Rock and Roll is Here to Stay
“Rock and Roll is Here to Stay” – Danny and the Juniors (1958) (https://youtu.be/LNEj5FUHStE) (Critics of rock & roll were sure that it was a temporary fad; teenagers of the Fifties were convinced otherwise. Thus, this song was a hit.) Rock & Roll is not just an American invention; it is an African-American invention. If […]
Doo Wops/Street Corner Harmony
“Doo-wop” is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in the 1940s by African-American youth, mainly in the ghettos of large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, and Washington, DC. It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with […]
White Cover Records
In the late Forties and early Fifties, the record industry was dominated by the existence of several large national operations (“labels”), which competed with smaller independent regional record producers. In the early 1950s the big five major record labels were Columbia, RCA Victor, Decca, Capitol and Mercury. There were popularity charts (“Top Ten” lists) by […]
American Bandstand
In his hit song “Sweet Little Sixteen” (1958) (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1405849232952298), Chuck Berry gave a shout out to a rock & roll dance show originating out of Philadelphia, Pa – “Cause they’ll be rockin’ on Bandstand in Philadelphia Pa.” This was an indication of the fact that nothing reflected Fifties teen age culture more than American Bandstand. […]
Criticism of the Fifties’ Culture
The period from the mid-to-late Fifties to the early Sixties saw a heightening of criticism of the metaphorical Levittown (and its clones) in literary and cultural forms. U.S. novels of the period presented a downbeat, unappealing and even bleak view of life in a Levittown style environment, especially John C Keats’s The Crack in the […]
Revolutionary Road
Revolutionary Road, written by Richard Yates in 1955, presented a portrait of a youngish all-American Fifties couple (April and Frank Wheeler), with two small children, six-year-old Jennifer and four-year-old Michael, living in a New England suburb of the big city in the 1950s. On the surface, the Wheelers are a perfect suburban family and the […]
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, written by Sloan Wilson and published in 1955, similar to Revolutionary Road, purports to capture the mood of the Fifties’ generation. The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit remains symbolic of the kind of middle-class conformity in 1950s America, namely the need for a man to submit to […]
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Culture
“The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Culture” (1950) written by David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, is considered to be one of the most important sociological books of the twentieth century. Sociologists Riesman and Glazer focused their criticism on the erosive capacity of suburbanization. “The Lonely Crowd,” according to the authors,. referred to […]
The Organization Man
“The Organization Man”, written by William H. Whyte (1957) was described as “epoch defining” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-rise-fall-of-organization-man_b_58c7ded1e4b0d06aa6580497). The Organization Man studied American businesses and argued that the guiding principle of American workers had become collectivism as opposed to individualism. Its portrait of this conformist culture combined with other works, such as Sloan Wilson’s novel The Man in […]
The Feminine Mystique
“The Feminine Mystique”, by Betty Friedan (1963). (This section is a supplement to the discussion in “Women’s Liberation” section of the Songbook.) Friedan’s book was based on a series of interviews she had with her college classmates, fifteen years after graduation. She asked them about the problems and satisfaction of their lives. Although the book […]