both of these interpretations can be abstracted as marginal groups fighting for power and freedom from an oppressive majority (European Americans of the Silent Generation) which is how the modernist artist is often framed. 3 The association of femininity with conservatism and masculinity with progress is based on the notion of masculinity as powerful. The suggestion here is not that the rhythmic transition was seen to represent the contemporaneous Women’s Movement, which would have required the opposite perception of the rhythmic transition: that is, as a move from the male to the female. 4 Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996), 60–61. 5 Ibid., 61–62. 6 Ibid., 62.

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from old-fashioned mass culture to innovative anti-mass culture and a transition from White

power to Black power which he codifies as a ‘revolution’. Indeed, he suggests that the Civil

Rights Movement inspired the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm.

Although academics do not explicitly state that the rhythmic trends reflected these socio-

political movements, this is often implied: particularly in scholarship on funk that cites

Vincent’s book. For example, as noted in Chapter 1, Stewart suggests that the trends towards

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures represent countercultural

revolution, in reference to White-associated rock, and the Civil Rights Movement, in relation

to Black-associated funk, while Martin Munro states that the shift from swung- to straight-

quaver subdivisions represents ‘a new confidence of African Americans’.7 Moreover, Stewart

does so evoking the association of mass culture with both femininity and the Silent

Generation in rock ’n’ roll ideology. Specifically, he describes the shift from swung- to

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns as a transition from ‘soft’ and ‘easy’ subdivisions to

‘assertive’ and ‘driving’ subdivisions and therefore as a shift from feminine to masculine

rhythm. Stewart then links the straight-quaver rhythms of soul with ‘the sense of urgency felt

by many African Americans during an era of aspirations toward upward mobility’ and to

‘[r]ising black consciousness’ in the 1950s and 1960s. Stewart also states that by the 1960s

straight-quaver subdivisions had become ‘emblematic of modern youth, while jazz, swing and

shuffles were largely relegated to the previous generation.’ Indeed, the swung-to-straight shift

is typically interpreted as a move from jazz rhythm to rock rhythm and therefore as a

transition from the old to the young, as well as from the old to the new.8 Thus, the notion that

the shifts to straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures reflected the

progressive politics of the 1960s is based on the assumption of rock ’n’ roll ideology that these

trends can be understood as a move from mass culture to anti-mass culture which is often

understood as a transition from feminine to masculine, old to young, and White to Black.

7 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 312–313. Martin Munro, Different Drummers: Rhythm and Race in the Americas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 208. Tony Palmer writes that the sound of train wheels influenced boogie-woogie eight-to-the-bar patterns and that the train represents a ‘symbol of escape’ via migration for African American. Thus, the swung-to-straight shift might be understood to represent African-American liberation via the boogie-woogie influence on it. Tony Palmer (author) and Paul Medlicott (editor), All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976), 13. 8 Ellis, ‘Rock: The Rhythmic Revolution’, 32–33. Ray Barretto as quoted in John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 160. Tony Scherman, Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 85. Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 296. Ned Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, in Eric Weisbard (ed.), A Momentary History of Pop Music (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 69–94; here, 86. D. J. Fontana as quoted in Steve Smith and Daniel Glass (eds.), The Roots of Rock Drumming: Interviews with the Drummers Who Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll Music (New York: Hudson Music, 2013), 57.

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This assumption is not a consensus. There is evidence of a generation gap in the interpretation

of the trend towards straight-quaver subdivisions in contemporaneous jazz criticism: namely,

between the young jazz-fusion bandleader Don Ellis (born 1934) and the older conservative

jazz critic Leonard Feather (born 1914). As noted, in a 1969 article, Ellis implies that the shift

from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions represents countercultural revolution. Here Ellis

casts himself as a revolutionary since he adopted straight-quaver subdivisions (and

polyrhythmic textures) in his recordings of this period.9 Conversely, in a 1971 article, Feather

describes jazz-fusion musicians who were influenced by rock, which he derides as mass

culture, and who partook in the trend towards straight-quaver subdivisions as ‘selling out’ and

as ‘whores’. The perceived interchangeability of men selling out and women selling sex further

indicates the association of mass culture with femininity.10 The fact that one man’s

‘revolution[ary]’ is another man’s ‘whore’ highlights the extent to which interpretations of the

rhythmic transitions are based on ideology more so than the purportedly inherent qualities of

different types of rhythmic subdivisions.

The second assumption is based on the first. It holds that straight-quaver subdivisions are

inherently more suggestive of forward momentum than shuffles and is often seen in popular-

music discourse. This provides another debatable basis for the view that the trend towards

straight-quaver subdivisions represents progressive politics. For example, as noted, Stewart

describes straight-quaver subdivisions as ‘driving’ and ‘more assertive’ and links their use in

rock and soul to countercultural revolution and the Civil Rights Movement respectively.11

Conversely, he describes swung-quaver subdivisions as ‘more relaxed’ and ‘less assertive’ and

associates them with the Silent Generation and Black oppression.12 The analytical basis for this

assumption is presumably the fact that in a pair of straight-quaver subdivisions the beat-

upbeat ratio is lower – that is, the distance between the downbeat and the quaver upbeat is

shorter – than in a pair of swung-quaver subdivisions. However, again, the inverse is argued in

jazz discourse in which swung-quaver subdivisions are seen to provide more rhythmic impetus

than straight subdivisions. Indeed, one of the definitions of swing is a feeling of rhythmic

9 For example, Ellis’s The New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground (1969) features the Isley Brothers’s hit ‘It’s Your Thing’ while Live at the Filmore (1970) features the Beatles’s straight-quaver ballad ‘Hey Jude’. 10 Leonard Feather, ‘A Year of Selling Out’, in Dan Morgenstein (ed.), Down Beat Music ’71 (Chicago: Maher Publications, 1971), 10. 11 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 293, 296, 312–313. Similarly, straight-quaver subdivisions in rock are described as ‘driving’ in: Allan F. Moore, Rock, the Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of Rock (London: Ashgate, 1993), 88, 100, 101, 104, 195. John Platoff, ‘John Lennon, “Revolution,” and the Politics of Musical Reception’, The Journal of Musicology, 22 (2005), 241–267; here, 263. Charles Hamm, Robert Walser, Jacqueline Warwick and Charles Hiroshi Garrett, ‘Popular Music’ [2013], The Grove Dictionary of American Music https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 3 December 2020). 12 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 293, 296, 312–313.

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momentum.13 More specifically, Matthew W. Butterfield notes that in a string of swung-

quaver subdivisions the upbeat-beat ratio is lower – that is, the distance between the quaver

upbeat and the ensuing downbeat is shorter – than in straight-quaver subdivisions. Butterfield

then argues that, abstracted from any other context, the lower upbeat-beat ratio in swung-

quaver subdivisions creates a feeling of anacrusis and therefore greater propulsion than

straight-quaver subdivisions do.14

Thus, swung-quaver subdivisions arguably offer two contradictory affordances: decreased

rhythmic drive relative to straight-quaver subdivisions (based on the short beat-upbeat ratio),

which is most common in popular-music discourse; and increased rhythmic drive relative to

straight-quaver subdivisions (based on the short upbeat-beat ratio), which is most common in

jazz discourse. This either indicates that the interpretation of rhythmic ‘drive’ in relation to

rhythmic subdivisions depends on the genre (for example, rock or jazz) or on the ideology of

the commentator (for instance, rock ’n’ roll ideology or jazz ideology), or that it is affected by

both. Additionally, it is possible that the notion of rhythmic vitality is based on newness

relative to the rhythmic norms of the day: swung-quaver subdivisions were exciting in the

1920s when straight-quaver subdivisions were the norm and straight-quaver subdivisions were

exciting in the 1950s when swung-quaver subdivisions were the norm. In any case, the

opposing views in rock ’n’ roll and jazz discourse on whether straight-quaver subdivisions

were more or less suggestive of forward momentum further weakens the foundations of

interpretations of the swung-to-straight shift as representing progressive politics.

The third assumption is the incorrect belief that the rhythmic transitions culminated in mid-

to-late-1960s rock and funk, which are associated with countercultural revolution and the Civil

Rights Movement respectively. At first glance this notion might seem uncontroversial since

these styles did typically feature straight-quaver subdivisions and often feature polyrhythm,

particularly funk. However, as demonstrated in Chapter 3, the trends actually culminated in

the late-1950s and early-1960s period in which straight-quaver polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll was

often received as rock-a-cha-cha. As noted in the previous chapter, rather than youth revolt or 13 For example, Howard Spring’s 2013 entry on ‘Swing’ in Grove Music Online defines swing as ‘[a] way of playing music that results in a feeling of forward motion or momentum’ and states that ‘[w]hen music swings, it is usually the result of a combination of characteristics related to musical pulse, how that pulse is divided, phrasing, and articulation’. Indeed. jazz scholars often describe swing as ‘driving’. Howard Spring, ‘Swing’ [2013], Grove Music Online https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 3 December 2020). André Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence [translated by D. Noakes] (New York: Grove Press, 1956), 52. Matthew W. Butterfield, “Race and Rhythm: The Social Component of the Swing Groove”, Jazz Perspectives, 4 (2010), 301–335. 14 It should be noted that, unlike the popular-music discourse, Butterfield’s argument is based on empirical scholarship on participatory discrepancies and does not connect the supposed drive of swung-quaver subdivisions to any socio-political context. Matthew W. Butterfield, ‘Why Do Jazz Musicians Swing Their Eighth Notes?’, Music Theory Spectrum, 33 (2011), 3–26; here, 10.

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African-American liberation, this era is typically understood as a restoration of power back to

the Silent Generation and as musically ‘Whiter’ than mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll.15 For example,

Charlie Gillett writes that during the in-between years White rock ’n’ roll singers ‘dutifully sang

the material that their producers handed to them’.16 This notion contradicts the interpretations

of the transitions as representing countercultural revolution and the Civil Rights Movement.

This finding is particularly significant since the interpretation that the trend towards straight-

quaver polyrhythm as symbolising African-American pride remains common in scholarship on

funk.17

Moreover, rock and soul songs that are associated with countercultural revolution and the

Civil Rights Movement do not consistently employ straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and

polyrhythmic textures respectively. For example, the Rolling Stones 1968 single ‘Street

Fighting Man’ features the RSQB paradigm but advocates a ‘compromise solution’ rather than

a ‘palace revolution’.18 Although soul songs that were associated with the Civil Rights

Movement featured straight-quaver polyrhythm in the late 1960s, they did not in the early

1960s. For example, while Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ and James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud, I’m

Black and I’m Proud’ feature straight-quaver polyrhythm in 1967 and 1968, Nina Simone’s

‘Mississippi Goddam’ and Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ feature crotchet and

triple-quaver monorhythm respectively in 1964. Thus, rock and soul songs that are associated

with a supportive position regarding a countercultural revolution and the Civil Rights

Movement are not consistently straight-quaver and polyrhythmic respectively.

Additionally, the interpretations that the rhythmic transformation symbolises African-

American liberation and youth revolt also exemplify the Black/White racial binary. This

dichotomy contributes to a neglect of the meanings of the Afro-Latin influences on the

rhythmic trends in relation to Latinx Americans. The significance of the often inaudible Afro-

Latin influences on the shift towards straight-quaver rhythmic patterns in White-associated

rock have been ignored by scholars. For example, Stewart states that mambo and calypso

15 James A. Cosby, Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll (Jefferson: McFarland, 2016), 197. 16 Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (London: Sphere, 1969), 167. 17 For example, Anne Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006). Martin Munro, Different Drummers. 18 Musical parameters like tempo, dynamics, and timbre can supersede the above interpretations of rhythm in perceptions of how politically progressive a song is. For example, in a contemporaneous review of the Beatles’s 1968 single ‘Revolution’, the rock critic Greil Marcus received the song’s up-tempo, loud, distorted accompaniment as revolutionary even though it features swung-quaver subdivisions and the lyrics opposes a violent countercultural revolution, writing that ‘[t]here is freedom and movement in the music, even as there is sterility and repression in the lyric’. Greil Marcus, ‘A Singer and a Rock and Roll Band’ in Marcus (ed.), Rock and Roll Will Stand, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 96–97.

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(among other styles) influenced a swung-to-straight shift in subdivisions which he links to

youth rebellion in reference to rock and Black liberation in relation to soul and funk.

However, he does not question what the impact of these Afro-Latin and African-Caribbean

musics might mean for Latinx and Caribbean Americans and nor do the scholars that cite

Stewart’s study.19 Conversely, the more apparent impact of Afro-Latin musics on the trend

towards polyrhythm in African-American styles is considered by commentators. The

folklorists Dena Epstein and Eileen Southern understood the drumming traditions of

enslaved Africans in the United States to have been all but eradicated by British colonialists.20

Afro-Latin polyrhythm, on the other hand, is understood to be an African retention.21 The

Afro-Latin influence on the trend towards polyrhythm in US popular music is therefore seen

as a conduit for the reintroduction of African polyrhythm to African-American music by

commentators such as Gillespie. This contributes to the above interpretation that the trend

towards polyrhythm represents African pride and the Civil Rights Movement. However, the

significance of this trend for Latinx Americans is still ignored.

In summary, the two most common socio-political interpretations of the rhythmic transitions

to straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures (namely, as representing

countercultural revolution and the Civil Rights Movement) are based on three debatable

assumptions, two of which have been contradicted in jazz discourse, and exemplify the

Black/White binary paradigm of race which marginalises Afro-Latin cultural contributions in

the United States. Thus, although these interpretations might seem persuasive in certain

instances (for example, James Brown’s straight-quaver polyrhythmic ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black

and I’m Proud’), they cannot be generalised and arguably say more about the ideology of the

commentators than they do about the rhythmic transformation in question. Consequently, the

meanings of the impact of Latinx-American music and migration on the rhythmic change are

interrogated below.

19 Andy Bennett and Jon Stratton, Britpop and the English Music Tradition (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 41. Albin J. Zak III, I Don't Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 233. Allan F. Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 52–53. 20 Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977) and Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971). 21 Julian Gerstin, ‘Comparisons of African and Diasporic Rhythm: The Ewe, Cuba, and Martinique’, Analytical Approaches to World Music, 5 (2017), 12.

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Meanings of the Afro-Latin Influences on the Rhythmic Transformation

As noted, rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha seem to have been the vehicle for the impact of

Afro-Latin musics on the rhythmic transition from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm

to straight-quaver polyrhythm in post-war popular music in the United States. The meanings

of Afro-Latin influences on the rhythmic transformation is therefore interrogated here

through a case study of the two American-Latin styles.

