Whenever I think of music in the 1950s, I cannot help but imagine a bunch of high school boys in leather jackets with their hair slicked back, or high school girls in poodle skirts. Most of the time in my imagination they will be singing, \u201cGrease Lighting\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re the One That I Want\u201d. For most people my age, it is hard to imagine music during that time, but even harder getting us to explore the music. We have this gut feeling that the music back then was boring and un-relatable, but all of this is untrue. What we do not understand is that today, modern music is closely related to the music of the 50s. In fact if it were not for the music of the 50s, many genres of music today would not exist.<\/p>\n
In the year 1954, a teen from Memphis, Tennessee entered the music industry. His name was Elvis Presley. Nicknamed \u201cthe King of Rock and Roll\u201d; Elvis is credited as being the creator of Rock and Roll. Without Elvis, and other 1950s rock and roll artists, many rock and roll genre inspired music would not exist today.<\/p>\n
Along with Elvis, many other musicians contributed to modernizing music during the 1950s. Many of those musician belonged to the genre of Jazz. Some of those artists included: Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday. Today, Jazz may not seem important to music, but it is. A popular genre in today\u2019s music is R&B; a type of music derived from Jazz. Therefore, Jazz is directly connected to today\u2019s music.<\/p>\n
Another type of music that is credited to the 1950s is Doo Wop. Doo Wop today is not nearly as popular as it was during the fifties, but one Doo Wop tradition has stuck around. That tradition is boy bands. That\u2019s right, boy bands like One Direction or the Back Street Boys are just replicas of the Doo Wop bands of the 1950s. The only difference between the Doo Wop boy bands and today\u2019s boy bands is that today\u2019s boy bands are established on TV shows; One Direction.<\/p>\n
One final type of music popular in the 1950s, related to today\u2019s music, is country music. In the mid 1950s artists like Ray Price, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Horton began shifting country music. Country music began to be influenced by rock and roll. This caused the industry to become a multimillion-dollar success and created the sound that still exists today.<\/p>\n
Whether today\u2019s music listeners like it or not, the music of the 1950s influenced future genres of music heavily. Traces of 1950s music can be found in almost all genres of music today, from Rock and Roll to Country. In fact, I suggest that every listener of today\u2019s music should take the time and explore the music of the 1950s. Perhaps you will discover a sound you enjoy, or maybe just appreciate your grandparent\u2019s records more. The music of the 1950s isn\u2019t just Grease<\/em>, it\u2019s classic, groundbreaking, and worth listening to.<\/p>\n –Kate M. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whenever I think of music in the 1950s, I cannot help but imagine a bunch of high school boys in leather jackets with their hair slicked back, or high school girls in poodle skirts. Most of the time in my imagination they will be singing, \u201cGrease Lighting\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re the One That I Want\u201d. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blogposts","tag-fa13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}