when did rock n roll begin?

Rockabilly and Rock n Roll evolved side by side during the late 40's and early 50's, but it was rock n Roll that would become the commercial success of the day, resulting in Rockabilly becoming a cult fashion.

Rockabilly music

Related to:psychobilly rock and roll 50s oldies country rock n roll

Rockabilly has never gone away, it has always had a cult following enabling it to survive the 60 years it has, with periods of commercial success.

The genre came about when poor white kids in the southern states of the US grew… read more Top Artists Stray Cats373,306 listeners Buddy Holly852,456 listeners Jerry Lee Lewis595,726 listeners Elvis Presley2,300,408 listeners Volbeat588,628 listeners More artists Top Tracks Rank Play Loved Artist and track name Buy Options1 Love this track Stray Cats — Rock This Town Buy More2 Love this track Eddie Cochran — Summertime Blues Buy More3 Love this track Stray Cats — Stray Cat Strut Buy More4 Love this track Jerry Lee Lewis — Great Balls of Fire Buy More5 Love this track Carl Perkins — Blue Suede Shoes Buy More6 Love this track Charlie Feathers — That Certain Female Buy More7 Love this track Buddy Holly — That'll Be the Day Buy More8 Love this track Gene Vincent — Be-Bop-a-Lula Buy More9 Love this track Wanda Jackson — Funnel of Love Buy More10 Love this track Eddie Cochran — C'mon Everybody Buy More More tracks Top Albums Queen of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson 88,109 listeners Play album Buy Stray Cats Stray Cats 167,450 listeners Play album Buy Queen of Pain Devil Doll 19,958 listeners Play album Buy Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood Volbeat 210,612 listeners Play album Buy Love Tattoo Imelda May 74,259 listeners Play album Buy More albums Related Tags Psychobilly Rock and roll50s Oldies Shoutbox Recently Popular Log in to Last.fm or sign up to leave a shout.

Samson-915 Sep 2017, 5:38am Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Cliff Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Steve Winwood, Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker and Eddie Cohran. The rockabilly legends that the world will never be able to afford it.trad-goth13 Sep 2014, 11:28am Check out The Cellmates Damn fine modern Rockabilly http://www.last.fm/music/The+Cellmates Bitch Destroyer12 May 2014, 4:04am Alexandr Panglos, научись грамотно писать сначала. Хардкор и все потомки его пишутся не через дефис, а слитно. Можешь не благодарить;)Alexandr Panglos29 Jul 2013, 1:22amПривет!

Предлагаю зацени банду с моего местечка, отличный коктейль из панка, хард-кора, психоделики и рок-н-ролла: http://www.mediafire.com/?355gc115rat880u http://www.nestor.minsk.by/mg/1999/25/mg92526.html http://www.lastfm.ru/music/S. R. D. Wishmaster_MG8 May 2013, 12:25pm I am proud that my soul is a brand Rockabilly!blkcyndi16 Apr 2013, 9:27am Hello to everyone I am looking forward in shouting w/ uqwertywithak27 Mar 2013, 11:43pm I never really was one for Elvis, I respect what the man did though, I've loved rockabilly. It's something you can like no matter where you may reside.geeblast19 Feb 2013, 11:18amcompletely burn my assblackie-baby15 Jul 2012, 6:39am爱死了<3weendril16 Jun 2012, 10:45amrock's father More shouts

Rock and roll music began as a melting of the rhythm and blues and country western genres of the 1940s. The beat of rock and roll music comes mainly from a rhythm and blues boogie beat. The difference is made by the addition of an accented backbeat. This backbeat is one of the essential elements of rock and roll music.

The most comprehensive list of Rock Music genres and information available anywhere (almost! )The Music Genres List site covers many of the most popular styles of Rock music, including British Invasion (my personal favourite!

), Hair Metal (one of my more amusing), and Rockabilly (one of the more fun genres. )Hoping, with your help, this becomes the definitive list of Rock music genres on the Internet, send an email to add @ musicgenreslist dot com if you feel any Rock music genres are missing and we’ll be happy add to the genres list.

Rock Genres Adult Alternative Rock American Trad Rock Arena Rock Blues-Rock British Invasion Death Metal/Black Metal Glam Rock Hair Metal Hard Rock Metal Jam Bands Prog-Rock/Art Rock Psychedelic Rock & Roll Rockabilly Roots Rock Singer/Songwriter Southern Rock Surf Tex-Mex Rock can mean many different things to different folks. According to Rock Music.mu Most popular generes are Rock & Roll and Classic Rock Rock and roll music has a certain feel to it, but what creates this feeling?

Well, it is a combination of the rhythm, instruments, vocals, and attitude. All of these elements blend together to create the rock and roll music people love. Some of these elements have been enhanced since the creation of rock and roll music through a natural evolution.

The instruments that create rock and roll music have changed around since the development of the genre. As rock and roll music began to split into different types of rock music, they added different instruments. However, the normal instrument line up includes one or two electric guitars, a bass guitar, and a drum kit.

Keyboards and other instruments have been added from time to time as well. Vocals associated with rock and roll music are varied. Most rock and roll singers have a unique style as apposed to pop music which can sound alike. Vocals are also where the attitude comes in.

Many lead singers have created the fame for their rock and roll bands. This was the case with Ozzy Osborne, Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger who are all still famous today. The technical definition of rock and roll music isn’t important. For true fans, rock and roll music can not be defined.

