Rock and Roll has been so pervasive and dominant for so long...and for the sake of this piece, we'll encompass Hip Hop and Modern Country under the Rock umbrella as well...it's easy to think that it simply took over popular music right from the very start.
Although Rock and Roll first emerged as a Top 40 force in 1955 with the likes of Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, it was in '56 that it truly emerged as a dominating style, thanks primarily to Elvis Presley, who had four #1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart for a dazzling total of 26 out of 52 weeks that year.
(The name "Rock and Roll" predated the genre, by the way, having its origins in 1920s Blues music. In the early 1950s, DJ Alan Freed began calling the high-energy Rhythm & Blues songs he played "Rock and Roll", and the name stuck when the new style, so heavily derived from R&B, emerged.)
Although Elvis and other Rock and Rollers still competed for chart space with decidedly non-Rock artists for several more years (other #1 songs in 1956 included "Lisbon Antigua" by Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra, "The Poor People of Paris" by Les Baxter, and "The Wayward Wind" by Gogi Grant...none of which found their way into the later repertoires of the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, unsurprisingly), the sea change had begun.
But Rock and Roll did not come to utterly eclipse all of the recording industry...at least not for quite a few years. Instead, pop music developed a schism, with Rock prevailing among 45 RPM singles, and other musical forms holding sway over 33 1/3 RPM long player albums. This was primarily for economic reasons. The growth of the Middle Class in the 1950s gave Baby Boomers disposable income, and they chose to spend it on 45s, which averaged at a cost of between 50¢ and $1, whereas LPs could be a more princely $3, $4 or $5 apiece.
And so albums became the province of non-Rock genres. Pop singers like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme would release several LPs in a calendar year, as would Jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. Boardway cast album and movie soundtracks were hugely successful (the cast album of My Fair Lady was the best selling LP of both 1957 and 1958!). In the early Sixties, comedy records from the likes of Bob Newhart and Allan Sherman sold in the millions.
Of course, that's not to say that Rock and Rollers didn't release albums as well. Generally though, they were considered more disposable by their record labels...a bit of a cash grab that usually consisted of ten or so songs quickly recorded in order to pad around a hit single.
Things began to change rapidly in the mid-1960s, however. An impetus for this change was the fact that so many British Invasion bands, led by the Beatles, were releasing albums that weren't mere collections of random songs, but had themes. The Boomer population was at its peak, the economy was roaring, and at last 33 1/3's were easily accessible to Rock fans,
Still, you might be surprised to learn that it still took a bit longer for Rock and Roll to take total charge. The best-selling album of 1964, the year the Beatles hit in America and unleashed the British Invasion, saw the cast album of Hello, Dolly! outsell everything else. In '65, it was the soundtrack to Mary Poppins.
It wasn't until 1966 that an album that could arguably fall into the realm of Rock and Roll was the best-seller of the year: Whipped Cream & Other Delights by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Now, while Alpert and his assemblage were considerably hipper than, say, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, a lot of fans might have to be convinced to consider them rockers.
Personally, I think it was the album's cover that helped hawk more than a few copies. ;)
And then came 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper. And that just had to be the biggest seller of the year...right?
Nope.
The biggest selling album of that year, the year of the Summer of Love, was More of the Monkees. Now, mind you, I'm a big fan of the Monkees, and it's impossible to claim that songs like "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and "I'm A Believer", both found on this LP, aren't absolute classic pop songs. But this album is really little more than unused tracks from the first Monkees LP sessions, churned out to capitalize on their massive overnight success. Heck, the photo used for the jacket was an outtake of a photoshoot they did to promote 'Monkees Clothes' from J.C. Penney! Creatively, their next two albums released that year, on which they gained artistic control and wrote and played on, were far superior. But this was the album that sold in the millions.
But at least the Monkees broke the stranglehold on album sales, and at long last ushered in the era of Rock and Roll dominance. And 1968, in terms of undeniable Rock and Roll, did it right.
Sure, it was the year of "The White Album" by the Beatles, Beggar's Banquet from the Stones, and Wheels of Fire by Cream. But this time, fans were right on the money, buying in greater quantities the one album that year that is arguably as good, if not better than, those epic milestones: Are You Experienced? from the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Since 1968, the album charts would be ruled forevermore by Rock and Roll. Even movie soundtracks like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard...all the biggest sellers of their release years...were steeped in the stylistic trappings of Rock. Sometimes the all-time annual sellers were head-scratchingly strange: Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida ('69)? Some Gave All ('92) from Billy Ray Cyrus? But other times, they were right on the money. Because of course Bridge Over Trouble Water by Simon and Garfunkel ('70), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John ('74), Rumours by Fleetwood Mac ('77), Thriller by Michael Jackson ('83 and '84), and both 21 ('11 and '12) and 25 ('15) by Adele had to be the biggest selling albums of their years, because they quite probably best encapsulated what was best about Rock and Roll in those years. They were certainly all artistic triumphs for the performers who created them.
So now you know some new bits of trivia to amaze your friends with. Here's one more: do you know which artist was the only biggest seller in three different years with three different albums? None other than Sir Elton John! There was the aforementioned ...Brick Road, while his Greatest Hits Volume I sold like hotcakes in 1975, and he returned to the top in 1994 with the soundtrack to The Lion King. And on that note, let's go out with some Elton...
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