THIRD STREAM, which more overtly blended jazz with Western classical music than other forms of jazz. Much of the early work of bassist Charles Mingus, such as the 1954 release, “Minor Intrusion,” is considered to be Third Stream. (Though you will also enjoy later, bluesier Mingus, such as “Devil Blues,” which we can see him and his band perform live at Monteaux in 1975.)
Here are twelve essential third stream performances.
[wpspoiler name=”Miles Davis and John Coltrane perform So What? in 1959″ open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Others of the many subgenres of jazz that developed in the ’50s and ’60s included MODAL JAZZ, in which musicians based their compositions not on a progression of chords, but on the relationship notes have to each other in “modes,” which are types of scales–“So What,” with Miles Davis on trumpet and John Coltrane on saxophone is a prime example.
[wpspoiler name=”Watch Miles Davis perform in 1959 with the Gil Evans Orchestra” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
COOL JAZZ:
Another subgenre of jazz that developed throughout the 1940s was “Cool Jazz.” It was quieter, more subtle and more harmonic take on jazz than bebop; it took more cues from 20th century classical “art music” composers like Stravinsky and Debussy.The two main “cool jazz” pioneers were trumpeter MILES DAVIS and pianist/bandleader GIL EVANS, both of whom were undeniably cool.
Listen to “Jeru” from “Birth of the Cool,” a 1957 release of Davis recordings from 1949 and ’50 that epitomized “cool jazz.” | Watch Miles Davis (on trumpet) perform with the Gil Evans Orchestra in 1959 | As a bonus, watch Gil Evans perform in a funkier era, in Umbria, 1974. The song may not be “cool jazz,” but it’s definitely cool jazz]
In 1950s a new genre called “Rockabilly” enthusiastically fused hillbilly music with the electric instruments of rock ‘n roll. The most dynamic rockabilly musician was a lanky lad from Tupelo, Mississippi who had the unlikely name ELVIS PRESLEY. Though they may have less of an mind-numbing effect on teenage than Elvis (even latter-day, white-sequined jumpsuit Elvis), other rockabilly artists like JOHNNY CASH and CARL PERKINS electrified audiences nationwide. [Watch a young Elvis perform “Heartbreak Hotel” on The Milton Berle Show in 1956 | Watch a young JOHNNY CASH perform “I Walk the Line” on the Tex Ritter show in the mid-’50s | Watch a not quite as young, but none too shabby CARL PERKINS perform “Blue Suede Shoes” on The Johnny Cash Show.]
Many histories of hip hop have been written since the first b-boy upped his first uprock, and while almost each has its own claim as to who was the first, who was the best and who made the old sound new, most agree on a few pivotal figures without which hip hop would never have formed. For example, after paying due homage to West African griots, who use music to accompany their epic tales, and drawing direct ancestral lines from them to late ’60s and early ’70s revolutionary African-American poets like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, every history of the music worth its salt describes Jamaican-born, Bronx-based DJ Kool Herc as “the godfather of hip hop.”
DJ KOOL HERC
In the mid and late-’70s DJ Kool Herc applied techniques prevalent in Jamaican dub music to U.S. dance music, specifically focusing on “breaks,” which are the moments in a song when the drum beat rhythms that underlie dance music appear on their own, and “toasting,” which is the act of speaking to the audience rhythmically during the breaks. Herc would use two turntables, each with a copy of the same record, isolate the drum beats from disco or funk songs on one and play that section through, go to the next record and play that same section, then back and forth and back and forth, a technique that came to be called “looping.” (In the highly competitive culture that developed around early hip hop–at least according to legend–Herc used to soak the labels off his records so no other DJs would steal his beats.) Herc also had the loudest sound system around, and hauled it from block party to block party in the Bronx, always guaranteeing a good time. (Watch Herc explain how he developed the idea of “the Merry Go Round.”)
