Counterfactual Music

Counterfactual Music

I was discussing my musical history the other day and I reported that in my childhood I didn’t like any of the music I heard on the radio and watched on TV. In fact, I positively disliked it. This was the era of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Pat Boone, Vera Lynne, Shirley Bassey, and sundry others. I had no interest in music then (I never heard any classical music). But something happened in the 1950s that changed my mind completely: popular music changed dramatically. I knew nothing of why this was so or who was responsible; all I knew was that I liked what I was hearing (I was around 10 at the time). I was particularly struck by Sherry by the Four Seasons and Good Luck Charm by Elvis Presley. Suddenly music interested me—I wanted badly to hear it. This was before the Beatles and the Stones and the Who. Of course, I liked them. Music had come into my life. What I didn’t know, but do now, is the history behind this change in popular music—specifically the contribution of black artists. This is now an oft-told tale that needs no repeating, though it is good to acknowledge it: Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner, Arthur Alexander, James Brown, and many others. Now we take all this for granted, but it might not have been. In a close possible world Frank Sinatra and Perry Como still rule the musical roost: no rock and roll, no blues, no soul, no reggae. So, we have the counterfactual: if black musicians had never existed, we would still be listening to the kind of stuff I so disliked in my youth. Or not listening to it, because I would never have had a musical life under those conditions. I have never warmed to Sinatra and company and really can’t bear listening to it. I wonder how anyone could have liked it (but there’s no accounting for taste). We tend to forget that there was a musical revolution beginning in the fifties. Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley—they would never have been if it were not for this revolution. John Lennon hated the music he grew up with (especially Acker Bilk jazz) and created music out of other influences; so did I. Just listen to Bo Diddley’s Mona and compare it to some crooner’s sappy stuff: there’s no comparison. I realize that I have been lucky to be born when I was, musically speaking.