Rhythm and Blues

Chicago bass player and songwriter, Willie Dixon described "rhytym and blues" as up-tempo blues with a beat. Others have defined rhythm and blues in opposition to rockabilly: R&B is performed primarily by black artists with horn sections while rockabilly is primarily white and guitar dominated. This definition frays at the edges as R&B songwriters drew on Tin Pan Alley sources for their inspiration (e.g., The Dominos' "Sixty Minute Man" which is built on the four-chord pattern of "Blue Moon") and rockabilly artists notoriously appropriated R&B songs (e.g., Elvis performing "Good Rockin' Tonight"). Furthermore, examples abound of black artists performing without trumpets, trombones, and saxophones. In the sixties, the emergence of Motown and different kinds of "soul music" that audiences identified as R&B made the musical definition of the genre even more difficult to define.

The Beatles' performing repertoire is a good place to look at the song types from whence they "nicked" [British slang for "catch" or "steal"] their ideas. They openly acknowledged the importance of the early 1960s Motown groups and recorded "Money" (Barrett Strong), "You Really Got a Hold on Me" (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles), and "Please Mister Postman" (the Marvellettes). In the mid-sixties, the Beatles would go as far as to do their own versions of the soul music of artists like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett with their album, Rubber Soul.

They also included songs based on performances by the "girl" groups of the era, such as "Boys" and "Baby It's You" by the Shirelles, "Chains" by the Cookies, and "Devil in Her Heart" by the Donays. Their interpretation of the multi-part vocal harmonies characteristic of some of these performers (e.g., "This Boy") and their predilection for call-and-response patterns reveals how deeply these influences ran.

Song Original Recording Beatles "Money" (Gordy & Bradford) Barrett Strong, August 1959 Lennon "Please Mr Postman" (Dobbins, Garrett, Holland, Bateman, & Gorman) Marvelettes, August 1961 [YouTube] Lennon, July 1963 Lennon, 1965 "Baby It's You" (Bacharach, David, Williams) Shirelles, February 1962 Lennon, March 1962 "Boys" (Dixon, Farrell) Shirelles, 1962 Starr, March 1964 "(There's a) Devil in His Heart" (Drapkin) Donays, 1962 Harrison, November 1963 "Twist and Shout" (P. Medley, B. Russell) Isley Brothers, June 1962 Lennon, March 1963 "You Really Got a Hold on Me" (Robinson) Miracles, November 1962 Lennon, November 1962 "Chains" (Goffin, King) Cookies, December 1962 Harrison, March 1962 "Mr Moonlight" (Johnson) Dr Feelgood and the Interns, 1962 Lennon, November 1964 "Anna" (Alexander) Arthur Alexander, 1962 Lennon, March 1963

The Shirelles

The Marvelettes

Lennon and McCartney's Songwriting/Performance Models

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Lennon and McCartney	Outline	Songwriting
	2-sep-09