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Mapping the music of the 1960s

About

ABOUT

Our names are Allison Moore and Cait Buckalew. This website is the final product of our Digital Humanities project for our History of Rock ’n’ Roll Course at Berry College in Mt. Berry, GA. The project assignment was to create an online project that synthesizes and provides some analysis about an aspect of Rock & Roll history.

Our Process

OUR  PROCESS

Pick a topic

We decided to look at locations of different genres of rock music, or genres that influenced it, in the 1960s.

Narrow Artists

We chose artists who had gold or platinum charting albums during the 60s, plus a few artists we felt that list left out.

Plot the map

We took the list of artists and researched where they were signed and where their labels were located. Then we plotted them on a map.

Analyze

Then we looked for connections any connections that would explain why the genres were grouped the way they were.

The Map

THE MAP

The rise of genres in music in the 1960s was very dependent on location. This map plots the top 72 (based upon record sales) rock n’ roll artists of the 1960s at the location in which they were signed, and color codes them by genre.

Analysis

ANALYSIS

the cities

NYC
LA
SAN
FRAN
MEMPHIS
DETROIT
NYC
NYC

New York, unsurprisingly, had 17 top artists – the largest of any other location. This is likely due to the fact that the several of the top recording labels of the 1960s (Atlantic, Columbia, Vanguard, Elecktra, and Atco) were all located in New York City. Due to this concentration, many artists where not originally from New York – instead, they travelled to the city in order to have access to more opportunities in the music industry. Such artists include: Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Aretha Franklin, and MC5.

By U.S. Information Agency. Press and Publications Service. (ca. 1953 - ca. 1978) This image was made by Rowland Scherman on assignment from The US Information Agency, 1963. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

LA

Los Angeles has the widest range of genres, claiming 13 top artists across 7 different genres. One explanation for the diversity of music genres in Los Angeles is that the music industry wasn’t the impetus for the artists gathering there. The industry wasn’t solely fueling it’s own success, so it relied less heavily on catering to a single genre. In cities like Memphis and Detroit, a large part of why the artists were in those cities was because their particular genre was already well established and flourishing there. In Los Angeles, the contributions and consumers of other cultural-product and craft industries (such as the fashion, film, and television industries) were consuming each others products, thereby fueling the other industries. This created less of a need for record labels to specialize in a single genre. 

LA

By NBC Television (eBay front back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Capitol Records (Billboard, page 73, 11 September 1965) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

San Francisco
SAN
FRAN

The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco was the hub of the hippie counter-cultural movement in the 60s. Many of the Haight-Ashbury residents lived communally in large houses in the district. They criticized the materialism and bourgeois attitudes of their elders. There was a greater emphasis on open sexuality and strong encouragement to challenge the mainstream ideas of the time. Part of the hippie challenge to social norms was experimenting heavily with LSD, which had just recently gone on the market. These attitudes leaked into the music scene and thus, acid rock was born with San Francisco as its home. 

By Ashley Famous Agency/Albert B. Grossman-management (eBay item photo front photo back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Warner Bros. Records (Billboard, page 9, 5 December 1970) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Memphis

By Adam Jones, Ph.D. (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

MEMPHIS

Sun Records in Memphis, TN was home to the rockabilly artists that stormed the 1950s. Many were still very popular at the beginning of the 1960s, mainly Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Sam Phillips, founder, signed Elvis in the company’s early years and together they helped to create the “Sun Sound” – a mixture of R&B and country. The studio was instrumental in pulling teens into rock n’ roll and continued providing an important basis for the genre moving into the 1960s.

 

Stax Records, also located in Memphis, TN, championed the soul movement of the 1960s. Notable artists include Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MG’s, and the Bar-Kays. Inspired by the success of Sam Phillips and Sun Records, siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton developed the label in order to capture the soul sound already popular among African Americans in the south.

Detroit
DETROIT

Motown Records, founded in Detroit in 1959 and also known as Hitsville, U.S.A, took the music industry by storm with more than 180 No. 1 hits in its history. Founder Barry Gordon created a “hit factory” system to churn out artists with the unique Motown sound, establishing the first African-American label to be critically acclaimed.

By Dig Downtown Detroit (Motown Historical Museum) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Resources

RESOURCES

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