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THE
YEARS PRIOR TO
'Rock'n' Roll'
IN AUSTRALIA
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Music
has always featured in Australia's history. The indigenous
people had their music and the early explorers then
immigrants brought music from all areas of the planet.
What we call folk music today is actually the modern
music of the first settlers. It was looked down upon
by the gentry of the day who were into Mozart and other
classical music, which was their 'modern' music.
So it was no surprise that when Rock'n'Roll broke loose
there would be critics who didn't like, just like there
are critics who don't like some styles of popular music
today.
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So, lets
look take a look what it was like...
RADIO
In the mid
50's radio in Australia was mainly made up of individual stations
that were run as small businesses with the exception of maybe
one or two stations in the each of the capital cities. Areas
outside the cities usually had just one commercial station that
covered large areas of land and many towns rather than just
one town. They were owned usually by rural landholders or local
town businessmen and the returns were quite minimal. They were
there to serve a promotional purpose for local businesses and
that's exactly what they did. Purely as a local advertising
and news outlet with little connection with the outside world
except for the news and some major sport events.
MUSIC
The music
content of the stations was very wide and rather than a station
having a particular style format as today, they had special
programs for individual styles of music or for the music of
a particular star. For example most main stations would have
a Jazz style program, a Top 8 or Top 10 Hit Parade, Country
music in the very early mornings and a mix match of all styles
throughout the day. The announcers who later became 'Disc
Jockeys' chose their own records from the library and played
virtually whatever they wanted.
HIT
PARADES
Hit Parades
as such did not start until the mid/late 50's and like America
the first ones featured a popular big band with staff singers
singing the supposed most popular songs sold as sheet music.
Some of these staff singers such as Bing and Frank spun off
to become major stars and that started the emphases on the singer
rather than the song.
After
a while radio audiences wanted to hear the singers singing
their own recorded songs rather than a live bands'
interpretation of them, so someone started playing the top
8 vinyl's and we know what this led to ! Top 40's...Top 100's
and so on ! The music industry STAR system was born!
FIRST
AUSSIE RECORD STARS
In the
40 and 50's Australia's music tastes were satisfied by a blend
of English and American music and the first Australian recorded
music stars were country bush balladeers such as Tex Morton.
The most popular and long lasting of these is Slim Dusty.
Until his recent stroke, Reg The
New Stars of Rock !
The
Starlite DVD publication of 'The Roots of Australian Rock-n-Roll'
will be released early 2005 to coincide with the 45th Anniversary
of Australia's music industry...If you are would like to be
on the e-mail list to be notified when it is due for release.
Please e-mail you name, address, phone and e-mail address.
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