A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs vol 1: From Savoy Stompers to Clock Rockers

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs #1

by Andrew Hickey

In this series of books, based on the hit podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, Andrew Hickey analyses the history of rock and roll music, from its origins in swing, Western swing, boogie woogie, and gospel, through to the 1990s, grunge, and Britpop. Looking at five hundred representative songs, he tells the story of the musicians who made those records, the society that produced them, and the music they were making. Volume one looks at fifty songs from the origins of rock and roll, starting in 1938 with Charlie Christian's first recording session, and ending in 1956. Along the way, it looks at Louis Jordan, LaVern Baker, the Ink Spots, Fats Domino, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Jackie Brenston, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and many more of the progenitors of rock and roll.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction

551 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 2019

About the author

I had a biography here but it was very out of date. Currently my main work is my podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The New Yorker compared that to the Bible, Oxford English Dictionary, and the works of Gibbon and Pepys, and said it "will eclipse every literary project in history". So that's nice.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Done! I'm almost as impressed with myself for reading this enormous volume of 530 large pages as I am with Andrew Hickey's massive obsessiveness and steely determination. He listened to every single single released before 1959 A side and B side, read every dubious autobiography by every 50s musician and every previous book on pop music, crosschecked every statement and found most of them to be egregious lies, and singlehandedly attempted to get all the facts straight and all the unsung originals dragged out of the darkness and handed the correct amount of praise and the great villains appropriately booed offstage. It's exhausting, it's like the rock & roll version of Peter Marshall's History of the English Reformation.

Recommended.

Now onto Volume 2.

*****************

Original review :

1. This is a case where I have to give out FIVE FAT SPARKLING STARS before I’ve finished the book because it will take me forever to read it (530 black-hole dense information-soaked pages, like a very chatty encyclopedia) but it’s obvious this is a great book on one of my favourite subjects and I just can’t wait till I finish it to tell all you fellow pop obsessives to get this now!

2. This book gave me an OMG moment akin to when the astronomers figured out that those little whiteish smudges weren’t distant stars at all but galaxies. Galaxies!!!! Galaxies like grains of sand.



Because when I got this I knew from the title that it was volume one so I kind of vaguely figured 250 songs in the first volume, the rest in volume two, which is out already I think, but THEN, I looked at the back cover and it said “Volume one looks at fifty songs that made up the origins of rock and roll” – er, FIFTY? Yeah, when I read the introduction it became clear – there will be TEN volumes like this, TEN 500 page whoppers, this will take at least another TEN years for Andrew Hickey to finish…. ULP!! This is stirringly ambitious. (Compare 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die – 950 pages – or Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock and Soul : The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made – 720 pages – both great books by the way - and you can see that Andrew Hickey’s project is on a whole other scale. It will be 5000 pages plus long.

3. The whole thing is one of those podcast-into-book enterprises we are fairly familiar with, and yes, each chapter does read like a transcript, but Andrew is a very affable enthusiastic companion bubbling along like a fresh spring of facts, factlets and facticles that, given the murk in which the music biz is constantly enmired, like Mordor, are always full of curious turns and gambols and perversities, all presented with elan and authority, and never dull.



4. Andrew is very clear about the misogynistic nature of the biz and more distressingly of many individuals we will meet along the way :

I am going to have to deal with a lot of abusers, sex criminals, and even a few murderers. You simply can’t tell the history of rock and roll without talking about Ike Turner, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Phil Spector, Jimmy Page… I could go on. But suffice to say that I think the assumption one should make when talking about rock music is that any man discussed in it is a monster unless proved otherwise… but in order for this to be a history of rock music and not a prurient history of misogynistic crime I’m probably not going to mention every awful thing these people do.



5. The five hundred songs cover late-1930s up to 1999 and stop there because Andrew believes, and I’ve heard this many times before, and I think it’s true, that “rock and roll as a cultural forcer is, it is safe to say, dead”. What that means is material for a whole interesting 30 page essay with footnotes; but what it means here is that Andrew can assess the whole rock era from start to finish because it’s finished.

What a project! I’ll be reading this and succeeding volumes for years (I hope). I first met Andrew on the page as the author of three books on the Beach Boys’ discography. Those were very good but I didn’t figure this kid as rock’s Edward Gibbon. Rave on, Andrew.

[Dick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Great podcast. A must for music history fans.

[Noel Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This is almost too much information. And apparently there a ton more books to come. It was an enjoyable marathon making it through this one but I'll need a break before tackling the next volume. One of the best music histories I've read.

[Miguel Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probablemente la mejor investigación y narración hecha de una historia musical durante el siglo XX, y dado que cada capitulo es una canción es ideal para leer un par y escuchar dicha música antes de dormír, o inclusive usar el podcast como audiolibro. Imposible no querer seguir cob los siguientes libros y canciones

[David Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree it would be nice to hear the music but I found this easier to focus on the History. When I listen to podcasts, I am generally multi-tasking. When I read, the book has all my attention. I recommend it and will pick up the next one as well.

