The Suburban Dream: The Emergence of the Teenager Discovering the Teenagers Until 1950 the term teenagers had never before been coined.  The word "teenage" had first appeared in the popular press in the 1920s, but the idea that there was a time of life between childhood and adulthood that could be isolated, and that had its own peculiar characteristics. Read More Alan Freed: A Record Consultant Alan Freed claimed that he was paid as a “record consultant” to the music business, but in truth, he was simply capitalizing on a long-stand industry tradition of disc-jockey pay-offs. There was no federal charge against payola until 1960, so technically payoffs weren’t illegal. But, he did conduct his business surrounded by a rough crowd.  Read More Billboard, Melody Maker and Rhythm & Blues In the wider social arena the war had emphasized the hypocrisy of participating ina crusade in the name of democracy and anti-racism, while at home blacks were the victims of systematic discrimination. Race riots in Detroit and elsewhere demonstrated the depths of black disaffection, but in the aftermath of the war blacks found that most of what little they had gained was transient. Read More The Birth of Rock'n' Roll and Arrival of Elvis Presley The first two Elvis Presley albums, both on RCA in 1956, neatly illustrate the basic dichotomy: Elvis Presley shows him onstage, eyes shut and mouth wide open, with his guitar thrust in the air, while Elvis has him seated in a staged pose, strumming his guitar. Here is the musician, they seem to say, and here are his musical instruments, his primary materials: his voice and his guitar. In the 1960 songs in which women are part of the continuing love relationship, the male is clearly the dominant figure.  Read More Rock Music, Jukeboxes and Top 40 Programming Rock and roll, which the industry learned to ride to a staggering new sales volume, also jarred that industry into new patterns: new companies, new small-group recording economics, new audience definitions, and new relationships to radio broadcasting. Some of the story can be told in terms of technical innovations. Television as the surging home entertainment medium turned radio stations toward the disc jockey format of record programming. New sizes, speeds, and materials for the records themselves may have had wide implications.  Read More