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The story of popular music for mass consumption begins with the phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in the 1880's. Edison also invented the light bulb and the movie camera. He is perhaps the most significant inventor of all time and certainly the link between the old world and the modern world. Prior to Edison, culture had no soundtrack except for live performance. Historical events could be documented only by pictures and writing based on a writer's memory or dictation. In other words, there was plenty of room for error in sorting out facts from subjective perceptions. As for music, people had to either learn an instrument and read sheet music or go to musical events before Edison introduced recorded sound to the living room.

In order for Edison to sell the first audio playback system, which he called the "talking machine," he also had to sell recordings, which at the time were fragile cylinders made of tin foil. His record label, Edison, soon found competition from Victor and Columbia. Up through the Great Depression these were considered the first "big three" record labels. Today only two of these companies still exist. Victor was eventually gobbled up by RCA and then BMG in the 1980s while Columbia became part of Sony Music also in the 1980s. Edison was driven out of the music business by his stubborn resistance to the rise of jazz music in the 1920s. He was more into promoting opera on his label and found jazz to be irreverant. On the other hand, his electric company, General Electric, went on to become one of the biggest corporations of all time. He may have been an electrical genius, but he sure didn't have his finger on the pulse of public taste. Perhaps he wanted to shape public taste with his idea of credible art. But in a harsh lesson, the music industry learned from Edison early on that public taste is not so easily manipulated.

The rise of jazz in the 1920s grew from the roots of blues and ragtime in the previous few decades. It coincided with Prohibition, which planted the seeds to a mob-driven underworld. It's funny that when the government tries to take away something from the people that they love, such as alcohol, the result is a weakened respect for government and a strengthening of the so-called evils that the unsuspecting lawmakers tried to destroy. In other words, no law was ever going to stop the culture at large from drinking alcohol, which has been a tradition for centuries. Even deeply religious people have always been quick to point out that "Jesus turned water into wine." So it's no shock that the law banning alcohol was a dismal failure and was overturned in 1933. People had simply rebelled and turned to bootleggers and underground bars serving alcohol called speakeasies. The soundtrack to this whole rebellion was jazz. It was a time when people were reaching for hedonistic liberation as dancing became more sexual and wild as illustrated in dances like "The Charleston." It was an age of incredible optimism fueled by new technology, progressivism and a booming economy.

Blues had been the social commentary of black Americans and its feelings of despair were closely tied to discrimination that they felt from the aftermath of the Civil War. Some historians point to the song "St. Louis Blues" by W.C. Handy, written in 1911 as the first blues song. In reality, nearly every song is a culmination of a wide array of previous influences. The roots of blues were intertwined with gospel hymns and the songs created by plantation slaves about their frustration. By the 1920s blacks were still treated as second-class citizens by white society and their music was ignored by the big record labels and the emergence of radio, which hit the scene in 1920. But black music was being popularized by white artists such as Al Jolson, who wore black make-up and made history by appearing in the first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer in 1927. Black artists were also getting signed to independent labels. The first black artist to really rise to popularity was Louis Armstrong, first with instrumentals and then songs like "Big Butter And Egg Man," "Keyhole Blues," and "West End Blues" in the late 1920s. Then many more began to follow.

An emerging underground black artist in the 1920s was Robert Johnson, who some people might consider the "grandfather of rock and roll." His basic guitar riffs followed earlier established blues patterns but with a little more of a jagged edge. Johnson never had hit records in his time but his influence can be heard and felt in future stars like Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. His music conjures up the image of the frustrated musician seeking notoriety by "making a deal with the devil at the crossroads." The movie The Crossroads starring Ralph Machio touches on that theme and helped the masses become aware of Robert Johnson. Such bluesy music with haunting melodies in the pre-rock era was kept out of the mainstream by the powers that be simply because it sounded to them like "devil music." The explanation for this is simply pure racist undertones in the establishment, although many of the early blues artists believed in the devil complex and were actually commenting on it. The one truth we can all agree on is that early blues was not happy music. It was about being cheated and mistreated.

Coinciding with the rise of jazz in the 1920s was the emergence of country music via the Grand Ole Opry. At the time it was commonly referred to as "hillbilly music" because it drew from experiences of rural white American farmers in the south. Like blues, country grew out of a form of folk music within a subculture. Some might trace the actual roots of country to Irish folk music. By the 1940s country music had clearly become its own genre regardless of its origins and was beginning to produce big stars like Hank Williams, Eddy Arnold and Tex Ritter. The key to their success was their close rapport with an audience that cherished honest storytelling. It was combined with simple melodies and became reflective of people who gravitated toward the basics of life as a contrast to the evergrowing modernization of society.