Scholarship on rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha emphasises two peoples and two places:

African-American musicians from New Orleans (particularly Professor Longhair), in reference

to rhumba blues, and Jewish-American songwriters from New York (specifically those

associated with the Brill Building), in relation to rock-a-cha-cha. Although Professor Longhair

had little national success in the 1950s and 1960s, rhumba blues has been associated with

Longhair and New Orleans since his ‘rediscovery’ in 1970 and the pianist-vocalist is often

described as having invented the style.22 While the artists and songwriters of rhumba blues

were typically African American, the performers of rock-a-cha-cha were rarely Jewish. Instead,

the songwriters of the Brill Building often wrote for Italian-American teen idols (for instance,

Frankie Avalon) and African-American vocal groups (for example, the Drifters and the

Shirelles).

Scholarship in Latinx studies and popular-music studies on rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha

has not offered in-depth theorisations of the adoption of Afro-Cuban rhythmic elements by

non-Latinx ethnic groups.23 The three socio-political interpretations of rhumba blues and

rock-a-cha-cha that have been suggested by scholars are examined below: that the styles are

product of migration (specifically, creolisation and mass migration), intercultural identification

(in reference to the African diaspora and Jewish-Latin engagement), and mass-culture ‘crazes’

for Afro-Latin rhythm. An alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll is then presented, drawing

on the contemporaneous trade-press reception of the style as well as cultural theory:

specifically, Radano’s hot rhythm and Vogel’s notion of race ‘crazes’ in the Jim-Crow era. By

interrogating the American-Latin hybrid styles, this section interprets the fundamental change

in the rhythm of post-war popular music in the United States. 22 McKnight, ‘Researching New Orleans Rhythm and Blues’, 116. Peter Narváez, ‘The Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures on African-American Blues Musicians’, Black Music Research Journal, 14 (1994), 175–196; here, 186. Cheryl L. Keyes, ‘Funkin’ with Bach: The Impact of Professor Longhair on Rock ’n’ Roll’, in Tony Bolden (ed.), The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives On Black Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 213–226. Christopher Coady ‘New Orleans Rhythm and Blues, African American Tourism, and the Selling of a Progressive South’, American Music, 37 (2019), 95–112; here, 102. Roberts states that Longhair crystallised the style rather than originating it: Roberts, The Latin Tinge, 136. 23 For example, Keyes, ‘Funkin’ with Bach’.

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First, it should be noted that rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha do not fit conventional models

for the analysis of musical mixture. For example, although the styles are musical hybrids, they

cannot be theorised as cultural hybridity. Cultural hybridity is a tool for theorising the musical

mixtures and transnational identities of migrants which, although it has been dismissed in

recent postcolonial scholarship (based on Homi Bhabha’s 1994 concept of the ‘third space’),

remains common in Latinx studies (drawing on Néstor García Canclini’s 1989 formulation).24

Rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha are not cultural hybrids because Latinx Americans were

seldom involved in the production of the styles. Only three of the 58 straight-quaver

polyrhythmic songs in the sample were written or performed by Latinx-American artists.25

Moreover, setting aside the problems with the concept of cultural ownership per se, 26 the styles

do not seem to be examples of problematic cultural appropriation – that is, the use of cultural

products of a social group by one who is not a part of that group – which is how Shane Vogel

interprets the European-American engagement in the calypso fad of 1957.27 This is because

rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha are American-Latin styles that adapt and transform Afro-

Latin rhythmic patterns rather than simply Latinx-American styles that are adopted by a

hegemonic social group. Additionally, Ruth Brown’s ‘Mambo Baby’ is the only rhumba-blues

or rock-a-cha-cha song in the sample that mentions Latinx culture and it does so without

employing offensive anti-Latinx language and the styles do not seem to have put Latinx

musicians out of work, as the thriving 1950s New York mambo and chachachá scene

demonstrates. Thus, a more nuanced interpretation of these styles is required.

Creolisation and Mass Migration

Academics argue that rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha are the product of processes of

cultural mixing that result from migration. Like Mardi Gras, the Cuban-influenced music of

24 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). Nestor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). Amar Acheraïou, Questioning Hybridity, Postcolonialism and Globalization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!: Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 10, 29, and 40. 25 Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’, a 1955 commercial chachachá recorded by the Cuban bandleader Peréz Prado; LaVern Baker’s 1956 hit ‘Jim Dandy’, which written by the Afro-Latinx Lincoln Chase, whose father was Cuban; and the Champs’s ‘Tequila’, a 1958 Latin-influenced rock ’n’ roll instrumental written and performed by the group’s Mexican-American saxophonist Danny Flores. A prominent example of rock-a-cha-cha from outside the sample that has been theorised as cultural hybridity by Deborah Pacini Hernandez is the Mexican American Ritchie Valens’s ‘La Bamba’: a straight-quaver polyrhythmic recording of the Mexican folk song. Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va!, 10, 29, and 40. 26 Erich Hatala Matthes, ‘The Ethics of Cultural Heritage’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu (accessed 4 December 2020). 27 Specifically, Vogel describes the calypso ‘craze’ as ‘cultural imperialism’. Shane Vogel, Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 3–4 and 60.

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New Orleans (including rhumba blues) is often understood by musicians and scholars as the

result of creolisation: that is, the process of cultural mixing that followed colonisation of the

Americas.28 For example, Jelly Roll Morton described the ‘Spanish tinge’ on jazz as a product

of creolisation in New Orleans. Specifically, in 1938 interview, Morton told Alan Lomax that

‘New Orleans was inhabited with maybe every race on the face of the globe and of course we

had Spanish people, we had plenty of them, and plenty of French people’ in his explanation of

the ‘Spanish tinge’.29 Subsequent musicians from New Orleans also associate rhumba blues

with creolisation. For instance, in the 1970s both Dr. John and Professor Longhair released

albums that featured rhumba blues with titles invoking gumbo (a creole Louisiana stew and a

common metaphor for creolisation): Dr. John’s Gumbo (1972) and Longhair’s Rock ’n’ Roll

Gumbo (1974) respectively.30 Similarly, scholars interpret New-Orleans rhumba blues as creole

in articles published in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, in reference to Longhair, Mark

McKnight states that the Caribbean influence was always present in New Orleans while Peter

Narváez refers to New-Orleans rhumba blues as a result of the cosmopolitanism of New

Orleans and refers to this as ‘syncretized’.31

Conversely, Stewart warns against the interpretation of rhumba blues as creole. He states that

‘[b]y the 1950s, the Haitian migrations and colonial eras were in the distant past. We should

not exaggerate the importance of the “Caribbean connection” as a survival of “authentic”

(that is, Afro-Haitian) musical traditions.’32 He notes that the vehicle for the Afro-Latin

influence on New-Orleans rhumba-blues recordings often appears to have been mass-

distributed recordings rather than creolisation, citing the fact that the Hawketts’s ‘Mardi Gras

Mambo’ features Dámaso Pérez Prado’s trademark grunt (‘uh!’) as evidence. Indeed, similarly,

‘Sugar Boy’ Crawford’s rhumba blues ‘Jock-a-Mo’ features a straight-quaver bar-level

saxophone pattern that was popularised by Pérez Prado’s 1950 hit ‘Mambo No. 5’ while

Professor Longhair was reportedly a fan of Pérez Prado’s.33 Thus, although there is no

evidence that African-Caribbean carnival directly influenced the origins of Mardi Gras in New

28 Samuel Kinser, Carnival, American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 174. 29 It is unclear whether Morton is referring to Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean Americans here, such as Cubans and Haitians, or Spanish and French colonial rule of Louisiana or both. Jelly Roll Morton, ‘The Spanish Tinge / “New Orleans Blues” / “La Paloma”’, Jelly Roll Morton: The Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax (Rounder Records ROUNDER 11661-1897-2, 2005). 30 Sara Le Menestrel, Negotiating Difference in French Louisiana Music (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016), 25. 31 McKnight, ‘Researching New Orleans Rhythm and Blues’, 116. 32 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 308. 33 Ibid., 306. Longhair also stated that he learnt to play Afro-Latin styles from performing with Puerto Ricans and West Indians in 1937 with the Civilian Conservation Corps (one of the public works projects in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal).

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Orleans, there is evidence that African-Caribbean music directly influenced rhumba blues.34

Consequently, while Mardi Gras has traditionally been understood as creole, rhumba blues

should not be. Similarly, while transnationalism is typically employed to theorise Latinx-

American mambo, which influenced rhumba blues, transnationalism cannot account for the

influence of mass-culture ‘crazes’ on rhumba blues.

While there was no significant Latinx-American migration to New Orleans in the 20th

century,35 there was a mass migration of Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean peoples to New

York: a first wave after 1917, when Puerto Ricans were granted US citizenship, and a second

larger wave after the Second World War. Consequently, scholars state that the Latinx

population of New York influenced both the popularity of Afro-Cuban styles in the United

States and the rhumba-blues and rock-a-cha-cha recordings made in the city. The Latinx

studies scholar Juan Flores argues that Afro-Cuban styles such as rhumba, mambo and

chachachá were more popular in the United States than Afro-Argentine tango and Afro-

Brazilian styles because the predominantly Puerto-Rican-American population of New York

identified with Afro-Cuban music and patronised these styles.36 Tango and samba were

popular in the US despite the negligible Argentine and Brazilian population in the US at the

time and these styles influenced the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm.37 However, as

argued in Chapter 4, the Afro-Latin rhythmic influence on rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha,

as the as the style descriptors suggest, was predominantly Afro-Cuban. Relatedly, Richard

Ripani states that the large Latinx-American population of New York contributed to the

Latin-influenced R&B recorded for Atlantic records in the 1950s and early 1960s, citing

straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits such as Ruth Brown’s 1954 rhumba blues ‘Mambo Baby’

and the Drifters’s 1959 baião-influenced ‘There Goes My Baby’.38 Thus, rhumba blues and

rock-a-cha-cha might be interpreted as the product of mass migration, if not as a product of

creolisation.

34 Alison Fields ‘Re-reading the Mardi Gras Indians: Performance and Identity’, The Southern Quarterly, 53 (2016), 183–194. 35 Ibid., 188. 36 Juan Flores, Salsa Rising: New York Latin Music of the Sixties Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 6. 37 Miriam Jime nez Roma n and Juan Flores (eds.), The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 3. 38 Richard J. Ripani, The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 2006), 63. Similarly, Katorza interprets Leiber and Stoller’s rock-a-cha-cha as representing a multicultural vision of the United States. Ari Katorza, ‘Walls of Sound: Lieber [sic] and Stoller, Phil Spector, the Black-Jewish Alliance, and the “Enlarging” of America’ in Ran and Morad, Mazal Tov, Amigos!, 78–95.

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Intercultural Identification

Scholars state that African Americans from New Orleans and Jewish Americans from New

York identified something of themselves in the Afro-Latin rhythmic elements of rhumba

blues and rock-a-cha-cha respectively.

Narváez states that New-Orleans musicians tend to utilise the ‘Spanish tinge’ in songs

referring to the city.39 He cites five examples: Jelly Roll Morton’s ‘New Orleans Blues’ (written

in circa 1902), Professor Longhair’s ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’ (1949) and ‘Big Chief’

(1964), Dave Bartholomew’s ‘Carnival Day’ (1950), and the Hawketts’s ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’

(1954).40 The last four of these songs are straight-quaver polyrhythmic rhumba-blues

recordings that mention African-American Mardi-Gras culture: specifically, ‘Mardi Gras in

New Orleans’, ‘Carnival Day’, and ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ mention the ‘Zulu King’ (referring to

the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, a predominantly African-American Mardi-Gras ‘krewe’)

while ‘Big Chief’ and ‘Carnival Day’ evoke the Mardi Gras Indians (groups of working-class

African Americans who parade in colourful Native American-inspired costumes at Mardi

Gras).41 Two of these songs – ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’ and ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ – have

since become anthems of New-Orleans Mardi Gras.42 Thus, rhumba blues became associated

with African-American Mardi-Gras culture in New Orleans between 1949 and 1954 and

seems to have remained so to this day.

Similarly, Stewart states that musicians from New Orleans identified with rhumba blues.

Specifically, he suggests that, under the influence of both the demands of local audiences and

of economics, musicians from New Orleans adopted Afro-Cuban rhythms from mass-

distributed recordings by artists such as Pérez Prado in order to ‘accentuate their “Caribbean”

identity’.43 The logic behind this assertion is that New Orleans is a port situated on the Gulf of

Mexico and faces Havana, Cuba, with which it had close links from the Spanish colonial

period (1763 to 1803) until the end of Cuban Revolution in 1959. Stewart provides no

39 McKnight, ‘Researching New Orleans Rhythm and Blues’, 116. Narváez, ‘The Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures on African-American Blues Musicians’. In an earlier publication the journalist Arnold Shaw states that the metropolitanism of New Orleans led to the Afro-Latin influence on R&B. Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 496. 40 Narváez, ‘The Influences of Hispanic Music Cultures on African-American Blues Musicians’, 192. Again, Shaw concurs writing that ‘had [Professor Longhair] grown up in Memphis, […] he would not have developed the Latin-inflected blues style that was his unique trademark’. Shaw, Honkers and Shouters, 496 41 Although carnival is also celebrated in areas in Alabama and Mississippi and throughout Louisiana, Mardi Gras has been described as a ‘synecdoche’ for New Orleans. Leslie A. Wade, Robin Roberts, and Frank de Caro, Mardi Gras: New Carnival Practices in Post-Katrina New Orleans (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019), 7. 42 For example: Anonymous, ‘Top Six Mardi Gras Songs of All Time’, Mardi Gras New Orleans https://www.mardigrasneworleans.com/news/top-six-mardi-gras-songs-of-all (accessed 19 March 2021). 43 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 308.

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evidence for this claim. However, given the fact that the four rhumba-blues recordings above

associate Cuban-influenced straight-quaver polyrhythm with Mardi Gras, his suggestion seems

plausible. Since New Orleans shares a carnival tradition with much of Latin America and the

Caribbean, including Cuba, the Afro-Cuban rhythm of rhumba blues seems to have come to

represent Mardi Gras in New Orleans and perhaps the ‘Caribbean identity’ of musicians from

the city.

As Stewart suggests, rhumba blues could be interpreted in terms of the African diaspora.

