Music timeline 1950-1959

Music timeline 1950-1959

• 1950 : Jac Holzman founds Elektra in New York to promote new folk and jazz musicians. Les Baxter's Music Out of the Moon incorporates exotic themes in instrumental music. The first major rhythm'n'blues festival is held in Los Angeles (the "Blues & Rhythm Jubilee"). Dutch electronics giant Philips enters the recording business
• 1951 : The white Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed decides to speculate on the success of Leo Mintz's store and starts a radio program, "Moondog Rock'n'Roll Party", that broadcasts black music to an audience of white teenagers. The first rock and roll record, Ike Turner's Rocket 88, is released. The first juke-box that plays 45 RPM records is introduced. Karlheinz Stockhausen joins the school of music at Darmstadt and begins composing "elektronische musik". The French national radio sets up a studio to record electronic music in Paris and the West Deutsche Radio creates a similar studio in Cologne (the NWDR). John Cage composes music for radio frequencies. Howling Wolf and Joe Turner popularize the "shouters". Victor and Columbia agree to split the record market: Victor sells 33 RPM long-playing records and Columbia sells 45 RPM records. Gunter Lee Carr cuts the dance novelty We're Gonna Rock. The first Jamaican studio opens and begins recording "mento" music.
• 1952 “Bill Haley forms the Comets, the first rock and roll band. Louis and Bebe Barron's soundtrack for the science-fiction film The Bells of Atlantisuses only electronic instruments. The Weavers, accused of being communists, are forced to dissolve. Bob Horn's "Bandstand" tv program airs from Philadeplhia every weekday afternoon. John-Clellon Holmes coins the expression "beat generation" to refer to Jack Kerouac and other young writers. The Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed (aka Moondog) organizes the first rock and roll concert, the "Moondog Coronation Ball". Oskar Sala invents the "Mixtur-Trautonium", an instrument capable of subharmonics. John Cage composes multi-media pieces that use a computer. John Cage's Williams Mix is an electronic collage of hundreds of random noises. John Cage's Water Music (1952) instructs the performers to also perform non-musical gestures. Gibson introduces its solid-body electric guitar, invented by Les Paul a few years earlier. Roscoe Gordon, a Memphis pianist, invents the "ska" beat with No More Doggin'. Sam Phillips founds Sun Records and declares "If I could find a white man who sings with the Negro feel, I'll make a million dollars". Electronic engineers Harry Olsen and Hebert Belar create the first synthesizer at RCA's Princeton Laboratories, the Mark I. Charles Brown's Hard Times is the first hit by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to enter the charts. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is founded to represent the recording industry of the USA.
• 1953 : Bill Haley's Crazy Man Crazy is the first rock and roll song to enter the Billboard charts. The Orioles' Crying in the Chapel is the first black hit to top the white pop charts. Todd Matshikiza's musical Makhaliphile fuses classical, jazz and African music. Sam Phillips records the first Elvis Presley record in his Sun studio of Memphis using two recorders to produce an effect of "slapback" audio delay. Hank Williams dies at 30. CBS launches a sub-label, Epic. Delmark is founded by Bob Koester. The black market constitutes 5.7% of the total American market for records. Youstol Dispage releases his first record. Vee-Jay is founded in Indiana, owned by a black couple and specializing in black music.
• 1954 : Boom of doo-wop. Bill Haley's version of "Rock Around The clock" is the first rock song used in a movie soundtrack. Joe Turner cuts the blues novelty Shake Rattle And Roll. The record companies switch from 78 RPMs to 45 RPMs. EMI (Electrical and Musical Industries) buys Capitol. The Country Music Disc Jockeys' Association (CMA) is founded in Nashville. Japanese electronic company TTK (later Sony) introduces the world's first transistor radio. The first Newport Jazz Festival is held, the first hazz festival in the world. Edgar Varese pioneers tape music with Deserts. Otto Luening's Fantasy In Space and Vladimir Ussachevsky's A Poem In Cycles And Bells pioneer "tape music" at Columbia University.
