Rock and Roll

By: Kathleen Thompson

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Rock and Roll

The year 1955 saw two remarkable, transforming events in American society, and they were not unrelated. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, and “rock 'n' roll” began to dominate the pop music charts. Each event had a long history behind it, and each, in its way, signaled a changing attitude toward race in the United States. The music called rock and roll was thoroughly interracial and could never have thrived in pre–World War II America. It could not have drawn white teenagers by the millions into the black world of rhythm and blues nor brought black and white audiences together in clubs and concerts. And that, as it turned out, was the whole point.

Race is and always has been at the heart of rock and roll. Singer Ruth Brown was once asked when rhythm and blues became rock and roll and she said, “When the white kids started dancing to it.” Every attempt to define the term in strictly musical terms has failed, in part because the differences within it are so much greater than the differences between it and the music that continued to be called R & B. The term “rock and roll” has no meaning apart from race.

Tracing the development of the music with an awareness of class, gender, and race shows how those three forces have played a role in one of the many forms of the music of the African diaspora. The influence of class is revealed in the fact that the music of the white poor and working class, in the form of country music, also moved into the mainstream, as part of the same rejection of bland, white middle-class popular music. R & B and country music often blended, as in the music of Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. And yet, while black and country musicians often respected each other and worked together, united by their scorn for the sentimental balladeers of white pop, country musicians were more acceptable in a racially divided culture and usually became far more successful commercially than did their black counterparts. Elvis, the Everly Brothers, and Brenda Lee trumped Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Ruth Brown.

The third force, gender, also had an effect on the development of rock and roll, but in a way that has been little recognized and less credited. There is no doubt that women instrumentalists were, for several decades, unacceptable in rock and roll. The occasional exception, like Peggy Jones playing lead guitar with Bo Diddley, merely proved the rule. Women vocalists had less difficulty, but also faced powerful discrimination. The result is that, while black women have been active in rock and roll since its inception as performers, their most powerful influence was on the creation of the form.

Defining Rock and Roll

Black women have been consistently defined out of rock and roll, and that is not an easy trend to reverse. Oversimplifications and generalizations are rife in discussions of rock and roll, “rock 'n' roll,” “rock music,” and “Rock.” The music history equivalent of a popular music expert could probably detect the age, ethnic background, and musical preferences of any writer on the subject just by analyzing their use of terms. That is why it is so important to challenge definitions from the outset. The book What Was the First Rock 'n' Roll Record? offers fifty candidates for that honor and makes an argument for each one. Based on vocabulary, blues queen Trixie Smith's “My Man Rocks Me (With a Steady Roll),” recorded in 1922, could very well be the first. The choice determines when rock and roll began and, therefore, who was an “influence” and who was a rock star. It also determines, in part, who gets included in a rock chronology and who gets left in the limbo of “not really rock and roll.”

Four rock “divas.”  Left to right: Ruth Pointer, D'Atra Hicks, Anita Baker, and Tina Turner. The occasion was a performance by D'Atra Hicks in Atlanta, Georgia, where she received a standing ovation.

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Before rock and roll, there were three kinds of popular music in the United States, as attested to by Billboard magazine's three charts: country and western (C & W), rhythm and blues (R & B), and pop. C & W came out of the hills of Appalachia and the swing dance halls of West Texas, and it was the music of working-class white people. Pop was whatever was popular among middle-class white people. Basically, R & B was black dance music. It was christened “rhythm and blues” in the 1940s by Jerry Wexler, later an Atlantic Records executive, when Billboard magazine needed a new name for its “race records” chart. At the same time, they changed the “hillbilly” chart to “country and western.”

In the years just before World War II, black popular music was mostly jazz. When jazz musicians began to explore more sophisticated forms and themes, moving away from the consistent rhythms that make for good dance music, another style began to evolve in and for dance clubs. It hearkened back to the blues and to the music of the blues queens such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, and the other black women who were the first to perform the blues onstage. This form of blues may actually have been more influential in the formation of R & B than was the blues of country men. It had already made the transition to entertainment, to music intended for an audience, no matter how personal its origin or its singer's style. And it employed jazz musicians as accompanists.

