Skip to main content

Durand Jones & The Indications - Can't Keep My Cool

The first commercial radio station in America, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began broadcasting in 1920. Throughout the early 1920s, radio experienced explosive growth. By 1924 there were nearly 600 commercial stations broadcasting and three million receivers in homes. In the late 1920s, NBC and CBS established radio networks that provided programming to affiliate stations throughout the country. However, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as television appeared on the scene many analysts were predicting radio’s demise. Radio stations up to this point had programmed a variety of material, including live music, drama, variety shows, sporting events, and news. With TV’s dramatic growth in popularity, radio stations in the 1950s began concentrating their efforts on playing music and emphasizing local programming rather than relying on the network feed. These trends led to the rise in popularity of the local disc jockey or DJ. DJs often had complete control of the style of l their show and the records that they played. After a time, it was not enough just to have a unique show, and many DJs started developing flamboyant and eccentric on-air personalities. They became showmen; in fact, several early rock and roll artists actually began their careers as DJs, including one at WDIA in Memphis named Riley B. King. King was known on the air as the “Blues Boy”; he later adopted those initials and became known simply as B. B. King.

Like the nation itself, in the late 1940s and early 1950s radio was segregated. A small number of black stations programmed jazz and R&B to black audiences, while white stations played pop and country for white audiences. However, R&B was becoming increasingly popular during the 1946–54 transitional period with white teenagers, who responded to the way the music was more emotional and viscerally exciting than conventional pop. To get their R&B fix, these teens began tuning in to black stations such as WDIA "America’s Only 50,000 Watt Negro Radio Station”, WERD in Atlanta, and KXLW in St. Louis.

As the audience for R&B grew, the more attentive white DJs picked up on the trend and also began to play R&B records... By connecting the rapidly expanding needs of the teenage nation with R&B and rock and roll records, these renegade DJs, both black and white, essentially saved radio from television’s onslaught. For all its strengths as a medium for family entertainment, TV could not connect with the young in the same direct way that radio could. By playing rock and roll records, radio could pin- point its audience with deadly accuracy. It was also portable, teens could listen at home or after school on the newly introduced transistor radio, or in their cars while cruising at night.
Source: The Roots of Rock and Roll from The History of Rock & Roll by Thomas Larson


Durand Jones & The Indications - Can't Keep My Cool
  • Released by: Dead Oceans
  • Release date: 1 July 2017

"Duran Jones and The Indications members consists of vocalist Durand Jones, drummer Aaron Frazer, guitarist Blake Rhein, organist Steve Okonski and bassist Michael Montgomery."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Psychotic Reactions - Skip To My Lou

It expresses the emotions of angst, anger, and lust in some of the only ways that are accepted by society. The history of this edgy music genre dates back to the 1950s. It was formed by a combination of the blues, gospel music, and country. Throughout the decades, rock ‘n roll has evolved and become famous for being the genre that’s continued to push the boundaries of music, and, sometimes, the cultural boundaries of society itself. In the 1950s rock ‘n roll could be defined as rhythm and blues. In the 1960s it was partial to new musical styles such as folk rock and soul. And in the 1970s hard rock was born. From the 1980s to the present, technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry. Good taste is the enemy of the revolution. This remark epitomizes the spirit of rock ‘n roll. You’re not expected to conform, you’re expected to be yourself… no matter what anyone thinks. You are admired deeply for expressing emotions such as anger, heartbreak, and sadness through music in a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins. Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women. The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists. Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello The Pat Moran Q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the l...
Post a Comment
Read more