From “The Rolling Stone Record Guide” published by Random House/Rolling Stone Press in 1979
Instrumental: Music without the human voice-that is, played exclusively by instruments. In rock and pop, these divide neatly into dance and mood pieces. Bill Doggett‘s 1957 "Honky Tonk" was one of the first rock instrumentals, and while there has never been a craze for nonvocal rock, the success of Johnny and the Hurricanes, Sandy Nelson, Duane Eddy, the Ventures and others through the Sixties indicates the continuing vitality of the concept. The big instrumental group in Britain was the Shadows, who released a string of hits when they were not backing Cliff Richard. Far fewer pure instrumentals have been recorded in the Seventies rock field, although many performers use voice as a kind of dehumanized horn (particularly European avant-gardists like Kraftwerk and Brian Eno).
Jazz: Term used throughout this century to describe black American music built around improvisation; sometimes also applied to related forms of dance music. Originally characterized by syncopation and strongly reiterated rhythm, but no longer formally limited-some jazz is modal in conception, some electronic, some traditional, with the result that some of the less traditional players now reject the term.
Jazz Rock: Although rock developed (partially) from rhythm & blues, which had been derived (partially) from jazz, this process had reversed itself by the mid-Sixties, when 
jazz performers began to become interested in the innovations of rock and soul music. Such performers as Gary Burton and Miles Davis began to utilize rock-style instrumentation-electrified guitars and keyboards, for example-while many young British horn players, who had apprenticed in rock groups, began to turn back toward their first love, jazz. The result was an improvisatory electrified form-now often called "fusion"-that uses little of rock’s thematic or emotional structure but a great deal of its technology. Jazz rock is also used to describe the brass-oriented pop bands, such as Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, who first made their appearance in the late Sixties. But this sort of music finally lacks both emotional conviction and any sense of instrumental challenge, which means that it qualifies as neither jazz nor rock.
Jug Band: A group, usually playing folkstyle material, featuring a jug as one of the instruments. (The jug, empty, is played by blowing air over its mouth.) Developed by blacks in the rural South during the ragtime era, the jug was just a novelty-the central instruments were actually banjo, guitar, kazoo, harmonica and sometimes washboard or mandolin. Notable Jug bands have included Gus Cannon and the Jug Stompers, and in the Sixties folk revival, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.
Juking: Southern slang for cruising roadhouses in search of liquor and women (as, for example, in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s "Down South Juking"), The original connotation of the word "juke" is sexual-the act itself or a sleazy brothel where sex was a sweaty commodity; the word was then transferred to the sort of R&B associated with such joints.
Jump Blues: Swing blues played with a fast, heavily accented rhythm, often by combos smaller than the popular swing orchestras of the Forties. Important transitional step in the rise of R&B.
L.A. Sound: Until the mid-Sixties. Los Angeles did not have a specific recording style. as music centers like Nashville. Detroit or Memphis did. Although a great many early rock and R&B hits were released by the city’s dozens of record labels. taken together 
they did not conform to a regional identity. as even New York rhythm & blues records tended to do. But. perhaps influenced by its movie and TV showbiz environment. L.A. did begin to develop a slick. Craftsman-like recording style later in the Sixties first with the surf music of the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and others and later with a pack of session players many of whom had come originally from such country-influenced areas as Arkansas. Texas and Oklahoma (for example. Glen Campbell, Leon Russell and David Gates of Bread). Lou Adler a 
producer/entrepreneur combined these styles in a version of folk rock that resulted in the hit single "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire and in the Mamas and the Papas, a major group. Essentially Adler added a very facile pop approach to the rougher-sounding folk rock developed in the East using strings and horns where appropriate. Los Angeles also produced a more authentic folk-rock style highlighted by the Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds. The city’s synthesis of folk rock and country approaches with mainstream pop became most prominent in the Seventies when it contributed country rock (in the form of later incarnations of the Byrds, as well as such bands as the Flying Burrito Brothers) the major impetus to the singer / songwriter movement (including such central figures as Randy Newman, Jackson Browne and the transplanted Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young) and such completely studio-contrived approaches as the Eagles‘ and Fleetwood Mac‘s.
Liverpool Sound: This northern English port city produced not only the Beatles but a whole gang of beat groups in the early Sixties (350 of them according to a 1962 survey). Liverpool groups mostly played Anglicized R&B. as did groups in London, Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere; but the Liverpool bands generally had a brighter, lighter veneer to their approach. Among the groups that followed the Beatles out of Liverpool were the Searchers, the Merseybeats, Ian and the Zodiacs, the Swinging Blue Jeans, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and Cilla Black. The phenomenon known as Merseybeat (because the Mersey River runs through Liverpool) was a short-lived craze and by 1965 the Liverpool scene was dead and only the Beatles survived it.
Leave a Reply