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Beat music

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to be confused withBeat (music),Big beat,Beats Music,orThe Beat (British band).
"Merseybeat" and "Mersey Sound" redirect here. For other uses of Merseybeat, seeMerseybeat (disambiguation).For the poetry anthology, seeThe Mersey Sound (anthology).

Beat
Stylistic origins
Cultural originsLate 1950s – early 1960s, UK
Derivative forms
Subgenres
Freakbeat
Regional scenes
Other topics

Beat music,British beat,orMerseybeatis a Britishpopular musicgenrethat developed, particularly in and aroundLiverpool,in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The genre melded influences fromBritishandAmericanrock and roll,rhythm and blues,skiffle,traditional popandmusic hall.It rose to mainstream popularity in the UK and Europe by 1963 before spreading toNorth Americain 1964 with theBritish Invasion.The beat style had a significant impact on popular music andyouth culture,from 1960s movements such asgarage rock,folk rockandpsychedelic music.

Origin

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The exact origins of the terms 'beat music' and 'Merseybeat' are uncertain. The "beat" in each, however, derived from the drivingrhythmswhich the bands had adopted from their rock and roll, R&B and soul music influences, rather than theBeat Generationliterary movement of the 1950s. As the initial wave of rock and roll subsided in the later 1950s, "big beat" music, later shortened to "beat", became a live dance alternative to the balladeers likeTommy Steele,Marty Wilde,andCliff Richardwho were dominating the charts.[1]The German anthropologist and music criticErnest Borneman,who lived in England from 1933 to 1960, claimed to have coined the term in a column inMelody Makermagazine to describe the British imitation of American rock'n'roll, rhythm & blues and skiffle bands.[2]

The 'Mersey' of 'Merseybeat' refers to theRiver Mersey.Liverpool lies on the eastern side of the river's estuary.

The nameMersey Beatwas used for a Liverpool music magazine founded in 1961 byBill Harry.Harry claims to have coined the term "based on apoliceman's beatand not that of the music ".[3]The band the Pacifics were renamed the Mersey Beats in February 1962 byBob Wooler,MCat theCavern Club,and in April that year they becamethe Merseybeats.[4]With the rise ofthe Beatlesin 1963, the terms Mersey sound and Merseybeat were applied to bands and singers from Liverpool, the first time in British pop music that a sound and a location were linked together.[5]The equivalent scenes in Birmingham and London were described asBrum Beatand theTottenhamSound respectively.[6]

Characteristics

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The most distinctive characteristic of beat music was its strong beat, using thebackbeatcommon torock and rollandrhythm and blues,but often with a driving emphasis on all the beats of 4/4 bar.[7]The rhythm itself—described byAlan Claysonas "a changeless four-four offbeat on the snare drum" —was developed in the clubs inHamburg,West Germany, where many English groups, including the Beatles, performed in the early 1960s and where it was known as themach schau(make show) beat.[8]The 8/8 rhythm was flexible enough to be adopted for songs from a range of genres. In addition, according to music writerDave Laing,[8]

"[T]he chord playing of the rhythm guitar was broken up into a series of separate strokes, often one to the bar, with the regular plodding of the bass guitar and crisp drumming behind it. This gave a very different effect from the monolithic character of rock, in that the beat was given not by the duplication of one instrument in the rhythm section by another, but by an interplay between all three. This flexibility also meant that beat music could cope with a greater range of time-signatures and song shapes than rock & roll had been able to".

