The 1950s or The
Fifties was a decade that began on January 1, 1950 at 12:00am and ended on
December 31, 1959 at 11:59pm. By its end, the world had largely recovered from
World War II and the Cold War developed from its modest beginning in the late
1940s to a hot competition between the United States and the Soviet Union by
the beginning of the 1960s.
Clashes between communism
and capitalism dominated the decade, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The
conflicts included the Korean War in the beginnings of the decade and the
beginning of the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik I. Along with increased
testing of nuclear weapons (such as RDS-37 and Upshot-Knothole), this created a
politically conservative climate. In the United States, the Red Scare (fear of
communism) caused public Congressional hearings by both houses in Congress and
anti-communism was the prevailing sentiment in the United States throughout the
decade. The beginning of decolonization in Africa and Asia occurred in this
decade and accelerated in the following decade, the 1960s.
Music
Popular music in
the early 1950s was essentially a continuation of the crooner sound of the
previous decade. Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Patti Page, Judy
Garland, Johnnie Ray, Kay Starr, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney,
Dean Martin, Georgia Gibbs, Eddie Fisher, Teresa Brewer, Dinah Shore, Kitty
Kallen, Joni James, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Toni Arden, June Valli, Doris Day,
Arthur Godfrey, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Guy Mitchell, Nat King Cole, and vocal
groups like The Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, The Four Lads, The Four Aces,
The Chordettes, Fontane Sisters, The Hilltoppers and The Ames Brothers.
The middle of the
decade saw a sudden, volcanic change in the popular music landscape as classic
pop was swept off the charts by rock-and-roll. Crooners such as Eddie Fisher,
Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the first half of the decade,
found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed by the decade's
end. Doo Wop entered the pop charts in the 1950s. Its popularity soon spawns
the parody "Who Put the Bomp."
Novelty songs
come into popularity, such as "Beep Beep"
Rock-n-Roll
emerged in the mid-50s with Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Gene Vincent, Chuck
Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, James Brown, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Bobby
Darin, Ritchie Valens, Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran, Brenda Lee, Bobby Vee, Connie
Frances, Johnny Mathis, Neil Sedaka, Pat Boone and Ricky Nelson being notable
exponents. In the mid-1950s, Elvis Presley became the leading figure of the
newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television
appearances and chart-topping records. Chuck Berry, with "Maybellene"
(1955), "Roll over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music"
(1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), refined and developed the major
elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and
introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on
subsequent rock music. Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Carl
Perkins, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Johnny Horton, and Marty Robbins were
Rockabilly musicians. Doo Wop was another popular genre at the time. Popular
Doo Wop and Rock-n-Roll bands of the mid to late 1950s include The Platters,
The Flamingos, The Dells, The Silhouettes, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers,
Little Anthony & The Imperials, Danny and the Juniors, The Coasters, The
Drifters, The Del-Vikings and Dion and the Belmonts.
The new music
differed from previous styles in that it was primarily targeted at the teenager
market, which became a distinct entity for the first time in the 1950s as
growing prosperity meant that young people did not have to grow up as quickly
or be expected to support a family. Rock-and-roll proved to be a difficult
phenomenon for older Americans to accept and there were widespread accusations
of it being a communist-orchestrated scheme to corrupt the youth.
Jazz stars in the
1950s who came into prominence in their genres called Bebop, Hard bop, Cool
jazz and the Blues, at this time included Lester Young, Ben Webster, Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles
Mingus, Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Gil Evans, Jerry
Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey,
Max Roach, the Miles Davis Quintet, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald,
Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday.
The American folk
music revival became a phenomenon in the United States in the 1950s to mid-1960s
with the initial success of the Weavers who popularized the genre. Their sound,
and their broad repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs
inspired other groups such as the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The
New Christy Minstrels, and the "collegiate folk" groups such as The
Brothers Four, The Four Freshmen, The Four Preps, and The Highwaymen. All
featured tight vocal harmonies and a repertoire at least initially rooted in
folk music and topical songs.
On 3 February
1959, a chartered plane transporting the three American rock and roll musicians
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson
goes down in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all four occupants
on board, including pilot Roger Peterson. The tragedy is later termed "The
Day the Music Died", popularized in Don McLean's 1972 song "American
Pie". This event, combined with the conscription of Elvis into the US
Army, is often taken to mark the point where the era of 50s rock-and-roll ended.
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock
'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United
States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from African-American musical
styles such as gospel, jazz, and rhythm and blues, with country. While elements
of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country
records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s.