Beginning with this base, the new music picked up some boogie-woogie piano, a good deal of jazz, and whatever the musicians thought would make it “jump.” Some R&B musicians borrowed a little from white country music, which had borrowed from black music in the first place.

When Alan Freed hosted his “Moon Dog's Coronation Ball” in Cleveland, the performers were all rhythm and blues—the music Freed dubbed rock and roll, almost as a kind of nickname. He sold out all 7,500 seats at the arena and then, because of a mistake, another 7,500. Almost 20,000 kids showed up, about a third of whom were white, and this was in 1952. White kids had started dancing to the music with a vengeance. The charts showed the same phenomenon. An R & B record that made it to Billboard's top spot in 1952, points out John A. Jackson in Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, sold an average of about 250,000 copies. Just a year later, the average had quadrupled to 1,000,000. Given the rest of what was happening at the time, it is reasonable to assume that a lot of those extra 750,000 copies were being sold to white kids. Rock and roll existed long before Bill Haley or anyone else put a record identified as rock and roll on the charts.

One of the biggest myths in the business is that, while white male musicians may have stolen the music from African Americans, they also were the ones who made it popular. Bill Haley and Elvis Presley were rock and roll, according to this mythology, and they left everyone else in their dust—on the sad old R & B charts. That simply isn't true. In fact, everyone made it popular, white and black, male and female. The white kids were dancing to music that included “straight” R & B, R & B influenced by country, R & B influenced by white pop, R & B seasoned, in fact, by a multitude of styles and performers. In the early years, those performers were almost as racially mixed as the music's origins—and its audience.

What black and white musicians were doing was translating R & B, not for a white audience, but for a younger audience. That teenage audience, really for the first time, had money to buy records and no music made for them. Many musicians began to focus their music less on overtly sexual themes and more on the romantic longing—or the need for excitement—that afflicts adolescents.

If you look at those early years in this way, the view is quite different. You don't see just black performers who were influential on white rock and roll stars; you see black rock and roll stars. There are fewer victims in this view, and more successful musicians, including black women. The most significant black women in rock and roll, however, came long before rhythm and blues even had a name.

Black Women and the Origins of Rock

The participation of black women in the origins of rock music begins in Africa, of course. Even in the musical forms that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, black women played a distinctive role. The basis of rhythm and blues was the blues itself, largely as performed by black women. Black women singers, many of whom had vaudeville experience, took the crudely powerful blues of the country and, according the Daphne Duval Harrison in Black Pearls, added to them “increased improvisation on melodic line, unusual phrasing which altered the emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails.” The role of these women can be clearly seen in their influence on a singer such as Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, who in turn influenced Janis Joplin and others. Joplin had a huge hit with the song “Ball and Chain,” which Thornton wrote, singing in a similar style.

The changes wrought by the blues women touched not only different styles of singing but also the music itself. Especially when they moved into the recording studio, the singers were backed up by jazz musicians, sometimes the best bands around and sometimes whoever could be found at recording time. These musicians, mostly male, were profoundly affected by the blues queens, modifying their music in a way that would come to seem inevitable but that might not otherwise have happened.

The second major influence of black women on the music that would become rock and roll came through the church. Lionel Hampton, one of the highly esteemed “predecessors” of rock and roll, declared that he always tried to sit next to “the sister who played the big bass drum” in the Holiness Church he attended as a child. He described the church band, with its guitar, trombone, and drums, and declared that the heavy back beat in rock and roll is “pure Church of God in Christ.”

It was a gospel beat, and it came from gospel churches where men preached and women sang and played in the band. The historian Cheryl Townsend Gilkes has written of the important role women played in music in black religious activities, citing especially women creators of gospel music such as Roberta Martin, Sallie Martin, Clara Ward, and others.

Black women were also profoundly influential on the people who would shape rock and roll. Little Richard, for example, has named among his heroes and musical role models Marion Williams of the Clara Ward singers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Mahalia Jackson. Great rock singers such as Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and James Brown, as well as Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and even Joe Cocker and Mick Jagger all owe a huge debt to Mahalia Jackson and other black women gospel singers. At the same time, rock and roll bands owe a huge debt to the gospel rhythms of the black church. The music of the Sanctified Church, as it is often called, was made largely by black women, and that music proved to make probably the most important contribution to rock and roll—the back beat. The music of the church also contributed a quality of emotionalism and sincerity that was utterly lacking in most white popular music.

