Southern rock
Southern rock is a subgenre of rock music and a genre of Americana. It developed in the Southern United States from rock and roll, country music, and blues and is focused generally on electric guitars and vocals. Author Scott B. Bomar speculates the term "Southern rock" may have been coined in 1972 by Mo Slotin, writing for Atlanta's underground paper, The Great Speckled Bird, in a review of an Allman Brothers Band concert.
This article is about a subgenre of rock music and a genre of Americana. For the Gibraltar-based insurance company Southern Rock, see Eldon Insurance.Southern rock
1960s and early 1970s, Southern United States
History[edit]
1950s and 1960s: origins[edit]
Rock music's origins lie mostly in the music of the American South, and many stars from the first wave of 1950s rock and roll such as Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis hailed from the Deep South. However, the British Invasion and the rise of folk rock and psychedelic rock in the middle 1960s shifted the focus of new rock music away from the rural south and to large cities like Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
In the 1960s, rock musician Lonnie Mack blended black and white roots-music genres within the framework of rock, beginning with the hit song "Memphis" in 1963.[1] Music historian Dick Shurman considers Mack's recordings from that era "a prototype of what later could be called Southern rock".[2]
The Allman Brothers Band, from Jacksonville, Florida, made their national debut in 1969 and soon gained a loyal following. Duane Allman's playing on the two Hour Glass albums and an Hour Glass session in early 1968 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama had caught the ear of Rick Hall, owner of FAME.[3]
In November 1968, Hall hired Allman to play on an album with Wilson Pickett. Allman's work on that album, Hey Jude (1968), got him hired as a full-time session musician at Muscle Shoals and brought him to the attention of a number of other musicians, such as Eric Clapton, who later related how he heard Pickett's version of "Hey Jude" on his car radio and called Atlantic Records to find out who the guitarist was: "To this day," Clapton said, "I've never heard better rock guitar playing on an R&B record. It's the best."[4] Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971.[5]
Their blues rock sound incorporated long jams informed by jazz and also drew from native elements of country and folk. They were also contemporary in their electric guitar and keyboard delivery.[6] Gregg Allman commented that "Southern rock" was a redundant term, like "rock rock."[6]
From late 1960s to early 1970s, popular musicians in south area included Creedence Clearwater Revival (from California), Dale Hawkins, Delaney & Bonnie, Janis Joplin, Leon Russell, and Tony Joe White.[7][8]
1970s: peak of popularity[edit]
Charlie Daniels' self-titled debut album, released in 1970, was a pivotal recording in the development of the Southern rock genre, "because it points the way to how the genre could and would sound, and how country music could retain its hillbilly spirit and rock like a mother," according to
Stephen Thomas Erlewine.[9]
Erlewine described Daniels as "a redneck rebel, not fitting into either the country or the rock & roll [...] but, in retrospect, he sounds like a visionary, pointing the way to the future when southern rockers saw no dividing lines between rock, country, and blues, and only saw it all as sons of the south."[10]
Daniels later formed the Charlie Daniels Band, a group which fused rock, country, blues, and jazz. Erlewine described the band's sound as "a distinctly Southern blend" which emphasized improvisation in their instrumentation. After the success of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", a single which Erlewine described as a "a roaring country-disco fusion", Daniels shifted his sound from rock to country music and "helped shape the sound of country-rock".[10]
The Marshall Tucker Band, from Spartanburg, South Carolina, opened many of The Allman Brothers Band concerts using elements of blues, country rock and blues rock in their music.[11][12] They also collaborated with Charlie Daniels.
Their self-titled album, released in 1973, included the hit "Can't You See". Perhaps known best for the single "Fire on the Mountain," the Marshall Tucker Band hit "Heard it in a Love Song" charted in 1977.
Lynyrd Skynyrd of Jacksonville, Florida, is known for "Free Bird", "Sweet Home Alabama", "Saturday Night Special", and "What's Your Name". They played British hard rock influenced music until the deaths of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and two other members of the group in a 1977 airplane crash.[13] After this tragic plane crash, members Allen Collins and Gary Rossington started the Rossington Collins Band.[14]
In the early 1970s other Southern rock groups emerged, influenced by the British rock and hard rock guitar sound exemplified by Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Paul Kossoff, and Richie Blackmore, for example.
The harder rocking Southern groups' music emphasized boogie rhythms and fast guitar leads with lyrics extolling love affair, dream, desire, hard work, of Southern working-class young adults, like the outlaw country movement.
Late 1970s Southern rock bands such as The Atlanta Rhythm Section (former Classics IV)[15] and the Amazing Rhythm Aces achieved success with bluesy vocals.
The Allman Brothers Band's offshoot Sea Level explored crossover and jazz fusion.
Other popular Southern rock musicians in 1970s included: