Music Genre Glossary T – Z

From “The Rolling Stone Record Guide” published by Random House/Rolling Stone Press in 1979

Even the most music interested among us can sometimes get lost in all the different labels music journalists and record companies choose to put on recordings. This glossary may help you find your way in this label jungle. As you can see from the text above here this glossary is from 1979 and as this is a retro blog that works alright for me. Besides, any music styles that has emerged since then is of little interest to me, with the possible exception of neo-classic country. I’m sorry to say that dance, trance, hip-hop, rap and the rest simply don’t do it for me – Ted

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Trad Jazz: British term for traditional New Orleans jazz, or its corruption (the latter is called Dixieland in the U.S.). Played by relatively small groups, patterned after the World War 1 New Orleans groups of King Oliver, etc. Trad jazz bands led by Chris Barber, Ken Colyer, Mick Mullian and others contributed such figures as Alexis Korner and Lonnie Donegan to the early British skiffle and R&B scene. It was associated with bohemian culture and left politics, but the rise of British rock was also a reaction to its purism, and to the fact that, with the success of Acker Bilk, Colyer‘s saxophonist the genre had merged with the pop mainstream.

Wall of Sound: Pop production style, devised by Phil Spector, in which the individual articulation of each instrument is deliberately obscured to create a massed effect.

Western Swing: Country music influenced by jazz, as played by Texas-Oklahoma string bands of the Thirties through the Fifties. Under the influence of Bob Wills and some others, such groups added horn sections and created what is also known as hillbilly jazz. Most groups had fiddlers, steel guitarists, horns, regular guitarists, voices, banjos and upright bass. In addition to traditional fiddle music, the Western swing repertoire encompassed jazz and pop standards and even some blues. This was of course primarily dance music, and it enjoyed wide popularity throughout the Southwest. The genre had a wide influence on country music in general, opening it to newer sources of inspiration, although today few groups (the exceptions are the remnants of Wills’ Texas Playboys and the country-rock band Asleep at the Wheel) actually play it.