Black Women Performers

Looking for performers is a different matter. Charlie Gillett, in The Sound of the City, defined five styles of rock and roll, using male musicians to illustrate his categories. Bill Haley belonged to “northern band rock and roll.” The second style, “New Orleans dance blues,” was exemplified by Fats Domino and Little Richard. The third, “Memphis country rock,” or “rockabilly,” gave us Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. The fourth was “Chicago rhythm and blues,” which included the music of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddly. Finally, there was “vocal group rhythm and blues,” originating in the urban centers of New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and sung by the Platters, among many others. All five styles came out of racially fluid communities, where black and white cultures co-existed, intermingled, and often collided.

Black women have always participated in making popular music. Before black “dance music” became jazz, women were even instrumentalists. Later, when jazz became commercially successful, women retained their position primarily as vocalists, although “Sweet Emma” Barrett, Lil Hardin Armstrong, Lovie Austin, and others were piano-playing exceptions. From Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, to Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, black women have been the acknowledged queens of American popular vocal music, and vocal music is where to begin looking for black women in rock and roll.

In the book Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, Charles Hamm investigates the beginnings of rock and roll by looking at the first recordings of the 1950s to chart high on any two of the three billboard charts, which is an instructive exercise. In 1953 and 1954, the groups called the Orioles, the Crows, and the Penguins hit the Top 20 on the pop charts with “Crying in the Chapel,” “Gee,” and “Earth Angel,” respectively. These were all R & B vocal groups, and all the records also charted as R & B, even though “Crying in the Chapel” was actually a cover of a country and western song. The fourth song to hit near the top of both charts was “Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill Haley and His Comets, in 1955. After that came Chuck Berry's “Maybellene”(1955) and two by the Platters, “Only You” (1955) and “The Great Pretender” (1955). That makes four vocal groups out of six crossover hits. So, by 1955, vocal group rhythm and blues had already crossed over from R & B to the pop charts. In fact, more than 15 percent of the Billboard number-one pop hits between 1955 and 1963 were vocal group rhythm and blues, or “doo wop.” Between 1955 and 1959, more than 30 percent of the top records on the R & B charts were in the same category. It was urban, northern, and far more influenced by jazz than by country. Black women were among its most popular practitioners.

The Platters included a black woman, Zola Taylor. Going solely by the charts, she was the first black woman in rock and roll. In addition to Zola Taylor, there were several all-woman vocal groups who did well on the R & B charts without crossing over, and Taylor was soon followed on the pop charts by the women—or rather, girls—of the Bobbettes. They were the first of what would come to be called the “girl groups,” and they ranged in age from eleven to fifteen. Their first hit was “Mr. Lee,” a song they wrote themselves. “Mr. Lee” made it to number one on the R & B charts and number six on the pop charts in 1957. Close on the wobbly high heels of the Bobbettes came the Chantels. Their first release went to number seventy-one on the pop charts. Their second, “Maybe,” reached number fifteen. The first girl group to chart at number one on the pop charts was the Shirelles, in 1961, with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” a song written for them by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. They also went high on the charts with “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Baby, It's You,” and “Soldier Boy.” They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

In 1963, the Chiffons hit number one with “He's So Fine.” They would follow up with “One Fine Day” (1963) and “Sweet Talkin' Guy” (1966), among many others.

John Clemente's Girl Groups: Fabulous Females that Rocked the World looks at the careers of almost fifty black groups and about half a dozen white groups. That is a fairly accurate reflection of the racial proportions of these rock and roll pioneers and their influence on rock and roll history. The most important of these groups were yet to come. In the meantime, something strange was happening to the men in rock and roll. More and more of them were white, and they were starting to sound more and more like Perry Como.

Where Did Rock and Roll Go?

It could be argued that rock and roll came into American life on the wings of technology. Because of advancements in recording processes and production, which made records cheaper and more accessible, a rash of independent labels sprung up in the early to middle 1950s. From Sun Records in Memphis to Chess in Chicago and King Federal in Cincinnati, these companies recruited unknown musicians with new sounds and worked to get them on the charts. In 1954, 42 of the 50 top-selling singles were released by the 5 major record companies. By 1956, those same 5 companies had only 17 singles in the Top 50.