It is in the musicians and it comes out before the music even begins. It isn’t in the way the musician plays but in the way the musician lives and breathes.

Classic rock music will always be around. It is music that has withstood the tests of time. Although we will always love the way these songs were sung by their original artists, it is also fun to hear them revamped by our favorite modern artists.

Below is a list of some of the popular cover songs made possible by classic rock music. Covering classic rock music means that you can cross this music over to any genre you want. This can be seen with the Stevie Nicks song “Landslide”. This song was taken by the Dixie Chics and transitioned well into their country/pop genre.

Dwight Yoakam was also successful in converting classic rock music into country. In 1999 he did this with the song “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”.

This song was originally performed by Queen in 1979. Both versions are popular and hold their own followings. Phil Collins has had many hits both on his own and with the group Genesis. In 1981 he had a hit song with “In the Air Tonight”. Now, the song is a hit again. This time it is being performed by Nonpoint who revamped the song in 2004.

With a new hard core feel, the song is being performed for a younger crowd. If you have ever watched the movie Gothika, you might have recognized some classic rock music that had a new feel to it. This 2003 film contained the Limp Bizkit song “Behind Blue Eyes”. However, it was The Who that first performed this song in 1971.

List of Famous Rock Artists“Weird Al” Yankovic 2Pac 3 Doors Down 3OH!3 ADELE Aerosmith Al Green Alan Jackson Alanis Morissette Alice In Chains All Time Low Aretha Franklin Avenged Sevenfold Avril Lavigne B.o.

B Beastie Boys Beck Bee Gees Beyoncé Big & Rich Billy Currington Billy Joel Blake Shelton Blink-182 Bob Dylan Bob Marley Bon Jovi Boston Boys Like Girls Brad Paisley Breaking Benjamin Brooks & Dunn Bruce Springsteen Bryan Adams Buckcherry Cee Lo Green Céline Dion Chicago Chris Brown Chris Tomlin Christina Aguilera Cobra Starship Coldplay Counting Crows Creed Creedence Clearwater Revival Daft Punk Darius Rucker Daughtry Dave Matthews Band David Bowie David Cook David Guetta Death Cab for Cutie Depeche Mode Destiny’s Child Dierks Bentley Disturbed Dixie Chicks Eagles Earth, Wind & Fire Eli Young Band Elton John Elvis Presley Enrique Iglesias Eric Clapton Etta James Evanescence Faith Hill Fall Out Boy Fat Joe Finger Eleven Five Finger Death Punch Five for Fighting Fleetwood Mac Foo Fighters Foreigner Frank Sinatra Gavin De Graw Gnarls Barkley Godsmack Good Charlotte Gorillaz Grateful Dead Green Day Guns N’ Roses Gwen Stefani Gym Class Heroes Hank Williams, Jr. Heart Hinder Hollywood Undead Incubus Ingrid Michaelson Jack Johnson Jackson 5 James Blunt James Taylor Janet Jackson Jason Mraz Jay Sean Jay-Z Jimmy Buffett Jimmy Eat World John Denver John Legend John Mayer John Mellencamp Johnny Cash Jonas Brothers Josh Groban Josh Turner Journey Justin Moore Justin Timberlake Katy Perry Keane Keith Urban Kelly Clarkson Kenny Chesney Kevin Rudolf Kings of Leon KISS Korn Led Zeppelin Lifehouse Linkin Park Lupe Fiasco Lynyrd Skynyrd Madonna Mariah Carey Marilyn Manson Maroon 5 Martina Mc Bride Marvin Gaye Mary J. Blige Matchbox Twenty Matt Nathanson Metallica Metro Station MGMT Michael Bublé Michael Jackson Missy Elliott Modest Mouse Montgomery Gentry Mötley Crüe Muse My Chemical Romance Natasha Bedingfield Neil Diamond Neil Young Nickelback Nine Inch Nails Nirvana Norah Jones O.

A. R. Oasis One Republic Ozzy Osbourne P!nk Panic! At the Disco Papa Roach Paramore Paul Mc Cartney Pearl Jam Phil Collins Phoenix Pink Floyd Plain White T’s Prince Queen R. E. M. Radiohead Rage Against the Machine Ray La Montagne Red Hot Chili Peppers Rise Against Rob Thomas Rod Stewart Rush Sade Santana Sarah Mc Lachlan Secondhand Serenade Seether Shania Twain Sheryl Crow Shinedown Simon & Garfunkel Simple Plan Skillet Slipknot Smashing Pumpkins Snoop Dogg Snow Patrol Staind Stevie Wonder Stone Temple Pilots Styx Sublime Survivor Switchfoot System of a Down The All-American Rejects The Beach Boys The Beatles The Black Eyed Peas The Black Keys The Cure The Doors The Fray The Goo Goo Dolls The Killers The Offspring The Police The Pussycat Dolls The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus The Rolling Stones The Temptations The Wanted The White Stripes The Who Theory of a Deadman Third Eye Blind Three Days Grace Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Trace Adkins Train U2 Uncle Kracker Usher Van Halen Van Morrison Weezer Whitney Houston Willie Nelson Young Money Zac Brown Band ZZ Top

Memphis Recording Service earned the title of ""Birthplace of Rock and Roll"" in 1951 when Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner recorded Rocket 88, a song with a heavy backbeat and a sound all its own. Rock and roll was born. Elvis at Sun Studio

Sun Studio: Elvis' Original Recording Studio

"United States Tennessee Memphis Guide Sun Studio: Elvis' Original Recording Studio By Teresa R. Simpson Updated 01/08/18Share Pin Email•••Sun Studio opened in Memphis on January 3, 1950, by record producer, Sam Phillips. The studio was originally called Memphis Recording Service and shared a building with the Sun Records label.

