Just when Rock & Roll was getting started as a popular music, tragedy struck. In 1957, the career of Jerry Lee Lewis as a popular star ended in scandal. He had married his 13 year old cousin. That same year Little Richard left Rock & Roll to become a preacher. In 1958, Elvis was drafted into the Army. In early 1959, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. In late 1959, Chuck Berry was arrested, then convicted of violating the Mann Act by carrying a 14 year old girl across state lines. There were other Rock & Roll recording acts still performing, but the loss of five of its major stars impacted its popularity. During this dry period, only two groups would rise to the challenge of Rock & Roll: The Four Season on the East Coast and the Beach Boys on the West Coast. It would take four years, and the Beatles, and the British Invasion, before Rock & Roll recaptured a large audience.
During those lost years from 1959 - 1964, the musical universe did not stand still. One of its greatest record producers, Phil Spector, would create a "wall of sound" in the recording studio. Surf rock with its focus on fun, surfing and cars would emerge on the West Coast. The Girl Groups and the Doo Wop groups would create some of the finest vocal group music ever heard on the charts. And the record companies marketed Teen Idols and Teen Queens to white teenagers with well-written songs composed by a number of talented young songwriters, working out of New York City's Brill Building.
Doo wop artists were vocal groups, with each singer in the group taking a different part that interweaved with the other singers. Frequently, the backing vocalists sang nonsense words as rhythm, and the genre's name derives from this trait. Two of the long-lasting of these groups were The Drifters and New Jersey's The Four Seasons.--All Music Guide
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Popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Girl Group sound was strongly influenced by the Doo-wop groups, "The songwriters and producers were schooled in traditional pop...The songs were innocent and yearning, with sweet, catchy melodies and driving backbeats." --Allmusic.com. The Girl Group sound would lead to one of the greatest Girl Groups of all time, The Supremes. Unlike the Doo Wop genre, the Girl Group genre has continued to have an impact on popular music since with the likes of groups such as The Chicks, Wilson Phillips, the Pointer Sisters, En Vogue, Destiny's Child, the Three Degrees, and TLC.
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Surf rock focused on the West Coast culture of fun, surfing and cars.
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In the early 1960s, America's teens danced. And America became the Land of a Thousand Dancers. Here are some of the more popular dances.
| Year | Dance | Song | Artist |
| 1966 | Land of a Thousand Dances | Wilson Pickett | |
| 1960 | The Twist | The Twist | Chubby Checker |
| 1961 | The Pony | Pony Time | Chubby Checker |
| 1962 | The Hitch Hike | Hitch Hike | Marvin Gaye |
| 1962 | The Locomotion | Loco-motion | Little Eva |
| 1962 | The Mashed Potato | Mashed Potao Time | Dee Dee Sharp |
| 1963 | The Monkey | The Monkey Time | Major Lance |
| 1964 | The Jerk | The Jerk | Major Lance |
Source: The hippie dictionary: a cultural encyclopedia (and phraseicon) of the 1960s and 1970s., by McCleary & McCleary, p. 122.
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Crampton, L., & Rees, D. (2003). Rock & roll year by year. Dorling Kindersley.
Covach, J. R., & Flory, A. (2015). What's that sound?: An introduction to rock and its history. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
McCleary, J. B., & McCleary, J. J. (n.d.). The hippie dictionary: a cultural encyclopedia (and phraseicon) of the 1960s and 1970s. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.
Smucker, T. (2018). Why the Beach boys matter. Austin, TX: Univ. Texas Press.
Strodder, C., & Phillips, M. (2007). The encyclopedia of sixties cool: A celebration of the grooviest people, events, and artifacts of the 1960s. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press.
Ward, E. (2016). The history of rock & roll Vol. 1 1920-1963. New York: Flatiron Books.
