Rock n Roll in America

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Recommended: the influence of rock n' roll on the US

After WWII, the United States encountered an economic boom that finally put the Great Depression to rest. With a growing middle class, the United States had more families than ever with a substantial amount of money not only to have more children, but also to spend more frivolously. This combination of higher wages and growing youth population gave rise to a brand new demographic: the American teenager. The 50s was the coming out of teens and young adults as marketing companies began to advertise straight to America’s newest demographic. Developed from Black rhythm and blues, rock & roll aroused a sense of self-awareness in young adults of the 50s so effectively that the youth began to shape American culture by using rock music as a means to proliferate the messages of the movements that occurred during the 50s and 60s, thereby empowering the young adults.
Although nobody is quite able to pinpoint from which genre and time period rhythm and blues emerged, rock and roll most definitely evolved from black rhythm and blues of the late 40s and early 50s. In fact, the terms rock and roll, especially popular in the growing rhythm and blues genre of music, came from “black slang for sexual intercourse.”1 Teenagers, with a tendency to thirst for the new and exciting, were the first of the white demographic to pick up on this new style of music as they surfed through the radio stations and discovered the African American rhythm and blues. However, the stigma of listening to “race music” would continue so much that rhythm and blues couldn’t be mass marketed to the populace as it was. However, after white disc-jockey Alan Freed caught on to the teens’ trend of listening to rhythm and blues by playing it on his radio show and officially call...

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... "Civil Rights and Elvis Presley." Elvis Presley History Blog, Profiling the King of
Rock and Roll. Accessed May 22, 2014. http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/civil-rights.html.
Washington Post. "From Joan Baez to Lady Gaga: Music of the civil rights movement - The Washington Post." Washington Post. Accessed May 22, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/politics/from-joan-baez-to-lady-gaga-music-of-the-civil-rights-movement/2014/05/20/ee8afe56-e048-11e3-9442-54189bf1a809_video.html. Wattenberg, Ben. 1998. "Did Woodstock change America?" Podcast audio. PBS. August, 1998.
Accessed May 21, 2014. http://http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript119.html.
Yagi, Randi. "10 Top Anti-War/Protest Songs about the Vietnam War - San Jose Internet.”
Examiner.com. Last modified March 29, 2012. http://www.examiner.com/article/10-top-anti-war-protest-songs-about-the-vietnam-war.

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