In 1953, an 18-year-old Elvis Presley walked into Memphis Recording Service with a cheap guitar and a dream. Nervously, he sang a demo song, failing to impress Sam Phillips. Elvis continued to hang around the studio, however, and in 1954, Sam Phillips asked him to sing again, backed by a band made up of Scotty Moore and Bill Black.

After hours of recording and nothing to show for it, Elvis began playing around with an old blues song, ""That's Alright, Mama."" The rest is, of course, history. Beyond Rock and Roll There was more than just rock and roll being recorded at Sun Studio. Big names in country and rockabilly like Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Charlie Rich were all signed by Sun Records and recorded their albums there throughout the 1950's.

It was then that Sam Phillips opened a larger studio on Madison Avenue. Today, Sun Studio is back in its original location on Union Avenue. Not only is it a recording studio, but a popular tourist attraction, as well. Websitewww.sunstudio.com "

. Bill Haley 's first long-player, Shake, Rattle & Roll was a 10"" platter that came out almost too early for its own good, in the first half of 1955, when most people had scarcely bought their first rock & roll single.

Shake Rattle & Roll

"Discography Browsernext Stream or buy on: Release Date September, 1955Genre Pop/Rock Styles Rock & Roll Rockabilly Submit Corrections Album Moods Boisterous Energetic Rollicking Carefree Cheerful Fun Humorous Playful Celebratory Confident Exuberant Freewheeling Gleeful Happy Album Themes Road Trip Summer Vacation Playful Bill Haley Shake Rattle & Roll All Music Rating 8 User Ratings ( 0 ) Your Rating Overview User Reviews Credits Releases Similar Albums Share this pagefacebook twitter google+All Music Review by Bruce Eder [+]It's a shame that, except for Elvis Presley 's long-players, rock & roll and R&B albums just didn't sell in the early days -- those kids might have appreciated the music, but they just didn't know what they were missing by failing to absorb it eight or ten songs at a time

Assembled from the eight sides cut at the first four recording sessions by Bill Haley & His Comets, in the spring and fall of 1954 and early 1955, it just happened to comprise four classics out of early rock & roll, including ""Rock Around the Clock,"" ""Thirteen Women,"" and ""Shake, Rattle & Roll"" -- the latter was the big hit at the time, having sold close to a million copies, while ""Rock Around the Clock"" was something of a secondary track, with only the 75,000 copies that it sold on its initial 1954 release to its credit.

They were augmented with four solid rockers. ""Happy Baby"" and ""Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)"" might not be in exactly the same league with those first two singles, but they're close and they made this one hell of a dance album, back when that was what one did with rock & roll.

""Birth of the Boogie"" captured Franny Beecher doing his best to imitate the late Danny Cedrone 's playing on ""Rock Around the Clock"" and ""Thirteen Women,"" and if there's any slackening at all in inspiration, it's on the last number, ""Mambo Rock"" (which, contrary to what the lyrics tell, was not being done by everyone), but Haley still makes it sound exciting.

This was also the only complete album to feature two of the original members of the Comets -- with Marshall Lytle on bass and Joey d'Ambrosio on tenor sax -- before they quit with drummer Dick Richards (who had been with the group but barely allowed to contribute to their records, playing tom-toms on two tracks) in the late summer of 1955, to be replaced by the longer-tenured Rudy Pompilli, Al Rex, and Ralph Jones.

Shake, Rattle & Roll's contents were later folded into the 12"" platter Rock Around the Clock, which contained two more songs by this lineup and a pair of tracks by the second Comets lineup.

The best way to appreciate this disc and these tracks is to imagine a time, and a reality, where these were the most exciting eight songs that you could buy all at once by any white band, anywhere in the entire world (and when there weren't five other LPs by any act, having to do with R&B or anything else resembling rock & roll, anywhere in the world, to choose from).

Read More ↓User Reviews There are no user reviews for this album. Sign up or Log In to your All Music Account to write a review. Track Listing Title/Composer Performer Time1Rock Around the Clock Jimmy De Knight / Max Freedman Bill Haley2Thirteen Women Dickie Thompson Bill Haley3Shake, Rattle and Roll Charles E. Calhoun Bill Haley4ABC Boogie Al Russell / Max Spickol Bill Haley5Happy Baby Frank Pingatore Bill Haley6Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)Julius Edward Dixon / Beverly ""Ruby"" Ross Bill Haley7Birth of the Boogie Johnny Grande / Bill Haley / Billy Williamson Bill Haley8Mambo Rock Jimmy Ayre / M. Phillips Bill Haleyblue highlight denotes track pick "

The identity of the first rock and roll record is one of the most enduring subjects of debate among rock historians. [93] Various recordings dating back to the 1940s and 1950s have been cited as the first rock and roll record.

Origins of rock and roll

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedianavigation search""History of rock and roll"" redirects here. For the radio program, see The History of Rock and Roll. For the TV program, see The History of Rock 'n' Roll. Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s.

It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, boogie woogie, jazz and swing music, and was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid-1960s, has been generally known simply as rock music.

