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I think you need to clarify some things. Do you mean 'rock songs' as in Jimmy Preston's Rock the Joint? Or do you mean 'rock songs' as in rhythm and blues/'black music'/music made by black people? If you mean--well, there is no other way of putting this--music that white musicians were playing that was influenced by R&B/gospel/etc., there aren't only simple songs, as can be heard in Preston's music and many other songs that had added arrangements. Even Little Richard. This makes me think you are referring to only R&B and gospel (which white musicians named 'rock 'n' roll'). If this is the case, this type of music wasn't exactly popular in the way we think of popular music nowadays, not until white musicians 'appropriated' it. As you can see, there is some incompatibility with what you're saying. 'Popular songs' did not only consist of rock 'n' roll songs, even though rock 'n' roll was considered popular music in the 50s. I mean, Jo Stafford made so-called traditional pop music, and they weren't exactly simple. If you read about late 70s British 'rock', you'd remember that 'rock 'n' roll' was a dirty word associated with the lower classes, drugs, and misfits, which was not necessarily part of popular music. Unless you mean popular music as opposed to 'classical music' (not the 'classical' from the period within 'classical music', mind you). I don't want to get into a whole Beatles debate, but Beatles took from many styles and genres. So it isn't exactly fair to compare them to typical rock 'n' roll music, which they themselves started playing and were being trained to play initially. |