Rock: New York 1950s Overview

At the start of the 1950s, midtown Manhattan was the centre of the American music industry, containing the headquarters of three major labels (RCA, Columbia, and Decca), most of the music publishers, and many recording studios. Publishers were the start of the recording process, employing “song pluggers” to go across town and persuade each of the major label artists-and-repertoire (A&R) men to record a new song with one of their established singers. Alongside traditional publishers, whose writers composed for stage shows and Hollywood musicals, were newer companies specializing in country music (including Peer-Southern and Hill and Range) and many affiliates of independent rhythm-and-blues labels. Some larger independent publishers made copublishing arrangements with smaller companies and acted as midwives for the birth of rock and roll by instigating pop cover versions of hits from the country and rhythm-and-blues markets.

Mitch Miller was the first major-label A&R man to appreciate the potential in covering country hits, producing “The Tennessee Waltz” by Patti Page for Mercury in 1950 and the first pop cover of a Hank Williams song, “Cold, Cold Heart,” by Tony Bennett for Columbia in 1951. Later, he turned an obscure song by a black vocal group from Nashville, Tennessee, the Prisonaires’ “Just Walking in the Rain,” into an international hit for Columbia’s Johnnie Ray. By 1956 several independent labels had learned to beat the pop covers with their own original versions. These labels included rhythm-and-blues pioneers such as Jubilee and Atlantic as well as newcomers such as Roulette and its associated labels Gone, End, and Gee, whose original version of “Why Do Fools Fall in LoveFrankie Lymon and the Teenagers outsold hit covers by Gale Storm, the Diamonds, and Gloria Mann. During the last years of the decade, the small publishers in the Brill Building took an ever-larger share of the pop market.