![]() The romantic ballads of the 1930s were from the heart - these were from someplace a bit lower. To young whites it was off-limits, intriguing, and helped the teens think they were getting away with something - rebelling. The black stations were playing music with more rhythm & blues – more exciting music – stuff that made you really want to move. Late at night, teens could dial in whatever stations they wanted. There were black radio stations that played ‘race’ music and white radio stations that played anything but ‘race’ music. The South was still deeply segregated but new technologies were making it possible to experience music across cultures. Restless teenagers were looking for a change. ![]() The soldiers who returned from WWII were settling down with wives and young families. The recording ban had displaced Big Bands from the charts and smaller bands were emerging. Some believe they were one of the first Rockabilly groups, if not the very first.īy the 1950s, it wasn’t clear what direction popular music would take. Seeing how well this excited crowds, more and more younger white bands began to behave like the Maddoxes on stage. There was something going on all the time.” The Maddoxes helped release white bodies from traditional notions of decorum - they just couldn’t keep from dancing. I mean it just wasn’t us up there pickin’ and singing. They played real loud for that time, too.” The Maddoxes were also known for their lively antics. ![]() “They played hillbilly music but it sounded real hot. Maddox said, “You’ve got to have somethin’ they can tap their foot or dance to, or to make ’em feel it.” After World War II the band kicked into high gear, pressing a more honky-tonk feel, with a heavy, manic bottom end. Combined with a Boogie bass line, he could really drive the bottom end of the band and audiences couldn’t keep still. Country artists like Moon Mullican, the Delmore Brothers, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Speedy West, Jimmy Bryant, and the Maddox Brothers and Rose began recording what was known as “Hillbilly Boogie”, consisting of “hillbilly” vocals and instrumentation with a boogie bass line.įred Maddox of the Maddox Brothers and Rose discovered that he could get a dramatic percussive ‘slap’ by a combination of slapping and vertically plucking strings of the stand-up 3/4 bass fiddle. In 1938 blues artists like Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson launched a nationwide boogie craze.It’s the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. Wills is quoted as saying “Rock and Roll? Why, man, that’s the same kind of music we’ve been playin’ since 1928! But it’s just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. Recordings of Wills from the mid-40s to the early 50s include “two beat jazz” rhythms, “jazz choruses”, and guitar work that preceded early rockabilly recordings. These corresponded to the public’s passion for Cowboy movies and the growing popularity of Big Bands. Western Swing by bands like Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, which combined country singing and steel guitar with big band jazz influences with horn sections. ![]() During the 1930s and 1940s two new country sounds emerged: Jimmie Rodgers, known as the ‘Blue Yodeler’, was perhaps the “first true country star.” The structure of most of his songs were blues-based chord progressions, although his blues had different instrumentation and sound from the recordings of his black blues contemporaries like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith. The first nationwide country hit was ‘Wreck of the Old ’97’ followed by ‘Lonesome Road Blues’. In its earlier form, there was an implication of a rich tradition of country music that embodied a variety of sources from the Blues to Cowboy, Western Swing and Boogie Woogie. By the time the Beverly Hillbillies was a hit on TV, the word had grown to imply: ‘Hick’ or ‘country’ used as a derogatory. The term morphed over time to acquire different meanings with new generations. ‘Hillbilly’ was a term used to describe some country music or mountain music. The word “rockabilly” is a fusion of “rock” (from “rock’n’roll”) and “hillbilly”. ![]()
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