The phrase ""rocking and rolling"" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but it was used by the early 20th century, both to describe a spiritual fervor and as a sexual analogy. Various gospel, blues and swing recordings used the phrase before it became used more frequently – but still intermittently – in the late 1930s and 1940s, principally on recordings and in reviews of what became known as ""rhythm and blues"" music aimed at black audiences.

In 1951, Cleveland-based disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the term ""rock and roll"" to describe it. [1]Various recordings that date back to the 1940s have been named as the first rock and roll record.

Contents [ hide ]1 The term ""rock and roll""2 Development of the musical style3 Key recordings3.1 1920s3.2 1930s3.3 1940s3.4 Early 1950s4 Views on the first rock and roll record5 References5.1 Sources The term ""rock and roll"" [ edit]The alliterative phrase ""rocking and rolling"" originally was used by mariners at least as early as the 17th century to describe the combined ""rocking"" ( fore and aft) and ""rolling"" (side to side) motion of a ship on the ocean. [2] Examples include an 1821 reference, ""... prevent her from rocking and rolling ..."", [3] and an 1835 reference to a ship ""... rocking and rolling on both beam-ends"".

[4] As the term referred to movement forwards, backwards and from side to side, it acquired sexual connotations from early on; the sea shanty ""Johnny Bowker"" (or ""Boker""), probably from the early 19th century, contains the lines ""Oh do, my Johnny Bowker/ Come rock and roll me over"".

[5] [6]The hymn ""Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"", with words written in the 1830s by Emma Willard and tune by Joseph Philip Knight, [7] [8] was recorded several times around the start of the 20th century by the Original Bison City Quartet before 1894, [9] the Standard Quartette in 1895, [10] John W. Myers at about the same time, [11] and Gus Reed in 1908.

[12] By that time, the specific phrase ""rocking and rolling"" was also used by African Americans in spirituals with a religious connotation. [2] The earliest known recording of the phrase in use was on a 1904 Victor phonograph record ""The Camp Meeting Jubilee"" by the Haydn Quartet, [13] with the words ""We've been rockin' an' rolling in your arms/ Rockin' and rolling in your arms/ Rockin' and rolling in your arms/ In the arms of Moses.""

Another version was issued on the Little Wonder record label in 1916. ""Rocking"" was also used to describe the spiritual rapture felt by worshippers at certain religious events, and to refer to the rhythm often found in the accompanying music.

[2]At the same time, the terminology was used in secular contexts, for example to describe the motion of railroad trains. It has been suggested that it also was used by men building railroads, who would sing to keep the pace, swinging their hammers down to drill a hole into the rock, and the men who held the steel spikes would ""rock"" the spike back and forth to clear rock or ""roll"", twisting it to improve the ""bite"" of the drill.

[14] ""Rocking"" and ""rolling"" were also used, both separately and together, in a sexual context; writers for hundreds of years had used the phrases ""They had a roll in the hay"" or ""I rolled her in the clover"".

[15]By the early 20th century the words increasingly were used together in secular black slang with a double meaning, ostensibly referring to dancing and partying, but often with the subtextual meaning of sex. [16] [17]In 1922, blues singer Trixie Smith recorded ""My Man Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll),"" first featuring the two words in a secular context.

[18] Although it was played with a backbeat and was one of the first ""around the clock"" lyrics, this slow minor-key blues was by no means ""rock and roll"" in the later sense.

[19] However, the terms ""rocking"", and ""rocking and rolling"", were increasingly used through the 1920s and 1930s, especially but not exclusively by black secular musicians, to refer to either dancing or sex, or both.

In 1927, blues singer Blind Blake used the couplet ""Now we gonna do the old country rock / First thing we do, swing your partners"" in ""West Coast Blues"", which in turn formed the basis of ""Old Country Rock"" by William Moore the following year. [20] Also in 1927, traditional country musician Uncle Dave Macon, with his group the Fruit Jar Drinkers, recorded ""Sail Away Ladies"" with a refrain of ""Don't she rock, daddy-o"", and ""Rock About My Saro Jane"".

[21]Duke Ellington recorded ""Rockin' in Rhythm"" in 1928, and Robinson's Knights of Rest recorded ""Rocking and Rolling"" in 1930.

[2]In 1932, the phrase ""rock and roll"" was heard in the Hal Roach film Asleep in the Feet. [ citation needed] In 1934, the Boswell Sisters had a pop hit with ""Rock and Roll"" from the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, [22] [23] where the term was used to describe the motion of a ship at sea.

[24] In 1935, Henry ""Red"" Allen recorded ""Get Rhythm in Your Feet and Music in Your Soul"" which included the lyric ""If Satan starts to hound you, commence to rock and roll / Get rhythm in your feet..."" The lyrics were written by the prolific composer J. Russel Robinson with Bill Livingston.

Allen's recording was a ""race"" record on the Vocalion label, but the tune was quickly covered by white musicians, notably Benny Goodman with singer Helen Ward. [ citation needed]Other notable recordings using the words, both released in 1938, were "" Rock It for Me "" by Chick Webb, a swing number with Ella Fitzgerald on vocals featuring the lyrics ""... Won't you satisfy my soul, With the rock and roll?

""; and ""Rock Me"" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel song originally written by Thomas Dorsey as ""Hide Me in Thy Bosom"".