Beat groups usually had simpleguitar-dominated line-ups, withvocalharmoniesand catchy tunes.[9]The most common instrumentation of beat groups featured lead, rhythm and bass guitars plus drums, as popularised bythe Beatles,the Searchers,and others.[1]Beat groups—even those with a separate lead singer—often sang both verses and choruses inclose harmony,resemblingdoo wop,with nonsense syllables in the backing vocals.[10]

Emergence

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The Dave Clark Fiveappearing onThe Ed Sullivan Showin 1966

In the late 1950s, a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the decliningskifflescene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has been estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls and clubs.[3]Liverpool was perhaps uniquely placed within Britain to be the point of origin of a new form of music. Commentators have pointed to a combination of local solidarity,industrial decline,social deprivation, and the existence of a large population of Irish origin, the influence of which has been detected in Beat music.[11]It was also a major port with links to America, particularly through theCunard Yanks,[12]which made for much greater access to American records and instruments like guitars, which could not easily be imported due to trade restrictions.[11]As a result, Beat bands were heavily influenced by American groups of the era, such asBuddy Holly and the Crickets(from which group the Beatles derived their name, combining it with a pun on the beat in their music),[13]and to a lesser extent byBritish rock and rollgroups such asthe Shadows.[14]

After the national success of the Beatles in Britain from 1962, a number of Liverpool performers were able to follow them into the charts, includingGerry & The Pacemakers(who achieved a number one hit in the UK before the Beatles),[15]the Searchers,andCilla Black.

Outside of Liverpool many local scenes were less influenced by rock and roll and more by therhythm and bluesand later directly by theblues.These included bands from Birmingham who were often grouped with the beat movement, the most successful beingthe Spencer Davis Groupandthe Moody Blues.Similar blues influenced bands who broke out from local scenes to national prominence werethe AnimalsfromNewcastle[15]andThemfromBelfast.[16]From London, the termTottenham Soundwas largely based aroundthe Dave Clark Five,but other London-basedBritish rhythm and bluesand rock bands who benefited from the beat boom of this era includedthe Rolling Stones,[17]the Kinksandthe Yardbirds.[18]

British Invasion

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Main article:British Invasion
The arrival ofthe Beatlesin the U.S., and subsequent appearance onThe Ed Sullivan Show,marked the start of the British Invasion

The Beatles' appearance onThe Ed Sullivan Showsoon after led to chart success.[19]During the next two years,the Animals,Petula Clark,the Dave Clark Five,[15]theRolling Stones,[17]Donovan,[20]Peter and Gordon,Manfred Mann,Freddie and the Dreamers,The Zombies,Wayne Fontanaandthe Mindbenders,Herman's Hermits,andthe Troggswould have one or more number one singles in America.[21]

Freakbeat

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Main article:Freakbeat

Freakbeat is a subgenre ofrock and rollmusic developed mainly by harder-driving British groups, often those with amodfollowing during theSwinging Londonperiod of the mid to late 1960s.[22][23]Freakbeat bridges "British Invasion mod/R&B/pop andpsychedelia".[24]The term was coined by English music journalistPhil Smee.[25]AllMusic writes that "freakbeat" is loosely defined, but generally describes the more obscure but hard-edged artists of theBritish Invasionera such asthe Creation,the Pretty ThingsorDenny Laine's early solo work.[26]Other bands often mentioned as Freakbeat arethe Action,the Move,the Smoke,the Sorrows,andWimple Winch.[27]

Decline

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By 1967, beat music was beginning to sound out of date, particularly compared with the "harder edged"blues rockthat was beginning to emerge.

Most of the groups that had not already disbanded by 1967, like the Beatles, moved into different forms ofrock musicandpop music,includingpsychedelic rockand eventuallyprogressive rock.[28]

