Piano turns rock and roll?!

I have now been given the task of writing about whatever I want to in this blog post. Given all of the things that we have learned this year in music appreciation, I am free to discuss any type of music that I want. There are two musicians in particular that have always sparked my interest. They both came at the beginning of the 21st century, and they are Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis. You might be asking yourself just how those two go together, but I am going to try and tell you how. ( I have to find out first) :) Ray Charles was a pioneeer in the genre of music called Soul during the 1950's. Jerry Lee Lewis was a rock and roll musician. The thing that these two men had the most in common was the piano. Ray Charles was completely blind and he was an amazing piano player. Ray Charles was called the "only true genius in show business" by Frank Sanatra. Something else that links these two men together in a way was the fact that people questioned their music and called it the "devil's music".

Ray Charles started going blind at the age of five, and was completely blind at the age of seven. He attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945, where he developed his musical talent. He was only taught classical music in school, but he wanted to play the jazz and blues that he heard on the radio. Almost immediately after signing with Atlantic, Charles scored his first hit singles. "Mess Around" was an R&B hit in 1953. "It Should Have Been Me" and "Don't You Know" both made the charts in 1954, but "I Got a Woman" (composed with band mate Renald Richard) brought him to national prominence.

Because a cat's the only cat who REALLY knows where it's at!

Swing music is a form of jazz that developed in the early 1930's and became very popular by 1935. Swing is simply just a different feel to the eighth notes in a song. Instead of playing just straight 1&2& patterns you give it a little "swing." Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of bandleaders such as Benny Goodman and Count Basie was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1945.

Swing, like jazz, was created by African Americans and had a great impact on the American culture as a whole. Swing bands abandoned the string orchestra and wanted to use "edgier" arrangements that emphasized woodwind and horn parts. One particular instrument that was more or less introduced with Jazz was the saxophone.

Charlie Parker was an American saxophonist and a composer. Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuoso technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure. Louis Daniel Armstrong was also a famous jazz musician. He was a jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans. Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music towards solo performances. He was very talented at "scat singing" when you sing sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his amazing talent in an America that was severely racially divided.