Rock and Roll Women (1): The Pioneers
Today's American pop charts are dominated by women, which has to be considered a sign of progress (hip-hop is a glaring exception, but I’m not going to get into that).
Women’s dominance, however, is based on a narrow platform. All of the big names are singers; few play any instruments, and, with rare exceptions, when they do, they are not playing rock. The image of the singer-songwriter, male or female, strumming an acoustic guitar while crooning about love or heartbreak — think of Joni Mitchell or early James Taylor — is a staple of Western popular music. (Whether most of the big stars actually write their own music is a subject for another day!)
But a woman who picks up an electric guitar or bashes away on the drums is seen as transgressive or dismissed as a curiosity.
The best women rockers in the U.S. today, like Jennifer Batten and Gail Ann Dorsey, mainly play to support top male acts (Batten played with Michael Jackson and Prince, Dorsey with David Bowie, among others). There is literally only one American top-tier rock band led by a woman instrumentalist, and that is Halestorm, named for its formidable frontwoman, Lzzy Hale.
There was a time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when women were making their mark in rock, but they’ve largely abandoned the field since then, at least in the U.S. I’m going to post more on this topic, but for now, I’m going to take a trip back to the early days of rock, to a happier time (at least for rock fans) when women were mixing it up alongside the guys.
These women were not without precedent. Before the birth of rock, there was a rich history of women in leadership roles in popular music. We (members of the Riff community) are going to be holding an online discussion on the topic on Dec. 11. The announcement below includes a bunch of links to bands and artists of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, some of whom helped lay the foundations for what would become rock and roll. Anyone reading this is invited to join — there is a zoom link at the end of the post.
In the current post, I pick up where that post leaves off, with Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock.
While faced with all of the awfulness of pre-civil rights era racism and sexism, Sister Rosetta Tharpe did have one advantage: she was positioned as a gospel singer.
In that world, women routinely held leading roles, and a dominant stage presence wasn’t frowned on; it was the norm. Her great innovation was to merge driving gospel beats with the blues while using the guitar as another lead voice, creating a new kind of music no one had heard before. There was no one to tell her, “girls don’t play guitar,” because no one, male or female, had played the way she did.
She wasn’t held up as a pioneer at the time because no one anticipated that this new kind of music would take over the world.
Lesley Gore: “You Don’t Own Me” (1964)
Gore didn’t write this or play any instruments, but I include it because it was a revolutionary statement of autonomy for women. Neither she nor the songwriters could know how iconic it would become, though they must have known it was ahead of its time.
A lot of “girl power” songs would follow, in the vein of Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” or Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” but it would be a long time before we heard another declaration of self-ownership as straightforward as “You Don’t Own Me.”
Gore broke ground in another way, living the last 30+ years of her life in an openly gay partnership. Sadly, there are powerful voices in our country who want to take us backward to a time when that was a dangerous thing to do.
The gains of the last 60 years feel more fragile than we expected. Gore never saw herself as a hero, but I think she was.
Goldie and the Gingerbreads: “Can’t you hear my heartbeat?” (1965)
Goldie and the Gingerbreads were one of several groups to cover this song — the biggest were Herman’s Hermits, who formed in 1964 and rivaled the Beatles in popularity and chart success for several years.
All of these groups (even the Beatles, until 1965/66) played mostly upbeat pop songs that were not quite rock and roll. It was only in the latter half of the 60s that the white boys (and a few girls) caught up to the likes of Chuck Berry, who had been doing real rock and roll since at least 1956.
The Pleasure Seekers: “What a Way to Die” (1962)
Formed in 1964 by five teenage girls, including two pairs of sisters, the Pleasure Seekers were one of the first all-female bands to achieve commercial success since the jazz and blues acts of the 1940s.
They would also be among the first to sign with a major label. They eventually split up, with bassist and singer Suzi Quatro going on to rock stardom under her own name and the rest of the band (with various lineup changes) continuing on with modest success as Cradle.
This clip is from a 1965 TV variety show. It’s got everything — a driving beat, strong bass line, edgy lyrics, a few screams, a punk feel that is a decade ahead of its time…and a truly cringe-worthy introduction by the host of the show, who is best forgotten.
“Reach Out” (1968, cover of the Four Tops hit of the same year)
The Pleasure Seekers toured extensively from 1964 through 1969. One of their set shows was a Motown Revue consisting of covers of the latest Motown hits. White artists covering songs by Black artists was already enough to raise eyebrows, but they went further, recasting the songs with a distinctly hard-rocking edge contrasting with their feminine presentation.
Suzi shows off what may be the first recorded instance of “head-banging,” a kind of substitute for dancing that would become a staple among punk and metal audiences (it still is).
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Next post: Suzi Quatro, Joan Jett, and more.