Indeed, although there is no evidence that Caribbean carnival directly influenced New-Orleans

carnival, Alison Fields theorises the Mardi Gras Indians – who are evoked in three of the

above rhumba-blues recordings (‘Jock-a-Mo’, ‘Big Chief’, and ‘Carnival Day’) – in terms of the

African diaspora. Specifically, she cites Nikal Pal Singh’s argument that the Black peoples

across the diaspora share communal experiences that traverse national boundaries through

linguistic and aesthetic representation.44 Drawing on Singh’s formulation of Black nationalism,

Fields concludes that the Black diasporic racial identity expressed by the Mardi Gras Indians

challenges the nation state.45 Fields’s interpretation is premised on the fact that similar but

independent traditions in which non-indigenous peoples dress in indigenous-influenced attire

exist elsewhere in the Black Caribbean: for example, in African-Jamaican Junkanoo, a

Christmas-time masquerade tradition in Jamaica. Like Mardi-Gras-Indian culture, rhumba

blues involves African Americans adopting the culture of another subaltern group.46 Thus, the

adoption of Afro-Cuban rhythmic elements in rhumba blues could be interpreted as an

expression of pan-Africanism and as challenging the nation state. Indeed, George Lipsitz

states that the music of the Mardi Gras Indians influenced Professor Longhair’s use of

polyrhythm and interprets the call and response between Longhair and his 1970s conga player

Alfred Roberts as ‘reproduc[ing] African musical forms in New Orleans’.47

Similarly, in his analysis of the oft-cited Latin-jazz collaboration between the African-

American bandleader Dizzy Gillespie and the Afro-Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, Jairo

Moreno argues that, despite the association of rhythm with Blackness, rhythm represented the

difference rather than the common denominator between African-American and Afro-Cuban

44 Nikal Pal Singh, Black is a Country (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). 45 Fields ‘Re-reading the Mardi Gras Indians’. 46 Ibid., 191. 47 George Lipsitz, ‘Mardi Gras Indians: Carnival and Counter-Narrative in Black New Orleans’, Cultural Critique, 10 (1988), 99–121; here, 119.

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music.48 Moreno’s evidence for this argument is the fact that African Americans struggled to

learn Afro-Cuban bar-level rhythmic patterns in the late 1940s and 1950s. As noted, Gillespie

states that in the 1800s African-American music lost its sense of polyrhythm after the

European authorities banned drums.49 Gillespie implies that he adopted Afro-Latin and

African-Caribbean polyrhythm in order to re-Africanise African-American music.50 Drawing

on Gillespie’s comments, Moreno argues that when African Americans were confronted with

Afro-Cuban polyrhythm in the 1940s they faced a sense of cultural loss which they dealt with

by associating Cuban rhythm with an atemporal dehistoricised Africa rather than the racial

complexities of Afro-Cuba.51 Jairo Moreno theorises this through the Black Caribbean

(drawing on Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic) and highlights the asymmetrical power dynamics in

the diasporic encounter. This indicates that relations between African Americans and Afro-

Cuban rhythm were more complicated than can be expressed through the lens of pan-

Africanism. Nevertheless, several scholars state that the rhumba in rhumba blues can be

understood as an engagement with the Black diaspora for African Americans from New

Orleans. New-Orleans rhumba blues could therefore be theorised in terms of the African

diaspora and linked to the interpretation of the trend towards polyrhythm as representing

Black pride discussed above.

Rock-a-cha-cha has also been interpreted as an example of intercultural identification.

Scholars have argued that Jewish Americans performed Jewishness through Afro-Latin music

and this theory has been applied to rock-a-cha-cha. Josh Kun claims that in the 1950s Jewish

Americans in New York found a new way to perform Jewishness by identifying with Afro-

Latin music.52 Kun acknowledges that Jewish-Latin relations in New York had been fraught

prior to the 1950s.53 Nevertheless he argues that by performing Afro-Latin musics Jewish

Americans evaded the anti-Semitism that might have accompanied the performance of

traditional Jewish music such as Klezmer without sacrificing the increased access to White

society that was afforded to them post-war (for example, residence in the suburbs) while still

48 Jairo Moreno, ‘Bauza –Gillespie–Latin/Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2004), 81–99; here, 93. 49 Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, To Be, or Not . . . To Bop: Memoirs (Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), 318. 50 Ibid., 318 and 490. 51 Moreno, ‘Bauza –Gillespie–Latin/Jazz’. 52 Josh Kun, ‘Bagels, Bongos, and Yiddishe Mambos, or The Other History of Jews in America’, Shofar, 23 (2005), 50–68; here, 51. Similarly, Amalia Ran argues that Argentine Jews identified with the Otherness expressed in tango. Amalia Ran, ‘Tristes Alegrías: The Jewish Presence in Argentina’s Popular Music Arena’ in Amalia Ran and Moshe Morad (eds.), Mazal Tov, Amigos! Jews and Popular Music in the Americas (Boston: Brill, 2016), 44–59; here, 47 and 58. 53 Kun, “Bagels, Bongos, and Yiddishe Mambos’, 61 citing Ruth Glasser, My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

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rejecting assimilation to hegemonic Whiteness.54 Kun’s evidence for this interpretation is the

Jewish characters in novels by Oscar Hijuelos and Philip Roth. Kun concludes that ‘[b]y

“going Latin,” they “go Jewish” while not “going white’’’.55 Citing Kun, Jon Stratton suggests

that the Latin-ness of rock-a-cha-cha stood in for Jewishness. He states that this is epitomised

in Ben E. King’s ‘Spanish Harlem’56 and argues that the ‘red rose’ in the lyrics represents a

Puerto Rican girl and thereby Jewish appreciation of Afro-Latin music.57

Although Stratton does not present any evidence for this argument beyond ‘Spanish Harlem’,

there is some evidence to suggest that one of the Jewish-American songwriters of the Brill

Building identified with Afro-Latin music. Namely, Mort Shuman, who wrote the music for

the Drifters’s ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ hit ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’, described himself as a

‘mambonik’ who ‘wrote rock ’n’ roll but lived, ate, drank and breathed Latino’.58 Shuman

reportedly attended the New York Palladium, a ballroom which was a few blocks away from

1650 Broadway where Shuman and co. worked on a daily basis. Relatedly, Leiber and Stoller

said that they identified with Blackness.59 Thus, academics argue that the ‘rhumba’ in rhumba

blues signified the Mardi Gras and the African diaspora to African Americans in New Orleans

and that the ‘cha-cha’ in rock-a-cha-cha represented a new way to perform Jewishness for

Jewish Americans in New York.60

‘Cashing in on the Craze of the Day’ The above interpretations overlook the influence of economics and mass-culture ‘crazes’ for

Afro-Latin music and dance in the United States between the 1910s and the early 1960s on

rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha. The term ‘craze’ is defined in this project as a form of

54 Anthony Macías makes a similar argument about Mexican Americans and R&B in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Anthony Macías, Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935–1968 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). 55 Kun, “Bagels, Bongos, and Yiddishe Mambos’, 51. 56 Jon Stratton, Jews, Race and Popular Music (London: Routledge, 2009), 121. 57 Conversely, another Jewish studies scholar Ari Katorza sees rock-a-cha-cha as hybrid of mass culture (African American and Afro-Latin rhythm and timbre) and high art (European harmony) in a problematic racial distinction that risks casting Leiber, Stoller, and Spector as ‘civilising’ rock ’n’ roll through the introduction of White-associated musical elements. Katorza, ‘Walls of Sound’, 78–95. 58 ‘Mambonik’, which signifies a Jewish devotee of Afro-Cuban music, is a linguistic hybrid of Afro-Cuban ‘mambo’ and the suffix ‘-nik’, which is common in Slavic languages including Yiddish. Mort Shuman as quoted in Ken Emerson, Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 123. 59 Leiber stated that ‘I identified with the blacks. I felt very sympathetic to them, and they were sympathetic to me.’ Jerry Leiber as quoted in Richard Williams, ‘Jerry Leiber Obituary’, The Guardian (23 August 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/aug/23/jerry-leiber-obituary (accessed 1 March 2021). For a brief discussion of Jews identifying as Black se Kun, ‘Bagels, Bongos, and Yiddishe Mambos’, 63 60 Stewart, ‘“Funky Drummer”, 308. Kun, ‘Bagels, Bongos, and Yiddishe Mambos, or The Other History of Jews in America’. Stratton, Jews, Race and Popular Music, 121.

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culture that achieves mainstream popularity but is considered to be of little value by the

dominant social group. For example, the popularity of Black music among young White

people in the early part of the 20th century is seen to be ‘crazy’ by the older White men who

dominated the press because they understand Black music as being lowbrow.

Brian Ward states that, at a national level, the motivation behind the recording of rhumba

blues was primarily commercial for both independent record labels and artists.61 Similarly,

New-Orleans rhumba blues was evidently motivated by economic interests for several

reasons. First, the fact that three of the above four songs mention ‘Rampart Street’ in the

lyrics seems more than coincidental. The street was significant: Longhair recorded in Cosimo

Matassa’s J&M Recording Studio which was located there. However, the repeated references

to the street perhaps indicates that each of these songs was emulating the previous iterations,

likely in an attempt to achieve a (regional) hit with a Mardi Gras-themed song. Indeed, Larry

Birnbaum states that Longhair based ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’ on Joe Lutcher’s ‘Mardi

Gras’.62 Second, two of the artists that recorded Mardi Gras-themed rhumba-blues recordings

in the early 1950s stated that this was influenced by commercial concerns. In reference to his

combination of two Mardi-Gras-Indian chants in his 1953 rhumba blues ‘Jock-a-Mo’, ‘Sugar

Boy’ Crawford said ‘I was just trying to write a catchy song’.63 Similarly, Art Neville, the

vocalist and pianist on the Hawketts’s ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’, said ‘[w]e gave it a little mambo

snap to cash in on the craze of the day’.64 Thus, New-Orleans musicians who linked rhumba

blues to Mardi Gras state that they were primarily motivated by economic factors.

Consequently, although rhumba blues has been associated with African-American Mardi Gras

in New Orleans since 1949, evidence suggests that economic gain was the principal

motivation for the recording of rhumba blues in the early 1950s rather than connecting with

the Black diaspora: for example, expressing African pride influenced by their ‘Caribbean

identity’, pan-Africanism, or a sense of cultural loss as might be argued based on the research

of Stewart, Fields, and Moreno.

61 Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding, Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (California: University of California Press, 1998), 43. 62 Larry Birnbaum, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ’n’ Roll (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 265. 63 Sugar Boy’ Crawford as quoted in Jeff Hannusch, ‘BackTalk: An Interview with James ‘Sugar Boy’ Crawford’, Offbeat Magazine, http://www.offbeat.com/articles/james-sugar-boy-crawford/ (accessed 4 May 2017). 64 Sublette, ‘The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Chá’, 83. In his 2018 monograph, Shane Vogel argues that African-Americans who participated in the 1957 calypso ‘craze’ were mocking notions of racial authenticity which he theorises as Black fad performance. Unlike calypso, rhumba-blues lyrics are not characterised by a mocking tone and this interpretation would therefore not seem to apply to the style. Shane Vogel, Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018).

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Similarly, excepting Mort Shuman’s quotation, no evidence has been located to suggest that

the Jewish-American songwriters that were associated with the Brill Building identified with

the ‘cha-cha’ in rock-a-cha-cha as a new way of performing Jewishness as posited by Stratton.

Indeed, in her autobiography, Carole King does not mention any Afro-Latin influences on her

songwriting.65 Thus, while this theory is plausible, there is little evidence for it in practice.

Instead, Jewish-American and African-American musicians were presumably driven to

incorporate Afro-Latin elements by the fact that chachachá was an economically viable ‘craze’.

The intention here is not to suggest that Jewish Americans exploited Afro-Latin rhythm for

commercial gain – which would risk verging on anti-Semitism – but that the engagement of all

non-Latinx ethnic groups with Afro-Latin rhythm seems to have been primarily motivated by

commercial concerns. This is seen in ‘The Rock-a-Cha’, a 1961 album track produced by the

Italian-American teen idol Annette Funicello and arranger ‘Tutti’ Camarata in which rock-a-

cha-cha was falsely constructed as an authentic cultural hybrid created by Latinx Americans,

seemingly in order to help sell the style. Thus, it appears that the rhythmic transitions to

straight-quaver rhythmic patterns and polyrhythmic textures would most likely not have

happened without the successive mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Afro-Latin rhythm in the United

States.

Moreover, although rhumba blues was typically written and performed by African Americans

and rock-a-cha-cha was often recorded in New York, scholarship overemphasises the link

between rhumba blues and New Orleans and rock-a-cha-cha with Jewish-American

songwriters. None of the rhumba-blues recordings in the sample was produced in New

Orleans. Instead one was produced in Los Angeles and the others in New York and none of

these mentions New-Orleans culture in the lyrics. Although the aforementioned rhumba-blues

recordings from New Orleans predate those in the sample, rhumba-blues songs were recorded

elsewhere in the United States before and simultaneously to the New-Orleans Mardi Gras-

themed recordings: namely, Skeets Tolbert and Nat ‘King’ Cole (with his trio), who were

based in New York and Los Angeles and recorded polyrhythmic songs entitled ‘rhumba blues’

in 1941 and 1949 respectively.66 Thus, the suggestion that rhumba blues is unique to New

Orleans and that the style was invented by Professor Longhair is incorrect. Similarly, although

more straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample were written by Leiber and Stoller

65 Carole King, A Natural Woman (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012). 66 The compilation album Rumba Blues from the 1940s exemplifies how common Cuban-influenced straight-quaver polyrhythmic blues was across the US in the 1940s. Various Artists, Rumba Blues from the 1940s: Latin Music Shaping the Blues (Rhythm & Blues RANDB026, 2015).

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than by any other songwriter(s)67 and over a quarter of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic hits

from the late 1950s and early-1960s were written by Jewish Americans, more of these hits

were written by Anglo Americans68 and African Americans – particularly those associated with

Motown records operating out of Detroit.69 Consequently, the significance of New-Orleans

and Jewish-American songwriters is somewhat overstated in identification of Afro-Latin

influences on the rhythm of mid-century US popular music.

Alternative Historicisation of Rock ’n’ Roll This thesis presents an alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll to the R&B-plus-C&W origin

myth and the Christ-like periodisation. This historicisation builds on Ronald Radano’s

conception of ‘hot rhythm’ and, to a lesser extent, on Shane Vogel’s discussion of race ‘crazes’

in the Jim-Crow era of segregation: that is, the period in US history between the post-bellum

Reconstruction of the 1870s and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Radano presents the concept ‘hot rhythm’ in response to the racially problematic notion of

rhythm as Black essence and the academically problematic disregard for social factors in

analyses of Black rhythm. Radano defines ‘hot rhythm’ as a new conception of Black rhythm

that emerged discursively in the modern era in the United States due to asymmetrical power

relations and changing conceptions of race following the Civil War. Specifically, hot rhythm

denotes the myth of syncopated rhythm as Black essence, as seen in the reception of the

mainstream popularity of African-American rhythm as ‘primitive’ from ragtime through rock

’n’ roll to rap. Radano argues that hot rhythm is also associated with excess (e.g. ‘abandon’ and

‘craze’) and cites repeated allusions to heat (e.g. hot jazz), intoxication (e.g. ‘narcosis’), and

contagion (e.g. ‘infectious rhythm’) as examples. Radano links the idea of ‘infectious rhythm’

to the fact that immigrants were blamed for causing epidemics at the time: for instance, the

so-called ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic of 1918 to 1920, which immediately preceded the jazz age.70

Radano states that the fear of White people liking Black rhythm was fundamentally a fear of

White girls dancing with Black men and therefore that ‘miscegenation’ (racial mixing) was

67 Namely: ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ (1953), the Coasters’s ‘Poison Ivy’ (1959), and Ben E. King’s ‘Stand by Me’ (written with King). Leiber and Stoller also produced the Drifters’s ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ (written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman). 68 For instance, the Fleetwoods’s 1958 hit ‘Come Softly to Me’. 69 For example: Jackie Wilson’s Lonely Teardrops (1958), the Miracles’s ‘Shop Around’ (1960), the Contours’s ‘Do You Love Me?’ (1962), Little Stevie Wonder’s ‘Fingertips’ (1963), Mary Wells’s ‘Two Lovers’ (1963). 70 Radano, ‘Hot Fantasies’, 463.

