The early history of Pop radio and Music TV

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Anyone teaching pop music needs to ge their libary to order the fabulous comprehensive history of pop by Alan Parker called All You Need is Love. It's coming out on about 4 DVDs as a set in May.Pop music as we know it in the west began just over 50 years ago in the early 1950s. Arguably it is not about to come to an end but it is the same as when it began. Already the three minute single song the basis of much pure pop is in terminal decline.

Music of all kinds will of course always be popular, but the way pop music is organised and sold is changing rapidly, and the future is hard to see.You probably have an iPod or want one for Christmas. Where does the music that you listen to come from? Some comes from your and your friends CDs, some music from downloads that you pay for, and some comes to you free. This is not how pop music began, although the three essential elements that are needed for pop music to flourish are still there. These three elements are:

TALENTTECHNOLOGYAUDIENCE

Let’s start at the beginning.
Don’t worry this is a very brief history to put everything in perspective. At A Level and higher levels this is known as context. Before World War Two (1939 – 1945) if you wanted to listen to a popular song you either bought a copy of the sheet music and played the song on your piano or acoustic guitar – this is what my aunt used to do. Or you could buy a GRAMOPHONE that played 78 rpm records, rpm means revolution per minute – this is what my mother did, as she did not play the piano. 78s are large 10 inch brittle discs that broke easily and could hold about 3 minutes of music on each side.

The gramophone is a very simple analogue instrument – there were some electric versions called pick -ups. A steel needle is placed onto the record that is on a turntable which is turned by a spring – you wind it up. The record has grooves cut into it that correspond to the vibrations of the music. The needle bounces around the grooves making the same vibrations as the music on the record which go through a horn shaped funnel and are amplified.

The dog on the HMV label is listening to music from a gramophone. The sound was scratchy and it only lasted 3 minutes – but the 3 minute pop song was born. The technology dictated that this was to become the standard song length. Actually it is the ideal duration for a song about romantic love aimed at teenagers and which will fit easily into a DJ format radio show.After the War the 78 would become the vinyl 45rpm disc, and the LP arrived – The Long Playing 12 inch record running at 33⅓ rpm which had about 20 minutes of music on each side – the forerunner of the CD album. Originally meant for classical music, the LP became important in the sixties as pop musicians matured and wanted to create albums.

The 45 singleWithout the technology of the little 45rpm disc pop music would not have appealed or been easily and cheaply available to its huge new audience of teenagers. After the war many babies were born in the United States and Europe as if to compensate for the huge loss of life in the war.This audience, known as the baby boomers, came to be teenagers in the mid fifties, and they were quite different to any previous generation of young people. They were relatively affluent with pocket money to spend.

The cost of a 45 rpm single was just about affordable each week or so by many young people, and there was very little to spend it on except films or pop music.A whole new industry grew up devoted to tapping into this new affluent generation of teenagers who began to hear exciting, rhythmic, fast music written just for them – rock n’ roll. This is where the talent came in. In America black performers like Chuck Berry, and Little Richard were recording exciting music onto these new discs. Their records began to be played on some US radio stations, or in the UK heard in specialist record shops.It was the true King of Rock Elvis Presley who did most to bring rock n’ roll to a teenage audience. An instinctive musician he sang blues and gospel influenced songs in a sexy way that thrilled young people all over the world. His early rock n’ roll records that electrified teenagers includi the up-tempo Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock, and the bluesy Heartbreak Hotel. These were instant hits in the US and in the UK.The Stratocaster

The second technological development essential for rock music was the invention of the electric guitar usually attributed to Americans Leo Fender, and Les Paul in the mid 1940s. By the mid fifties the Fender Stratocaster had became the defining musical instrument of the new rock music. Immortalised in Britain by Hank Marvin playing his flame red stratocaster in the Shadows the group that backed Cliff Richard – check Cliff’s Move it for early British rock n’ roll.Two people who heard this new music in a record shop in Liverpool were John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They were in a ‘group’ (Liverpool name for a band) that sang rock n’ roll songs at The Tavern club. They admired the serious looking Buddy Holly, an American who played a Stratocaster and wrote his own memorable foot tapping pop songs. Check the link to Buddy Holly singing Oh Boy on Youtube.The Beatles emerged as the most important, inventive, exciting, musically distinctive and successful pop group in the history of pop music. In the early 1960s they began to write and record their own songs – Please Please Me, She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Help raced to the top of the record charts and entranced a new generation of young people in the UK who had never before had music created specially for them.It’s hard to describe the huge impact that the Beatles had in Britain. It wasn’t just that they were witty, handsome, cheeky, iconoclastic (breaking down traditional barriers) Liverpudlians, but the music was electrifying.