• 1955 : "Rebel Without A Cause" and "Blackboard Jungle" establish a new role model for teenagers, the rebellious loner and sometimes juvenile delinquent. Frank Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours (1955) is the first concept album of pop music. Millett Morgan releases a recording of the Ionosphere. Pete Seeger releases the first album of African music by a white musician, Bantu Choral Folk Songs. Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line launches a new genre in Britain, "skiffle". Hungarian composer Georg Ligeti, while studying at Cologne, coins a "texture music" that has minimal movement. Chuck Berry cuts his first rock and roll records, the first ones to have the guitar as the main instrument, and invents the descending pentatonic double-stops (the essence of rock guitar). Bo Diddley invents the "hambone" rhythm. The Chordettes and the Chantels are the first girl-groups. Ray Charles invents "soul" music with I Got A Woman, a secular adaptation of an old gospel. Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan performs at the Museum of Modern Art of. ABC-Paramount is founded in New York New York. The magazine "Village Voice" is founded by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer. Ace Records is formed by Johnny Vincent in New Orleans, specializing in black music. Charlie Parker dies at the age of 35.
• 1956 : Heartbreak Hotel starts Presley-mania. The rock'n'roll music of white rockers is called "rockabilly" (rock + hillbilly). Screamin Jay Hawkins' I Put A Spell On You and his antics pioneers gothic rock. Wanda Jackson is the "queen of rockabilly". The popularity of rock and roll causes the record industry to boom and allows independent labels to flourish. Ska develops in Jamaica. Martin Denny's Exotica invents a new genre. Norman Granz founds Verve to promote alternative jazz musicians. Elektra pioneers the "compilation" record, containing songs by different musicians.
• 1957 : Golden age of the teen-idols. Link Wray's Rumble invents the "fuzz-tone" guitar sound. LaMonte Young composes music for sustained tones. Max Mathews begins composing computer music at Bell Laboratories. Lejaren Hiller writes a program for a computer to compose the Illiac Suite. Bruno Maderna's Musica su Due Dimensioni is the first electroacoustic composition. Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat launches "calypso".
• 1958 : Golden age of instrumental rock. Eddie Cochran overdubs all instruments and vocals on Summertime Blues and C'mon Everybody. The Kingstone Trio's Tom Dooley launches the folk revival. Lowman Pauling uses guitar distortion and feedback on the Five Royales' The Slummer The Slum. The film company Warner Brothers enters the recording business. Big Bill Broonzy dies at 65. RCA introduces the first stereo long-playing records. Don Kirshner opens offices at the Brill Building. The RIAA establishes a "gold" award for singles and albums which reach $1 million sales. David Seville's The Witch octor and the Tokens' Tonite I Fell In Love are the first novelty hits. Edgar Varese premieres his Poeme Electronique in a special pavilion designed by architect Le Corbusier, where the music reacts with the environment. John Fahey invents "American primitivism". Bobby Freeman's Do You Wanna Dance begins the "dance craze". Antonio Carlos Jobim's Chega de Saudade coins bossanova. The Columbia-Princeton studio is established in New York for avantgarde composers, with an RCA Mark II synthesizer. Stax is founded in Memphis to promote black music.
• 1959 : Frank Zappa and Donald Van Vliet cut a record together. In Jamaica Theophilus Beckford cuts the first "ska" song, Easy Snapping. Rick Hall founds the FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Puertorican dj Polito Vega starts broadcasting Latin music in New York. The Drifters' There Goes My Baby introduces Latin rhythm into pop music. Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion introduces the USA to African polyrhythms. The first Newport Folk Festival is held. John Cage performs "live electronic music". LaMonte Young and others found the "Fluxus" movement. Barry Gordy founds Tamla Motown in Detroit to release party-oriented soul records. Chris Blackwell founds Island in Jamaica. Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and others found the "Tape Music Center" near San Francisco. Raymond Scott invents the first sequencer, the "Wall of Sound". 600 million records are sold in the USA. Buddy Holly dies at 22 in a plane crash. Since 1955, the US market share of the four "majors" has dropped from 78% to 44%, while the market share of independent record companies increased from 22% to 56%. Since 1955, the US market has increased from 213 million dollars to 603 million, and the market share of rock and roll has increased from 15.7% to 42.7%.