Pop Music

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Timothy Berg

While there has always been "popular" music in the United States, and all forms of music are popular with certain audiences, the term "pop music" generally denotes forms of music that are non-classical, very mainstream, intended for very wide audiences, and often controlled by the giants of the music business: sheet music publishers in the early decades of the century, recording companies after 1930. While these companies often produced a great variety of music, their need for profits mandated a constant search for the "next big thing," the next great artist, or style of music whose popularity would generate big record sales. Thus fueled by the profit motive, companies sought to reach the widest markets possible. And while the large companies did produce music targeted at markets considered "marginal," such as the African-American population, they tended to focus on music that was unchallenging, unthreatening, and palatable across the spectrum of listeners.

The focus on palatable, tuneful, and unchallenging music did not necessarily mean music of poor quality. White crooners such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Tony Bennett, and other artists, along with black performers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Nat "King" Cole, dominated the popular music charts during the 1940s and early 1950s. They also produced some of the finest pop vocal music ever recorded, often composed by the accepted masters of the popular genre such as the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen and others, whose best-known songs have become standards of the repertoire--the classics of light, romantic, and/or witty music. Prior to the rise of rock 'n' roll in 1955, this style of music was American pop music, and it appealed to white Americans, and listeners in other English-speaking countries, of all ages and classes. The music was easy to produce, and the recording companies knew what material to look for. With the rise of rock 'n' roll, however, things changed. The large companies that defined the pop music field began finding it increasingly difficult to control or predict the course of pop music and the "next big thing" became harder and harder to find with any regularity. Thus, after 1955, the pop music field fragmented and, by the end of the twentieth century, that fragmentation had become so great that the term "pop music" is now very difficult to define.

This fragmentation was the result of numerous of factors. First, while the major record companies such as Columbia, RCA, Decca, and Capitol dominated the pop vocal field during the 1940s and 1950s, they were not the only companies in the music business. Small, independent labels such as Chess, King, Specialty, Sun, and others were busy recording and selling more marginal or specialized music--blues, rhythm and blues, country and western, ethnic music, folk, gospel, and so on. What they were doing was tapping into the diverse musical landscape that existed in the United States. Occasionally, one of these small independents would have a major hit. Chess had huge successes in the mid-and late 1950s with such early rock 'n' roll greats as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Sun was the first to record Elvis Presley, whose amalgamation of country, blues, and rhythm and blues styles hit the charts in the mid-1950s. These successes not only challenged the commercial success of the major labels, but they also shattered the homogeneity of the pop music field. How could Chuck Berry and Tony Bennett both be singing pop music? The answer was that they were not. After the rise of rock 'n' roll, new styles challenged the primacy of pop music dominated by white crooners.

This rupture in the landscape of popular music set off a scramble by the large companies to keep up with the changes. For a brief period, from about 1955 to 1958, they were unable to do so alone. RCA succeeded for a time by buying Elvis Presley's contract from Sun, adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach, but Presley's experience at RCA was indicative of the entire approach the major labels took to pop music: co-optation. Compared to the raw power of his early Sun recordings, Presley's output on RCA was a rapid devolution into the pop crooner formula. It was the only form the major labels understood. Thus, while Presley scored some early rock 'n' roll hits on RCA ("Jailhouse Rock," "Hound Dog"), by the late 1950s he had been reshaped into the pop crooner mold, recording such songs as "Love Me Tender" and "Treat Me Nice." By the mid-1970s, Presley was recording the same songs as Frank Sinatra, notably "My Way."

By 1958, the major companies had regained much of their position through the process of co-opting many of the more marginal sub-genres of American music. If a record became a hit in one of these more marginal markets, the major labels found someone to record the same song in a way that was palatable to white middle-America. Thus, while black America heard an original like Little Richard singing "Tutti Frutti," white America heard Pat Boone's watered-down version. These major labels also followed the tried-and-true formula that had worked during the crooner era of relying on professional songwriters to write material for young singers. Thus pop music during the 1958 to 1963 period was dominated by teen idols and young vocal groups singing professionally written songs, many written out of New York's Brill Building songwriting center. This was a system the major labels understood, one controlled by professional producers using professional songwriters and studio musicians. While some great music came out of this era, it largely conformed to the major pop requirements, producing unthreatening, easy to listen to music with mass appeal.