The History Of Rock And Roll

Submitted By bangbanger94
Words: 2677
Pages: 11

The sixties were where everything was wild and crazy. A lot happened on the sixties and I will start off by listing and explaining everything about the sixties. The sixties was known for “The Rock N Roll Era” At the beginning of the 1960s, pop and rock and roll trends of the 1950s continued; nevertheless, the rock and roll of the decade before started to merge into a more international, eclectic variant known as rock. By the mid-1960s, rock and roll in its purest form was gradually overtaken by pop rocked, beat, psychedelic rock, blues rock and folk rock, which had grown in popularity. The country and folk-influenced style associated with the latter-half of 1960s rock music spawned a generation of popular singer-songwriters who wrote and performed their own work. Towards the decade's end, genres such as baroque pop, sunshine pop, bubblegum pop, progressive rock and heavy metal started to grow popular, with the latter two finding greater success in the following decade. Furthermore, the 1960s saw funk and soul music rising in popularity; rhythm and blues in general remained popular, and this style was commonly associated to girl groups of the time, whose fusion of R&B and gospel with rock and roll enjoyed success until the mid-part of the decade. Aside from the popularity of rock and R&B music in the 1960s, Latin American as well as Jamaican and Cuban music achieved a degree of popularity throughout the decade, with genres such as bossa nova, the cha-cha-cha, ska, and calypso being popular. From a classical point of view, the 1960s were also an important decade as they saw the development of experimental, jazz and contemporary classical music, notably minimalism and free improvisation. The Beatles started to become very popular at that era. British rock broke through to mainstream popularity in the United States in January 1964 with the success of the Beatles. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the band's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, starting the British Invasion of the American music charts. The song entered the chart on January 18, 1964 at No. 45 before it became the No. 1 single for 7 weeks and went on to last a total of 15 weeks in the chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show February 9 is considered a milestone in American pop culture.
The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for an American television program. The Beatles went on to become the biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed by numerous British bands. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, utilizing traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics. In the early sixties figures such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream audience with hits including "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "Masters of War" (1963), which brought "protest songs" to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences.

Around 1963 JFK assassination happened; people say everyone remembers where they were at and what they were doing when that happened. On November 22, 1963, the youth and idealism of America in the 1960s faltered as its young President, John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Two days later, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby during a prisoner transfer. After researching all the available evidence about Kennedy’s assassination, the Warren Commission officially ruled in 1964 that Oswald acted alone; a point still greatly contested by conspiracy theorists