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perceived to be the greatest threat of hot rhythm.71 The mainstream popularity of Black

rhythm was therefore seen as a social disease leading to moral decline.

Radano’s interpretation employs two analytical figures: ‘descent’ and ‘displacement’. The terms

map onto two opposing receptions of Black rhythm (desire and fear respectively) and two

opposing notions of Black rhythm (anti-mass culture and mass culture respectively). Descent

is a temporal concept that links the notion of Black rhythm as biological essence to Africa and

the past. He historicises descent in the fact that 19th-century evolutionary scientists identified

that homo sapiens evolved in Africa and had dark skin and so theorised that rhythmic

communication preceded verbal language. Following a leap in logic, rhythm has been

understood as innate among Black people.72 The analytical figure of descent is associated with

the rural and the ‘Sambo’ stereotype of peaceful Black people. Viewed historically, descent

provides the basis for the notion that ‘natural’ African-American music is more authentic than

European-American music and, thus, gives rise to the association of Blackness with anti-mass

culture. Conversely, the analytical figure of displacement is a spatial concept that denotes the

post-Reconstruction fear of Blacks replacing White people in geographical (for example, the

Great Migration) and social spaces (for instance, white-collar jobs). The two figures come

together in an analysis that shows how the mainstream popularity of African-American

syncopated rhythm (descent) led to a racialised fear that White listeners were being led astray

by this rhythm (displacement). Displacement is thus associated with the urban and the ‘Black

Brute’ stereotype of predatory Black men, forming the basis of the notion that the mainstream

popularity of Black rhythm represented a mass-culture ‘craze’.

Radano does not discuss whether the age of the commentator tended to affect whether an

individual received Black rhythm in terms of one of the two analytical figures. However, it is

evident that while White youth received the Black rhythm of rock ’n’ roll as primitive,

authentic and anti-mass culture (descent), their White parents received it as primitive, savage,

and mass culture ‘crazes’ (displacement). The rock-press reception of rock ’n’ roll as descent

was illustrated in Chapter 5 in the perception of Little Richard as destructive and

revolutionary. The adult-press reception of rock ’n’ roll as displacement is seen in two articles

published in the New York Times in the mid-1950s which discuss the work of psychiatrists who

associated the ‘craze’ for rock-’n’-roll rhythm with savagery, excess, intoxication, contagion,

71 Ibid., 474. 72 Martin Munro states that African-American music was associated with rhythm long before 1900, citing the aforementioned legislation that prohibited Blacks from drumming in South Carolina in 1740 because of the fear of revolt. However, Munro agrees that rhythm only became central to to the understanding of African-American music with ragtime. Munro, Different Drummers, 184–185.

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miscegenation, and societal decline.73 In a 1956 article, the publication cites the psychiatrist

Francis J. Braceland who refers to rock ’n’ roll as ‘cannibalistic and tribalistic’ music and as a

‘communicable disease’, while a sidebar to a 1957 article cites the psychiatrist Joost A. M.

Meerlo who describes rock-’n’-roll dancing as a ‘prehistoric rhythmic trance until it had gone

far beyond all the accepted versions of human dancing’ and as ‘rhythmic narcosis’. Meerlo also

links rock ’n’ roll to supposed rhythmic epidemics (Sydenham’s chorea and Tarantism) that

would lead to ‘our own downfall’.74 Similarly, an article in U.S.A. Confidential links juvenile

delinquency to Africa, savagery, sex, insanity, drugs, and miscegenation (‘White girls are

recruited for colored lovers’) as well as communism and the Mafia.75 Although metaphors of

contagion may also be employed to describe an ‘infectious smile’ or a catchy melody, the

combination of the overtly racist language of savagery and references to infectious rhythm in

the examples above corroborates Radano’s argument that, in relation to rhythm, contagion is a

racialised metaphor. Thus, both young and old European Americans seem to have interpreted

rock ’n’ roll as hot rhythm. However, the former draw on descent and the latter on

displacement. Age therefore affects whether hot rhythm is perceived as descent or

displacement, which has not previously been argued.

The trade press does not employ the tropes of displacement in their reviews of singles that

feature reiterated straight-quaver rhythmic patterns in a pitched instrument or straight-quaver

polyrhythm. This is presumably because singles were appraised in terms of their commercial

potential among the youth market. However, the trade press does receive rock ’n’ roll

featuring the RSQB paradigm as hot rhythm, evoking the tropes of excess, heat, and

contagion. For example, Billboard describes the rhythm of both sides of Little Richard’s 1957

single ‘Ready Teddy’/‘Rip It Up’ as ‘wild, rip-roaring abandon’ while Cash Box describes the

rhythm of Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ as ‘torrid’.76 Moreover, Billboard

refers to the Beatles’s breakthrough US hit ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ with the language of

contagious rhythm as well as heat and excess, suggesting that the ‘infectious twist-like

thumper that could spread like wildfire here’.77 Thus, adult-dominated academia and print

media received rock ’n’ roll as a ‘craze’ for hot rhythm in the 1950s and early 1960s.

73 Anonymous, ‘Rock-and-Roll Called Communicable Disease’, New York Times (28 March 1956), 33. 74 Milton Bracker, ‘Experts Propose Study of ‘‘Craze’”, New York Times (23 February 1957), 12. 75 Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, U.S.A. Confidential (New York: Crown Publishers, 1952). As cited in James A. Cosby, Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2016), 194 and 195. 76 Anonymous, ‘Review Spotlight on…Records’, Billboard (16 June 1956), 44. Anonymous, ‘Record Reviews’, Cash Box (28 September 1957), 10. 77 Anonymous, [review of the Beatles, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’], Cash Box (4 January 1964).

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Although Radano does not discuss hot rhythm in relation to Afro-Latin and African-

Caribbean musics, Hollywood films and trade-press reviews evoke this discourse in reference

to styles such as samba and calypso, sometimes invoking the tropes of displacement.78 As

Walter Clark summarises, in the 1940s critics described the Hollywood films that feature the

Brazilian samba singer Carmen Miranda as savage (‘primitive’, ‘barbaric’, ‘jungles’, ‘natives’,

‘tom tom’, ‘wildcat’), hot (‘torrid’, ‘fiery’, ‘hot tamale’, ‘firecracker’), and excessive

(‘tempestuous’ and ‘volatile’).79 Additionally, Billboard received Harry Belafonte’s 1953 calypso

single ‘Hold ’Em Joe’ as ‘especially contagious’.80 Similarly, two rhumba-blues recordings and

one calypso-influenced R&B songs that feature straight-quaver polyrhythm in the sample were

received with reference to infectious rhythm.81 Thus, Afro-Latin, African-Caribbean, and

American-Latin musics were received as ‘crazes’ for hot rhythm by the trade press in the

1950s.

The reception of rock ’n’ roll and African-Caribbean as hot rhythm suggests that they were

seen as somewhat interchangeable.Indeed, Artie Butler, an arranger and pianist of rock ’n’ roll

during the in-between years, referred to Afro-Latin music as having a ‘different kind of

infectious beat’ to rock ’n’ roll.82 Shane Vogel historicises calypso as one in a series of

interchangeable race ‘crazes’ in the United States that occurred during the Jim-Crow era,

including African-American styles (such as 1920s jazz) and Afro-Latin musics (such as tango,

mambo, and bossa nova).83 Building on Radano and Vogel, rock ’n’ roll can be seen as the

latest in a succession of mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Black rhythm in the United States during the

Jim-Crow era, each of which was received as ‘hot rhythm’. These waves of hot rhythm

include: African-American ragtime at the turn of the century; Afro-Argentine tango in the

1910s and 1920s; African-American jazz in the 1920s; Afro-Cuban ‘rhumba’ and African-

American swing in the 1930s; Afro-Brazilian samba in the 1940s; Afro-Cuban mambo and

chachachá as well as African-American rock ’n’ roll and African-Trinidadian calypso in the

1950s; and finally, although to a lesser extent, Brazilian bossa nova in the early 1960s.84

78 For a study of Black rhythm in the context of the circum-Caribbean see Munro, Different Drummers. 79 Clark, ‘Doing the Samba on Sunset Boulevard’, 265 and 269. 80 Johnny Sippel, [review of Harry Belafonte, ‘Hold ’Em Joe’], Billboard, (1957), 27. 81 Namely, ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’, the Drifters’s ‘Honey Love’, and Earl Bostic’s ‘Flamingo’. 82 Artie Butler as quoted in Emerson, Always Magic in the Air, 125. 83 Vogel states that race crazes influenced segregation, asserting that the mass-culture ‘coon craze’ of the 1890s, which popularised ragtime, aided the introduction Jim-Crow laws in 1896 by presenting a comic image of Blacks which both obscured and rationalised Black disenfranchisement. Vogel, Stolen Time, 4, 13, and 36. 84 For a detailed discussion of the critical reception of bossa nova in the United States in terms of race, see K.E. Goldschmitt, ‘Copying the Bossa Nova: Jazz and Dance Fads in the Early 1960s’ in Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

161

This is not to say that the trade press did not distinguish between ‘crazes’ for African-

American, Afro-Latin, and African-Caribbean rhythm. Michael Eldridge suggests that the

popularity of African-Caribbean calypso among European Americans was received with less

anxiety by critics than that of African-American rock ’n’ roll because the Black rhythm of the

former could be understood as exotic, faraway, and therefore as less threatening.85 The same

was perhaps true of Afro-Latin styles. However, the fact that there was a consensus among

trade publications that calypso would replace rock ’n’ roll in 1957 indicates that these styles

were seen as interchangeable.86

The perception of popular African-American and Afro-Caribbean styles as interchangeable

‘crazes’ for hot rhythm led to the mixing of these styles, creating hybrids such as rhumba

blues, rock-calypso, and perhaps rock-a-cha-cha. For example, Brian Ward states that African

Americans recorded rhumba blues in 1954 because they feared that the R&B boom was a

passing fad and thought that mixing it with another ‘craze’, mambo, might increase its

longevity.87 Although rhumba blues predated the mainstream popularity of mambo, a variation

of Ward’s theory is visible in the film Bop Girl Goes Calypso. In stating that calypso would

replace rock ’n’ roll and referring to rock ’n’ roll and calypso as ‘rages’ in promotional

materials, Bop Girl Goes Calypso suggests that the two styles were mixed because they were

understood as interchangeable mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Black rhythm. The mixing of Afro-

Caribbean and African-American styles would seem to have translated into the incorporation

of bar-level rhythmic patterns over the RSQB drumbeat in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For

example, in the 1957 film Bop Girl Goes Calypso, an applied psychology student determines that

a mixture of calypso rhythms and the beat of rock ’n’ roll will replace rock ’n’ roll.88 Likewise,

in the aforementioned 1958 column in Billboard, Ren Grevatt predicts that ‘there is likely to be

a continuing integration of the basic rocking beat with other rhythms’ before citing rock-a-

cha-cha and rock-calypso.89 Similarly, in his 1969 rock history, Carl Belz states that between

1957 and 1963 leading to the incorporation of calypso elements (among others) over the ‘beat

of rock’ affording the style longevity.90 Given the fact that the American-Latin hybrids rhumba

blues and rock-a-cha-cha featured straight-quaver bar-level rhythmic patterns and influenced

the rhythmic trends in question, the perception of popular African-diasporic styles as

85 Michael S. Eldridge, ‘Bop Girl Goes Calypso: Containing Race and Youth Culture in Cold War America’, Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 3 (2005), 1–28. 86 Peter Stanfield, ‘Crossover: Sam Katzman’s Switchblade Calypso Bop Reefer Madness Swamp Girl or Bad Jazz Calypso, Beatniks and Rock ’n’ Roll in 1950s Teenpix’, Popular Music, 29 (2010), 437–455; here, 443–444. 87 Ward, Just My Soul Responding, 44. 88 Stanfield, ‘Crossover’, 446–448. 89 Ren Grevatt, ‘On the Beat’, Billboard (15 December 1958), 8. 90 Carl Belz, The Story of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 60.

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interchangeable ‘crazes’ for hot rhythm seems to have influenced the rhythmic transformation

of post-war popular music in the United States from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm

to straight-quaver polyrhythm. Responding to criticisms that hot rhythm says little about

Black music as sound, this interpretation illustrates how Radano’s concept influenced the

production of music as well as its reception and does so in a broader circum-Caribbean

context than is discussed by Radano.91

Additionally, as concluded above in the section entitled ‘Creolisation and Mass Migration’,

Afro-Cuban styles seem unlikely to have been as popular as they were in the United States in

the 1950s and early 1960s without the growing Latinx-American population at the time. The

Latinx population in the United States increased from 500,000 in 1900 (0.7% of the US

population) to 6.3 million by 1960 (3.2% of the US population). It would not seem to be a

coincidence that the Latinx community was largest in the twin centres of the US music

industry (New York and Los Angeles) and that there was a significant Afro-Latin influence on

the US popular music in this period. Thus, the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm

would also probably not have occurred without Latinx-American migration to the United

States in the 20th century. Consequently, the Afro-Latin influence on the rhythmic

transformation to straight-quaver polyrhythm can be interpreted as representing a product of

both successive mass-culture ‘crazes’ for hot rhythm and the mass migration of Latin

Americans to the United States during the Jim-Crow era.

Conclusion

This chapter contributes a critique of existing interpretations of the rhythmic transformation

from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm and the Afro-

Latin influences on it. The common interpretations that the transformation represents

countercultural revolution and the Civil Rights Movement are based on three questionable

assumptions and are not consistently evident in rock and soul songs that are associated with

these political movements. These two interpretations also exemplify the Black/White binary

paradigm of race and the meanings of the trends, in relation to Latinx Americans, have

therefore been neglected.

91 Samuel A. Floyd in Samuel A. Floyd and Ronald Radano, ‘Interpreting the African-American Musical Past: A Dialogue’, Black Music Research Journal, 29 (2009), 1–10; here, 4. Butterfield, ‘Race and Rhythm’, 316.

