Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
brought down the houses. Soon afterward, talented opera performers converged on the
shattered city for free public performances that turned arias into anthems for the city's re-
birth. San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House today is home to North America's
second-largest opera company, after NYC's Metropolitan Opera.
Swing Jazz, Blues & Soul
Swing was the next big thing to hit California. In the 1930s and '40s, big bands sparked a
lindy-hopping craze in LA and sailors on shore leave hit San Francisco's underground, in-
tegrated jazz clubs.
California's African American community grew with the 'Great Migration' during the
WWII shipping and manufacturing boom, and from this thriving scene emerged the West
Coast blues sound. Texas-born bluesman T-Bone Walker worked in LA's Central Ave
clubs before making hit records of his electric guitar stylings for Capitol Records.
Throughout the 1940s and '50s, West Coast blues were nurtured in San Francisco and Oak-
land by guitarists like Pee Wee Crayton from Texas and Oklahoma-born Lowell Fulson.
With Beat poets riffing over improvised bass lines and audiences finger-snapping their
approval, the cool West Coast jazz of Chet Baker and Bay Area-born Dave Brubeck
emerged from San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. At the same time,
in the African American cultural hub along LA's Central Ave, the hard bop of Charlie
Parker and Charles Mingus kept SoCal's jazz scene alive and swinging.
In the 1950s and '60s, doo-wop, rhythm and blues, and soul music were all in steady ro-
tation at nightclubs in South Central LA, considered the 'Harlem of the West.' Soulful
singer Sam Cooke ran his own hit-making record label, attracting soul and gospel talent to
LA.
Waiting for the Sun: A Rock 'n' Roll History of Los Angeles
, by Barney Hoskyns, follows
the twists and turns of the SoCal music scene from the Beach Boys to Black Flag.
Rockin' Out
The first homegrown rock-and-roll talent to make it big in the 1950s was Ritchie Valens,
born in the San Fernando Valley, whose 'La Bamba' was a rockified version of a Mexican
folk song. Dick Dale (aka 'the King of the Surf Guitar'), whose recording of 'Miserlou'