It was obvious to Victor, Columbia, and the others that something had to be done. They could keep trying to push “Oh, What a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts!” or they could compete in the field of rock and roll. They took their cue from one of the independents, Dot Records. Dot had been making its mark by recording white performers, particularly Pat Boone, doing cover versions of the more raw and raucous rock and roll. After a few hits, Boone was able to go back to the Tin Pan Alley ballads he preferred and still sell. So the larger companies went looking for their own Pat Boones. They found Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin, Bobby Rydell, Danny and the Juniors, and so on. Each one would be established as a rock and roll star and then would sing the kind of music the major labels were accustomed to producing, with a little more prominence for guitar and drums. Even the real rock and roll stars started to go in the same direction, usually after they went from their original independent labels to Columbia or RCA-Victor. Elvis sang “That's When Your Heartaches Begin” (1957) and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” (1960). The Everly Brothers did “All I Have to Do Is Dream” (1958) and “Devoted to You” (1958).

In the meantime, Little Richard had gone into Bible college, and Chuck Berry, unjustly accused of violating the Mann Act, was in prison. Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper were dead, killed in an airplane crash on their way to a performance. The disk jockeys were in trouble in the payola scandal. Jerry Lee Lewis had married his thirteen-year-old cousin.

So, with the pop charts taken over by Fabian, and the Beatles still a few years in the future, rock and roll may have seemed dead, dormant, or in suspended animation. This was hardly the case, because on the pop charts, it continued to be made by black women in more grown-up versions of the “girl group.” Otherwise, it was back where it came from—on the R & B charts.

The House That Ruth Built

Unless you define rock and roll as “what white people performed from 1955 on,” it's obvious that what was on the R & B charts during the late fifties and well into the sixties was a lot closer to the spirit of the genre than was Elvis singing “Can't Help Falling in Love” (1961) supported by chimes and a chorus of people humming. If rock and roll is a blending of African American musical traditions and white popular music traditions, then white rock musicians had gone back over toward the white end of the scale—way over—while black musicians had adopted just enough of white pop—and white country music—to make a music that had a more general appeal than did straight jazz or blues.

Just the names of the black women who were charting at that time are enough to make the point: Etta James, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Ruth Brown, Dinah Washington, Esther Phillips, and LaVern Baker. All except Phillips are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They and their male colleagues—Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Otis Redding—kept the spirit of rock and roll alive. Not until the bands of the British invasion, ironically, took American pop back to its black roots would white popular music again begin to deserve the name of rock and roll.

Ruth Brown, also known as “Miss Rhythm,” began recording with Atlantic Records in 1948. Her first hit, “So Long” (1949), was the company's second. “Teardrops in My Eyes” (1950) was her first R & B number one song. For the rest of the 1950s, she routinely topped the R & B charts with such songs as “I Wanna Do More” (1952) and “Our Love Has Joined Us Together” (1955), with Clyde McPhatter. She crossed over onto the pop charts with “Lucky Lips” (1956), “This Little Girl's Gone Rockin” (1958), and others. Her string of hit records secured Atlantic's place in the recording business, so the label was called “The House That Ruth Built.” She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Etta James did not come onto the music scene quietly. She was just sixteen years old when she recorded an “answer” to Hank Ballard's hit “Work with Me Annie” in 1954. “Roll with Me Henry” was a little too explicit for the time and was banned on many radio stations until it was rereleased as “The Wallflower.” Beginning with “Good Rockin' Daddy” in 1955, James became one of the top three women of R & B, along with Ruth Brown and Dinah Washington. During the 1960s, she toured regularly with Little Richard, James Brown, and others. In 1967, she recorded the famous “I'd Rather Go Blind” and “Tell Mamma.” By 1969, she was one of Billboard's top seven female artists, in spite of the fact that she made few public appearances between 1964 and 1968 because of an addiction problem. She recovered and continued a legendary career. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Because of her versatility, Dinah Washington always transcended labels, but between 1945 and 1961, she had forty-five songs that hit the R & B charts, and a string of her recordings, beginning in the late 1950s, was highly successful on the rock and pop charts. Among these were her duets with Brook Benton, including “Baby, You've Got What It Takes” in 1960. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