AFRIKA “BAM” BAMBAATAA
The next hip hop legend who features prominently in most histories of the genre is Afrika “Bam” Bambaataa, who began his storied career in hip hop as a South Bronx deejay and co-founder of a brutal street gang known as the Black Spades, and went on to become known as, among other things, “THE GODFATHER/GRANDFATHER OF HIP HOP, FATHER OF ELECTRO-FUNK, MASTER OF RECORDS, AMBASSADOR OF HIP HOP, GREATEST DJ ON EARTH, HIP HOP’S FOREMOST DJ, THE BEST DJ IN BUSINESS.” Afrika’s family, some members of which were active in black liberation struggles of the late ’60s and early ’70s infused him with a political consciousness that would ultimately shape his approach to music. Having won a trip to Africa in what his many biographies vaguely refer to as “an essay contest,” Bambaataa–at that point still known by his given name, Kevin Donovan–found inspiration in the South African Zulu nation’s struggles against the apartheid regime. He adopted his now famous pseudonym, choosing “Bambaataa” in honor of a Zulu chief, Bambatha kaMancinza, who led a 1906 rebellion against British colonizers, and returned to the Bronx determined to use the power of music to improve
the lives of the African-American and Latino youth in his community. He soon transformed the Black Spades into the Universal Zulu Nation, a peace-seeking alternative to the violence of street gang culture, and spread the Zulu ideology, and by his extension, early hip hop culture, by DJ’ing (“disc jockeying”) at massive street parties around the city.
More about Bambaataa:
Meet Bambaataa in this excerpt from British documentary about hip hop | Watch Bambaataa perform his biggest hit, “Planet Rock,” in 1982 (“Gotta rock it don’t stop it, gotta rock it don’t stop, keep tickin’ and tockin’, working’ all around the clock.”)| In this 2011 Chicago Tribune article, Bambaataa states what can only be seen as a reasonable life goal: “The only thing I want is to awaken all humans on the planet that we are living on Mother Earth.”
THE SUGARHILL GANG
In the late ’70s rappers (deejays speaking rhymes over rhythmic breaks) began to attract attention from musicians outside the Bronx, and even outside their own African-American and Latino communities, such as Debbie Harry of the punk/New Wave band Blondie and members of the British band The Clash. As rap music moved from the Bronx Streets to the Manhattan mainstream, record producers became eager to bring this music to a wider audience (or, as some may say, cash in on it). At just this time a fledgling New Jersey-based label called Sugar Hill Records pulled together a group of MC’s (MC=”master of ceremonies”) into an entity that became known as The Sugarhill Gang. The Gang’s three rappers–Wonder Mike, Big Bank Hank and Master Gee–were not experienced MCs who had come up through the street party ranks, but they sure put together one catchy tune; in 1979 the Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became the first rap song to become a radio hit.
“Rapper’s Delight” lit up the airwaves, literally introducing this new form of urban rhythmic and poetic expression to the world with Wonder Mike’s lyric, “now what you hear is not a test–I’m rappin’ to the beat, and me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet.” The Gang had “borrowed” the song’s basic groove from “Good Times” by the R&B/disco band, Chic. (The song’s composers eventually got co-writing credit for “Rapper’s Delight.”) Big Bank Hank also borrowed–well, directly stole–most of his rap in the song from established rapper Grandmaster Caz. Deejays from the Bronx balked at the fact that The Sugarhill Gang hadn’t come up from the streets, but beyond the local hip hop community all listeners knew was that much-maligned disco music had a ready and able replacement.
More about The Sugarhill Gang and “Rapper’s Delight”: NPR’s take on “Rapper’s Delight” (aired in 2000) | [this link not completely appropriate for everyone, due to some of
the “adult” imagery in the lyrics. But for the rest of
us, it’s something to behold.] Watch Sugarhill Gang perform “Rapper’s Delight” live in 1979 and you’ll see how disco laid the foundations for hip hop.