Tharpe performed the song in the style of a city blues, with secular lyrics, ecstatic vocals and electric guitar. [25] She changed Dorsey's ""singing"" to ""swinging,"" and the way she rolled the ""R"" in ""rock me"" led to the phrase being taken as a double entendre, with the interpretation as religious or sexual. [26]The following year, Western swing musician Buddy Jones recorded ""Rockin' Rollin' Mama"", which drew on the term's original meaning – ""Waves on the ocean, waves in the sea/ But that gal of mine rolls just right for me/ Rockin' rollin' mama, I love the way you rock and roll"".

In August 1939, Irene Castle devised a new dance called ""The Castle Rock and Roll"", described as ""an easy swing step"", which she performed at the Dancing Masters of America convention at the Hotel Astor. [27] The Marx Brothers ' 1941 film The Big Store featured actress Virginia O'Brien singing a song starting out as a traditional lullaby which soon changes into a rocking boogie-woogie with lines like ""Rock, rock, rock it, baby ...""'.

Although the song was only a short comedy number, it contains references which, by then, would have been understood by a wide general audience.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an early use of the word ""rock"" in describing a style of music was in a review in Metronome magazine on July 21, 1938, which stated that "" Harry James ' ""Lullaby in Rhythm"" really rocks.""

[28] In 1939, a review of ""Ciribiribin"" and ""Yodelin' Jive"" by the Andrews Sisters with Bing Crosby, in the journal The Musician, stated that the songs ""... rock and roll with unleashed enthusiasm tempered to strict four-four time"". [29]By the early 1940s, the term ""rock and roll"" also was being used in record reviews by Billboard journalist and columnist Maurie Orodenker.

In the May 30, 1942 issue, for instance, he described Sister Rosetta Tharpe's vocals on a re-recording of ""Rock Me"" with Lucky Millinder 's band as ""rock-and-roll spiritual singing"", [30] and on October 3, 1942, he described Count Basie 's ""It's Sand, Man!""

as ""an instrumental screamer.. [which].. displays its rock and roll capacities when tackling the righteous rhythms."" [31] In the April 25, 1945 edition, Orodenker described Erskine Hawkins ' version of "" Caldonia "" as ""right rhythmic rock and roll music"", a phrase precisely repeated in his 1946 review of ""Sugar Lump"" by Joe Liggins.

[32] [33]A double, ironic, meaning came to popular awareness in 1947 in blues artist Roy Brown 's song "" Good Rocking Tonight "", covered in 1948 by Wynonie Harris in a wilder version, in which ""rocking"" was ostensibly about dancing but was in fact a thinly veiled allusion to sex.

Such double-entendres were well established in blues music but were new to the radio airwaves. After the success of ""Good Rocking Tonight"", many other R&B artists used similar titles through the late 1940s. At least two different songs with the title ""Rock and Roll"" were recorded in the late 1940s: by Paul Bascomb in 1947 and Wild Bill Moore in 1948.

[34] In May 1948, Savoy Records advertised ""Robbie-Dobey Boogie"" by Brownie Mc Ghee with the tagline ""It jumps, it's made, it rocks, it rolls."" [35] Another record where the phrase was repeated throughout the song was ""Rock and Roll Blues"", recorded in 1949 by Erline ""Rock and Roll"" Harris.

[36]These songs were generally classed as "" race music "" or, from the late 1940s, ""rhythm and blues"", and were barely known by mainstream white audiences. [37] However, in 1951, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed began broadcasting rhythm, blues, and country music for a multi-racial audience. Freed, familiar with the music of earlier decades, used the phrase rock and roll to describe the music he aired over station WJW (850 AM ); its use ialso is credited to Freed's sponsor, record store owner Leo Mintz, who encouraged Freed to play the music on the radio.

[1] [38] Originally Freed used the name ""Moondog"" for himself and any concerts or promotions he put on because he used as his regular theme music a piece called ""Moondog Symphony"" by the street musician Louis ""Moondog"" Hardin. Hardin subsequently sued Freed on grounds that he was stealing his name, and because Freed was no longer allowed to use the term Moondog, he needed a new catchphrase.

After a night of heavy drinking, he and his friends came up with the name The Rock and Roll Party because he already was using the phrase Rock and Roll Session to describe the music he was playing.

[ citation needed] As his show became extremely popular, the term became widely used to describe the style of music. Development of the musical style [ edit]Rock and roll music emerged from the wide variety of musical genres that existed in the United States in the first half of the 20th century among different ethnic and social groups.

Each genre developed over time through changing fashion and innovation, and each one exchanged ideas and stylistic elements with all the others. The greatest contribution came from the musical traditions of America's black population, with an ancient heritage of oral storytelling through music of African origin, usually with strong rhythmic elements, with frequent use of "" blue notes "" and often using a "" call and response "" vocal pattern.

African music was modified through the experience of slavery, and through contact with white musical styles such as the folk ballad, and instruments, such as the Spanish guitar. New styles of music emerged among black Americans in the early 20th century in the form of blues, ragtime, jazz, and gospel music.

[16] [39] According to the writer Robert Palmer:""Rock 'n' roll was an inevitable outgrowth of the social and musical interactions between blacks and whites in the South and Southwest.

Its roots are a complex tangle. Bedrock black church music influenced blues, rural blues influenced white folk song and the black popular music of the Northern ghettos, blues and black pop influenced jazz, and so on.

But the single most important process was the influence of black music on white."" [40]By the 1930s, African American musicians, such as Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, were developing swing music, essentially jazz played for dancing, and in some areas such as New York City processes of social integration were taking place. According to Palmer, by the mid-1930s, elements of rock and roll could be found in every type of American folk and blues music.

Some jazz bands, such as Count Basie 's, increasingly played rhythmic music that was heavily based on blues riffs. In Chicago, blues performers formed into small groups, such as the Harlem Hamfats, and explored the use of amplification.

In the Midwest, jump bands developed instrumental blues based on riffs, with saxophone solos and shouted vocals.

In Nashville and elsewhere, country music played by white musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers incorporated blues styles, and in some cases was recorded with (uncredited) black musicians. In Texas and Oklahoma, Western swing bands, such as Bob Wills, combined elements of big band, blues and country music into a new style of dance music.

As musicians from different areas and cultures heard each other's music, so styles merged and innovations spread. [40] Increasingly, processes of active cross-fertilisation took place between the music played and heard by white people and the music predominantly played and heard by black people.

These processes of exchange and mixing were fueled by the spread of radio, 78 rpm and later records and jukeboxes, and the expansion of the commercial popular music business. The music also benefited from the development of new amplification and electronic recording techniques from the 1930s onward, including the invention of the electric guitar, first recorded as a virtuoso instrument by Charlie Christian.

[16]Louis Jordan in 1946In 1938, promoter and record producer John H. Hammond staged the first "" From Spirituals to Swing "" concert in New York City to highlight black musical styles.

It featured pianist Pete Johnson and singer Big Joe Turner, whose recording of "" Roll 'Em Pete "" helped spark a craze across American society for ""boogie woogie"" music, mostly played by black musicians. In both musical and social terms, this helped pave the way for rock and roll music. Economic changes also made the earlier big bands unwieldy; Louis Jordan left Chick Webb 's orchestra the same year to form the Tympany Five.

Mixing of genres continued through the shared experiences of the World War II, and afterward a new style of music emerged, featuring ""honking"" saxophone solos, increasing use of the electric guitar, and strongly accented boogie rhythms. This "" jump blues "" encompassed both novelty records, such as those by Jordan, and more heavily rhythmic recordings such as those by Lionel Hampton.

Increasingly, the term ""rocking"" was used in the records themselves, and by the late 1940s frequently was used to describe the music of performers such as Wynonie Harris whose records reached the top of the newly christened ""rhythm and blues"" charts.

[16] [40]In 1947, blues singer Roy Brown recorded "" Good Rocking Tonight "", a song that parodied church music by appropriating its references, including the word ""rocking"" and the gospel call ""Have you heard the news?

"", relating them to very worldly lyrics about dancing, drinking and sex. The song became much more successful the following year when recorded by Wynonie Harris, whose version changed the steady blues rhythm to an uptempo gospel beat, and it was re-recorded by Elvis Presley in 1954 as his second single.

A craze began in the rhythm and blues market for songs about ""rocking"", including ""We're Gonna Rock"" by Wild Bill Moore, the first commercially successful ""honking"" sax record, with the words ""We're gonna rock, we're gonna roll"" as a background chant.

One of the most popular was "" Rock the Joint "", first recorded by Jimmy Preston in May 1949, and a R&B top 10 hit that year. Preston's version is often considered a prototype of a rock-and-roll song, and it was covered in 1952 by Bill Haley and the Saddlemen.

Marshall Lytle, Haley's bass player, claimed that this was one of the songs that inspired Alan Freed to coin the phrase ""rock and roll"" to refer to the music he played.

[2]Freed first started playing the music in 1951, and by 1953 the phrase ""rock and roll"" was becoming used much more widely to market the music beyond its initial black audience. The practitioners of the music were young black artists, appealing to the post-war community's need for excitement, dancing and increasing social freedoms, but the music also became very attractive to white teenagers.

As well as ""rocking"" rhythm and blues songs, such as the massively successful and influential "" Rocket 88 "" recorded by Ike Turner and his band but credited to singer Jackie Brenston, the term was used to encompass other forms of black music.

In particular, vocal harmony group recordings in the style that later became known as ""doo-wop"", such as "" Gee "" by the Crows and "" Earth Angel "" by the Penguins, became huge commercial successes, often for the new small independent record companies becoming established. These included Modern, Imperial, Specialty, Atlantic, King and Chess. The adoption of rock and roll by white people was hindered by racist attitudes.

As Billy Burnette said about his father Dorsey Burnette and uncle Johnny Burnette: They'd buy their clothes on Beale Street, at Lansky Brothers, where all the black people shopped.

Right outside Memphis, there was a voodoo village, all black-real mystic kind of people... A lot of real old line southern people called my dad and my uncle white nigger. Nobody was doing rock-and-roll in those days except people they called white trash. When my dad and my uncle started doin' it, they were just about the first.

[41]Although some of the rhythm and blues musicians who had been successful in earlier years – such as Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, and Fats Domino who had his first R&B hit in 1950 – made the transition into new markets, much of the initial breakthrough into the wider pop music market came from white musicians, such as Haley, Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, re-recording earlier rhythm and blues hits, often making use of technological improvements in recording and innovations such as double tracking, developed by the large mainstream record companies, as well as the invention of the 45-rpm record and the rapid growth of its use in jukeboxes.

