genre american

Folk Rock

mid-1960s–early 1970s · New York City / London

Bob Dylan's electric turn and the Byrds' ringing twelve-strings: the marriage of folk music's lyrical seriousness with rock's rhythm and amplification.

Folk rock emerged when Bob Dylan plugged in. The folk revival of the early 1960s — earnest, acoustic, oriented toward social protest and traditional music — and the British Invasion of 1964 had been developing in parallel, with surprisingly little overlap. Dylan’s appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965 with an electric band was the collision: the crowd booed, Pete Seeger reportedly tried to cut the power cables, and American rock music was changed permanently.

The Byrds crystallized the genre from the other direction: Roger McGuinn took Dylan’s songs (“Mr. Tambourine Man”), added twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar ringing through a Beatles-influenced arrangement, and reached the pop charts in 1965. Their sound — jangly, harmonic, lyrics carrying weight — was folk rock’s defining texture. Simon & Garfunkel, the Mamas & the Papas, Buffalo Springfield and the Lovin’ Spoonful all explored adjacent territory.

The genre pointed in two directions simultaneously: toward the singer- songwriter movement of the 1970s (Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King) and toward country rock (the Byrds again, Flying Burrito Brothers, early Eagles). It established that lyrical ambition — the expectation that songs should mean something — was a permanent feature of American rock.

Connections

Roots, siblings & influences

fuses

Rock 'n' Roll

mid-1950s–early 1960s · genre

Blues rhythm and form aimed at teenagers: Chuck Berry's guitar stories and Elvis Presley's Sun sessions turned Black rhythm and blues into a national youth music.

Folk rock applied rock's amplified rhythm section and energy to the song structures and lyrical concerns of the folk revival.

Rock and roll

influenced by

British Invasion

mid-1960s · genre

British guitar groups returned American blues and rock 'n' roll to the US charts as a new pop language: Beatles melody, Stones grit, mod attack.

Dylan's electric turn at Newport in 1965 was directly catalyzed by the Beatles' example: rock could be intelligent and carry weight.

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop from the Beginning

What grew from it

influenced

Americana

mid-1990s→ · genre

The roots music umbrella: folk, country, blues, gospel and bluegrass recombined without commercial pressure — Emmylou Harris, Uncle Tupelo, Gillian Welch and a tradition that doesn't know it should be obsolete.

Americana's lyrical seriousness and acoustic orientation descend from the folk revival's values — meaning over entertainment, tradition over novelty.

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop from the Beginning · Country Music, U.S.A.

fused into

Country Rock

late 1960s–1970s · genre

Gram Parsons' cosmic American music made commercial: the Byrds' pedal steel, Eagles' harmonies and the Long Beach Ballroom — the bridge that let country and rock share an audience.

Country rock grew from the same folk-rock impulse toward acoustic instruments and lyrical seriousness, taking that impulse in a more explicitly country direction.

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop from the Beginning

influenced

Outlaw Country

1970s–early 1980s · genre

Waylon and Willie's rebellion: long hair, marijuana, self-production rights and a refusal of the Nashville Sound's polish — the outlaw movement gave country its integrity back.

Bob Dylan's influence — the singer-songwriter asserting artistic control and lyrical seriousness — was explicit in the outlaw movement's ideology.

Country Music, U.S.A.

Key artists

Bob Dylan
1941– · artist
The poet who rewrote what a song could say: from the folk revival to electric rock to country and back, Dylan's restless movement made him the most influential songwriter in American music.

Sources

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop from the Beginning — Nik Cohn (1969). Weidenfeld & Nicolson · Book
Rock and roll ↗ . Encyclopædia Britannica · Encyclopedia