[Tim Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to this by way of the superb podcast of the same name, which I highly recommend. In truth, the podcast has the added advantage of including snippets of the songs he's analysing, but the book format allows the reader to flip back more easily when necessary. Hickey doesn't begin with, say, That's All Right, Mama, or even Rocket 88, but way back in the swing era, with the Benny Goodman Sextet's 1939 recording of "Flying Home". As Hickey says, you have to begin somewhere, and this song, containing an innovative guitar solo by Charlie Christian and, (in a slightly later version) a honking sax solo by Illinois Jaquet is as good a place as any.
The story then continues with Big Joe Turner's "Roll 'Em Pete"  This song is crucial to the development of rock and roll, not, as Hickey is at pains to make clear, because it is the first instance of the backbeat, ("The first of anything is messy", says Hickey)  but more for the combination of boogie-woogie piano, backbeat, and bluesy "floating" lyrics. All the elements of rock and roll are there.
We then get chapters on Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Louis Jordan, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and many more, including Fats Domino, Les Paul, Johnny Otis, Johnny Ray, Hank Williams and up to the performers who first come to mind when I think of fifties rock and roll - Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and Elvis, ending the first volume with Mickey and Sylvia's "Love Is Strange". Erudite yet readable, this is a must-read for any music fan.

[Dominic H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Hickey's incredibly well judged and informative podcast has been the subject of a lot of interest lately following an article by Bill McKibben in the New Yorker. He is also publishing a serles of ebooks heavily based on the scripts for each episode. This is a sensible and pragmatic approach obviously but despite Hickey's very accessible and literate narrative, the podcasts are particularly effective because of the (very) frequent musical examples, which always break up the narration judiciously and illuminatingly. Without this context the books themselves work less well. Useful of course if you want a quick way of referring back to something that was said in an episode, but the transcripts are generously made available anyway and I have generally found it quicker to refer back to the episode show notes. So, a nice to have for admirers of the podcast, perhaps not the place to start in isolation to get a feel for the history.

[Maurice Rubino · Rating 5 out of 5]

History and Music blended together so beautifully!!

I am so glad I this work by Andrew Hickey, which I first heard on his podcast of the same name but completed Volume 1 by downloading this book. I now am looking forward to completing the Andrew’s history by reading Volume 2.
This book has given me so many insights into the evolution of popular music starting in the 1930’s and connecting the pieces up to the early 60’s in Volume 1.Volume 2 will pick up the story and bring us into the 90’s.

[Steve Yetter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, great podcast. This is essentially edited scripts of the podcast sans audio clips. Those clips are essential and I went back and forth between book and podcast regularly. There are also Mixcloud streams of the complete songs of clips in the podcasts that are a wonderful bonus. The whole shebang is a 5 star effort. This first 550 page volume covers just the first 50 episodes spanning rock’s roots in the 1940s up through about 1957(!). This is a work in progress and will continue into the 2030s. Get on the train now.

[MRS CA THOMSON · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book based on podcasts it is both interesting and educational. Some bits of information are repeated but that's not surprising considering how often the same people pop up at different times.
I really want to go and listen to some of the early records.
Recommend to anyone who is interested in rock history.

[William Ginn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent history of the beginning of Rock and Roll. However, its almost entirely a transcript of his excellent podcast - which is better because you can actually hear the music he's discussing.

[RA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool stuff, nice background to a wide variety of songs, which contributed to Rock & Roll.

[Jimgosailing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, full disclosure, I listened to the podcasts, over fifty some podcasts that this volume covers, and I wanted somewhere to capture my thoughts regarding the podcast.

First off, it’s incredibly researched; I’ve listened to several podcasts on music history and this is the best. And I’m often surprised by how old some songs I’m familiar with are - that what I’ve heard for years is actually a cover of a much older song. And it’s incredible but he really starts with riffs and passage from 1930s songs, such as a horn riff that somebody in the 50’s transposed and played as a guitar riff

And I like how he weaves details into his narrative that provide depth; for instance, in The Beatles “I feel fine” he points out that Lennon based this on a blues song from the 50’s he was familiar with (and notes that this riff was used in the 1930s); the guitar riff sounds remarkably similar, but Hickey takes pains to point out how Lennon made changes that made it his own and he was not merely usurping someone else’s work; and for this song, as for numerous other songs, Hickey gets to use his phrase “there are no firsts” when the discussion of the first use of feedback is raised in connection with this song; and he points out that Townsend, Beck, and Clapton were all already using feedback in their stage performances. And how Ringo’s drumming for this song sounds like drumming from a Ray Charles song.

Or how he points out that the drums on “What Your Doing” easily morph into the iconic drumming on “Day Tripper” and pointing out how similar they both sound to Hal Blaine’s intro to “Be My Baby”

(and as I write this, I’m realizing that since I’m up to Episode 127, these two Beatle examples will be in a likely Vol II, but they exemplify Hickey’s work: but notable episodes in the first fifty: Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton; Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean by Ruth Brown; Rock Island Line by Lonnie Donegan; Ain’t That a Shame by Fats Domino; and, of course, Rocket 88; wait, on second thought, there wasn’t a bad or a subpar episode: they were all illuminating. And don’t let the titles of the episodes mislead: each is a deep dive not only into that song, but also others songs by that artist; the artist as well, other contemporary artists, and often the broader music scene.)

One aspect that I appreciate is his giving an upfront warning about sexual assault, drug use, slurs used in songs that aren’t acceptable today, and the racism that was prevalent (virulent?). And I like that he pays particular attention to the contributions of women to the industry, whether as individuals (where they typically got no recognition or credit) or as members of girl groups.