A new generation fo clean-cut singers filled the juke boxes in the '50s, along with perennial favorites like Frank Sinatra and a few Big Bands that lingered on from earlier years. Romantic ballads from solo vocalists like Eddie Fisher, Rosemary Clooney, and Kay Starr, as well as close harmony from quartets like the Four Aces, kept couples dancing cheek to cheek. There were also plenty of fluffy novelties like Patti Page's "The Doggie in the Window," and kids jitterbugged to Teresa Brewer's "Music! Music! Music!" and Rosemary Clooney's swinging "Come On-a My House." An amazingly versatile vocalist, Clooney recorded 31 top-40 hits from 1951 through 1954. Time magazine put her on its cover, noting approvingly tht she sounded "the way pretty girls next door ought to sound."

Other strains in the pop musical mix were the Weavers, serving up fresh versions of traditional songs in a folk-music revival; Les Paul and Mary Ford, pioneering multitrack recording in "How High the Moon" and other hits; Johnnie Ray, the piano-pounding "Million-Dollar Teardrop" wholse emotion-soaked renditions of "Cry" and "The Little White Cloud That Cried" got live audiences so fired up that they would storm the stage; and country music star Hank Williams, whose songs of honky tonks and heartbreak-"Hey, Good Lookin',""Cold, Cold Heart," "Lovesick Blues"-crossed over and picked up fans among pop music devotees.

Another Country singer and bandleader, Bill Hlaey, rocketed out of abscurity to a spot on the pop chart in 1954 with his version of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," which rythm-and-blues singer Big Joe Turner had made popular among black listeners. Haley's hit was the first loud rumble of what Life magazine called a "frenzied teenage music craze." In 1955 Haley and his group the Comets scored big when featured in Blackboard Jungle, a movie about high-school toughs. When the lights came up, the teenagers in the audience were itching to rock around the clock; the adults wee shaking their heads. That same year, singer-songwriter Chuck Berry stepped up the hear with "Maybellene." His next big hit, "Roll Over Beethoven," released in 1956, announced the rock and roll revolution in no uncertain terms: "Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news!"