163

African Americans from New Orleans and Jewish Americans from New York may have

adopted Afro-Cuban rhythms in order to perform part of their own identity through the

music of another subaltern group, as suggested by Stewart and Stratton, and therefore this

might have influenced the overarching transformation. However, the musicians themselves

indicate that economic gain was the principal motivation for adopting Afro-Latin rhythms,

capitalising on the successive mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Afro-Latin rhythm in the United States

during this period. Nevertheless, the rhythmic transformation seems unlikely to have occurred

without mass migration of Latin Americans to the two central cities of the US music industry.

Consequently, by drawing on an alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll, rooted in how the

trade press understood the style at the time, the influence of Afro-Latin musics on this

fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war popular music in the United States can be seen

to represent a product of successive waves of both ‘hot rhythm’ and of Latin-American

immigration in the United States during the Jim-Crow era.

Thus, while James Brown and others associated late-1960s and 1970s funk with Blackness and

Africa, the rhythmic trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm culminated in late-1950s and

early-1960s rock-a-cha-cha and was influenced by the desire among both European-American

and African-American musicians to cash in on the latest ‘craze’ for hot rhythm. This

contradicts the widespread assumption in funk scholarship that the rhythmic transformation

was simply a product of racial pride and which has not discussed possible Afro-Cuban

influences on the trend to polyrhythm in depth. This project therefore necessitates a revision

of funk history. The conclusion of this chapter is also significant to wider society. Namely, the

chapter uncovers a substantial contribution of Latinx-American culture to popular culture in

the United States more generally, a country in which Latin-American immigration is

consistently denigrated and scapegoated.92

92 For example, President Donald Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants being ‘rapists’ and his flagship policy to ‘build a wall’ on the border between the US and Mexico to keep out Mexican immigrants. C-Span, ‘Donald Trump Presidential Campaign Announcement Full Speech (C-SPAN)’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apjNfkysjbM (accessed 7 September 2021).

Conclusion More than Just a Tinge

This study is the first to establish that, simply put, Mario Bauzá was right: historians have

erased the impact of Afro-Cuban music and migration (and that of Latin Americans more

generally) on a fundamental change in the rhythm of post-war popular music in the United

States. Thus, as Robert Palmer suggests, a significant revision of popular-music historiography

is needed.

Statistical analysis of the data collected from a corpus analysis of 431 Billboard hits from 1950

to 1965 demonstrates that a rhythmic transformation from triple-quaver and crotchet

monorhythm to duple-quaver polyrhythm occurred in US popular music. This analysis also

illustrates that the two constituent shifts to straight-quaver subdivisions and polyrhythmic

textures happened, as did a move towards the reiterated straight-quaver/backbeat paradigm.

Because these strongly correlated trends are statistically significant, it can be extrapolated (as is

the norm in research on inferential statistics) that one would probably find the same results

with a different sample of US popular hits of this period. The tipping point for all four of

these trends was in 1961. Although existing empirical scholarship suggests that a swung-to-

straight shift occurred between the 1950s and the 1960s with a tipping point in around 1960,

this project is the first to establish that trends towards straight-quaver polyrhythm,

polyrhythmic textures, and the RSQB paradigm also occurred, culminating in 1961.

Both the corpus analysis and a reception study of contemporaneous reviews indicate that

Afro-Latin musics (particularly Afro-Cuban styles) were the predominant influence on the

rhythmic transitions from swung- to straight-quaver subdivisions and from monorhythmic to

polyrhythmic textures as well as the overarching transformation of US popular music from

swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm. A Latin heritage (via

rhumba blues) is identified for four of the five bar-level rhythmic patterns that are employed

in Paul Anka’s 1957 hit ‘Diana’: the earliest example in the sample of the straight-quaver

polyrhythmic style of rock ’n’ roll that came to dominate the late 1950s and early 1960s and a

song that influenced other rock ’n’ roll songwriters and arrangers such as Carole King. Three

of these patterns are the most common bar-level rhythmic patterns utilised in straight-quaver

polyrhythmic songs in the sample and in a supplementary sample of 36 songs described as

‘rock-a-cha-cha’ by Cash Box in 1958 and 1959, all but two of which featured straight-quaver

polyrhythm. Indeed, 80% of the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample feature two

or more Afro-Latin or American-Latin bar-level patterns, including variations of patterns. 164

165

Moreover, together, either Billboard or Cash Box identified an Afro-Latin influence on 40% of

the straight-quaver polyrhythmic songs in the sample (including ‘Diana’). Cash Box consistently

employed the style descriptor ‘rock-a-cha-cha’ to denote Latin-influenced straight-quaver

polyrhythmic rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The frequency of their use of the

term peaked in 1961: the year that straight-quaver polyrhythm became the norm. This

indicates that the trend towards straight-quaver polyrhythm and the trend towards rock-a-cha-

cha are the same trend. Although commentators have posited Afro-Latin influences on both

these bar-level rhythmic patterns and on the trends towards straight-quaver subdivisions and

polyrhythmic textures, this is the first project to provide a wealth of empirical evidence to

substantiate this argument.

White, male, non-Latinx critics erased the Afro-Latin influence on the trend towards straight-

quaver polyrhythm throughout the 1960s. There appear to have been three main reasons for

this erasure: the Black/White binary paradigm of race, in the form of the R&B-plus-C&W

origin myth of rock ’n’ roll; the gendered Christ-like narrative of rock ’n’ roll historiography;

and the ‘tinge’ metaphor of the impact of Afro-Latin styles on US popular music. These three

explanations can be seen in a comparison of the similar styles ‘rock-a-billy’ and ‘rock-a-cha-

cha’. Rockabilly exemplifies the R&B-plus-C&W origin myth, the use of the term peaked in

1957 during the ‘golden age’ of rock ’n’ roll’s ‘birth’, it is taken seriously by the rock press, and

it is remembered today. Conversely, rock-a-cha-cha does not fit this origin myth. The use of

the term peaked in 1961 during the in-between years in which rock ’n’ roll was purportedly

‘dead’, it is considered to be a mass-culture fad in all accounts, and it is largely forgotten today.

This thesis argues against these three narratives. First, the influences on rock ’n’ roll are not

simply Black and White: they are Afro-Latin too. Second, rock ’n’ roll was not ‘emasculated’,

‘commercialised’, and ‘killed’ during the in-between years: it was Afro-Latinised. Third, the

impact of Latin-American music on the United States was not a superficial ‘tinge’, as

suggested in the title of John Storm Roberts’s 1979 monograph, but a structural change, as

Bauzá claims. Although Ned Sublette implies that the Black/White racial binary and ‘tinge’

metaphor has contributed to the neglect of Afro-Cuban influences on the rhythmic

transformation, the notion that the gendered marginalisation of the in-between years as

representing the ‘emasculation’ and ‘death’ of rock ’n’ roll has marginalised the Afro-Latin

influence on the rhythmic transformation is original to this project.

The two most common socio-political interpretations of the coalescing rhythmic transitions

are that they represent countercultural revolution and the Civil Rights Movement. This project

identifies that there are two problems with these readings. First, they are based on three

166

debatable assumptions that characterise modernist rock ’n’ roll ideology. Second, they

exemplify the Black/White racial binary and the question of what the Afro-Latin influence on

the rhythmic transformation might mean for Latinx Americans has been overlooked. Drawing

on an alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll that is introduced in this thesis – based on

contemporaneous sources and the work of Ronald Radano and Shane Vogel – this study

offers an original interpretation of the rhythmic transformation of popular music as the

product of mass-culture ‘crazes’ for Black rhythm and the mass migration of Latin Americans

to the United States during the Jim-Crow era.

This research therefore contributes to two main areas of scholarship: popular-music studies

and Latinx studies. It also speaks to jazz studies, gender studies, and Black-music studies.

This thesis also employs a methodological synthesis and provides an original model for the

analysis of rhythmic texture both of which could be employed in future work. Two

contrasting approaches are combined: corpus analysis and reception theory. This mixture of

methods adds a formalised corpus analysis to David Brackett’s approach in Categorizing Sound

in order to conduct a study of the rhythm and reception of rock ’n’ roll over time. A novel

means of determining monorhythm and polyrhythm is also presented. This is based on a

distinction between beat-level and bar-level rhythmic patterns, building on Jay Rahn’s and

Mark Butler’s discussion of ‘symmetrical’ and ‘asymmetrical’ patterns. This method could be

applied to styles of music for which quavers are the density referent and could be adapted to

styles in which semiquavers are the density referent: for example, subsequent styles of

polyrhythmic popular music such as funk, disco, and electronic dance music.

The identification of the rhythmic shift to straight-quaver polyrhythm is significant for the

study of popular music before and after 1950. The rhythmic transformation is germane to

both jazz and popular-music studies since it separates the jazz-as-popular-music era (circa

1920 to 1945) and the rock-as-popular-music era (from 1955 onwards). The rhythmic change

is also essential context for the study of most popular music from the 1950s to the present

day, since scholars suggest that straight-quaver subdivisions have remained the norm in both

rock and soul traditions and that straight-quaver polyrhythm has characterised African-

American popular music.

In particular, the culmination of the rhythmic transformation in rock ’n’ roll of the late 1950s

and early 1960s and the Afro-Latin influence on it has significant implications for the study of

African-American popular music. Rhumba blues and rock-a-cha-cha are scarcely mentioned in

167

scholarship on funk, disco, and electronic dance music. However, the American-Latin styles

are the main polyrhythmic precursors to the African-American styles. Moreover, although

scholarship on funk, disco, and electronic dance music often acknowledges Afro-Latin musics

as a straight-quaver polyrhythmic precursor, a line of influence between Afro-Latin musics

and funk has not been interrogated. Rock-a-cha-cha is an under-examined ancestor in this

rhythmic evolution. Thus, further research is needed to establish whether significant revision

of the historiography and funk and subsequent polyrhythmic styles is needed.

Future studies could also investigate four rhythmic trends that have been identified as

occurring between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s in literature on funk: a transition from

quaver to semiquaver subdivisions as the density referent of US popular music, a

corresponding slowing down of tempo, a trend towards straight-quaver and semiquaver

polyrhythm, and the adoption of swung-quaver semiquaver subdivisions. A similar

methodological synthesis could be employed in order to interrogate the extent to which these

trends occurred, whether Afro-Latin musics influenced them as mooted by Alexander Stewart,

and whether the contemporaneous reception associates these trends with Black power and

Africa, as received wisdom would suggest, or Afro-Latin styles and ‘hot rhythm’, as was found

in this project.

For Latinx studies, the erasure of this Latinx-American contribution to US popular culture is

crucial as it exposes a substantial, overlooked example of Latinx peoples and cultures being

written out of US history. Race, gender, and ethnicity have affected this erasure. Specifically,

White, male, non-Latinx critics erased the impact of Afro-Latin musics on a rhythmic

transformation of US popular music because they held dominant conceptions of race (the

Black/White binary) as well as racialised, gendered, and ethnically specific notions of what

constitutes mass culture within popular music in the United States. This erasure is increasingly

problematic given that the Latinx-American population has grown tenfold from 6.3 million in

1960 (3.2% of the US population) to 60.6 million by 2019 (18% of the US population).1

Moreover, the argument that the Afro-Latin influence on the rhythmic transformation

represents another positive impact of Latinx immigration to US culture is significant given

that Latinx immigrants are often scapegoated: for example, Donald Trump’s denigration of

Mexican migrants.

1 Luis Noe-Bustamante, Mark Hugo Lopez, and Jens Manuel Krogstad, ‘U.S. Hispanic Population Surpassed 60 Million in 2019, But Growth Has Slowed, Pew Research Centre https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/07/u-s-hispanic-population-surpassed-60-million-in-2019-but-growth-has-slowed/ (accessed 4 March 2021).

168

The alternative historicisation of rock ’n’ roll as the latest in a series of mass-culture ‘crazes’

for hot rhythm in the Jim-Crow era contributes to scholarship on music and race. This new

historicisation situates rock ’n’ roll in a broader circum-Caribbean context while still discussing

the style within the national borders of the United States. It also presents a way to consider

the relationship between the mainstream popularity of African-American, Afro-Latin, and

African-Caribbean musics in the United States during the 20th-century.

This project also broadens the utility of Ronald Radano’s conception of hot rhythm in three

ways. First, it maps Radano’s two analytical figures onto the generation gap, where rock ’n’ roll

is received as ‘displacement’ by critics of the older, Silent Generation but ‘descent’ for critics

of the younger, Baby-Boomer generation. Second, it applies hot rhythm to Afro-Latin musics.

Third, it discusses how hot rhythm influenced music making, challenging critiques of

Radano’s theory who suggest that it can say nothing about music as sound.

This thesis therefore establishes empirically that White, male, non-Latinx rock historians have

erased the impact of Latinx-American music and migration on a rhythmic transformation

from swung-quaver and crotchet monorhythm to straight-quaver polyrhythm in popular

music in the United States between the 1950s and the 1960s, culminating in 1961. This

research demands a significant revision of popular-music historiography, which needs to

acknowledge this substantial but neglected contribution of Latinx Americans to US popular

culture.

