ABSTRACT
Introduction: Crossing Over Th e term “crossover” arises frequently in writing about post-World War II popular music. It is perhaps most familiar from discussions of the early years of rock and roll, in which crossover is an important phenomenon that helps account for the rise of rock and roll in the 1950s out of a combination of R&B, C&W, and mainstream pop elements. In this common usage, crossover refers to the marketing of recordings as refl ected by charts published in musicindustry trade magazines, especially Billboard.1 Th ese charts (Billboard’s “Hot 100,” for instance) rank hit records and were originally designed to help businesspeople at record labels, radio stations, record stores, and distribution centers assess current trends with an eye toward anticipating future opportunity and demand. Th e charts thus attempted to represent which songs were popular while providing a rough sense of the kind of listener to which a record appealed. For this second purpose, listeners were-and to some extent continue to be-divided along economic, geographic, and racial lines for marketing purposes. Pop charts tracked records directed at a generally middle-class white audience, while the R&B charts followed records intended for urban black audiences, and C&W charts followed those made for rural white listeners. Whenever a record appears on more than one of these charts-on both the pop and R&B charts, for example-it “crosses over.” Th is is, strictly speaking, only a fact in regard to the consumption aspect of the music in question (as much as charts ever refl ect facts, that is). A crossover hit may be assumed to appeal to two distinguishable listening audiences. Chart crossover is not necessarily a reliable indicator in matters of musical style, however; a record can certainly cross over on the charts while remaining absolutely true to a single style. Th e earliest R&B crossovers in the mid 1950s are a good example of this. Little Richard, for one, did not straddle a stylistic border between R&B and pop with tunes like “Tutti Frutti” and “Lucille”; he did, however, cross audience borders when his songs appealed to both black (R&B) and middleclass white (pop) audiences.
