![]() All the huffing about besmirching tradition couldn’t harm sales of Elvis’ Christmas Album. While Lionel Hampton and Leadbelly cut some early R&B Christmas sides during the mid-‘40s, it was Nat “King” Cole-influenced Charles Brown who made R&B a permanent Christmas fixture, thanks to his 1947 recording of Merry Christmas Baby with Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers.įrom the outset, rock ‘n’ roll met with heavy scrutiny and public outcries, none louder than when record companies, none louder than when record companies saw fit to mix boughs of holly with a backbeat, a risky yet commercially astute move. The fact that this snappy arrangement came from the Ravens – vocal-group pioneers responsible for the first R&B white Christmas in 1948 – only showed that Christmas and black musical styles were compatible long before rock ‘n’ roll was born. ![]() Bill Pinckney’s basso profundo pitted against the weightless tenor of Clyde McPhatter resulted in arguably the best seasonal hybrid ever. The sound was hip, even jive – Irving Berlin pop turned finger-popping cool. Black influences dominated early, so it’s no surprise that the first rock ‘n’ roll era Christmas standards belongs to an R&B group, The Drifters, who released their version of White Christmas in 1954. Rock ‘n’ roll has always been a black and white issue, a music of mergers originating with union of rhythm and blues and country and western. ![]()
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