Was Gospel more influential on rock & roll music than the blues? Discuss?

One thing that gospel gave rock and roll was a different, more outlandish energy than the blues.

Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson et al may have laid a musical foundation for r&r, but not the unbridled - and sometimes unhinged - edge that Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis did. And we know where those guys picked it up from.

Blues is a somber music (thus the name), and even when it plugged in and became party music, it still came with restraints.

The states of ecstasy and uninhibitedness the black church generated is the very id of rock n roll.

And the colorful preachers who shouted and stomped and sweated across church pulpits are the true forerunners of great performers like Mick Jagger and, of course, Tina Turner.

So blues is the musical backbone of r&r, but gospel is what made it fun.

 

Jump blues as well right? Not just gospel.

 

Sure. Particularly Louis Jordan in terms of having fun as part of the package.

Still, most of the people who really brought the wildness to r&r - Elvis, the Killer, all the rockabilly guys - were country boys, who probably weren't too familiar with the very urban music that was coming out on Vee Jay and the like.

And as much fun as jump blues was, people getting down in black church, dancing in the aisles, testifying and feeling the spirit flow through them seems like a more direct bridge to the wildness of 50s and 60s rock shows.

 

If I had to lean one way or another I'd lean to "blues" having exerted more of an influence, at least foundationally/musically (12 bar progression, boogie rhythms, etc.), but gospel has been an under-recognized influence as well, in ways that are only now being fully understood. And really, blues and gospel are two sides of the same coin, right? One side was evil but sold a lot more...

 

Do we have any reliable figures for how well gospel records sold? Billboard wasn't getting reports from churches and the labels like savoy may or may not have kept good books.

 

I've never really looked into it, but the audience for gospel had to be way smaller as a whole. Not that individual records weren't huge sellers. Accurately determining sales figures would have been a nightmare, even at the time, for both genres, though gospel may have had more informal, unreported sales that were never tracked by anyone.

 

I've read quotations from those who lived in black neighborhoods back in the day stating that there were 10 storefront churches for every blues club, maybe hyperbole maybe not. Be that as it may, it doesn't necessarily translate into record sales. Certainly not into jukebox sales, which were a substantial part of the market back in the day. And much blues didn't sell particularly well.

 

I don't know but I can't really think of many rock and pop songs with the gospel style melisma. That is a key thing that is missing most of the time. Rock and Roll has just about everything from the blues, but it only has a few things now and then from everything in gospel type songs.
The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll. Gospel had a distant cousin and they called it rock and roll.

 

I think I have to go with beenieman on this one, Bear. I was in a Goodwill store today and one of the songs that played over their system was a Little Richard song. I don't remember which one but even though the lyrics were not spiritual and the song was definitely rock and roll, there was also a very strong Pentecostal feel to the music and Richards warbling WOOOOOOOOO's came across as nearly speaking in tongues. And it struck me right there that Little Richards music was all pretty much closely tied to charismatic spiritual/religious influences. So, yeah, I would say all of Little Richards work- at least what I'm familiar with- could be said strongly tied to gospel and spirituals.

 

One question I've been wondering about while reading these posts is, How much does blues music owe it's influences to gospel music? The other major influence, of course, is work songs, but how close are they tied to gospel?
I could see a theory being built around the idea that gospel led to work songs and both of them led to blues which in turn led to rock and roll.
But I'm not making any definitive declarative statement there. I'm just an amateur musicologist.

 

I guess the Roll comes from the church, the blues didn't have those kind of wreck-the-house-down rhythms. Gospel is more tuneful too than most blues, probably an influence on doo-wop.

 

Yeah but he said listen to "anything" by Little Richard. I responded with Tutti Frutti. You hear just gospel in his high wooos like in Tutti Frutti? Maybe but just as much Jump Blues IMO. I can't say that just a vocalization like that makes it sound "gospel". Maybe if it had some melisma I would say it has more or a connection to gospel. IMO a song like Tutti Frutti is more closely rooted in jump blues and jazz than gospel. Listen to how he scats in Tutti Frutti. I don't know what song you are referring to.

 

Now THAT'S a great question! If you research the very early history of the blues, you realize how intricately intertwined blues and gospel became over time, at times breaking free from one another, but ultimately folding the new stuff back into the whole. "Work songs" would be one of the many varied precursors to both.

 

Interesting question, and one i've thought of myself. If anything in rock music was carried over from gospel, it's the call and response pattern of the lyrics.

 

I can't pretend to be able to tell you how much gospel is in Tutti Frutti, but it's there (as well as blues and boogie influences). To me all Richard's music has gospel influences.
But now don't forget what I said: I'm just an amateur musicologist. Amateur, my friend, amateur!

 

But, wasn't a lot of British rock influenced by American rhythm & blues?

 

Definitions come into play when getting into sales discussions. The more "rockin'" "blues" tunes often sold better (Little Walter's "Juke" sold big, nothing by Muddy came close). Louis Jordan sold a ton. Do we categorize that as blues though? As opposed to gospel, sure, though I believe Louis did a few tracks that could be defined as gospel. See, it all overlaps in ways both confusing and wonderful!

 

All the early blues players would have heard gospel growing up. It might have actually been the dominant form of music they heard, so invariably some of it rubbed off.

The call and response, the handclapped rhythms, the raising and lowering of the voice for dramatic effect to name a few.

So yeah, gospel influenced the blues. And vice versa, no doubt.

Of course, follow any of it far enough back and you get to Congo Square. And Africa before that. Fruits of the same tree.

 

Gospel was part of it, as was swing and country. A big melting pot.

 

Y

Yes but as someone else said, how far back do you go? The Beatles and Led Zeppelin were influenced by skiffle, which is a mix of country, folk, blues and jazz; beyond looking at a limited time period of maybe a few years influences tend to be very wide and generic.

 

Yes, the central irony in the "Devil's Music" is that it came from the Church.

 

Just catching up.

1. Tutti Frutti has more gospel than blues in it.
2. I think a comparison of sales of blues to gospel pre rock & roll, even if possible, would not prove anything. gospel had a much bigger audience through churches than blues through blues clubs. There's always been a lot more churches than clubs.
3. I googled to try to see how many black Americans identified as Christian. 77%. I couldn't find out how many listen to the gospel every week but I'm thinking it's a lot. It certainly remains an influence and would have been a big influence in the days rock & roll developed.

 

I think it's silly to parse the two. Others have pointed this out. Blues was what was heard on Saturday night and only hours later they'd listen to Gospel at Sunday morning services. All this happened long before recorded music. I would suggest that Rock music and even what was considered proper Rock 'n Roll were products of influences of what would have been recorded. By the time the '50s rolled around, 75 years would have passed after the Civil War and two World Wars would have brought a lot of intermingling of music throughout not just the USA, but throughout the world.

 

BB King often said the difference between Gospel and the blues was you replace the word Jesus with Baby

 

The blues and gospel music were sharply divided in the mind of black Baptist believers and priests, but I believe a large group of people listened to both and accepted them as two sides of one coin of life and artistic / emotional expression, I believe.
Many blues pre war blues artists recorded at least a few gospel sides under pseudonym or even their own including, people like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton. Some bluesplayers made a lot of them, like Blind Willie McTell. Then you have the so-called gospel blues of people like Blind Willie Johnson. And a lot of blues artists from the era would later become preachers, some never recording blues again, like Reverend Robert Wilkins, some performing both, like Son House.