Rock And Roll In The 50's Essay

987 Words2 Pages

The 1950’s were one of the most influential decades in American history. In an era where communication was moving at a snails pace, compared to today’s standards, views and attitudes of America’s youth grew and spread faster than ever before, because of the popularity of a new type of music called rock and roll. Rock and Roll was like no other music that was heard before and in the mid 50’s it exploded. Rock and Roll in the mid 50’s changed America for the better in bringing up issues of race, war, and freedom of expression.
From 1955-1960 rock and roll took of for many reasoning, one of the reason it took of was from the large number of youth in America during the mid 1950’s. The baby boomer generation made up a major part of the American population and they were all in their teenage years during this time. “ Today leer-ics are offered as standard popular music for general consumption, including consumption by teenagers” (Brackett, 102). Brackett is explaining in this quote that in the 1950’s teenagers had a major importance in determining the popularity of new rock and roll music. Most of the baby boomer generation had parents that fought in World War II and they grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and the other big band music of the early …show more content…

The top 40 charts help establish a standard of what would be played on the radio and after ASCAP and the Orion hearings ended the Payola period of rock and roll. ASCAP, “mounted an attack on rock n roll” (Brackett, 131). With all the lawsuits and early rock and roll artist like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry not performing their music lead to a decline in the late 1950’s of rock and roll. The youth of America was highly influenced by what was played on the radio and how the artist were perceived and viewed by others in society helped bring the advancement as well as the later decline of rock and

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