Download Rock n` Roll and the Rise of the Teenager

Rock n’ Roll and the Rise of
the Teenager
Baby Boomers
• The audience for Rock n
Roll was the Baby
Boomers. Those people
born at the end of, and
immediately following
WW2.
• The youngest audience
ever considered for a
target audience of music.
1950’s Teenage Cultural Identity
• 1950’s were a period
of economic stability
and properity
• A desire to return to
“normal” after the
turmoil of WW2
• First generation to
grow up with
television
1950’s Teenage Cultural Identity
• Cold war tension
between U.S. and
Soviet Union and the
fear of nuclear war.
1950’s Teenage Cultural Identity
• Fear of communism
exemplified by the
congressional
hearings on “unAmerican activities”
1950’s Teenage Cultural Identity
• New levels of racial
awareness and
tensions.
• Supreme Court
Decision in the case
of Brown vs Board of
Education ordered the
desegregation of
schools.
• Rosa Parks refuses to
move to the back seat
Teenage Self-Identity
• Teens in the 1950’s
were the first group of
teenagers to identify
themselves as a
separate group:
“Teenagers”
• Teens developed their
own fashion, dance
steps, music, and
ways of speaking.
Teen Identity
• In the early 1950’s,
teenagers were drawn to
R & B music.
• By the late 1950’s Major
Labels found a way to
fabricate and package
teen culture and sell it
back to them.
• In the 60’s the teens grew
up and reclaimed their
culture and made their
own music.
Teen Power
• Rock n Roll is targeted at “the 8 to 14 year
olds, to the pre-shave crowd that make up
12% of the country’s population and 0% of
its buying power.” – Mitch Miller, A&R
director of Columbia Records early 1950’s
• 1958 survey of the 19 million teenagers
showed that they spent 9 billion dollars a
year.