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What was before Elvis

The earth was created and Elvis popped out eh, lol. There were acts like Billie Holiday, B.B. King, Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Peggy Lee, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Mathis, Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, Bessie Smith, Jackie Wilson, Fats Domino, and many more.
 
Rock and roll was out before Elvis became popular. He is just the one that a lot of people know now. You had Chuck Berry and Little Richard doing it as well and before Elvis came out.
 
Here is what was before Elvis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_rock_and_roll_record

Elvis himself: "A lot of people seem to think I started this business, but rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that.(p. 199)"
 
fred astaire, dean martin, all the BLACK artists that Elvis "sampled" from....elvis wasn't the beginning by any stretch of the imagination..he just happened to be white and therefore palpable to the white pallette at the time, but he was DOING black music and moves
 
Frank Sinatra Arrives In 1943 For Hollywood Bowl performance.
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Pittsburgh, PA 1943
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Buddy Holly was doing extremely well before he died along with Ritchie Valens. :( And yes... B.B. King. He is an AWESOME performer, saw him in concert in Hawaii. He is a TREAT to watch. :D Those are the only ones (that aren't already listed) I can think of right now.
 
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Nirvana said:
What music was before elvis was it just classical music and baroque ?
Was elvis the first real singer and celebrity ?
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No, the first celebrities in music history were opera singers going as far back as the 17th and 18th century. Especially castratos were extremely popular in the late 17th and the first half of the 18th century. Great castratos had a very powerful and a very high voice because they were castrated. During performances by someone like, say, Farinelly there were scenes of mass hysteria - women fainting, screaming, and so on. In the second half of the 18th century castratos disappeared from the scene and tenors and especially sopranos became the most popular voice types. Someone like Jenny Lind was as popular in the 19th century as our pop queens are today, including tours with concerts for tens of thousands of people. There were also instrumentalists who were stars. Violinist Nicolo Paganini for example was sorta the Jimi Hendrix of the 19th century. When the grammophone was invented tenor Enrico Caruso became early in the 20th century the first superstar of the record industry - the first one to sell millions of records.


The 'pop music' of the first half of the 20th century came primarily from three fields:

1) The musical.
Virtually every singer sang and recorded songs that came from musicals. Musicals were huge in those days, both in the theatre and on the silver screen and the songs from songwriters like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and about half a dozen others continue to be popular and widely recorded to this day. 80% of everything that people like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett ever recorded are songs from these guys. Even jazz instrumentalists improvised on tunes from them.

2) Jazz.
Singers recorded songs from musicals, but the arrangements were often heavily influenced by jazz. Ragtime was an important movement around the turn of the 19th/20th century with Scott Joplin as it's most important representative, then came Dixieland (Louis Armstrong) and in the 1930's you had the bigbands when Swing (Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie) was hugely popular. In the mid-40's Jazz moved into it's be-bop phase and became a form of 'art-music' and as such became less of an influence on pop.

3) Vaudeville.
Remember the minstrel shows? Al Jolson (in blackface) was the first superstar 'pop' singer' with his ridiculous mammy songs. The music from categories one and two has stood the test of time - the music of the singers that came out of the Vaudeville movement hasn't. In fact, they sound laughable to modern ears. Even so - Jolson was the biggest star in popular music until Bing Crosby arrived on the scene.


One thing you have to keep in mind is that in those days music from black artists was except for a few very rare exceptions (Armstrong, Nat King Cole) only popular among people of colour. Black jazz artists were the most important of their time from an artistic perspective, but it were usually the watered down white versions of the same music that sold the most records to the whites - which is where the money was. There was a musical apartheid in those days. Even when a record by a black artist sold enough copies to be on the 'big' charts it wasn't included because it was considered 'race music.' If there's one thing we have to be grateful for to Elvis it's that he changed the attitude of whites towards black music. His early records sounded black enough to make the listener curious enough to check out the real thing. He did for radio what Michael did for MTV so to speak.
 
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Here's a few of my favorite clips from La Bamba (The Ritchie Valens Movie - 1987) ... and the original recordings from Ritchie Valens. I was completely obssessed with this movie and the songs when I was younger. Plus, Lou Diamond Phillips was THE icing on the cake. :swoon::wub: :p


Ritchie Valens (1941 - 1959)


La Bamba - Ritchie Valens (1959)

La Bamba (Movie/Soundtrack/Los Lobos - 1987)

Donna - Ritchie Valens (1959)

Donna - 1987

We Belong Together - 1987


The entire soundtrack and basically all of his songs were effing AWESOME.