169

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Discography Adams, Faye and Joe Morris Orch, I’ll Be True/Happiness To My Soul (Herald H-419, 1953). Ames Brothers, The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane (RCA-Victor 20-5897, 1954). Andrews Sisters, the, The Best of the Andrews Sisters (MCA Records MCAT 2-4024, 1973). Angels, the, My Boyfriend’s Back (Smash Records S-1834, 1963). Animals, the, The Animals (MGM Records SEW 4264, 1964). Anka, Paul, Just Young (ABC-Paramount 45-9956, 1958). --------------, Paul Anka (ABC-Paramount, ABC-240, 1958). --------------, Paul Anka’s 21 Golden Hits (RCA-Victor LSP-2691, 1963). Arnaz, Desi and His Orchestra, Banalu (RCA 66865-2, 1996). Ashby, Irving, Rock-A-Cha (Knight X2004, 1958). Avalon, Frankie, Venus (Chancellor C-1031, 1959). Baker, LaVerne and The Gliders, Jim Dandy (Atlantic 45-1116, 1956). Bartholomew, Dave, The Very Best Of Dave Bartholomew (Bayou Records BOD-1003, 2003). Basie, Count, The Best of Basie (Roulette R 52081, 1963). Bass, Fontella, Rescue Me (Checker 1120, 1965). Baxter, Les, The Poor People of Paris (Capitol F3336, 1956). --------------, Unchained Melody/Medic (Capitol Records 3055, 1955). Beatles, the, Help! (Parlophone PMC 1255, 1965). --------------, Hey Jude/Revolution (Apple Records R 5722, 1968). --------------, I Feel Fine (Parlophone R 5200, 1964). --------------, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hears Club Band (Parlophone PMC 7027, 1967). --------------, We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper (Parlophone R 5389, 1965). Bernal, Gil, King Solomon’s Blues (Spark Record Co. 45x106, 1954). -------------, The Dogs/James (Bumps Record Co. B1501, 1961). Berry, Chuck, I’m Talking About You/Little Star (Chess 1779, 1961). ----------------, Johnny B. Goode/Around and Around. (Chess 1691, 1958). ----------------, Oh Baby Doll (Chess 1664, 1957). ----------------, Rock & Roll Music/Blue Feeling (Chess 1671, 1957). ----------------, Roll Over Beethoven/Drifting Heart (Chess 1626, 1956). Berry, Richard and The Pharaohs, Have Love Will Travel/No Room (Flip Records 435-349,

1960). --------------------------------------------, Louie Louie/You Are My Sunshine (Flip Records 45-321,

1957). Bland, Bobby ‘Blue’, Sometime Tomorrow/Farther Up The Road (Duke 170, 1957). Bleyer, Archie, Hernando’s Hideaway (Cadence 1241, 1954). Bo, Eddie, I’m Wise (Apollo Records 486-45, 1956). Bobbettes, the, Mr. Lee (Atlantic 45-1144, 1957). Boone, Pat, Don’t Forbid Me/Anastasia (Dot Records 45-15521, 1956). Bostic, Earl, Earl Bostic And His Also Sax Vol. 1 (King Records EP 200, 1953). Bradley, Will, Beat Me Daddy (Eight To The Bar) (Columbia 35530, 1940). Brown, James and the Famous Flames, I Got You (I Feel Good) (King Records 45-6015, 1965). ------------------------------------------------, Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag (King Records 45-5999,

1965). Brown, James, Say It Loud - I’m Black And I’m Proud (King Records 45-6187, 1968).

181

Brown, Ruth and Her Rhythmakers, Mambo Baby/Somebody Touched Me (Atlantic 45-1044, 1954).

Butler, Jerry, He Will Break Your Heart/Thanks To You (Vee Jay Records VJ 354, 1960). Byrds, the, Turn! Turn! Turn! (Columbia CS 9254, 1965). Channel, Bruce, Hey! Baby (Smash Records MGS 27008, 1962). Charles, Ray, Ray Charles (Atlantic 8006, 1957). ----------------, Your Cheating Heart/You Are My Sunshine (ABC-Paramount 45-10375, 1962). Checker, Chubby, Twist With Chubby Checker (Parkway P 7001, 1960). Chiffons, the, He’s So Fine/Oh My Lover (Laurie Records 3152, 1963). Clooney, Rosemary, Mambo Italiano (Columbia 4-40361, 1954). Coasters, the, Down In Mexico/Turtle Dovin’ (ATCO Records 45-6064, 1956). ----------------, Poison Ivy/I’m a Hog for You (ATCO 45-6146, 1959). Cole, Cozy, Topsy (Love Records 5003, 1958). Cole, Nat King, Mona Lisa (Capitol F1010, 1950). Collins, Al, Shuckin Stuff/I Got the Blues for You (Ace Records A-50, 1955). Como, Perry, No Other Love/Keep It Gay (RCA-Victor 47-5317, 1953). Contours, the, Love Me/Merengue (RCA-Victor 7055145, 1962). Cooke, Sam, Shake/A Change Is Gonna Come (RCA-Victor 47-8486, 1964). Dales, Dick and The Del-Tones, Misirlou/Eight Till Midnight (Deltone Records 4939, 1963). Darin, Bobby, Dream Lover/Bullmoose (ATCO Records 45-6140, 1959). Day, Bobby, Rock-In Robin/Over and Over (Class 229, 1958). ---------------, Rockin’ With Robin (Class CS 5002, 1959). Dibango, Manu, Soul Makossa (Fiesta 51,199, 1972). Diddley, Bo, Bo Diddley/I’m A Man (Checker 814, 1955). Dixie Hummingbirds, The, The Dixie Hummingbirds’ Book of the Seven Seals (Charly Records

1988). Doe, Ernie K., Mother-In-Law/Wanted, $10,000.00 Reward (Minit 623, 1961). Dominoes, the, Sixty Minute Man (Federal 45-12022, 1951). Domino, Fats, Ain’t That A Shame/Goin’ Home (United Artists Records XW001, 1955). -----------------, Hide Away Blues/ She’s My Baby (Imperial 5077, 1950). Domino, Fats, The Fat Man/Detroit City Blues (Imperial 5058, 1950). Drifters, the, Honey Love/Warm Your Heart (Atlantic 1029, 1954). ---------------, Save The Last Dance For Me/Nobody But Met (Atlantic 45-2071, 1960). ---------------, There Goes My Baby/Oh My Love (Atlantic 45-2025, 1959). Dr. John, Dr. John’s Gumbo (ATCO SD 7006, 1972). Dupree, Champion Jack, Cabbage Greens (Okeh OKM 12103, 1963). Eva, Little, The Loco-Motion (Dimension 1000, 1962). Everly Brothers, the, All I Have to Do Is Dream/Claudette (Cadence 1348, 1958). --------------------, Cathay’s Clown/Always It’s You (Warner Bros. 5151, 1960). Fleetwoods, the, Come Softly To Me (London Records 45-HLU 9941, 1958). Forn, Tennessee Ernie, Sixteen Tons (Capitol F3262, 1955). Four Seasons, the, Sherry & 11 Others (Vee-Jay Records SR-1053, 1962). Franklin, Aretha, Respect/Dr. Feelgood (Atlantic 45-2403, 1967). Funicello, Annette, Dance Annette (Bueno Vista Records BV-3305, 1961). Gibbs, Georgia, Kiss Of Fire/A Lasting Thing (Mercury 5823, 1952). Gillespie, Dizzy, The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (Bluebird 0786366528-2, 1995). Glenn, Lloyd, Jungle Town Jubilee/Chica-Boo (Swing Time 254, 1951).

182

Haley, Bill, Birth Of The Boogie/Mambo Rock (Decca 29418, 1955). Haley, Bill, and His Comets, Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town) / (We're Gonna) Rock

Around The Clock (Decca 29124, 1954). Harris, Phil, Goofus/The Thing (RCA-Victor 20-3968, 1950). Harris, Wynonie, Git To Gittin’ Baby/Good Mambo Tonight (King Records 4774, 1955). ---------------------, Good Rockin’ Tonight/Good Morning Mr. Blues (King Records 4210, 1948). Hawketts, the, Mardi Gras Mambo/Your Time’s Up (Chess 1591, 1955). Hayman, Richard and His Orchestra, Let’s Get Together (Mercury Wing MGW 12100, 1954). Holly, Buddy, Buddy Holly (Coral, CRL-57210, 1958). Hooker, John Lee and His Guitar, Sally May Boogie Chillen’ (Modern Records 20-627, 1948). Jive Five, the, My True Story/When I Was Single (Beltone 45-1006, 1961). Johnny Burnette Trio, the, Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track)/I Just Found Out (Coral 9-

61758, 1956). --------------------------------, The Train Kept A-Rollin’/Honey Hush (Coral 9-61719, 1956). John Coltrane Quartette, the, Coltrane (Impulse! A-21, 1962). Johnny Otis Orchestra, Gee Baby/Mambo Boogie (Savoy Records 777, 1951). Johnny Otis Show, the, Willie And The Hand Jive (Capitol F3966, 1958). Kallen, Kitty, Little Things Mean A Lot (Decca 9-29037, 1954). King, B.B., Singin’ The Blues (Crown Records CLP5020, 1957). King, Ben E., Stand By Me (ATCO 45-6194, 1961). Lee, Peggy, Fever (Capitol F3998, 1958). Lewis, Jerry Lee, Great Balls Of Fire/You Win Again (Sun 281, 1957). --------------------, Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On/ It’ll Be Me (Sun 267, 1957). Littlefield, Little Willie, It’s Midnight (No Place To Go/Midnight Whistle (Modern Records 20-686,

1949). Loco, Joe And His Quintet, Gee/El Baion (Tico Records 10-208, 1954). Longhair, Professor, New Orleans Piano (Atlantic SD 7225, 1972). -------------------------, Rock ‘n’ Roll Gumbo (Dancing Cat Records DT-3006, 1974). Lutcher, Joe and His Alto Sax, Jumpin' At The Mardi Gras (Ace CDCHD 753, 2000). Lymon, Frankie and The Teenagers, 25 Greatest Hits (EMI 4 95479 2, 1998). Makeba, Miriam, Pata Pata (Reprise RS.20606, 1967). Marcels, the, Blue Moon/Goodbye To Love (Colpix Records CP 186, 1961). Mayfield, Percy, Louisiana/Two Hearts Are Greater Than One (Speciality 432-45, 1952). McLollie, Oscar and Annette, Rock-A-Cha (Class 238, 1958). Mickey and Sylvia, Love Is Strange/I’m Going Home (Groove 4G-0175, 1956). Midnighters, the, Annie Had A Baby/She’s The One (Federal 42-12195, US). Mircales, the, Shop Around/Who’s Loving You (Tamla T 54034, 1960). Morton, Jelly Roll, ‘The Spanish Tinge / “New Orleans Blues” / “La Paloma”’, Jelly Roll

Morton: The Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax (Rounder Records ROUNDER 11661-1897-2, 2005).

Newman, Thunderclap, Something In The Air/Wilhelmina (Track Record 45-2656, 1969). Norfolk Jubilee Quartet, Standing By The Bedside Of A Neighbor/Jonah In The Belly Of The Whale

(Decca 48004, 1946). Olatunji! Drums of Passion (Columbia CL 1412, 1960). Orbison, Roy And The Candy Men, Oh Pretty Woman (Monument 45-851, 1964). Orlando, Tony, Bless You/Am I The Guy (Epic 5-9452, 1961). -------------------, Halfway To Paradise/Lonely Tomorrows (Epic 5-9441, 1961). Page, Patti, All My Love (Bolero) (Mercury 5455, 1950).

183

Paree, Paul, Big Daddy, Don’t You Scold Me (Zenith 1000, 1959). Peek, Paul, Sweet Skinny Jenny/The Rock-A-Round (National Recording Corporation NRC001,

1958). Pickett, Bobby (Boris) and The Crypt-Kickers, Monster Mash (Garpax Records 45-44167,

1962). Prado, Pérez, Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White/Rhythm Sticks (RCA-Victor 47-5965, 1954). ----------------, Que Rico El Mambo/Mambo No. 5 (RCA-Victor 20-3782, 1950). Presley, Elvis, Heartbreak Hotel/I Was The One (RCA-Victor 47-6420, 1956). -----------------, Hound Dog / Don’t Be Cruel (RCA-Victor 20-6604, 1956). -----------------, I Want You, I Need You, I Love You/My Baby Left Me (RCA-Victor 47-6540,

1956). -----------------, Jailhouse Rock (RCA-Victor EPA 4114, 1957). -----------------, Love Me Tender, (RCA-Victor EPA 4006, 1956). -----------------, Mystery Train/I Forgot To Remember To Forget (Sun Records 223, 1955). Price, Lloyd, Walkin’ The Track (Speciality SP-2163, 1986). Richard, Little and Johnny Otis’ Band, Little Richard’s Boogie/Directly From My Heart To You

(Peacock Records 5-1968, 1956). ------------------, Here’s Little Richard (Speciality SP-100, 1957). ------------------, Little Richard (Speciality SP-2103, 1958). Robins, the, Smokey Joe’s Café/Just Life A Fool (ATCO Records 6059, 1955). Rolling Stones, the, Out of Our Heads (London Records LL 3429, 1965). ------------------, Street Fighting Man (London 45-909, 1968). Sedaka, Neil, Oh! Carol (RCA-Victor 47-7595, 1959). Shannon, Del, Runaway With Del Shannon (Bigtop 12-1303, 1961). Shirelles, the, I Met Him On A Sunday/I Want You To Be My Boyfriend (Decca 9-30588, 1958). ----------------, Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (Scepter Records 1211, 1960). Shirley and Company, Shame, Shame, Shame (Vibration VI-532, 1974). Shirley & Lee, Let The Good Times Roll (Aladdin 45-3325, 1956). -----------------, You’d Be Thinking Of Me/Feel So Good (Aladdin 3289, 1955). Simone, Nina, Mississippi Goddam (Phillips 40216, 1964). Smith, Carl, Loose Talk/More Than Anything Else In The World (Columbia 4-2317, 1954). Strangeloves, the, I Want Candy (Bang Records 211, 1965). Swift, Joe and Johnny Otis & His Orchestra, That’s Your Last Boogie/What’s Your Name

(Exclusive 51X, 1948). Temptations, the, My Girl/(Talking’ ‘Bout) Nobody But My Baby (Gordy G-7038, 1964). Tharpe, Sister Rosetta and the Dependable Boys, Everybody's Gonna Have A Wonderful Time Up

There / My Lord And I (Decca 48071, 1948). Thornton, Big Mama, Hound Dog/Night Mare (Peacock Records 1612, 1953). Turner, Titus, Sweet and Low/Big John (Wing Records W-90033X45, 1955). Valens, Richie, Richie Valens (Del-Fi Records DFLP-1201, 1959). Various Artists, Boogie Woogie Piano (Brunswick BL58018, 1950). -------------------, Chicago Blues Volume 2 (1939-1944) (Document Records DOCD-5444, 1996). -------------------, Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Vol. 2: Religious Music (Folkways Records P 418,

1956). -------------------, Rumba Blues from the 1940s: Latin Music Shaping the Blues (Rhythm & Blues

RANDB026, 2015). Vaughan, Sarah, Interlude 1944-1947 (Naxos Jazz Legends 8.120572, 2001).

184

Ventures, the, Walk, Don’t Run (Dolton Records BLP 2003, 1960). Walker, Jr. and The All Stars, Shotgun/Hot Cha (Soul S-35008, 1965). Walker, T-Bone, The Imperial Blues Years (Not Now Music NOT2CD454, 2012). Walter, Little, My Baby/Thunder Bird (Checker Records 955, 1955). Washington, Dinah and Brook Benton, The Two Of Us (Mercury SR 60244, 1960). Weavers, the, On Top Of Old Smokey (Decca 27515, 1951). Wells, Mary, Two Lovers/Operator (Motown M-1035, 1962). Williams Larry, Here’s Larry Williams (Speciality SP 2109, 1959). ------------------, Short Fat Fannie/High School Dance (Speciality 608, 1957). Wilson, Jackie, Baby Workout (Brunswick 55239, 1963). -----------------, Lonely Teardrops (Brunswick 9-55105, 1958). Wonder, Little Stevie, Fingertips (Tamla TM54080, 1963).