At the same time, younger black musicians such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley took advantage of the gradual breakdown of ethnic barriers in America to become equally popular and help launch the rock and roll era.

By the time of Haley's first hits in 1953, and those of Berry, Little Richard and then Presley the next year, rock and roll was firmly established.

[2] [16] The Pentecostal church has also been identified as a crucial component in the development of rock and roll. The modern Pentecostal movement parallels rock and roll in many ways. Further, the unhinged, wild energy of the church is evidenced in the most important of early rock performers that were also raised in Pentecostal churches, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

[42]Key recordings [ edit]See also: Timeline of music in the United States (1880–1919), Timeline of music in the United States (1920–1949), and Timeline of music in the United States (1950–1969)1920s [ edit]""My Man Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll)"" by Trixie Smith was issued in 1922, the first record to refer to ""rocking"" and ""rolling"" in a secular context.

[19]Papa Charlie Jackson recorded ""Shake That Thing"" in 1925. [ citation needed]"" That Black Snake Moan "", a country blues first recorded in 1926 by Blind Lemon Jefferson, contains the lines ""That's all right mama / That's all right for you / Mama, that's all right / Most any old way you do"", later famously used by Arthur Crudup for his song "" That's All Right "", subsequently covered by Elvis Presley as his first single.

[43]""Sail Away Ladies"" and ""Rock About My Saro Jane"" were recorded by Uncle Dave Macon and his Fruit Jar Drinkers on May 7, 1927.

[21] ""Sail Away Ladies"" is a traditional square dance tune, with, in Macon's version, a vocal refrain of ""Don't she rock, daddy-o"", which in other versions became ""Don't you rock me, daddy-o"". [44] ""Don't You Rock Me, Daddy-o"" later became a hit in the UK in 1957 for both the Vipers Skiffle Group and Lonnie Donegan. Macon is thought to have learned the song ""Rock About My Saro Jane"" from black stevedores at Nashville in the 1880s, although Alan Lomax believed that the song dated from the mid-19th century.

[45]"" Jim Jackson's Kansas City Blues "" by Jim Jackson, recorded on October 10, 1927, was a best selling blues, suggested as one of the first million-seller records.

[46] [47] Its melody line was later re-used and developed by Charlie Patton in ""Going to Move to Alabama"" (1929) and Hank Williams ("" Move It on Over "") (1947) before emerging in "" Rock Around the Clock "", (1954) and its lyrical content presaged Leiber and Stoller 's "" Kansas City "".

It contains the line ""It takes a rocking chair to rock, a rubber ball to roll,"" which had previously been used in 1924 by Ma Rainey in ""Jealous Hearted Blues"", [48] and which Bill Haley would later incorporate into his 1952 recording ""Sundown Boogie. """"It's Tight Like That"" by Tampa Red with pianist Georgia Tom ( Thomas A. Dorsey ), recorded on October 24, 1928, was a highly successful early hokum record, which combined bawdy rural humor with sophisticated musical technique.

With his Chicago Five, Tampa Red later went on to pioneer the Chicago small group "" Bluebird "" sound, and Dorsey became ""the father of gospel music "". ""Pine Top's Boogie Woogie"" by Clarence ""Pinetop"" Smith, recorded on December 29, 1928, was one of the first hit "" boogie woogie "" recordings, and the first to include classic rock and roll references to ""the girl with the red dress on"" being told to ""not move a peg"" until she could ""shake that thing"" and ""mess around"".

Smith's tune derives from Jimmy Blythe 's 1925 recording ""Jimmy's Blues"", [47] and earlier records had been made in a similar style by Meade ""Lux"" Lewis and others.

A hit ""pop"" version of Smith's record was released by Tommy Dorsey in 1938 as ""Boogie Woogie"". [49]"" Crazy About My Baby "" by Blind Roosevelt Graves and brother Aaron, recorded in 1929, was a rhythmic country blues with small group accompaniment.

Researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow has stated that this ""could be considered the first rock 'n' roll recording"". [50] [51] The brothers also recorded rhythmic gospel music. The Graves brothers, with an additional piano player, later were recorded as the Mississippi Jook Band, whose 1936 recordings including ""Skippy Whippy"", ""Barbecue Bust"" and ""Hittin'the Bottle Stomp"" were highly rhythmic instrumental recordings which, according to writer Robert Palmer, ""..featured fully formed rock and roll guitar riffs and a stomping rock and roll beat"".

[40] [52]1930s [ edit]Jimmie Rodgers"" Standing on the Corner (Blue Yodel No. 9) "" by Jimmie Rodgers, recorded on July 16, 1930, was one of a series of recordings made by the biggest early star of country music in the late 1920s and early 1930s, based on blues songs he had heard on his travels. ""Blue Yodel No. 9"" was recorded with an uncredited Louis Armstrong (cornet) and Lil Armstrong (piano), foreshadowing later collaborations between black and white musicians but which at the time were almost unprecedented.

[53]"" Tiger Rag "" by the Washboard Rhythm Kings (later known as the Georgia Washboard Stompers), recorded in 1932, was a virtually out-of-control performance, with a rocking washboard and unusually high energy.

[54] It opens with a repeated one-note guitar lick that would transform into a chord in the hands of Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker and others. This is just one of many recordings by spasm bands, jug bands, and skiffle groups that have the same wild, informal feel that early rock and roll had.

After the original recording by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917, ""Tiger Rag"" had become a jazz standard as well as widely covered in dance band and march orchestrations.

