{"id":782780,"date":"2026-09-26T02:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T02:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/782780\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T02:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T02:22:13","slug":"the-1950s-song-ray-manzarek-called-the-definition-of-doors-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/782780\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1950s song Ray Manzarek called the definition of Doors music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ray<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Sat 26 September 2026 0:00, UK <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a common misconception about the formation of The Doors<\/a> that a crew of three laid-back, life-long LA dudes basically stumbled upon a mystical, well-travelled army brat on the beach and made him their frontman. <\/p>\n

Actually, that\u2019s pretty accurate aside from the fact that keyboardist Ray Manzarek<\/a>, unlike guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore, wasn\u2019t born and raised in Los Angeles.\u00a0Despite later coming across as the living embodiment of West Coast vibes, he spent his formative years on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s, at the very same time that the city was becoming the epicentre of the new sound of electric blues.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, that\u2019s what really did it to me,\u201d Manzarek told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 2000, \u201cIt\u2019s made me everything I am. Just hearing Muddy Waters and Howlin\u2019 Wolf and John Lee Hooker and Magic Sam on the radio killed me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manzarek didn\u2019t quite go the extra mile that fellow Chicagoan Mike Bloomfield<\/a> did, as he didn\u2019t tend to go to the black blues clubs as a teenager, let alone dare to ask to play alongside the masters. Instead, after teaching himself to play some piano-based blues as a high school kid, his attention was suddenly diverted to a new variation of that music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was taking piano lessons the whole time and getting good at playing the blues and improvising,\u201d he told <\/a>journalist Danielle Zelisko in 2006, \u201cThen I heard rock and roll, and that was it! Elvis Presley on television and Carl Perkins\u2019 \u2018Blue Suede Shoes\u2019; Jerry Lee Lewis and \u2018A Whole Lotta Shakin\u2019 Going On\u2019, \u2018Great Balls of Fire.\u2019 Then on the other side, Little Richard, what a maniac!\u201d<\/p>\n

While rock and roll would eventually come to be associated first and foremost with the electric guitar, many of the original superstars of rock were piano players, which timed up perfectly with Manzarek\u2019s early development on the instrument. That included Lewis, Little Richard, and the great Fats Domino<\/a>, whom Manzarek described as being particularly \u201cinfluential\u201d on his playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFats Domino\u2019s left hand on \u2018Blueberry Hill\u2019 . . . [Sings] \u2018I found my thrill\u2026\u2019 and the right hand would go tink tink tink tink tink tink, and the left hand would go bom, bom, bom, bom, dun dun dun [imitates \u2018Blueberry Hill\u2019 melody]. That\u2019s Doors music!\u201d Manzarek said, \u201cIt\u2019s almost \u2018Light My Fire\u2019. \u2018Light My Fire\u2019 is dun dun don dun don dun dun don dun dun, so it\u2019s just a little bit different, but it\u2019s, you know, 90 per cent of what I played with The Doors was Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard-inspired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

Domino\u2019s iconic 1956 recording of \u2018Blueberry Hill\u2019 was actually a cover of an old World War II era tune, but his adaptation became the gold standard and one of the most celebrated songs of early rock. 11 years later, when The Doors scored their first number one single with 1967\u2019s \u2018Light My Fire\u2019, not many people were drawing a direct line from Manzarek\u2019s keyboard playing to Fats\u2019s tinkling of the ivories.<\/p>\n

Had he been playing a standard piano, though, the old school rock and roll roots of the song probably would have been more apparent. Instead, that unique Doors sound, created through a combo of Ray\u2019s melodic line on a Vox Continental organ and bass line on a Fender Rhodes bass keyboard, felt like something completely fresh on the rock landscape.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t hurt, of course, that Manzarek had also recruited his fellow UCLA film student Jim Morrison<\/a> as a singer and lyricist, giving the band a sort of perfect, dangerous combination of Elvis, Sinatra, and Howlin\u2019 Wolf, all wrapped in a modern beatnik surfer package. Chugging along in the background of every one of those songs, though, in a band without a bass player, was Ray Manzarek, the Chicago blues kid turned LA rockstar.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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