They had the ideal musical combination, which immediately became the norm, of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums, and good vocal harmonies. This was a much more exciting and loud, bass heavy set up, than even a big dance band sound (popular in the War) could create. Again the technology had contributed to rock n’ roll with the invention of the bass guitar which could play loudly the deep low range of a double bass.As the teenagers grew into students they were able to buy their favourite musicians on a 12 inch Album with over 40 minutes of playing time. The Beatles masterpiece Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often voted as the best album ever recorded. It became the defining sound of the 1967 summer of love when the pop album came of age as an icon in its own right.

Radio

The 1960s was the most creative period for rock music. This was again helped by the third major development of technology, the emergence of pop radio.I remember the frustration of not being able to hear all this exciting new music, except on one or two specialist radio programmes like the BBC Saturday Club. Entrepreneurs realised that this new dynamic young audience needed an outlet to hear all the incredible music that was being produced.

Pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline, and Radio London, were set up on ships in the North Sea broadcasting to England and northern Europe. They immediately captured a big audience. The BBC, prompted by the Wilson Labour government of the time, realised that this potentially vast audience needed a whole new radio station.It was called Radio 1 and launched by ex pirate DJ Tony Blackburn on 30 September 1967. It is of course still with us today, and still has the largest young audience in spite of numerous commercial competitors.By the mid sixties in less than 10 tears since Elvis caused a sensation with Heartbreak Hotel, the three minute pop song had a home not just on the Dansette record player in a teenage bedroom, but in cars, in work places and on radio and on television.Talent, Technology, AudienceSo the three elements had come together. The extraordinary talent of Elvis, the Beatles, and the other British groups and singers, as well as black soul singers from Detroit like The Supremes created sensational 3 minute songs available on pocket money friendly 45rpm discs which were heavily marketed with exposure on UK pirate pop radio stations.

The electrification of the guitar and the use of Marshall amplifiers gave small pop groups the chance to squeeze into a Transit van and play their own songs to young audiences in town Halls throughout the country.The talent had exploited the technologies to find its delighted audience of teenagers.Pop music was taking over the bedrooms of the nation’s youth. Just as the ipod has found a more sophisticated, older and mobile audience in the 21st century.

POP MUSIC AND TELEVISION

If technology drove the sound of rock music – the Stratocaster - and the means of consuming pop music - pirate radio and the 45rpm disc, it was the technology of television that created the look of pop music, and propelled the singers and musicians into world wide superstar status.

Television in Britain and the United States quickly realised the potential of youth audiences. For the commercial TV stations in America this new audience had money to spend on records, clothes, pop concerts, makeup, magazines and all sorts of consumer items.Elvis and The Beatles reached vast audiences of millions through appearances on the very popular Ed Sullivan show. Ed Sullivan had the highest-rated variety show in America.

It was a Sunday night ritual for millions. Sullivan booked the Beatles as headliners for three shows beginning on February 9, 1964.The Sullivan show remains one of the highest-rated non -sports TV programmes of all time. It is estimated that 45 percent of Americans, that is more than 73 million people, watched the show. Apocryphal stories maintain that not a single crime was committed in New York during the Sullivan hour.Check http://www.cnn.com/ ‘when the Beatles hit America’. On April 4th 1964 The Beatles had the top five songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart – an achievement never equalled.

The Ed Sullivan show became the TV place to see the latest rock 'n' roll acts, many of whom were from Britain such as, the Animals, the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits and Freddy and the Dreamers, and The Rolling Stones.Suddenly through television youth culture was visible to everybody. The Beatles had long hair; so men grew their hair long. Teenage pop music wasn't taken seriously, but the Beatles got people to take it seriously.

The Beatles studied Transcendental Meditation and went to India with the Marharishi, and this introduced a whole generation to Eastern mysticism, and the sitar.This was soon followed by the counter culture revolution including women's liberation, ideas about civil rights, the sexual revolution, and the peace and anti nuclear movement .There was an increase in taking drugs, and in sexually transmitted diseases, and traditional values and ideology changed. Previously admired institutions like the Church of England, the Monarchy and the government were seen as out of touch with ordinary people, fusty and monolithic. It was cool to mock these institutions e.g. the stage show Beyond the Fringe.In November 1962 That Was the Week That Was a new very popular television show in England introduced a whole new audience to political satire.