Influence

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Beat was a major influence on the Americangarage rock[29]andfolk rockmovements,[30]and would be a source of inspiration for subsequent rock music subgenres, includingBritpopin the 1990s.[31]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^abB. Longhurst,Popular Music and Society(Polity, 2nd edn., 2007),ISBN0-7456-3162-2,p. 98.
  2. ^Borneman, Ernest (1984). "Über die sexuelle Umgangssprache".Sex im Volksmund. Der obszöne Wortschatz der Deutschen(in German). Herrsching: Manfred Pawlak. p. [4].ISBN3-88199-145-X.Während der fünfziger Jahre schrieb ich eine wöchentliche Spalte in der englischen Musikzeitschrift 'Melody Maker'. Um den englischen Imitationen der amerikanischen Rhythm-and-Blues, Rock-and-Roll und Skiffle Bands einen Namen zu geben, erfand ich das Wort 'beat music', das sich mittlerweile in vielen Sprachen eingebürgert hat.
  3. ^ab"The Founders' Story 2 - Bill & Virginia Harry".Triumphpc.Retrieved2 August2019.
  4. ^B. Eder and R. Unterberger,"The Merseybeats",AllMusic,retrieved 16 June 2009.
  5. ^Ian Inglis (2010)."Historical approaches to Merseybeat".The Beat Goes on: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (editors Marion Leonard, Robert Strachan).Liverpool University Press. p. 11.ISBN9781846311901.Retrieved20 June2013.
  6. ^B. Eder,"Various artists:Brum Beat: the Story of the 60s Midland Sound",AllMusic,retrieved 5 February 2011.
  7. ^P. Hurry, M. Phillips and M. Richards,Heinemann Advanced Music(Heinemann, 2001), p. 158.
  8. ^abJon Stratton (2010)."Englishing Popular Music in the 1960s".Britpop and the English Music Tradition (editors Andy Bennett, Jon Stratton).Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010. pp. 41–46.ISBN9780754668053.Retrieved2 July2013.
  9. ^J. Shepherd,Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Volume II: Performance and Production(Continuum, 2003),ISBN0-8264-6322-3,p. 78.
  10. ^Nell Irvin Painter,Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 261.
  11. ^abR. Stakes, "Those boys: the rise of Mersey beat", in S. Wade, ed.,Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and its Social Context in Liverpool Since the 1960s(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001),ISBN0-85323-727-1,pp. 157–66.
  12. ^Coslett, Paul."Cunard Yanks".BBC Liverpool.Retrieved31 December2018.
  13. ^Gilliland 1969,show 27, track 4.
  14. ^W. Everett,The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),ISBN0-19-514105-9,pp. 37–8.
  15. ^abcGilliland 1969,show 29.
  16. ^I. Chambers,Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985),ISBN0-312-83469-1,p. 75.
  17. ^abGilliland 1969,show 30.
  18. ^J. R. Covach and G. MacDonald Boone.Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997),ISBN0-19-510005-0,p. 60.
  19. ^Gilliland 1969,show 28.
  20. ^Gilliland 1969,show 48.
  21. ^"British Invasion".Encyclopædia Britannica.Retrieved23 January2016.
  22. ^Richie Unterberger(3 April 2007)."Joe Meek's Freakbeat: 30 Freakbeat, Mod and R&B Nuggets - Joe Meek | Songs, Reviews, Credits".AllMusic.Retrieved29 November2015.
  23. ^Richie Unterberger (29 November 2011)."Looking Back: 80 Mod, Freakbeat & Swinging London Nuggets - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits".AllMusic.Retrieved29 November2015.
  24. ^"Looking Back: 80 Mod, Freakbeat & Swinging London Nuggets - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic".AllMusic.Retrieved5 September2020.
  25. ^Norris, Richard (11 March 2012)."20 best: UK psych records ever made".Factmag.
  26. ^"Freakbeat Music Genre Overview".AllMusic.Retrieved5 September2020.
  27. ^Erlewine, Stephen Thomas."Various Artists: Nuggets, Vol. 2: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire & Beyond".AllMusic.Archivedfrom the original on 5 July 2015.Retrieved10 July2015.
  28. ^E. Macan,Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997),ISBN0-19-509888-9,p. 11.
  29. ^V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine,All music guide to rock: the definitive guide to rock, pop, and soul(Backbeat Books, 3rd end., 2002), pp. 1320-1.
  30. ^R. Unterberger,"Merseybeat"Archived23 April 2012 at theWayback Machine,retrieved 5 February 2011.
  31. ^D. B. Scott, "The Britpop sound", in A. Bennett and J. Stratton, eds.,Britpop and the English Music Tradition(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010),ISBN0-7546-6805-3,pp. 103-122.

References

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