Stonehenge
Uploaded by playerdnice908 on Oct 30, 2005
The blues are the roots of early rock and roll. Rock today has changed so much that
the basic blues patterns have been all but lost. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the
birth and evolution of rock and roll by focusing on the greatest rock and roll musicians of the
sixties and seventies.
The origin of the blues can be traced to back to the slaves in th rural black areas of
the south. Musically the blues are defined as a 12 bar chord progression, harmonized with the
scales and patterns. The chord progression pattern is four measures of tonic chords followed by
two measures of sub-dominate chords, and finally two measures of tonic chords.
Blues performers would travel around the south singing about their loss of love and
family, and the pains they were forced to endure. The music became popular because nearly
every one who heard it could identify with its message. This type of blues became known as
country blues because it was rooted in rural areas. The blues became more main stream and
popular in the 1920s because of the recording industry coming into existence. More instruments
were added such as pianos, organs, and wind instruments. Big Band and Rhythm and Blues
came from City Blues.
To Rock and Roll then came from Rhythm and Blues, in fact, many of the
first recorded “Rock” songs were simply white musicians re- recording Rhythm and Blues
songs originally written by black artists.
It took Bob Dylan 23 years to realize he wanted to become a rock musician. Bob Dylan,
whose birth name was Robert Allen Zimmerman, had a awful childhood in a Minnesota mining
town. He adopted his pseudonym when he went to the University of Minnesota. “ Dylan” came
from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, with whom Zimmerman was frequently compared in the
University folk circles. After leaving the University, Dylan moved to New York’s Greenwich
Village to follow his folk hero, Woodie Gunthrie. In fact, his main goal of moving to the
Village was simply to meet his hero. He not only met the folk guru, but became a member
of his group of followers, or groupies. They also became good friends.
Gunthrie got him a couple of gigs at various nightclubs around the Village. Dylan got
enough attention at his nightly gigs to be noticed by the Columbia Record Company, specifically
the producer John Hammond. His first record, Bob Dylan,...