Friday, April 25, 2025
If you want to talk about cultural and societal change, in the past 60 years there have been few influences stronger than the combination of Elvis Presley and the transistor radio. Before this happy coincidence, everyone listened to the same music (basically from the 40s) because parents controlled the radio and TV and the record player. Then cheap, portable transistor radios met up with a white singer who sang largely black-inspired music, and the world changed, creating entirely new genres of music that were unstoppable.