185

Appendices Appendix 1. Drum legend/notation key

Appendix 2. Rhythmic characteristics of the sample of year-end hits on the Billboard mainstream singles chart from 1950 to 1965 Year Song – Artist Rhythmic

(Sub)divisions in the Fixed Rhythm

Rhythmic Texture Category

Rhythmic Texture Subcategory

Reiterated Straight-quaver/ Backbeat Paradigm

1950 1: ‘The Tennessee Waltz’ – Patti Page

Crotchet Monorhythm Commetre No

2: ‘Goodnight Irene’ – Gordon Jenkins & The Weavers


3: ‘“The Third Man” Theme’ – Anton Karas


4: ‘The 3rd Man Theme’ – Guy Lombardo


5: ‘If I Knew You Were Comin’ (I’d’ve Baked a Cake)’ – Eileen Barton

Triple-quaver Monorhythm Commetre No

6: ‘Mona Lisa’ – Nat “King” Cole


7: ‘Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy’ – Red Foley

Triple-quaver Monorhythm Contrarhythm No

8: ‘I Can Dream, Can’t I?’ – The Andrew Sisters


9: ‘All My Love (Bolero)’ – Patti Page

Featuring duple-quaver

Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘The Thing’ – Phil Harris


1951 1: ‘Cry’ – Johnnie Ray & The Four Lads


Monorhythm Contrarhythm No

186

2: ‘Because of You’ – Tony Bennett


3: ‘How High the Moon’ – Les Paul & Mary Ford


4: ‘Sin’ – Eddy Howard

Triple-quaver Polyrhythm N/A No

5: ‘If’ – Perry Como


6: ‘Come On-a My House’ – Rosemary Clooney


7: ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ – Tony Bennett


8: ‘Too Young – Nat “King” Cole


9: ‘Be My Love’ – Mario Lanza


10: ‘On Top of Old Smoky’ – The Weavers & Terry Gilkyson


Monorhythm Commetre No

1952 1: ‘You Belong to Me’ – Jo Stafford


2: ‘Wheel of Fortune’ – Kay Starr


3: ‘I Went to Your Wedding’ – Patti Page


4: ‘Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart’ – Vera Lynn


5: ‘Kiss of Fire’ – Georgia Gibbs


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘Why Don’t You Believe Me’ – Joni James



7: ‘Blue Tango’ – Leroy Anderson



8: ‘The Glow-Worm’ – Mills Brothers


9: ‘Half As Much’ – Rosemary Clooney


10: ‘Here in My Heart’ – Al Martino


187

1953 1: ‘Vaya Con Dios’ – Les Paul & Mary Ford


2: ‘The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)’ – Percy Faith (Felicia Sanders)


3: ‘You You You’ – Ames Brothers


4: ‘Rags to Riches’ – Tony Bennett


Polyrhythm N/A No

5: ‘The Doggie in the Window’ – Patti Page


6: ‘Till I Waltz Again with You’ – Teresa Brewer


7: ‘I’m Walking Behind You’ – Eddie Fisher


8: ‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes’ – Perry Como

Tempo too quick to reliably discern


9: ‘No Other Love’ – Perry Como


Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘St. George and the Dragonet’ – Stan Freberg

Spoken word with musical score. No rhythmic patterns.

1954 1: ‘Little Things Mean a Lot’ – Kitty Kallen


2: ‘Sh-Boom’ – The Crew-Cuts


3: ‘Wanted’ – Perry Como


4: ‘Oh! My Pa-Pa (O Mein Papa) – Eddie Fisher


5: ‘Make Love To Me!’ – Jo Stafford


6: ‘Mr. Sandman’ – The Chordettes


7: ‘Hey There’ – Rosemary Clooney

Crotchet Monorhythm Contrarhythm No

8: ‘Secret Love’ – Doris Day


9: ‘This Ole House’ –


188

Rosemary Clooney 10: ‘I Need You Now’ – Eddie Fisher


11: ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ – Four Aces feat. Al Alberts


12: ‘Cross Over the Bridge’ – Patti Page


13: ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ – Archie Bleyer


Polyrhythm N/A No

14: ‘Stranger in Paradise’ – Tony Bennett


15: ‘I Get So Lonely (When I Dream About You)’ – The Four Knights


16: ‘Young-At-Heart’ – Frank Sinatra


17: ‘The Little Shoemaker’ – The Gaylords



18: ‘Hold My Hand’ – Don Cornell


19: ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ – The Ames Brothers


Polyrhythm N/A No

20: ‘Skokiaan’ – Ralph Marterie


Polyrhythm N/A No

1955 1: ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ – Perez Prado


Polyrhythm N/A No

2: ‘Sincerely’ – The McGuire Sisters


3: ‘Rock Around the Clock’ – Bill Haley & His Comets


4: ‘Sixteen Tons’ – “Tennessee” Ernie Ford


5: ‘Love Is a Triple-quaver Monorhythm Commetre No

189

Many-Splendored Thing – Four Aces 6: ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ – Mitch Miller



7: ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett’ – Bill Hayes


8: ‘Autumn Leaves’ – Roger Williams


9: ‘Let Me Go Lover’ – Joan Weber


10: ‘Dance With Me Henry (Wallflower)’ – Georgia Gibbs


11: ‘Heart of Stone’ – The Fontane Sisters


12: ‘Unchained Melody’ – Les Baxter


Polyrhythm N/A No

13: ‘Learnin’ the Blues’ – Frank Sinatra


14: ‘Ain’t That a Shame’ – Pat Boone


15: ‘The Crazy Otto’ – Johnny Maddox


16: ‘Moments to Remember’ – The Four Lads



17: ‘I Hear You Knocking’ – Gale Storm

Triple-quaver Polyrhythm Contrarhythm No

18: ‘Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)’ – Perry Como


19: ‘Teach Me Tonight’ – The De Castro Sisters


20: ‘Melody of Love’ – Billy Vaughan


1956 1: ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ – Elvis Presley



1 (joint): ‘Hound Featuring Monorhythm Contrarhythm Yes

190

Dog’ – Elvis Presley

duple-quaver

2: ‘Singing the Blues’ – Guy Mitchell


3: ‘The Wayward Wind’ – Gogi Grant



4: ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ – Elvis Presley


5: ‘Rock and Roll Waltz’ – Kay Starr


6: ‘The Poor People of Paris’ – Les Baxter

Triple-quaver Monorhythm Commetre Yes

7: ‘Memories Are Made of This’ – Dean Martin


8: ‘Love Me Tender’ – Elvis Presley


9: ‘My Prayer’ – The Platters


10: ‘Lisbon Antigua’ – Nelson Riddle


11: ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’ – Pat Boone


12: ‘The Green Door’ – Jim Lowe


13: ‘Moonglow and Theme from “Picnic”‘ – Morris Stoloff


14: ‘The Great Pretender’ – The Platters


15: ‘Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)’ – Perry Como



16: ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ – Elvis Presley


17: ‘No, Not Much!’ – The Four Lads


18: ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ – Carl Perkins


191

19: ‘Honky Tonk (Parts 1 & 2) – Bill Doggett


20: ‘Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)’ – Doris Day


1957 1: ‘All Shook Up’ – Elvis Presley


2: ‘Love Letters in the Sand’ – Pat Boone


3: ‘Jailhouse Rock’ – Elvis Presley


Monorhythm Contrarhythm Yes

4: ‘(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear’ – Elvis Presley


5: ‘April Love’ – Pat Boone


6: ‘Young Love’ – Tab Hunter


7: ‘Tammy’ – Debbie Reynolds


8: ‘Honeycomb’ – Jimmie Rodgers


9: ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ – The Everly Brothers



10: ‘You Send Me’ – Sam Cooke


11: ‘Butterfly’ – Andy Williams


12: ‘Too Much’ – Elvis Presley


13: ‘Round and Round’ – Perry Como


14: ‘Butterfly’ – Charlie Gracie


15: ‘Chances Are’ – Johnny Mathis


16: ‘Don’t Forbid Me’ – Pat Boone


17: ‘Young Love’ – Sonny James


18: ‘Diana’ – Paul Anka


Polyrhythm N/A No

19: ‘Party Doll’ – Buddy Knox


20: ‘That’ll Be The Day’ – The Crickets


192

1958 1: ‘At the Hop’ – Danny & the Juniors



2: ‘It’s All in the Game’ – Tommy Edwards


3: ‘The Purple People Eater’ – Sheb Wooley



4: ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ – The Everly Brothers



5: ‘Tequila’ – The Champs


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘Don’t’ – Elvis Presley


7: ‘Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)’ – Domenico Modugno


8: ‘Sugartime’ – The McGuire Sisters


9: ‘He’s Got the Whole World (In His Hands)’ – Laurie London


10: ‘The Chipmunk Song’ – David Seville


1959 1: ‘Mack the Knife’ – Bobby Darin


2: ‘The Battle of New Orleans’ – Johnny Horton



3: ‘Venus’ – Frankie Avalon


Polyrhythm N/A No

4: ‘Stagger Lee’ – Lloyd Price


5: ‘The Three Bells’ – The Browns


Monorhythm Commetre Yes

6: ‘Lonely Boy’ – Paul Anka


7: ‘Come Softly to Me’ – Fleetwoods


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

8: ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ – The Platters



9: ‘Heartaches By Triple-quaver Polyrhythm N/A No

193

the Number’ – Guy Mitchell 10: ‘Sleep Walk’ – Santo & Johnny


1960 1: ‘The Theme from “A Summer Place”‘ – Percy Faith


2: ‘Are You Lonesome To-night?’ – Elvis Presley


3: ‘It’s Now or Never’ – Elvis Presley


Polyrhythm N/A No

4: ‘Cathy’s Clown’ – The Everly Brothers


Polyrhythm N/A No

5: ‘Stuck on You’ – Elvis Presley


6: ‘I’m Sorry’ – Brenda Lee


7: ‘Running Bear’ – Johnny Preston



8: ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ – The Drifters


Polyrhythm N/A No

9: ‘Teen Angel’ – Mark Dinning



10: ‘My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own’ – Connie Francis


1961 1: ‘Tossin’ and Turnin’’ – Bobby Lewis


Polyrhythm N/A No

2: ‘Big Bad John’ – Jimmy Dean


3: ‘Runaway’ – Del Shannon


Polyrhythm N/A No

4: ‘Wonderland By Night’ – Bert Kaempfert


5: ‘Pony Time’ – Chubby Checker


6: ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ – The Tokens


7: ‘Blue Moon’ – The Marcels


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

8: ‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ – Bobby Vee



194

9: ‘Calcutta’ – Lawrence Welk


Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘Runaround Sue’ – Dion


1962 1: ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ – Ray Charles


2: ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ – The 4 Seasons


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

3: ‘Sherry’ – The 4 Seasons


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

4: ‘Roses Are Red (My Love)’ – Bobby Vinton


5: ‘Peppermint Twist – Part I’ – Joey Dee & the Starliters


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘Telstar’ – The Tornadoes



7: ‘Soldier Boy’ – The Shirelles


8: ‘Hey! Baby’ – Bruce Channel



9: ‘Duke of Earl’ – Gene Chandler


Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘The Twist’ – Chubby Checker



1963 1: ‘Sugar Shack’ – Jimmy Gilmer/Fireballs


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

2: ‘He’s So Fine’ – The Chiffons


Polyrhythm N/A No

3: ‘Dominique’ – The Singing Nun


4: ‘Hey Paula’ – Paul & Paula


5: ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ – The Angels


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘Blue Velvet’ – Bobby Vinton


7: ‘Sukiyaki’ – Kyu Sakamoto


8: ‘I Will Follow Him’ – Little Peggy March


Polyrhythm N/A No

9: ‘Fingertips – Part 2’ – Little Stevie Wonder


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

10: ‘Walk Like a Man’ - The 4



195

Seasons 1964 1: ‘I Want to Hold

Your Hand’ – The Beatles


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

2: ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ – The Beatles


3: ‘There! I’ve Said It Again’ – Bobby Vinton


4: ‘‘Baby Love’ – The Supremes


5: ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ - Roy Orbison with the Candy Men


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

6: ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ – The Animals


7: ‘Chapel of Love’ – The Dixie Cups


8: ‘I Feel Fine’ – The Beatles


Polyrhythm N/A No

9: ‘She Loves You’ – The Beatles


Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘I Get Around’ – The Beach Boys



1965 1: ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ – The Rolling Stones


Polyrhythm N/A No

2: ‘Yesterday’ – The Beatles



3: ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ – The Byrds


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

4: ‘Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’ – Herman’s Hermits


5: ‘I Got You Babe’ – Sonny & Cher


6: ‘Help!’ – The Beatles


7: ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ – The Four Tops


Polyrhythm N/A No

8: ‘You’ve Lost Featuring Polyrhythm N/A No

196

That Lovin’ Feelin’’ – The Righteous Brothers

duple-quaver

9: ‘Downtown’ – Petula Clark


Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘This Diamond Ring’ – Gary Lewis/Playboys



197

Appendix 3. Rhythmic characteristics of the sample of year-end hits on the Billboard R&B singles chart from 1950 to 1965 Year Song – Artist Rhythmic

(Sub)divisions in the Fixed Rhythm




1950 1: ‘Pink Champagne’ – Joe Liggins


2: ‘Teardrops from My Eyes’ – Ruth Brown


3: ‘Double Crossing Blues’ – Johnny Otis/The Robins/Little Esther


4: ‘Blue Light Boogie - Parts 1 & 2’ – Louis Jordan


5: ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’ – Ivory Joe Hunter


6: ‘Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere’ – Joe Morris


7: ‘Blue Shadows’ – Lowell Fulson w/ Lloyd Glenn


8: ‘Mona Lisa’ – Nat “King” Cole


9: ‘Mistrustin’ Blues’ – Little Esther/Mel Walker/Johnny Otis


10: ‘Hard Luck Blues’ – Roy Brown


1951 1: ‘Sixty-Minute Man’ – The Dominoes


2: ‘‘Black Night’ –


198

Charles Brown 3: ‘Fool, Fool, Fool’ – The Clovers


4: ‘Rocket “88”’ – Jackie Brentson


5: ‘Flamingo’ – Earl Bostic


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘I’m In the Mood’ – John Lee Hooker


7: ‘The Glory of Love’ – The Five Keys


8: ‘Bad, Bad Whiskey’ – Amos Milburn


9: ‘Don’t You Know I Love You’ – The Clovers


10: ‘I Got Loaded’ – “Peppermint” Harris


1952 1: ‘Have Mercy Baby’ – The Dominoes


2: ‘My Song’ – Johnny Ace w/ The Beale Streeters


3: ‘Juke’ – Little Walter & his Night Cats


4: ‘I Don’t Know’ – Willie Mabon


5: ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ – Lloyd Price


6: ‘Night Train’ – Jimmy Forrest


7: ‘5-10-15 Hours’ – Ruth Brown


8: ‘Five Long Years’ – Eddie Boyd


9: ‘3 O’Clock blues’ – B.B.


