Creativity tears at the straitjacket
Among those loudly critical of burgeoning Rock'n'Roll, were old guard musical rivals who watched resentfully as the upstart's popularity bloomed.
Author James Wierzbicki, in his 2016 Music In the Age of Anxiety, recorded that songwriter/orchestra leader/ASCAP member Billy Rose termed nascent Rock'n'Roll songs "obscene junk, pretty much on a level with dirty comic books."
Per Wierzbecki, other notable avowed foes of the new music included Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Bob Crosby, Mel Torme, and Paul Whiteman. Commendable talents, all. Just not terribly open-minded in music appreciation.
Ol' Blue Eyes, jacket slung over one shoulder, was caustic: “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd - in fact, plain dirty - lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth..."
Broadway composer Meredith Wilson (of Music Man renown) notoriously derided Rock'n'Roll as "utter garbage" that "should not be confused with anything related to music or verse."
Scolds were surely apprehensive about personal career sustainability, given the change in public preferences then unfolding. Too, they must have been embittered by success in their field accruing to those they regarded as inferiors, both musically and socially.
Their hidebound, rigid definition of musician -- someone able to read and reproduce on a moment's notice any notes in any style set before them -- was passing from common acceptance.
Skilled professions did have requirements, true, and not unreasonably so. Only someone knowledgeable of human anatomy, for instance, could be an effective surgeon. Likewise, no man ignorant of matters automotive could legitimately banner himself as a master mechanic.
But strict definition robbed music of its artful nature, its inherent capacity for individual and cultural expression. Musical notes were never red bricks, to be impersonally troweled into arrangement however befits utilitarian requisite.
By inflexible accounting, music was merely a profession of no more spiritual consequence than carpentry. In that view, musicians are interchangeable journeymen without individual perspective or worth. Machines, not men.
In honest and real folk musics -- whether Country, Blues, Rock'n'Roll, or any variant -- human expression not circumscribed by formula or regimentation was lifted up for salute.
Common people were and remain as entitled to creative outlet as anyone. The art they formed from personal experiences, in styles they found appropriate, were as valid as any issued from classroom lecturns.
This is not to depreciate technical proficiency. Some of the most enjoyable, worthwhile musicians, then and today, display breath-stealing abilities. We appreciate accomplished musicianship, and vigorously applaud its makers.
But virtuosity isn't necessary for someone to open up and pour their life into a song. Indeed, passion can sometimes be blocked by technical obsessiveness.
In Rock'n'Roll's embryonic seasons - also long before and since - music gave folks a way to make their own statements, in their own ways. Finger-wagging dogmatists urged straitjackets be respected. Damn them all.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