Meanwhile, jazz became the first popular music in America to fragment into multiple genres. Mainstream music from the twenties through the forties can be summed up as "the big band era," which was the upbeat optimistic side of jazz. Glenn Miller is without a doubt, the most celebrated artist of this era with his swinging pop hits like "In The Mood," "The American Patrol" and "Little Brown Jug." These songs were pretty much the soundtrack to World War II, as was the military tribute "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" by the Andrews Sisters. On the softer side, crooners like Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, who started out as vocalists for big bands, became popular singing love ballads and whimsical novelties that formed the basis of "lounge music." Frank Sinatra was considered a crooner but with a more dynamic vocal style that allowed him to also fit in with upbeat swing. Boogie woogie was a funky outgrowth of the bluesy and rootsy side of jazz with big band crossover appeal. Pine Top Smith was one of the early boogie woogie artists who helped popularize the genre beginning in the late 1920s. It was boogie woogie that started to shape the sound of what was to become known as rhythm & blues highlighted by pulsating bass lines.

The term "rock and roll" appeared in boogie woogie recordings long before the 1950s. Throughout the thirties and forties several songs by black artists used the term as an underground reference to sex. The topic of sex was off-limits in pop music in the pre-rock era, simply because the establishment did not condone sex for pleasure as moral activity. Queen Victoria of Great Britain in the 1800's had set many prudent standards that America graciously followed for many years, even after her death. The term "rockin' " was much more common, however, than "rock and roll" as in "Good Rockin' Tonight" by Wynonie Harris in 1947. By the 1940s rhythm & blues was becoming its own sound and wasn't necessarily strictly tied to the boogie woogie formula. Black artists gradually were becoming more accepted in the mainstream with people like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, who all mixed the upbeat big band sound with melancholy blues. For those jazz musicians who didn't like all the prevalant formulas of the day, the concept of progressive or improvisational jazz began developing.

The big band era faded quickly after World War II. Glenn Miller had enlisted in the military and came up missing, which was the first major blow to the genre and then several of the main bands disbanded by the end of the decade. For awhile crooners took over. Record sales overall began to slump, so something new was needed to excite the market. By this time the major record labels were Columbia, RCA and Decca. Two of these labels revolutionized the music industry by issuing new configurations of recorded sound. For years 78 rpm records were the industry standard. In 1947 Columbia introduced the 33 and 1/3 rpm long-playing record, which held a lot more music than the three minute time limit of the 78 rpm disc. That same year RCA introduced the 45 rpm record, which only featured one song per side but was revolutionary because it used something called microgroove technology. Microgroove allowed a lighter tonearm and needle to cut through the vinyl, giving the disc longer life. It took awhile for people to catch on, but by the mid-fifties the 78 was an ancient dinosaur as all the labels were concentrating on 45s and LPs.

Technology has always played a big part in shaping recorded music. Prior to the invention of the condensor microphone in 1925, for example, loud sounds such as drums were very hard to record without distorting. Soft sounds were also hard to record because the singer had to sing at a certain volume through a horn in order for the sound vibrations to affect the device that was cutting the groove. Then in the early 1940s Les Paul introduced the modern electric guitar. The guitar, of course, goes back several centuries and the electric guitar appeared as early as the 1920's in Hawaiian music, but it was Paul's hollow-body model that set the standard for what was to follow. In all fairness, Leo Fender also introduced a similar model around the same time.

Les Paul was also the first major pioneer in multi-track recording. Prior to his 1951 recording of "How High The Moon" with Mary Ford, the concept of over-dubbing was only done in movies. Music was always recorded live until that time. In other words, a full band would play the entire piece in real time and keep doing it over and over again until they got the final take. With multi-track recording, which started out as four tracks, an artist could lay down separate tracks for different instruments and vocals. It no longer had to be done all at once as a live performance. The key to this new technique was the Ampex reel to reel tape deck. Magnetic tape allowed four separate channels of audio to be recorded or played at the same time. This also opened the door for electronic reverb for the first time. Prior to the reel to reel machine, if an artist wanted echo on their voice it had to be recorded in a room where there was natural reverb. The reel to reel also paved the way for stereo music, a technology used in movie theaters since the early 1930s, but absent from music recordings until the fifties. Even so, the one-signal mono sound dominated the recording industry until the late sixties.

With the advent of the electric guitar and multi-tracking, combined with the withering of big bands and the mixing of styles between country and r&b artists, a new sound in music was born. Enter the rock era. There's a long list of artists who are given credit for inventing rock and roll, but the first such record to make a big national splash was "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley & The Comets in 1955. Several records prior to this hit can be considered rock and roll including "Shake, Rattle And Roll" by Big Joe Turner, "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston & Ike Turner and "Fat Man" by Fats Domino. The term "rock and roll" was brought into the mainstream in the early fifties by a Cleveland radio DJ named Alan Freed, calling his show the "Rock And Roll Moondog Show." Early rock that leaned more on r&b than country was also called "bop."