LaVern Baker did not begin recording under her own name until she signed with Atlantic in 1953. Her first major hit was the novelty song “Tweedle-Dee,” which charted as both R & B and pop in 1954. It was covered by white singer Georgia Gibbs, whose version eventually passed Baker's in sales. However, when Gibbs did the same with Baker's next hit, “Jim Dandy” (1956), Baker's version climbed far above hers on the pop charts. Baker had many other hits on both charts before she stopped recording in the late sixties. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

Motown and More

Berry Gordy's Motown was the most successful black-owned recording company in the history of American popular music, and black women were at the heart of his sound and his success. Motown started its climb to the top with Mary Wells, who started recording for Gordy when she was seventeen. Her first single, a song she wrote herself, was “Bye, Bye, Baby.” It charted on both the R & B and pop charts. Beginning in 1962, she had a string of hits, including “The One Who Really Loves You” and two others that year, and “Laughing Boy” and three others in 1963. Her 1964 hit “My Guy” went to number one on the pop charts. She also did duets with Marvin Gaye and started the glamour trend for women performers at Motown. She toured in England with the Beatles, who declared her their favorite American singer.

Next came the Marvelettes, whose first song, “Please Mr. Postman” (1961), went to number one on the pop charts. Within a year, the Marvelettes were the most consistently successful group on the label, with “Playboy” (1962), “Beechwood 4-5789” (1962), “Too Many Fish in the Sea” (1964), and many others. Two other Motown women's vocal groups were among the most successful performers in rock and roll history—Martha and the Vandellas and the Supremes.

Martha and the Vandellas had a string of huge hits for Motown that began with “Heat Wave” (1963) and went on through “Dancing in the Street” (1964), “Nowhere to Run” (1965), “I'm Ready for Love (1966), and dozens of other rock and roll classics. In spite of this success, the group felt that they were slighted by Berry Gordy and the Motown organization in favor of the Supremes. The Supremes, of course, had unparalleled success.

“Where Did Our Love Go” (1964) was hardly the first release by the Supremes, but it might as well have been. Its enormous success made the group instantly famous. They went on to “Baby Love” and “Come See About Me,” both in the same year. The year 1965 brought “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “Back in My Arms Again,” among others. The group continued as the Supremes until 1967, when they became Diana Ross and the Supremes, a change that was difficult for Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson. Indeed, Ballard left the group and was replaced by Cindy Birdsong, formerly of the Blue Belles. In 1970, Ross left the Supremes to begin a solo career. She was replaced by Jean Terrell, and the group went on to have hits with “Up the Ladder to the Roof” and others, but they were not promoted well by Motown. Diana Ross, on the other hand, was. From “Ain't No Mountain High Enough” (1970) on, she became a rock and roll superstar. The Supremes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

The song that put Diana Ross on the road to solo stardom was cowritten by another important woman at Motown. Valerie Simpson, working with her partner Nickolas Ashford, wrote and produced many hits at Motown, including a number of other songs for Ross, as well as “You're All I Need to Get By,” for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Later, they moved to Capitol Records and successfully recorded several of their own songs.

Still, the women who contributed most to Motown may have been a group most people have never heard of. From 1961 to 1972, the Andantes—Jackie Hicks, Louvain Demps, and Marlene Barrow—reported to work regularly at Berry Gordy's studio, and he used them to create the “Motown Sound,” putting their vocals behind everyone from the Four Tops to Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, and theSupremes. The Temptations finally insisted that the Andantes not be used on their records because, without the women on stage with them, they were having trouble coming close to the sound of their records in performance.

The inspiration for Berry Gordy's use of the Andantes was Phil Spector's “Wall of Sound.” He created that sound with and for the Crystals, the Ronettes, and Darlene Love. The Crystals recorded their first single for Phil Spector on their prom night, still in their prom dresses. “There's No Other” (1961) hit number eight on the R & B charts and number twenty on the pop charts. Their biggest hit was “He's a Rebel,” which pop-charted at number one. The problem was that Phil Spector had used Darlene Love and the Blossoms to record it, a typical Spector move. The Blossoms backed everyone from Doris Day to Paul Anka to Elvis Presley. For a time, they were Phil Spector's group of choice to keep his other girl groups in line. If they didn't record what he wanted, the way he wanted it, he simply had the Blossoms do it. Then he put any name he chose on the label.

