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Oh, Those Great Rhythms: Digression II<br>The function of the drums in a rock music ensemble is to keep the beat. ("It has a good beat... I give it 10 points, Dick.") On early R&B records, the drum part was usually executed with brushes. All the arrangements required, generally, was a dull thud on the second and fourth pulse of the bar. There were very few "breaks" or "fills." When the drum fill (a short percussion outburst, usually at a cadence or resting point of a musical phrase) became popular in rock arrangements, it most often took the form of groups of triplets (three-note rhythmic figures, squeezed into the space of two beats... sounding like: ya-da-da ya-da-da ya-da-da ya-da-da- whomp). For a while, during the mid- 50s, it seemed like every record produced had one or more fills of this nature in it. Eventually, with the improvements in studios and recording techniques, the drummers began to use sticks on the sessions and the cadence fills became more elaborate but, before and after the fill, the drummer's job was still to keep the beat... that same old crappy beat... the beat that made the kids hop around and scream and yell and buy records. A long process of rhythmic evolution has taken place since the early 50s. It is laughable now to think of that dull thud on the second and fourth as lewd and pulsating. <br><br><br>Green Visors<br>Hal Zeiger: "The problem at the time was basically this: trying to make the music acceptable, or, to try to get the right to expose it, and that took some doing. I knew the kids were listening to the radio stations... it was just a matter of how to merchandise this to get their dollars, too I told Bill Graham (founder of the Fillmore and former manager of the Jefferson Airplane), 'You've got to understand when these things are underground, that's one thing. But the minute it goes over ground, the minute, you see, it looks like money, everyone wants in' <br><br>So to make R&B acceptable, the big shots of the record industry hired a bunch of little men with cigars and green visors, to synthesize and imitate the work of the Negroes. The visor men cranked out phony white rock Highly skilled couriers then delivered the goods to American Bandstand along with a lot of presents (tokens of their esteem) to Dick Clark for all his marvelous assistance in the crusade to jam these products down the kids' throats Pat Boone was notable, too, for his humanistic activities (bleaching Little Richard and making him safe for teenage consumption). <br><br>One of my favorite Negro R&B groups during the 50s was Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. Their work was some of the most important sociosexual true-to-life commentary of that era, for instance: Stingy Little Thing (a song in protest about girls who wouldn't "put out"), Work with Me Annie, and Annie Had a Baby. Songs like these got played on the air every once in a while--the kids would hear Annie Had a Baby and say, "Hey, here's a song about a girl getting pregnant," and rush to tune it in--but an official of the station (with teen-age children of his own to protect) would "lay a pink memo on it," and the song would sort of "disappear." <br><br>The visor men, meanwhile, were magically purifying all this stuff. Work with Me Annie ("Please don't cheat/Give me all my meat") through the wisdom of their craft became Dance with Me, Henry ("If you want romancin'/You better learn some dancin' "). <br><br><br>Vaseline<br>White rock, overproduced and shiny, nearly slickened itself to death. (Remember Fats Domino with Strings?) The music industry was slumping a bit. Was this to be the end of rock? Were we doomed to a new era of country & western tunes smothered in Vaseline? Then, just in the nick of time, Beatlemania New hope. There they were: cute, safe, white. The kids took to them immediately. Their music had real energy; it was sympathetic to their life style. It was music made for young people by other young people. No green visors. It seemed to radiate a secret message: "You can be free. You can get away with it. Look, we're doing it!" <br>I'm sure the kids never really believed all the Beatles wanted to do was hold your hand. And the girls were provided with "kissable closeups" (enlarged views of their idols' lips, teeth and gums) which they could kiss, touch, rub and/or hang on the bedroom wall. Girls forgot Elvis Presley. He was too greasy, too heavy business: sullen pouting and all that stuff The Beatles were huggable & cute & mop & tops & happy & positive. Beatlemania was fun to be involved in. <br><br>The record companies were at a loss to compete with the British threat. Zeiger relates another droll incident: "I remember Mike Maitland who was then vice president and sales manager of Capitol Records. He was decrying the fact that they couldn't get any hit singles, and I said to him, 'Well, Mike, tho reason is because you have the wrong people working for you.' 'Well, what do you want me to do? Get some of these fellows with the tight pants to produce these records?' I said, 'Exactly. Two button records can't be produced by guys with three button suits. It's all a matter of buttons.' Look at Mike Maitland now. He's president of Warner Brothers Records and look at the kind of thing they're putting out... fellows with tight pants... or no pants... are producing the records."<br>
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