Buddy Holly (1936- 1959)


Crying, Waiting, Hoping - Buddy Holly - 1959

That'll Be the Day - Buddy Holly - 1957

That'll Be the Day & Peggy Sue - The Buddy Holly Story (1978)

Peggy Sue - Buddy Holly - 1957



I emphasize on these two artists because they were both true Rock n' Roll pioneers, their deaths were very tragic, and they were entirely too young. Ritchie was only 17! The Big Bopper also died in the same plane crash.

I truly pray that when they make a movie about Michael, that it will be just as beautiful and touching. :angel:

Now I want to go watch La Bamba. :D
 
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George W. Johnson

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The first really popular recording artist was George W. Johnson, whose first records were Whistling Coon & The Laughing Song. They were first released in the 1890s. Back then, there was no recording tape or microphones. A singer or band had to record each copy of a record separately by singing in a horn type thing. They had to sing really loud or the sound would not pick up on the recording. So everybody who bought a record had a unique version. If a song happened to get popular, the singer had to sing the song thousands of times, to have enough copies for the demand. In the case of The Laughing Song there were versions for multiple years. This one is from 1897.
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This recording is from 1891, and is George's first.
 
abc123 said:
The 'pop music' of the first half of the 20th century came primarily from three fields:

1) The musical.
Virtually every singer sang and recorded songs that came from musicals. Musicals were huge in those days, both in the theatre and on the silver screen and the songs from songwriters like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and about half a dozen others continue to be popular and widely recorded to this day. 80% of everything that people like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett ever recorded are songs from these guys. Even jazz instrumentalists improvised on tunes from them.

2) Jazz.
Singers recorded songs from musicals, but the arrangements were often heavily influenced by jazz. Ragtime was an important movement around the turn of the 19th/20th century with Scott Joplin as it's most important representative, then came Dixieland (Louis Armstrong) and in the 1930's you had the bigbands when Swing (Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie) was hugely popular. In the mid-40's Jazz moved into it's be-bop phase and became a form of 'art-music' and as such became less of an influence on pop.

3) Vaudeville.
Remember the minstrel shows? Al Jolson (in blackface) was the first superstar 'pop' singer' with his ridiculous mammy songs. The music from categories one and two has stood the test of time - the music of the singers that came out of the Vaudeville movement hasn't. In fact, they sound laughable to modern ears. Even so - Jolson was the biggest star in popular music until Bing Crosby arrived on the scene.


One thing you have to keep in mind is that in those days music from black artists was except for a few very rare exceptions (Armstrong, Nat King Cole) only popular among people of colour. Black jazz artists were the most important of their time from an artistic perspective, but it were usually the watered down white versions of the same music that sold the most records to the whites - which is where the money was. There was a musical apartheid in those days. Even when a record by a black artist sold enough copies to be on the 'big' charts it wasn't included because it was considered 'race music.' If there's one thing we have to be grateful for to Elvis it's that he changed the attitude of whites towards black music. His early records sounded black enough to make the listener curious enough to check out the real thing. He did for radio what Michael did for MTV so to speak.
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Paul Robeson was HUGE in the UK, and very much a cross-over artist stylistically, starting (as many singers do) with religious music, then moving on to musicals (Showboat was a massive hit) and then becoming politically active. He very notably supported miners in the UK. He was a great hero of the UK working class, who were then still largely of caucasian origin, as mass immigration from former colonies did not really get under way until after WWII. There was no 'musical apartheid' in the UK, and I'm not sure there ever has been.
 
Hot_Street said:
Junior Parker......... Mystery Train 1953
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Herman "Junior" Parker was an American blues singer and musician. He is best remembered for his voice which has been described as "honeyed" and "velvet-smooth". One music journalist noted, "For years, Junior Parker deserted down home harmonica blues for uptown blues-soul music".

Thank you :) I had not heard that song for a long time.
 
Al Jolson was the Elvis , MJ of the 1920's

He was pretty much the preeminent superstar who had more number 1 hits than the Beatles and was also dubbed the world's greatest entertainer.

He was the king of Broadway and starred in the first ever talking picture , The Jazz Singer (1927). He also had two biopics based on his life (whilst he was still alive)
 
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