The message and music of rock and roll was very simple. Essentually, it was swing dance music with a faster tempo and more raw and amplified sound than big band, blues or country. The lyrics were generally about the high school dating experience. For the first time, the music industry began to target teenagers, which added to the rebellious nature of the music. It's important to point out, however, that the major labels were definitely avoiding rock and roll. The movement happened because of independent labels like Chess (who signed Chuck Berry) and Sun (who signed Elvis Presley). Once rock and roll began to surge in the fifties, only then did the three major labels begin to take notice. But the first wave of rock only lasted a few years. Not only were local government officials and school administrators voicing anti-rock concerns about the rebellious behavior the music inspired, several of the movement's stars suddenly disappeared almost overnight. Elvis was drafted in the Army, Chuck Berry went to jail for transporting a minor over a state line, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash and Little Richard became a preacher. By the end of the decade the overall pop landscape had swung back to a nostalgic lounge sound highlighted by Bobby Darin's "Mack The Knife."

What followed in the early 1960s was a period of intense optimistic dance songs countered by tearful ballads that dwelled on personal tragedy. You had "The Twist" by Chubby Checker on one hand and the romantic death lyrics of "Teen Angel" by Mark Dinning on the other. Many of the songs of that period were novelty and for the most part, unoriginal and forgettable. They tended to be family-friendly songs and had very little to do with the rock and roll of the fifties. Very few songs of that period had intellectual credility. Most of the songs were products of either "Tin Pan Alley" or other songwriting teams who wrote "safe hits" for recording artists. Tin Pan Alley was a specific group of writers that included Neil Sedaka and Carole King, who cranked out assembly line formula songs day after day for various artists. The only artists who seemed to break away from this industry structure were the Ventures, the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys. The Ventures were an instrumental guitar-bass-n' drums outfit that didn't necessarily write their own material, but were the closest thing of the period that could be considered innovative rock. They used different chord progessions than the fifties hits and were pretty much the first band to put heavy emphasis on lead guitar. The Four Seasons and the Beach Boys were unique because they wrote their own songs and had their own sound, although the Beach Boys were sued by Chuck Berry for lifting the melody almost note for note of "Sweet Little 16" on their 1963 hit "Surfin' USA."

If there was an underground scene to escape to at the time it was brought on by none other than the beatniks, who called their movement the "beat generation." Leaders of this emerging counter-culture were more writers and poets than musicians, although progressive jazz and folk were the two genres of choice for this group. The names that stand out are Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsburg and William Burroughs. Beat poets made recordings of rhythmic spoken word pieces set to music and to some degree sounded loosely like early rap artists. The underlying scheme of the beat generation revolved around seeking pleasures beyond what was offered by the establishment. It really was not so much a political movement as it was a hedonistic or wandering movement. Their views of alienation and disenchantment with the mainstream were similar to those of the "lost generation" writers during the post-World War I era. The beatniks also helped pave the way for the 1960s "love generation" movement popularized by the hippies whose main themes were peace and love. The beatniks, unlike the hippies, however, were generally confined to their subculture and did not penetrate the music charts with their anthems. One particular successful jazz artist embraced by the beatniks was Dave Brubeck, whose instrumental hit "Take 5" broke musical ground with its 5/4 time signature, which was considered very odd.

The pre-rock lounge and swing sounds have continued to be celebrated in the decades to follow. The New Vaudeville Band had the most retro sound in the sixties with their big hit "Winchester Cathedral." In the seventies Englebert Humperdinck's "After The Lovin'" and Al Matino's remake of "Volare" kept the lounge sound alive. Frank Sinatra continued to have hits in the sixties but one of his most memorable hits was "Theme From New York, New York" in 1980. There was a string of forties remakes in the eighties, starting with Larry Elgart's "Hooked On Swing" and continuing with Taco's "Puttin' On The Ritz" and Depeche Mode's "Route 66." David Lee Roth even did a remake of the thirties standard "Just A Gigolo." In 1990 a medley called "Swing The Mood" by Jive Bunny featured actual hit recordings of forties and fifties swing hits. Harry Connick Jr. ended up doing several classics. Madonna's song "Hanky Panky" in 1990 was a modern version of the classic big band sound. Then for awhile the alternative rock format embraced swing music from Squirrel Nut Zippers, Cherry Poppindaddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Lou Bega closed the century with "Mambo #5." The popularity of Latin music in America in the nineties was another phenomonon that kept ballroom dancing alive.