Each episode was introduced by singer Millicent Martin belting out a satirical song about the week’s news and political events. Music was seen as an essential part of this new show aimed at a young politically aware audience.

TELEVISION TAKES ON POP MUSIC

It soon became clear to television bosses that rock 'n' roll was going to attract audiences. The first ‘youth’ programmes did not quite hit the right note. Cool for Cats (ITV, 1956-61) and Six-Five Special (BBC, 1957-58), were based on the radio model of new music acts with chatty DJs.The effect was that they were trying too hard to be ‘with it’, which somewhat put off the target audience as well as annoying the older generation. Real success came with ITV’s Oh Boy! (1958-59) with its fast pace and irreverent approach which tuned in to the young audience, and in the process helped create the template for pop music TV.The BBC's main pop music show was the hugely successful Juke Box Jury (1959-67). A panel of invited guests would listen to a series of songs and pronounce them a 'hit' or a 'miss'. Despite its lack of visual content and an ageing host in radio DJ David Jacobs, the show was a success.What really captured the 60s zeitgeist was ITVs Ready, Steady Go! (ITV,1963-66). Ultra fashionable with her long dark hair in a fringe, presenter Cathy McGowan became a style icon. The difference from a television perspective was that RSG had a ‘live’ studio audience. Its mix of the latest bands in front of a live audience created a show that was influential, and more visually exciting than anything else on television.

Top of The Pops

The BBC not to be outdone by its rival ITV, really got chart pop music TV under way when on the first of January 1964 Top of the Pops (1964-2007) hit the nation’s screens. This was the longest running pop music show ever, and sustained the three minute single for several generations of teenagers.The programme was a chart show with a rundown of the top ten singles each week. TOTP quickly attracted a large audience as well as the support of the record industry. For musicians and record executives alike an appearance on the programme became a key element in a song’s success.

The bands generally sung to a backing track, or mimed to the actual record. This was considered to be the right thing to do because TOTP was a chart based show, so the actual record featured in the charts was the one the viewer should see and hear.The BBC continued to foster popular music although aiming at a different audience. As the album became the preferred choice of young people towards the end of the 1960s a new kind of programme took a more serious approach to pop music.

The BBC 2 series The Old Grey Whistle Test (1971-85) provided a platform for bands to play live and chat to the presenter Bob Harris. It quickly acquired a late night, rather exclusive cultural image.BBC2 also broadcast the influential In Concert series where stars such as Bob Dylan gave intimate concerts to a small studio audience. This later became Rock Goes to College (1978-81), a series of performances recorded live in front of student audiences with a feeling of acoustic integrity that was popular in the post punk era.

When Channel 4 started it had a brief to stimulate new audiences, and it took pop music TV in a new direction with The Tube (1983-87), a live mix of performances, videos and interviews presented by the effervescent and sometimes controversial Paula Yates and Jools Holland.Towards the end of the 1980s there was a fragmentation of the pop music scene. Many new styles and musical forms appeared and the single had become a CD single. It always seemed expensive and the pop chart began to be a much less important part of young people’s lives.

TOTP was still broadcasting every week on BBC1 and trying desperately to keep up with rap, hip-hop, acid house and indie. After several make overs TOTP moved to BBC2 and then in 2007 eventually died leaving the memory of a once great pop institution.Some TV shows attempted to address disparate audience tastes. With a blend of studio performances and the rapidly maturing art form of music videos, shows like Snub TV (BBC, 1988-90) and Rapido (BBC, 1988-92) aired late at night with little impact, although worthy in themselves. Specialist shows dedicated to black music, led by Baadasss TV (Channel 4, 1995-96) and Flava (Channel 4, 1996-2001), also emerged to niche audiences, but the overall audience impact was slight.

MTV

The seismic change in the landscape of Pop Music TV was the arrival of multi channel television, and MTV in particular which relied on the creativity and excitement generated by the growing popularity of the music video.Teenagers took up the 24 hour pop music MTV with enthusiasm, often soaking it up on the TVs in their bedrooms, much to the dismay of teachers and parents.