GRANDMASTER FLASH and THE FURIOUS FIVE
With the almost unfathomable success of “Rapper’s Delight,” everyone from deep-pocketed New York record producers to big market radio deejays to suburban kids yearning for a kind of music that was both new and true immediately realized the potential of hip hop as a danceable replacement for disco. What they didn’t know was that hip hop also had the potential to be an agent for personal and political change (see Afrika Bambaataa above). Rappers in the Bronx weren’t just rhyming, as Wonder Mike famously did in “Rapper’s Delight,” about having a bad meal at a friend’s house [see the not-completely-appropriate for kids lyrics of the song here], but were boldly addressing the harsh realities of life as a non-white urban youth in late ’70s and early ’80s America. This changed in 1982 when Sugarhill Records scored second hit with “The Message,” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Grandmaster Flash was an innovative and highly respected DJ who had begun
to rival DJ Kool Herc (see above) as the most popular DJ on the street party scene. Flash was among the first to employ a technique that allowed him to take lyrics and rhythmic phrases from one record and play them simultaneously over other records. Also, while he didn’t invent “scratching“–hip hop histories generally agree that Grand Wizard Theodore was the first DJ to popularize it on the streets–Flash perfected the technique and became well-known as a disc-spinning master. He and his crew of rappers, known as the Furious Five, rose to prominence in the New York hip hop scene; Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had even opened for The Clash in 1981. (They were not well-received.) In 1982 Sugarhill records released “The Message,” a rap about the many frustrations and struggles non-white youth faced on America’s streets and the song became a massive hit. (“Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge, I’m trying not to lose my head….It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.”) The rap’s success assured lyricists that they didn’t necessarily have to dilute their messages to find radio play or even achieve stardom well beyond the boundaries of the Bronx.
Watch Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five perform “The Message” live in 1983 in front of a mainly white New York audience. The group’s main rapper on the song isn’t Flash himself, but Mellie Mel. (Listen to NPR’s Terry Gross interview Mellie Mel during “hip hop week” on “Fresh Air.”)
From that point forth rap and hip hop became big, big, BIG business. While most respected rappers still came up from the streets, after hip hop became mainstream, all knew that stars of the genre could earn a whole lot of money. In an upcoming session focusing on the global roots and ramifications of American music, “All Around This World” will take you on a tour of New School Rap, Gansta Rap, the East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry, etc., connecting the dub beats DJ Cool Herc spun in the early ’70s in the Bronx more directly back to West Africa, back to Jamaica, and then beyond America’s borders back out to the world. For now, this week in class, we’ll bring back “Rapper’s Delight,” reveling in the wondrous rhymes of Wonder Mike, and even do some breakdancing–we may even try this!
A bit more hip hop history: An excellent 1990/1991 hop history video from the UK featuring an overview of hip hop, to that point, with Afrika Bambaataa | AcesandEighths.com hip hop history, including an exciting tour of Global Hip Hop | Mr. Wiggles’ extensive — though not 100% appropriate for kids — hip hop timeline
[wpspoiler name=”Get on the Night Train with James Brown in 1963″ open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Then came JAMES BROWN.
James Brown was an R&B crooner, a gospel preacher, the most soulful of soul artists, and, at the same moment, something completely new. Brown and his awesome, awesome band, THE JBs took the emphasis off of melody and harmony and put the focus on a driving, gutturally groovy, rhythm. In particular, unlike much soulful music of the time, Brown’s music emphasized “the downbeat,” or the first beat of a musical segment known as a measure. (Count 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 and you’re counting out two measures of four beats each. Emphasize the first beat of each measure–1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4–and you’ll be in the ballpark of funk.) Brown’s band brought together many rhythmic instruments that had become standard in rock ‘n’ roll, like the electric guitar, electric bass, Hammond organ and a drum kit, and married them with a searing horn section. The band would then play songs that might consist, for the most part, of the same chord over and over. (This distinguished the form from R&B and soul songs which focds on more closely structured compositions.) “Godfather of Soul” Brown would use this repeated chord as a foundation upon which he’d sculpt the development of the performance, manipulating the pace of the band and the enthusiasm of the audience in order to whip everyone who was there into a frenzy.
In the ’70s in America funk formed the foundation for a less politically stirring form of music called disco, which we’ll explore in another week. It also inspired the even more intensely political Nigerian musician, FELA KUTI, to blend it with African rhythms to originate a genre called Afrobeat. [Watch Fela perform “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense” live in the UK in 1984. Note the funky James Brown-style guitar underneath.]
Today you’ll hear funk music many places–usually places where people dance. DJs at dance clubs regularly use funk records to get people grooving, hip hop artists regularly sample funk chords and progressions, and funk bands…well, they just do their darndest to stay funky.