The group Spector came to focus on was the Ronnettes, who may have been the first really sexy girl group. Their mixed racial background gave them a look that was exotic for the times, and producer Phil Spector developed that part of their image. Their first single for Spector, “Be My Baby” (1963), made it to number two on the pop charts. Virtually all of their songs charted from then until 1966, when they disbanded. They toured with the Rolling Stones in 1964 and became good friends with the Beatles. In 2000, they won a suit against Phil Spector for royalties and rights.

There is one more woman from this time who should be mentioned, difficult as she is to label or categorize. Dionne Warwick won the first of five Grammy Awards in 1968 for “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” As vocalist of choice for the songwriters Burt Bachrach and Hal David, she had thirty hit singles and nearly twenty hit albums. When that team broke up, she went on to score a number one R & B hit with “Then Came You” (1974), with the Spinners.

Soul

Motown and Spector musicians are often categorized as “soul,” possibly to define them out of the rock and roll mainstream. It's also true, however, that black musicians were searching for a name to call their own, a name without the connotations that had attached themselves to both rhythm and blues and rock and roll. What's undeniably true is that certain black artists seem to cry out for the name “soul.” Foremost among them is Aretha Franklin.

It took Franklin about seven years of recording the wrong songs with the wrong labels and producers before she hit her stride. Then, in 1967, she made the album I Never Loved a Man, with the singles “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” and “Respect.” Both songs went to the top reaches of both the R & B and pop charts, and the latter became an anthem for the entire liberation movement. There was rioting in the streets of the cities in the late 1960s, and, wrote Phyl Garland in The Soul Scene, “Newspapers, periodicals and television commentators pondered the question ‘Why?’ as Aretha Franklin spelled it out in one word, R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”

Franklin had twenty number-one R & B hits and won seventeen Grammy awards. She has had a major album in every decade of her career. In 1998, Time magazine named her the Most Influential Soul Musician and said, “American music, like America itself, seems too democratic for any title to endure …. All told, there's only one monarch in music whose title has never rung false and still holds up—and that's Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.”

Franklin was the first female inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, entering in 1987. The Supremes would follow in 1988. After them were Zola Taylor, when the Platters were inducted in 1990, and LaVern Baker and Tina Turner in 1991. Of the first fifty performers or groups inducted, five were women—all black.

Roberta Flack brought a different style to the soul scene. Sweet and slow, her recordings were often radical reinterpretations of songs by other artists, such as Ewan MacColl's “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (1969) and Paul Simon's “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” (1971). The Staple Singers came to popular music from Gospel, a move that alienated a number of their original fans. Their songs, however, continued to carry a powerful message of love and understanding. The group included Cleotha, Roebuck, “Pop,” Yvonne, and Mavis Staples, who also had a solo career. The Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

Gladys Knight and the Pips had been recording since the late fifties, even charting in the Top 40 a number of times during the 1960s. They performed regularly at the Apollo Theater in Harlem to enthusiastic crowds and were seen there by Berry Gordy, who signed them to Motown. There, they had two number two hits—“I Heard It through the Grapevine” (1967) and “Neither One of Us [Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye]” (1973). Leaving Motown for Buddha Records, they finally made it to number one with “Midnight Train to Georgia” (1973). Gladys Knight and the Pips were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Perhaps the “rockingest” soul singer was Tina Turner, who began her career with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm. Shortly thereafter, the group became the hugely successful Ike and Tina Turner Revue. After leaving Ike because of his abuse, Tina found herself spurned by promoters in the United States and performed almost exclusively in the United Kingdom until 1984. In that year, she made a major comeback with the album Private Dancer, which included her Grammy-winning “What's Love Got to Do with It.” Turner was a rock and roll legend ever since.