199

King 10: ‘Mary Jo’ – Four Blazes

Triple-quaver Monorhythm Contrarhythm

1953 1: ‘Money Honey’ – Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters


2: ‘Shake a Hand’ – Faye Adams


3: ‘Honey Hush’ – Joe Turner


4: ‘Hound Dog’ – Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton


Polyrhythm N/A No

5: ‘Crying in the Chapel’ – The Orioles


6: ‘(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean’ – Ruth Brown


7: ‘Help Me Somebody’ – The “5” Royales


8: ‘The Clock’ – Johnny Ace w/ The Beale Streeters



9: ‘Please Love Me’ – B.B. King


10: ‘Baby Don’t Do It’ – The “5” Royales


1954 1: ‘The Things That I Used To Do’ – Guitar Slim


2: ‘Hearts of Stone’ – The Charms


3: ‘Honey Love’ – The Drifters Feat. Clyde McPhatter


Polyrhythm N/A No

200

4: ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – Roy Hamilton



5: ‘Oh What a Dream’ – Ruth Brown & Her Rhythmakers


6: ‘Work with Me Annie’ – The Midnighters


7: ‘Hurts Me to My Heart’ – Faye Adams



8: ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ – Joe Turner


9: ‘Annie Had a Baby’ – The Midnighters



10: ‘You Upset Me Baby’ – B.B. King


11: ‘I’ll Be True’ – Faye Adams



12: ‘Mambo Baby’ – Ruth Brown and her Rhythmakers


Polyrhythm N/A No

13: ‘Lovey Dovey’ – The Clovers


14: ‘Such a Night’ – Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters


15: ‘You’re So Fine’ – Little Walter & His Jukes


16: ‘Sh-Boom’ – The Chords


17: ‘Gee’ – The Crows


18: ‘Saving My Love for You’ – Johnny Ace


19: ‘Sexy Ways’ – The Midnighters


20: ‘Rags to Triple-quaver Monorhythm Commetre No

201

Riches’ – Billy Ward & His Dominoes

1955 1: ‘Ain’t That a Shame’ – Fats Domino


2: ‘Maybellene’ – Chuck Berry



3: ‘Pledging My Love’ – Johnny Ace


4: ‘Only You (And You Alone) – The Platters


5: ‘My Babe’ – Little Walter & His Jukes



6: ‘The Wallflower’ – Etta James


7: ‘Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) – The Penguins


8: ‘Hands Off’ – Jay McShann



9: ‘Unchained Melody’ – Roy Hamilton


10: ‘All By Myself’ – Fats Domino


11: ‘Bo Diddley’ – Bo Diddley


12: ‘Sincerely’ – The Moonglows


13: ‘I Got a Woman’ – Ray Charles


14: ‘Unchained Melody’ – Al Hibbler



15: ‘A Fool For You’ – Ray Charles


16: ‘Poor Me’ – Fats Domino


17: ‘Adorable’ – The Drifters


18: ‘Feel So Triple-quaver Monorhythm Contrarhythm No

202

Good’ – Shirley & Lee 19: ‘Play It Fair’ – LaVern Baker


20: ‘Don’t Be Angry’ – Nappy Brown


1956 1: ‘Honky Tonk (Parts 1 & 2) – Bill Doggett


2: ‘Blueberry Hill’ – Fats Domino


3: ‘The Great Pretender’ – The Platters


4: ‘I’m In Love Again’ – Fats Domino


5: ‘Long Tall Sally’ – Little Richard



6: ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ – Elvis Presley



7: ‘Hound Dog’ – Elvis Presley



8: ‘Fever’ – Little Willie John


9: ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’ – Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers


10: ‘Let the Good Times Roll’ – Shirley & Lee


11: ‘My Prayer’ – The Platters


12: ‘Rip It Up’ – Little Richard


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

13: ‘Drown In My Own Tears’ – Ray Charles


14: ‘At My Front Door’ – The El Dorados


203

15: ‘Treasure of Love’ – Clyde McPhatter


16: ‘Tutti-Frutti’ – Little Richard





18: ‘Seven Days’ – Clyde McPhatter


19: ‘Corrine Corrina’ – Joe Turner


20: ‘Slippin’ And Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’)’ – Little Richard



1957 1: ‘Searchin’’ – The Coasters


2: ‘Blue Monday’ – Fats Domino


3: ‘I’m Walkin’’ – Fats Domino



4: ‘You Send Me’ – Sam Cooke





6: ‘School Day’ – Chuck Berry


7: ‘All Shook Up’ – Elvis Presley


8: ‘Mr. Lee’ – The Bobbettes


9: ‘Since I Met You Baby’ – Ivory Joe Hunter


10: ‘C.C. Rider’ – Chuck Willis


11: ‘Love Is Strange’ – Mickey & Sylvia


Polyrhythm N/A No

12: ‘Send for Me’ – Nat “King” Cole


204

13: ‘Lucille’ – Little Richard



14: ‘Farther Up the Road’ – Bobby “Blue” Bland


15: ‘Honeycomb’ – Jimmie Rodgers


16: ‘Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On’ – Jerry Lee Lewis



17: ‘Diana’ – Paul Anka


Polyrhythm N/A No

18: ‘Jim Dandy’ – LaVerne Baker


Polyrhythm N/A

19: ‘Short Fat Fannie’ – Larry Williams





1958 1: ‘Lonely Teardrops’ – Jackie Wilson


2: ‘Yakety Yak’ – The Coasters



3: ‘Get a Job’ – The Silhouettes


4: ‘Topsy II’ – Cozy Cole


Polyrhythm N/A

5: ‘At the Hop’ – Danny & the Juniors



6: ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ – The Everly Brothers



7: ‘Little Star’ – The Elegants



8: ‘Tequila’ – The Champs


Polyrhythm N/A No

9: ‘It’s All in the Game’ – Tommy Edwards


10: ‘Rock-In-Robin’ –


205

Bobby Day 1959 1: ‘It’s Just a

Matter of Time’ – Brook Benton


2: ‘Kansas City’ – Wilbert Harrison


3: ‘Stagger Lee’ – Lloyd Price


4: ‘Personality’ – Lloyd Price

Triple-quaver Polyrhythm N/A

5: ‘Poison Ivy’ – The Coasters


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘Thank You Pretty Baby’ – Brook Benton


7: ‘The Clouds’ – The Spacemen


8: ‘I’m Gonna Get Married’ – Lloyd Price


9: ‘So Many Ways’ – Brook Benton


10: ‘Don’t You Know’ – Della Reese


1960 1: ‘Baby (You’ve Got What it Takes’ – Dinah Washington & Brook Benton


2: ‘Kiddio’ – Brook Benton


3: ‘He Will Break Your Heart’ – Jerry Butler



4: ‘White Silver Sands’ – Bill Black’s Combo


5: ‘A Woman, A Lover, A Friend’ – Jackie Wilson


6: ‘A Rockin’ Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love)’ – Dinah



206

Washinton & Brook Benton 7: ‘Smokie – Part 2’ – Bill Black’s Combo


8: ‘Doggin’ Around’ – Jackie Wilson


9: ‘Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go’ – Hank Ballard & the Midnighters


10: ‘Fannie Mae’ – Buster Brown


1961 1: ‘Tossin’ and Turnin’’ – Bobby Lewis


Polyrhythm N/A No

2: ‘Shop Around’ – The Miracles


Polyrhythm N/A No

3: ‘Please Mr. Postman’ – The Marvelettes



4: ‘Mother-In-Law’ – Ernie K-Doe



5: ‘Hit the Rock Jack’ - Ray Charles


6: ‘Stand By Me’ – Ben E. King


Polyrhythm N/A No

7: ‘My True Story’ – The Jive Five


8: ‘Blue Moon’ – The Marcels


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

9: ‘Pony Time’ – Chubby Checker


10: ‘I Pity the Fool’ – Bobby Bland


1962 1: ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ – Ray Charles


2: ‘Duke of Earl’ – Gene Chandler


Polyrhythm N/A No

3: ‘Green Triple-quaver Polyrhythm N/A No

207

Onions’ – Booker T. & The MG’s 4: ‘I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More’ – Barbara George



5: ‘Mashed Potato Time’ – Dee Dee Sharp


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

6: ‘Do You Love Me’ – The Contours


Polyrhythm N/A No

7: ‘Release Me’ – “Little Esther” Phillips


8: ‘You’ll Lose a Good Thing’ – Barbara Lynn


9: ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ – The 4 Seasons


Polyrhythm N/A No

10: ‘You Are My Sunshine’ – Ray Charles


Polyrhythm N/A No

1963 1: ‘Louie Louie’ – The Kingsmen


Polyrhythm N/A No

2: ‘Fingertips – Part 2’ – Little Stevie Wonder


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

3: ‘It’s All Right’ – The Impressions


4: ‘Heat Wave’ – Martha & the Vandellas


5: ‘Two Lovers’ – Mary Wells


Polyrhythm N/A No

6: ‘He’s So Fine’ – The Chiffons


Polyrhythm N/A No

7: ‘Baby Workout’ – Jackie Wilson


8: ‘Cry Baby’ – Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters


9: ‘It’s My Featuring duple- Polyrhythm N/A No

208

Party’ – Leslie Gore

quaver

10: ‘That’s The Way Love Is’ – Bobby Bland


1964 NO CHART 1965 1: ‘I Can’t Help

Myself’ – The Four Tops


Polyrhythm N/A No

2: ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag (Part I)’ – James Brown


Polyrhythm N/A No

3: ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’ – James Brown


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

4: ‘My Girl’ – The Temptations


Polyrhythm N/A No

5: ‘Rescue Me’ – Fontella Bass


Polyrhythm N/A Yes

6: ‘Shotgun’ – Jr. Walker & the All Stars


Polyrhythm N/A No

7: ‘We’re Gonna Make It’ – Little Milton


8: ‘Got to Get You Off My Mind’ – Solomon Burke


9: ‘I Want To (Do Everything For You)’ – Joe Tex


10: ‘Hold What You’ve Got’ – Joe Tex


209

Appendix 4. Rhythmic characteristics of the sample of year-end hits on the Billboard country & western singles chart from 1954 to 1957 Year Song –

Artist Rhythmic (Sub)divisions in the Fixed Rhythm




1954 1: ‘I Don’t Hurt Anymore’ – Hank Snow


2: ‘Slowly’ – Webb Pierce


3: ‘More and More’ – Webb Pierce


4: ‘Bimbo’ – Jim Reeves


5: ‘Even Tho’ – Webb Pierce


6: ‘Wake Up, Irene’ – Hank Thompson



7: ‘(Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely’ – Johnnie & Jack


8: ‘One By One’ – Kitty Wells & Red Foley


9: ‘I Really Don’t Want to Know’ – Eddy Arnold


10: ‘You Better Not Do That’ – Tommy Collins


11: ‘I’ll Be There (If You Ever Want Me) – Ray Price


12: ‘This Ole House’ – Stuart Hamblen


210

13: ‘Secret Love’ – Slim Whitman


14: ‘Back Up Buddy’ – Carl Smith


15: ‘The New Green Light’ – Hank Thompson’


16: ‘I Love You’ – Ginny Wright/Jim Reeves


17: ‘This Is The Thanks I Get (For Loving You)’ – Eddy Arnold


18: ‘Courtin’ In the Rain’ – T. Texas Tyler

Tempo too quick to reliably discern rhythmic subdivisions


19: ‘I’m Walking the Dog’ – Webb Pierce


20: ‘If You Don’t Somebody Else Will’ – Jimmy & Johnny


1955 1: ‘In the Jailhouse Now’ – Webb Pierce


2: ‘Love, Love, Love’ – Webb Pierce


3: ‘I Don’t Care’ – Webb Pierce


4: ‘Sixteen Tons’ – “Tennessee” Ernie Ford


5: ‘Loose Talk’ – Carl


211

Smith 6: ‘A Satisfied Mind’ – Porter Wagoner


7: ‘Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young’ – Faron Young.


8: ‘The Cattle Call’ – Eddy Arnold


9: ‘Let Me Go, Lover!’ – Hank Snow


10: ‘That Do Make It Nice’ – Eddy Arnold. Not on Spotify bought on iTunes


11: ‘Makin’ Believe’ – Kitty Wells


12: ‘Just Call Me Lonesome’ – Eddy Arnold


13: ‘All Right’ – Faron Young


14: ‘I’ve Been Thinking’ – Eddy Arnold



15: ‘If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’) – Faron Young


16: ‘Are You Mine’ – Ginny Wright/Tom Tall


17: ‘Yellow Roses’ –


212

Hank Snow 18: ‘There She Goes’ – Carl Smith


19: ‘Satisfied Mind’ – Red Foley & Betty Foley


20: ‘Would You Mind?’ – Hank Snow



1956 1: ‘Crazy Arms’ – Ray Price


2: ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ – Elvis Presley


3: ‘Singing the Blues’ – Marty Robbins


4: ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ – Elvis Presley



5: ‘I Walk the Line’ – Johnny Cash



6: ‘I Forgot To Remember To Forget’ – Elvis Presley


7: ‘Why Baby Why’ – Webb Pierce and Red Sovine




9: ‘I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby’ – The Louvin Brothers



10: ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ – Elvis


213

Presley 11: ‘Yes I Know Why’ – Webb Pierce


12: ‘I’ve Got a New Heartache’ – Ray Price


13: ‘Sweet Dreams’ – Faron Young


14: ‘I Take the Chance’ – The Browns


15: ‘Poor Man’s Riches’ – Benny Barnes


16: ‘You and Me’ – Red Foley & Kitty Wells


17: ‘Love Me Tender’ – Elvis Presley


18: ‘Searching (for Someone Like You)’ – Kitty Wells


19: ‘Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (Tomorrow You’ll Cry)’ – Porter Wagoner


20: ‘Just One More’ – George Jones


1957 1: ‘Gone’ – Ferlin Husky


2: ‘Young Love’ – Sonny James


3: ‘Four Walls’ – Jim


214

Reeves 4: ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ – The Everly Brothers



5: ‘Bye Bye Love’ – The Everly Brothers


6: ‘There You Go’ – Johnny Cash



7: ‘A White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation)’ – Marty Robbins


8: ‘Fraulein’ – Bobby Helms


9: ‘My Special Angel’ – Bobby Helms

Triple-quaver Polyrhythm No

10: ‘My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You’ – Ray Price


11: ‘Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On’ – Jerry Lee Lewis






13: ‘Honky Tonk Song’ – Webb Pierce




15: ‘All Shook Up’ – Elvis Presley


215

16: ‘A Fallen Star’ – Jimmy Newman

Triple-quaver Monorhythm Commetre

17: ‘Why, Why’ – Carl Smith


18: ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’ – Patsy Cline


19: ‘Gonna Find Me a Bluebird’ – Marvin Rainwater


20: ‘Am I Losing You’ – Jim Reeves


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