[Watch James Brown tear it up with “Night Train” in 1963, Live at the Apollo, “Super Bad”
(which we’re going to hear in class) performed on Soul Train in 1970 and “Get on the Good Foot,” another Soul Train appearance, this time in 1973 | Watch SLY & THE FAMILY STONE funk it up on Soul Train | Free your mind with PARLIAMENT/FUNKADELIC as they perform live in 1979]
“Soul music” blends the powerful spirituality of gospel with the deeply emotional grooves of “Rhythm & Blues,” which was the term record companies had begun to use in the ’40s to categorize forms of African American music, replacing the increasingly unconfortable “race records.” Using the term “soul” in reference to a song or singer implies more than just adherence to a particular musical genre, but the assertion that the musician–almost exclusively an African-American musician–brings a particular depth to his or her art, perhaps borne of historical struggles, maybe due to connection with a higher power.
“Soul music” as a term first became associated with RAY CHARLES, who brought a spiritual, Gospel-inspired emotion to his piano-based blues, and vocalist, preacher SOLOMON BURKE–“the Muhammad Ali of soul.” Passionate vocalists like Stax Records artist OTIS REDDING and gospel-soul artist MAVIS STAPLES, “soul blues” singer SAM COOKE, gospel/jazz/R&B singer/songwriter ARETHA FRANKLIN and even rhythm &
blues/rock ‘n’ roll legend ETTA JAMES, whose version of “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” we try to channel in class–watch this incredible performance of the 1962 hit–all virtually exploded with “soul.”
[Watch Ray Charles perform “I Believe to My Soul” in 1960 and “Hit the Road Jack” in 1961 | Watch Otis Redding sing “Try a Little Tenderness” | Watch Sam Cooke perform “Ain’t
That Good News” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand | Enjoy Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers perform in Ghana in 1971 | Watch the Staple Singers, led this time by “Pops” on vocals, perform “Respect Yourself” in 1972 | Watch Aretha Franklin perform “I Never Loved a Man” in 1967 | Watch Solomon Burke singing “Cry to Me” live at the Long Beach Blues Festival.]
In the 1960s producer Berry Gordy’s Detroit-based Motown Records married soul with stellar songwriting to score over a hundred top ten hits. Often backed by a set of superb studio musicians known as the Funk Brothers, Motown artists like SMOKEY ROBINSON &
THE TEMPTATIONS, THE SUPREMES and GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS were soulful and groovy. STEVIE WONDER–first known as “Little Stevie Wonder”–also was a Motown artist whose career has expanded well beyond soul to envelop many other genres like funk and R&B.
[Watch Diana Ross and The Supremes sing a flawless “Stop in the Name of Love” at the Hollywood Palace in the mid-60s | Watch Smokey Robinson & the Temptations perform “Tracks of My Tears” in 1965 | Watch Gladys Night and Pips sing their classic, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” in 1973, accompanied by their classic dance moves | Watch Stevie Wonder reach “Higher Ground” in 1973]
By the early 1970s soul music had expanded to refer to the electrifying new sounds that developed in the politically, socially and racially charged times. Soul in the 1970s had a deep, groovy center, with activist/artists like CURTIS MAYFIELD intertwining their music with the struggles taking place in the street. At the same time, a television program, Soul Train, with its infinitely soulful host DON CORNELIUS, introduced American youth to soul, R&B and eventually funk artists like EARTH WIND & FIRE and THE COMMODORES.
[Watch Curtis Mayfield live in performance in 1972 | Watch EARTH, WIND & FIRE perform “Mighty Might,” on Soul Train in 1974 | Dig the Commodores performing “Too Hot Ta Trot” in 1977 (Note the wonderful costumes. Note the amazing glasses. Note Lionel Ritchie.)]
“Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell.
Go go. Go Johnny go….
Johnny B Goode.”
Ah, rock. Ah, roll. Ah…’n.’
