MUS 4930 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Too Much Monkey Business, Polka, American Pop
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Bhakti Panchal
Professor Falwell
MUS 4930
1 August 2017
Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Lull and Revival
After losing Buddy Holly, Little Richard joining the ministry, Elvis going into the
military, and many other problems with Chuck Better and Jerry Lee Lewis, the long-lasting
effect was that everything started to change. There were many things that affected American Pop
Culture after many people had voluntary or accidentally left. For example, after Jerry Lee Lewis
came back on the record, he was black listed by most radio stations. Lewis could no longer
connect with an audience; neither of his songs made it into the top fifties. Large record
companies promoted polka, calypso, folk music, ballads, novelty songs, and a softer orchestrated
fare. Some independents went pop or merged with a major. In these years, moreover, the ranks of
more hardline rock “n” roll performers were depleted. Fans listed the losses that augured the end
of an era. Chuck Berry was a sexual threat and target of opponents of the civil rights movement
as well as does of rock ‘n’ roll. Even though he was put into jail his classics continued to sell
well. He had released some albums which became successful and during these years, English
musicians were listening to Berry as well. The Beatles sang Berry’s “Too Much Monkey
Business” every night at the Hamburg club. After Elvis came back from the military, he could
reclaim the throne in popular music and he had begun a new film. Elvis recorded 149 Top Forty
singles and reached the album charts with ninety-two LPs before he died in 1977. When Buddy
Holly died, a new career started for him. An album of his greatest hits reached number two on
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the charts and was on and off the Top 100 for the next seven years which shows how his music
influenced Americans after his death.
Furthermore, the British Invasion changed the music landscape of the late 50s and early
60s because of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and dozens of other British musicians whose
explosion into the American market would be known as the British Invasion- cut their musical
teeth on Berry Holly, Presley, Lewis and Little Richard. Alice Echols argues, the British
Invaders “conquered American with their very own music.” Many of their recordings were note-
for-note versions of rock ‘n’ roll classics. Buddy Holly was also a role model for the British
invaders because every British rock ‘n’ roller starting with the Beatles, listened to and learned
from Holly. While rock ‘n’ roll flourished in England in the early 60s with the 350 bands in
Liverpool alone, the music receded in the United States. Even though new and old songs were
sold, only a few new artists emerged, one being Roy Orbison.
During the lull, rock ‘n’ roll limited itself in subject matter and theme romance, well
before or after move was made mangiest and to celebrations of the young and the restless in the
United States. Some listeners wanted more than they were getting; they missed music that took
risks and spoke to a fuller range of human experiences. The Beatles remained playfully
irreverent, but over the course of the decade, in such songs as “Paperback Writer,” they began to
use rock ‘n’ roll as a medium for a critique of modern industrial culture. There were many
British rock ‘n’ roll groups that followed the Beatles to the United Sates. Many of them and a
new generation of American artists-tapped into the new belief with a sexually graphic, racial
psychedelic music.
Founded in by Berry Gordy, Motown produced a rhythm and blues sound with more
staying power than “the girl’s groups,” who were swept away by the British Invasion. When it
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