Rivaling Turner for sheer energy was Patti Labelle, who first came to prominence in 1960 with a girl group called the BlueBelles. Also in the group were Cindy Birdsong, who joined the Supremes in 1967, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash. In 1962, the group changed its name to Patti LaBelle and the BlueBelles and, in 1970, to LaBelle. With that final name change came an image change to a glitzy “glam-rock.” Very successful in its live appearances, the group had a number one hit in 1974, “Lady Marmalade.” LaBelle disbanded in 1977, and Patti Labelle went on to a career as a solo singer and as an actor in film and television.

Mention must be made of Donna Summer and the phenomenon that was disco. Coming out of a background of musical theater that included Hair and Porgy and Bess, Summer became queen of disco, with fourteen Top-10 hits, four number one singles, three platinum albums, five Grammy awards, and twelve other Grammy nominations. She was the first female artist to have three number one solo singles in one year (“MacArthur Park,” “Hot Stuff,” and “Bad Girls”), and she was the only artist to have three number one double albums in a row (Live and More, Bad Girls, and On the Radio).

Rock and Roll, the Next Generation

The 1980s brought a new generation of black women onto the pop charts. Of course, Diana Ross was still going strong, and Tina Turner had just made the comeback of the century. The new girls, however, were about to make recording history.

Whitney Houston, the daughter of the gospel star Emily “Cissy” Houston and cousin of Dionne Warwick, signed with Arista Records in 1983, at the age of twenty. (Her family insisted that she wait until she finished school before beginning a career.) Her first album was released two years later. (Her producer insisted that they take their time and wait until they had just what they wanted.) The album was worth the wait. Whitney Houston was both the top-selling debut album and the top-selling album by a woman to that point in history. It included three hit singles. Her second album was the first by a woman ever to debut at number one, and gave her another record—seven consecutive number one singles. By the year 2002, she had five Grammy awards, nineteen American Music Awards, seven Image Awards from the NAACP, five Peoples Choice Awards, two Emmys, and five Soul Train Awards. Houston also went on to a very successful acting career.

Janet Jackson had some famous brothers to measure up to—the Jackson Five, with superstar Michael—and she didn't have any trouble doing it. After appearing on the television series Good Times at the age of ten, she went into singing when she was sixteen. Her first albums came out in 1982 and 1984, but it was her third album that established her as a success. She cowrote seven of the nine songs on Control and also worked on arranging and production. Five singles from the album became hits, and the album went multiplatinum. Jackson became a rock superstar. In 1989, she released Rhythm Nation 1814, which included four number one hits and three more Top 5 hits. It sold ten million copies and reached the top of both the pop and R & B charts. Two years later, Jackson signed a $32 million, two-album deal with Virgin Records. At the time, it was the biggest recording contract in history. By 2002, she had sold forty million albums, won three Grammy awards, and earned an Oscar nomination for her appearance in John Singleton's film Poetic Justice (1992).

Janet Jackson became a rock superstar. By 2002 she had sold 40 million albums, had won three Grammy awards, and had been nominated for an Oscar.

Austin/Thompson Collection

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There are huge differences between Houston and Jackson and the young black girls such as Etta James and the Bobbettes who first carried the torch for black women in rock and roll. The biggest, of course, is financial. The early women of rock and roll came from families who knew poverty, whether urban or rural. They climbed to music stardom and saw little or none of the money they should have earned. They then either quit the music business to become mothers, teachers, and salesclerks or worked the hard touring circuits and got by on their “oldies” fame. Houston and Jackson, on the other hand, came from middle-class families with connections in the music business. They went on to become multimillionaires, and it is unlikely that either will ever have to work as a salesclerk. They were evidence of a network of talented and successful African Americans who could see to it that not every black child had to begin at the bottom of the ladder in the music business or, for that matter, in society as a whole.

But the women born in poverty, the women who are hungry for self-expression and success are still out there. They are making music. And they are part of a new wave of rebellion, controversy, and definition. They are one part of the world of hip-hop. Like rock and roll, that movement goes far beyond questions of music. We can try to label Erykah Badu, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, and India Arie. We can pigeonhole Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, and Me'Shell Ndegeocello. But when we do, we find ourselves mired in the same swamps that afflict the historian of rock and roll. The music is about so much more than the notes.

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