Rock ‘n’ roll is yet another one of the many genres of music we come to explore in All Around This World that stands on the shoulders of the musical giants that came before it–could not stand at all if not for millennia of music-making in Africa, in Europe and then in America–yet when it emerged as a distinct form it sounded so shocking that it shook American society–“white” American society–to its core. A central issue at work here–often, but not always, unspoken–was race. When rock ‘n’ roll coalesced as a genre in the 1950s, America was entering a period of unprecedented interracial conflict. The South was still segregated, overtly and obstinately. The North was segregated too–though more covertly, insidiously. When America’s “white” teenagers started listening to and, heavens forbid!, dancing in suggestive ways to “black” music, spinning these contemporary “race records” on the player in their very own suburban bedrooms, not even in some swing era dancehall or a jazz club in a separate, seedy part of town…. Many who were in power in America saw this not as a moment of frivolous, cross-racial musical curiosity, but as a pronounced step toward breaking down the barriers between races that had structured American society since days of slavery. Dangerous, and potentially destabilizing. And, in
great part, they were right.
Our mission this week isn’t to detail the development of every twist and turn of every subgenre of American rock ‘n’ roll from its origins in the ’50s to the present–I did that with English rock and pop in our Western Europe and The Nordic Counties season, and, while it sure was a fun thing to go through, and I’ll one day do that for American rock music, oy! it took a lot of work. Instead, let’s go back to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, before rock was what we know as ROCK. Back then, in the latest 1940s and early ’50s, record companies still mainly sold “white” music–Appalachian folk, for example, or most kinds of country–to “white” people and “black” music, like jazz and blues, to “black,” much as they had in the ’20s when they openly marketed “hillbilly” music to whites and “race records” to African Americans. As we’ve learned in in other weeks, none of the “white” forms of music was actually just by, or for, whites, and the same with music like jazz and blues, but when the record company marketing machines fired up, they most often chose sides.
Fortunately for us music-lovers, musicians themselves, and the fans who really appreciate their art, rarely listen to machines. As we’ve seen pretty consistently in our global explorations, musicians not only keep their ears open for interesting new ways to create, but the best musicians take genre-bending risks as a matter of course. Music fans don’t lag far behind.
So no one should be surprised that even in stratified, highly segregated 1950’s America, young, white musicians, especially in America’s south–like Tupelo, Mississippi’s ELVIS PRESLEY–were eager to cross racial boundaries and learn how to play “black” music. ELVIS and other white artists, like CARL PERKINS, JERRY LEE LEWIS and JOHNNY CASH combined blues rhythms with an accentuated “backbeat” and gave their songs a country flair to create a new form of music called “Rockabilly.”
Because rock ‘n’ roll evolved slowly into own genre there is much dispute among music historians about which musician can claim “the first rock record.” The prime candidate for rock record #1 seems to be “Rock Around the Clock,” which was a big hit for BILL HALEY & HIS COMETS; it may not have been the first rock record per se, but it certainly was the new genre’s first breakthrough hit. Coming in a close second may be “Rocket 88,” a 1951 recording by a band known as Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. (This was actually an alias for IKE TURNER and The Kings of Rhythm.)
Whoever can claim the first rock record, by the mid ’50s record companies realized white teenagers were buying this music, and so a genre was born. Elvis, many of whose early hits were reworked versions of old blues songs, was certainly the most popular early rock artist, but black “electric blues” artists like CHUCK BERRY, who effectively transposed jump blues piano sounds onto guitar to create the first rock riffs, BO DIDDLEY, who adopted the Latin “3-2 clave” to create a blues-rock rhythm called the “Bo Diddley Beat”–watch him perform “Hey Bo Diddley” and count it out: bop bop bop, bop bop–not to mention a dynamic gospel/jump blues/booige woogie piano player known as LITTLE RICHARD, also became part of the early rock scene.
On February 3, 1959, three popular early rock musicians–BUDDY HOLLY, J.P. “THE BIG BOPPER” Richardson and RITCHIE VALENS–were flying together from one city on their concert tour to another when their plane crashed and they all lost their lives. (“The day the music died.”) Rock fans mourned not only the loss of three promising performers–fans and some critics believed Holly to have the talent and vision to advance rock songwriting some other, uncharted level, and Ritchie Valens was already breaking new ground, bringing Mexican son jarocho into the American mainstream with his rendition of “La Bamba”–but the end of what had seemed to be an idyllic era (no matter what the controversies rock had wrought).
