A long, long time ago, Bob Dylan sang: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
Recently, while contemplating that profound thought, my mind took me back to remembering the times that I grew up in. It wasn’t very long after the last Big War.
I guess this is what old folks do. We start slip-sliding away from this real world into a nostalgia of days gone by. . . not entirely, mind you, but enough to render the present into a more understandable context.
My parents’ generation, of course, had a different set of memories. Their dreamy memories were perhaps summoned in Archie Bunker’s theme song:
“Boy, the way Glenn Miller played. . . songs that made the hit parade. . . gee! I oughta celebrate; those were the days.”
Those were the days of Louis Armstrong’s jazz morphing into Swing and beyond.
While Duke Ellington and his big band were swayin’ and swingin up in Harlem, along came Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie and a host of others in those ’30’s big band venues of the Big Apple, Chicago, and beyond.
The Western world was swinging and swaying into some new/old musical grooves. This beboppin’ modulation would ultimately help to soothe those war wounds of our Greatest Generation.
You see. . . the greatest collective historical life-sacrifice known to man— running the dam nazis and the fascists and hiro-heads back into their holes— had been accomplished, by the grace of God, by 1945.
Meanwhile, back at the big River, black blues and bebop was being reborn into jazz and ultimately branching off into rock ’n roll, to sooth the tortured soul of our Greatest generation.
The new music had come slip-slidin’ out of ole Mississippi delta mud, where, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Light'nin' Hopkins, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith had slogged a muddy way out of no way. Up in Chicago, them delta-born blues was bein’ modulated into some sho-nuff high-falootin’ big city tracks. And these musicians mentioned here are just the pioneering ones that I’ve heard of!
While all that was going on, back down in the Mississippi delta, BB King was busy bein’ born in 1928. Along came Bo Diddley in Greenwood in 1928 and Little Richard in 1932. By 'n by, along came BB King and Chuck Berry. And we can't forget a godfather of Soul, James Brown!
While this writing fool— this baby boomer— I, was being born in Louisiana in 1951, there was an earth-shaking birth-pangs sisboombah happening all around my mama’s delivery. In the muddy belly of the the deep South, rock ’n roll was being born upriver in Memphis.
Shake, rattle and roll! and I helped. Haha!
Up on the Great Lake Erie, in Cleveland, disc jockey Alan Freed gave the new music a name: rock ’n roll! Up the road, in Detroit, the vibes were busy bein' born to bring something very special to America. . . 'mo' about that town in the next blog.
Up and down and all a-round-round!
Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, about 150 miles from where I was a clueless suburban kid being raised in Jackson, a white boy with a black feelin' was crooning a different kind of rhythm than any other white boy had ever felt before.
Why! even over in the Lone Star, in Texas, Buddy Holly and his buds were pickin’ up on the new beat.
Starting in Memphis, BB King was big in bringin' a rockin' blues to the wider world; then along came Chuck Berry thumpin' out, in a powerful way, the news of the day:
"I got a rockin' pneumonia; I need a shot of rhythm n' blues; hey diddle diddle gonna play my fiddle, got nothing to lose. Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the News!"
The revolution into Rock was so huge and so loud that even Ludwig and Tchai probably were feeling that Beat, because they had already been picking up those revolution vibes back in 1812!
It wasn't too long, thereafter . . . mid-’50’s . . . across the waters, Brit kids in Liverpool heard that News, while dancing to a new, never-heard-before-in-England backbeat that had drifted upriver from the muddy waters of Mississippi up to the Great Lakes. . . and downriver to N’Awlins and across the Great Waters to England and beyond.
Stay tuned for more about the next phase of rock 'n roll.
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