MTV (Music TeleVision) launched in the US on August 1st 1981 with the words: ’ladies and gentlemen , rock and roll’. The first video transmitted was appropriately the Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star. In fact the early MTV videos were often little more than promotional shots linked by a Video Jockey, similar to a radio DJ format.Later in the 80s record companies realised the potential of an exciting video played on MTV as a way of enticing an audience to buy a band’s CD. The first black artist to have a video on MTV was Michael Jackson with his 14 minute video of his album Thriller, which was one of the early and very influential high budget music videos.

The videos were rotated many times in a day and Thriller was played twice an hour at its peak.Queen’s video for Bohemian Rhapsody is considered one of the most influential with its ground breaking visual effects, especially the revolving faces of the band. It led to the creation of the music video as a creative art form.The new technology of digital visual effects (DVE) offered the video producer a whole range of special visual effects that threw out of the editing room window any notion that a song had to be a realistic version of a band playing a concert.

POSTMODERN MUSIC TELEVISION

The idea of postmodern television is of interest to students studying media theories. If you are interested in delving deeper into the theories behind television then Jonathan Bignell in An Introduction To Television Studies (Routledge 2004) examines in depth the whole idea of postmodern television. He also looks at Music Video and Postmodernism in The Television Handbook (Bignell and Orlebar Routledge 2005).A brief definition from this chapter is a good start:‘Music Television seems to be a perfect example of postmodernism : the material it broadcasts appears to be shallow, based around commodity images with no message except the injunction to buy, it broadcasts a flow of short videos producing an endless present or perpetual flow in which the …fixed points of conventional terrestrial television schedules are largely absent.’

Watching music video television appears to stop time and keep the viewer in a dream world of perpetual NOW. Strangely this does not seem to affect students at all and the amount of music television watched by teenagers fell in 2006 – probably because of the portable MP3 player.One of the main postmodern ideas is that pop performers are seen in a world of images that are not associated with any idea of their real selves. So a performer is only known through the MTV image, which can change as Madonna or Kyle have so successfully done. This leads to a change in cultural identity where everyone can redefine themselves according to the images they project. Music Television is part of this culture of celebrity where: ‘ the notion of an identity being constructed out of changeable appearances, changing fashions of self –presentation and the thinking of self as an image put on display to other people.’ (Bignell 2005) is popular with young people and young women in particular.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC TELEVISION

Back on terrestrial TV The Chart Show (Channel 4/ITV, 1986-98) pioneered a video-only format on network television still supporting the pop single but acknowledging the importance of albums.In the 21st century with the demise of TOTP, popular music has become part of the main stream of popular television with shows such as Pop Stars (ITV, 2001) and its successors, like Fame Academy (BBC, 2002). These shows are a mile away from the raw energy and iconoclasm of Oh Boy or Ready Steady Go and are watched by a family audience rather than an exclusively young teenage audience.As pop music entered its sixth decade the broadcasters woke up to the fact that they had a huge archive of great music.

The postmodern notion of nostalgia became fashionable and clips from the best acts became the norm in 'best of' shows such as the BBC's I Love the Seventies (2000) and its successors, which mixed chart tunes with jokey celebrity reminisces about the decade in question.Pop music became history and its sociological effect became interesting. The BBC told the story of pop music with insight and the benefit of hindsight in The Rock 'n' Roll Years (1985-87), a documentary series that charted popular music's progress from 1956 to 1980 with a mix of music and newsreel footage.

In 2001 the BBC’s Walk On By: the Story of popular Song was an excellent eight part series telling the story of the popular song over the last 100 years, with archive footage and expert interviews, from its earliest beginnings in black blues music and Appalachian folk songs to the present day.In a rapidly changing musical landscape Music TV and shows such as Top of the Pops no longer occupy a central role in young people’s lives.

Over recent years pop music TV including MTV has faced ever increasing competition from multi media and niche musical outlets which enable viewers to consume music of their choice, any time night or day, in a way that traditional television formats cannot do.In 2007 popular music on television is kept alive by the excellent Later... With Jools Holland (BBC, 1992-), a thoroughly 'grown-up' music show. Jools Holland, the former Tube presenter, and his band play live, and host an interesting mix of live performers offering a platform for popular musicians of all types from all over the world.The real music story of the first decade of the 21st centrury is that audiences are flocking to live musical events and concerts. Music is of course still par to f the soundtrack of most people’s lives but music on television needs to be repackaged and almost reinvented as a television format. The largest TV audiences for popular music are now for live concerts or recordings from live music events such as the Glastonbury festival.


There is still music on television and it is nearly all live or recorded as live – perhaps this is a good thing?