Of course rock ‘n’ roll didn’t die with Buddy Holly, but the ’50s did certainly turn into the more turbulent, much more challenging ’60s. Within just a few years, straightforward three chord, 12-bar blues-based rock would become the sound of the past.
[Elvis appears on The Milton Berle Show in 1956 where he scandalously gyrates his way through the Lieber and Stoller song (first performed by BIG MAMA THORNTON), “Hound Dog.” Public outcry followed, as did harsh critical assessments, such as this: “Popular music has been sinking in this country for some years. Now it has reached its lowest depths in the “grunt and groin” antics of one Elvis Presley.” | Little Richard wows us with “Lucille” (in 1957) and his own version of “Hound Dog” | Watch “rock and roll specialists” Buddy Holly & the Crickets perform “Peggy Sue” on The Arthur Murray Dance Party in 1957 | Watch a theatrical Big Bopper sing–well, lip synch–“Chantilly Lace” in 1958 | Listen to Ritchie Valens perform, “Come On Let’s Go“]
“Skiffle” is a form of music that developed in the U.S. in the 1920s as a down-home blend of jazz, blues and folk, faded into obscurity, then re-emerged in the UK in the 1950s and changed the world.
While the term “skiffle” was a slang term used in the ’20s to refer to a “rent party,” which was a social gathering with a small charge that people held to raise money to pay for rent on their house, the origins of “skiffle” as a musical form are in dispute–did it arise from New Orleans Jazz? did it appear in the form of improvised jug bands that played early blues and jazz across the American South? Whatever the origins of the form, skiffle bands came to embody a unique form of roosty, do-it-yourself music-making. Rather than move
toward more and more complicated arrangements performed by more and more virtuosic musicians like other forms of blues and jazz, skiffle remained consciously self-made: instruments in a 1920s skiffle band might include, in addition to the standard acoustic guitar, a jug, a tea-chest bass, a washboard, a cigar-box fiddle, a musical saw or even a kazoo. While the form may have been fun it never really caught on; the term “skiffle” all but disappeared by the ’40s.
But not in England. In the 1950s a British traditional jazz guitarist named LONNIE DONEGAN became interested in the form and began to play skiffle in the intermissions of his jazz band performances, accompanying other band members who played a washboard and tea-chest bass. They played American folk songs and in 1956 even recorded a cover of Leadbelly’s “Rock Island Line.” The song was a
big hit. [Watch Donegan skiffle himself silly on British TV.]
Donegan and his skiffle band ended up having many more hits in the U.K. in the ’50s, but ultimately his own music isn’t his legacy. Donegan was important in the development of global culture because of the musicians he inspired to start their own skiffle bands–young blokes, some of who may have heard of. Like VAN MORRISON. MICK JAGGER. JIMMY PAGE. DAVID GILMOUR. Oh, and this guy named JOHN LENNON whose skiffle band, The Quarrymen, were a first iteration of his “other band,” THE BEATLES. These musicians eventually ditched exchanged homemade instruments for international stardom. But it all started with skiffle.
[Watch a 13 year old Jimmy Page, eventually of Led Zeppelin fame, and his skiffle band in 1957, perform, “Mama Don’t Allow No Skiffle Anymore” | Watch Page about ten years later playing “I’m a Man,” when he was a member of the Yardbirds, on the BBC show Shivaree (note the amazing Shivaree dancers)]
In the 1940s Chicago blues artists and guitarists like Texas-born, Los Angeles-based T. BONE WALKER combined blues, jazz and electricity to make for an energizing new sound. In the ’50s electric blues artists like BO DIDDLEY and CHUCK BERRY not only energized early American rockers like ELVIS PRESLEY (learn about Elvis’s admiration of Berry’s music), but their forays into the United Kingdom–particularly a 1958 tour by MUDDY WATERS–also inspired an entire generation of young British guitarists like JIMMY PAGE, KEITH RICHARDS and ERIC CLAPTON to create a new genre called “blues-rock.” (Look in the “skiffle” section below to learn a bit more about Page and his earliest musical adventures.) [Watch T-Bone Walker play, “Don’t Throw Your Love on Me So Strong” | Watch Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry on stage together in 1973]
