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    Milwaukee Rock and Roll
    Milwaukee Rock and Roll
    Milwaukee Rock and Roll
    Ebook167 pages56 minutes

    Milwaukee Rock and Roll

    By Larry Widen and Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The history of rock music in Milwaukee began at an age when some musicians played in a segregated part of the city. At the same time, a young singer named Buddy Holly kicked off a tour that ended with a plane crash in Iowa 11 days later. The following years brought the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the rest of the British Invasion. In the late 1960s came acid rock, civil unrest, and Summerfest, a music festival that continues to this day. Milwaukee has had its moments in the spotlight: Bob Dylan left the stage after two songs in 1964, Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 concert was delayed for hours while police searched for a bomb in the theater, hundreds of Black Sabbath fans rioted after a 1980 show, and the Plasmatics’ Wendy O. Williams was beaten by police in 1981. And then there was the helicopter crash in which blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn perished.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 29, 2014
    ISBN9781439647486
    Milwaukee Rock and Roll
    Author

    Larry Widen

    Larry Widen is a historian and the author of Images of America: Entertainment in Early Milwaukee. He operates the historic Times and Rosebud cinemas near downtown Milwaukee.

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      Book preview

      Milwaukee Rock and Roll - Larry Widen

      King.

      INTRODUCTION

      In this unique musical history of Milwaukee, you are going to encounter folk singers, heavy-metal icons, balladeers, big-band cats, top-40 pop stars, and duckwalking, keyboard-pounding, guitar-strumming heroes of rock and roll. The only thing that all of them have in common is where their particular style of music originated. The rock music that has been a part of our collective consciousness since the mid-1950s came from the countless African men and women who were transported to this country in chains and put to work in the farmlands of Virginia, Georgia, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Without them, there would be no Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, or Ozzy Osbourne; no Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, or Jerry Garcia; and no Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, or Elvis Presley either. There would be some form of popular music, of course, but it would not sound anything like what we have embraced and enjoyed all these years. The history of rock and roll in Milwaukee, or anywhere for that matter, began in the dank hold of one of the many slave ships that sailed to the New World laden with illicit human cargo. The pain and agony these people endured poured out of them in words, music, and rhythms that came to be called the blues.

      Robert Johnson rests quietly beneath an expansive pecan tree in the rear of a Greenwood, Mississippi, church graveyard. Nearly 80 years after his death, the singer’s granite marker is still decorated with coins, guitar picks, and other offerings from those who have made the pilgrimage to pay their respects. The legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for unlimited musical talent is synonymous with the blues. For decades, blues fans and musicologists alike have searched for the location at which the unholy bargain was struck. Many believe the mythic ground is the junction of Mississippi State Highways 61 and 49, just outside of Clarksdale. Others maintain the crossroads exists only in voodoo, the centuries-old superstitious hybrid of African and Catholic religions mentioned in so many blues songs.

      Mississippi has spawned more blues singers than the other 49 states combined, primarily because the land is so fertile for agriculture. Greenwood, in the heart of the Mississippi River Delta, still produces a staggering 20 percent of the world’s cotton crop each year. For several hundred years, African American laborers toiled in these fields, first as slaves and then as sharecropping freedmen. B.B. King, George Buddy Guy, Chester Arthur Howlin’ Wolf Burnett, and a number of other musicians born in the early part of the 20th century worked alongside family members on plantations for less than a dollar a day. To make the time in the sun a bit more palatable, workers sang songs, or field hollers, to each other. The music of the fields was adopted by black churches that were founded in the decades following the Civil War. In the 1920s and 1930s, musicians used their voices and acoustic guitars to bring these primitive rhythms out of the fields and churches and onto Mississippi street corners. From there, it was only a short time before the blues went north on Highway 61 to Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.

      Memphis was the largest regional commercial center in the 1930s and had a number of radio stations and nightclubs where African American musicians could work. By 1950, a 15-year-old Elvis Presley was one of the few whites who spent time on Beale. Presley loved the black music scene and defied his parents’ orders not to wear the baggy suits and loud shirts worn by his heroes.

      The former Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records studio, located at 706 Union Avenue, is sacred ground to music fans. Although only as large as an average living room, an astonishing number of musicians recorded at Sun, including Howlin’ Wolf, James Little Milton Campbell Jr., Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison. On July 5, 1954, Presley, along with Bill Black and Scotty Moore, recorded That’s All Right, Mama, the groundbreaking single that combined blues, gospel, and country. The building, still open for tours, is virtually intact with the original floors, ceilings, and recording equipment used by these artists. Memphis is also home to the Gibson guitar factory, where visitors can see a semi-hollow-body electric guitar being made by hand. In the plant at 145 George W Lee Avenue, the company produces between 35 and 40 of its ES-series guitars each day. Retailing for $4,000 each, the ES guitar is favored by performers like B.B.

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