The Dictionary of Soul

One of the most striking occurrences in the history of Billboard’s popularity charts was the disappearance of the R&B chart from November 1963 to January 1965. This chapter analyzes this event in depth in order to examine the relationship of R&B to the mainstream. R&B continued to have an active existence (illustrated by a discussion of radio formats) despite the disappearance of Billboard’s chart; the temporary cessation of the chart was due to conflictual understandings of genre based in part on different weightings of musical style versus the importance of audience. The “British Invasion” and the emergence of folk-rock during 1964-65 created greater racial division of the mainstream than had existed since the arrival of early rock ‘n’ roll. In the period immediately following, greater emphasis on black identity, musically and politically during the late 1960s led to the re-naming of the R&B category to Soul in 1969.

Introduction

This chapter examines the concept of genre through an array of theoretical lenses. The first point is that music genres are relational: they are defined by their similarity to and difference from other genres. The chapter then advocates for a genealogical approach to history, with an emphasis on the conditions of a genre’s emergence. Other concepts explored are the importance of scale or level in understanding how genres function as assemblages; that authorship in genres arises from collective dialogue among participants in a “genre world”; and that genre functions through repetition and difference in a process of iteration or citation. The latter half of the chapter proposes a model for a range of possible relationships between musical categories and group identities. The chapter closes with a discussion of the importance of “crossover” for understanding music-identity relations, and of the role that music industry popularity charts will play in the book.

Foreign Music and the Emergence of Phonography

Chapter two begins around 1900 with a discussion of the United States music industry in the early days of sound recording, which is examined for its impact on the categorization of popular music, and the new possibilities afforded for the circulation of genre-identity relations. The category of “foreign music” emerges in response first to an interest in music of faraway places facilitated by sound recording, and then to the discovery of marketing possibilities to recent European immigrants. The subcategories of Hawaiian and Jewish music are analyzed in more detail to show how foreign music moved from an emphasis on imaginary to homologous music-identity relations by the 1920s. The category of foreign music established a model for how the music industry could be structured around the concept of homological relations (that is, a direct one-to-one correspondence) between categories of music and categories of people.

Notes Toward a Conclusion

What are the implications for the analyses of popular music genres in the previous chapters for what has taken place since the 1980s? With drastic transformations in modes of music circulation and distribution, including the internet and digital file sharing, some would argue that the whole concept of genre needs to be re-thought. Against such millenarian claims, this chapter argues that the processes of emergence, stabilization, and transformation that have been examined in this book will still be central to any study of genre, even if the conditions (including such factors as the types of sources, rates of circulation, etc.) of such studies might be very different. Discussion of the theory of assemblage illustrates how previous concerns of the book might apply to current discussions about genre.

Crossover Dreams

This chapter focuses on the rise of the concept of “crossover” in response to the transformation of radio formats and music industry categories during the 1970s and early 1980s. Country music is examined for its close proximity to the “Adult Contemporary” radio format, and the music for the film Urban Cowboy is analyzed for how it uses a variety of country music sub-genres. The transformation of Billboard’s popularity chart from “Soul” to “Black,” and of the radio format for black popular music from “Soul” to “Urban Contemporary” is examined in relation to the almost all-white format of “Album-Oriented Rock” (“AOR”). Michael Jackson’s breakthrough album Thriller is discussed for its ability to transcend what were widely viewed as impermeable boundaries. In spite of Thriller, however, a recording such as George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” reveals how mainstream popular music remained largely segregated at the beginning of the 1980s.

Forward to the Past

This chapter charts the emergence of “race music”: the earliest music industry category associated with African Americans. This emergence is set against “presentist” histories of blues and jazz, in which historical narratives are tailored to present day beliefs about those genres. The argument is that now-current ideas about racial homogeneity, anti-commercialism, and gender (i.e., the dominance of male participants) in these genres is projected onto the past, creating a more orderly picture than existed in the public discourse of the time. After a discussion of the dominance of minstrelsy tropes in early blues and jazz prior to 1920, the chapter analyzes the stabilization of the race music category following the commercial success of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920. The conclusion proposes that the label “race music” brought together then-current ideas of African American identity with an identifiable sound.

The Corny-ness of the Folk

Country music in the late 1930s was more disconnected from the mainstream than swing. Appearing initially only in cover versions of songs by crooners, or in the recordings of “singing cowboys,” turmoil in the music industry during the war years created an opening for a few extremely successful country recordings exemplified by Al Dexter’s “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” “Hillbilly Music” (as country was usually called during this time) was associated with the concept of “corn,” which allied the music to rural agricultural production and lowbrow, “corny” comedy routines. The popularity of recordings like “Pistol Packin’ Mama” affected a discursive shift, and the status of the music was worked out via the use of labels such as “Folk Music,” “Hillbilly,” “Country,” and “Western.” By the late 1940s, a major hillbilly hit like “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)” drew on some of the same minstrelsy tropes as had “Open the Door, Richard.”

From Jazz to Pop

“Swing,” as the most commercially successful variety of jazz, became the mainstream of popular music during the late 1930s. The growth in popularity of jukeboxes broadened the popular music field, facilitating greater involvement of African Americans, and paving the way for the success of swing and the greater tracking of race records. The contrasting histories of two versions of “Tuxedo Junction,” one by Erskine Hawkins and one by Glenn Miller, are used to highlight the intertwining of aesthetics, race, and how popularity was discussed and represented at the time. After World War II, swing declined in popularity, resulting in a reshuffling of the hierarchy of popular music genres. The Count Basie novelty recording of “Open the Door, Richard” illustrates the reduced opportunities for African Americans in mainstream popular music, in which recordings associated with African Americans and other minority groups evoked minstrelsy and/or relied on racial stereotypes.

The Newness of Old-Time Music

The early history of what would eventually be called “country music” drew on many of the same ideas about genre and audience that had been developed in the marketing of foreign music and race music. The idea that rural, white people from the South constituted a distinct audience led to a rapid formation of the category some three years after the initial interest in “race” music. The ambiguous social position of southern, rural white people led to difficulties in finding a convenient label for the category, although “Old-Time Music” came closest to achieving official status, and “Hillbilly Music” was used informally in the press. Old-Time Music increasingly pursued connections to mainstream popular music even while continuing to refer to an imagined rural past. One of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s, Vernon Dalhart, is used to exemplify the trajectory of Old-Time Music during the mid-1920s.