Great Rock Musicians: Their Achievements and Effect on Rock and Roll
Great Rock Musicians: Their Achievements and Effect on Rock and Roll
The blues are undeniably the roots of early rock and roll. Rock today has mutated so much that the basic blues patterns have been all but lost.
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the birth of, and evolution of rock and roll by focusing on three of the arguably greatest rock musicians of the sixties and seventies. The origin of the blues can be traced to the emancipation of the slaves in the rural black areas of the south, where most of the people worked on share- cropping farms. Musically the blues are defined as a 12-bar chord progression, harmonized with the corresponding scales and patterns. The chord progression pattern is four measures of tonic chords followed by two measures of sub- dominate chords, two more measures of tonic chords, one measure of dominate chords, one measure 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 later became known as country blues because it was rooted in rural areas. The Blues became more main stream and popular in the 1920's 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 stemmed from City Blues. Rock and Roll then stemmed from Rhythm and Blues, in fact, many of the first recorded "Rock" songs where simply white musicians re-recording Rhythm and Blues songs originally written by black artists. It took Bob Dylan 23 years to realize that he wanted to become a rock musician. Bob Dylan, whose birth name was Robert Allen Zimmerman, had a relatively uneventful childhood in a Minnesota mining town. He adopted his pseudonym when he went to the University
The blues are undeniably the roots of early rock and roll. Rock today has mutated so much that the basic blues patterns have been all but lost.
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the birth of, and evolution of rock and roll by focusing on three of the arguably greatest rock musicians of the sixties and seventies. The origin of the blues can be traced to the emancipation of the slaves in the rural black areas of the south, where most of the people worked on share- cropping farms. Musically the blues are defined as a 12-bar chord progression, harmonized with the corresponding scales and patterns. The chord progression pattern is four measures of tonic chords followed by two measures of sub- dominate chords, two more measures of tonic chords, one measure of dominate chords, one measure 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 later became known as country blues because it was rooted in rural areas. The Blues became more main stream and popular in the 1920's 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 stemmed from City Blues. Rock and Roll then stemmed from Rhythm and Blues, in fact, many of the first recorded "Rock" songs where simply white musicians re-recording Rhythm and Blues songs originally written by black artists. It took Bob Dylan 23 years to realize that he wanted to become a rock musician. Bob Dylan, whose birth name was Robert Allen Zimmerman, had a relatively uneventful childhood in a Minnesota mining town. He adopted his pseudonym when he went to the University