""Good Lord (Run Old Jeremiah)"" by Austin Coleman with Joe Washington Brown, from 1934, was a frenzied and raucous ring shout recorded by John and Alan Lomax in a church in Jennings, Louisiana, with the singer declaiming ""I'm going to rock, you gonna rock ... I sit there and rock, I sit there and rock, yeah yeah yeah."" [2] [55] Music historian Robert Palmer wrote that ""the rhythmic singing, the hard-driving beat, the bluesy melody, and the improvised, stream-of-consciousness words... all anticipate key aspects of rock 'n roll as it would emerge some 20 years later.""

[40]""Oh! Red"" by the Harlem Hamfats, recorded on April 18, 1936, was a hit record made by a small group of jazz and blues musicians assembled by J. Mayo Williams for the specific purpose of making commercially successful dance records.

Viewed at the time (and subsequently by jazz fans) as a novelty group, the format became very influential, and the group's recordings included many with sex and drugs references. [56]"" I Believe I'll Dust My Broom "" (recorded on November 23, 1936), "" Crossroad Blues "" (recorded on November 27, 1936), and other recordings by Robert Johnson, while not particularly successful at the time, directly influenced the development of Chicago blues and, when reissued in the 1960s, also strongly influenced later rock musicians.""

Rock It for Me "" was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb and His Orchestra in 1937. Its lyrics mentioned a kind of music called ""rock and roll"": ""Every night/You'll see all the nifties/Plenty tight/Swingin' down the fifties/Now they're all through with symphony/Ho ho ho, rock it for me!/Now it's true that once upon a time/The opera was the thing/But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme/So won't you satisfy my soul/With the rock and roll?""""

One O'Clock Jump "" by Count Basie, arranged by Eddie Durham and recorded on July 7, 1937, was based on a 12-bar blues that builds in rhythmic intensity and features, like many of Basie's other records, the rhythm section of Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), and Freddie Green (rhythm guitar) that ""all but invented the notion of swing through their innovations"".

[57] "" Sing, Sing, Sing "" by Benny Goodman, also from 1937, written by Louis Prima, featured repeated drum breaks by Gene Krupa, whose musical nature and high showmanship presaged rock and roll drumming. ""Rock Me"" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, recorded on October 31, 1938, was important not only for its lyrical content, but for its style.

Many later rock and roll stars, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard, cited Tharpe's singing, electric guitar playing, and energetic performance style as an influence.

[58] Tharpe performed the song with pianist Albert Ammons at the From Spirituals to Swing concert presented by John Hammond in Carnegie Hall on December 23, 1938. She also re-recorded the song with Lucky Millinder 's band in 1942, and columnist Maurie Orodenker described her vocals as ""rock-and-roll spiritual singing"".

[30]"" Ida Red "" by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, recorded in 1938 by a Western swing band, featuring electric guitar by Eldon Shamblin.

The tune was recycled again some years later by Chuck Berry in "" Maybellene "". [59]"" Roll 'Em Pete "" by Pete Johnson and Joe Turner, recorded on December 30, 1938 was an up-tempo, non- swung boogie woogie with a hand-clapping backbeat and a collation of blues verses [35] [47]""Rocking the Blues"" by the Port of Harlem Jazz Men, a group comprising Frank Newton, J. C. Higginbotham, Albert Ammons, Teddy Bunn, John Williams and Sidney Catlett, was an upbeat instrumental issued in 1939 as Blue Note no.

3. [60] [61]1940s [ edit]"" New Early in the Morning "" and ""Jivin' the Blues"", both recorded on May 17, 1940 by ""Sonny Boy"" Williamson, the first of the two musicians who used that name, are examples of the very influential and popular rhythmic small group Chicago blues recordings on Lester Melrose 's Bluebird label, and among the first on which drums (by Fred Williams) were prominently recorded.

[62]"" Down the Road a Piece "" by the Will Bradley Orchestra, a smooth rocking boogie number, was recorded in August 1940 with drummer ""Eight Beat Mack"" Ray Mc Kinley sharing the vocals with the song's writer Don Raye. The song would later become a rock and roll standard. The ""eight beats"" in Mc Kinley's nickname and the popular phrase ""eight to the bar"" in many songs indicate the newness of the shift from the four beats per bar of jazz to boogie woogie 's eight beats per bar, which became, and remains, characteristic of rock and roll.

Bradley also recorded the first version of Raye's "" Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar "", later recorded with greater commercial success by the Andrews Sisters, whose biggest hit "" Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy "" also contains numerous proto-rock and roll elements.

[63]"" Flying Home "" was recorded most famously in 1942 by Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra, with tenor sax solo by Illinois Jacquet, recreated and refined live by Arnett Cobb. This became a model for rock and roll solos ever since: emotional, honking, long, not just an instrumental break but the keystone of the song.

The Benny Goodman Sextet had a popular hit in 1939 with a more subdued version of the song, featuring electric guitarist Charlie Christian. The book What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record? by Jim Dawson and Steve Propes discusses 50 contenders as the ""first rock and roll record"", the earliest being ""Blues, Part 2"" from the 1944 Jazz at the Philharmonic live album, also featuring Jacquet's saxophone but with an even more ""honking"" solo.

[49]"" Mean Old World "" by T-Bone Walker, recorded in 1942, is an early classic by this hugely influential guitarist, often cited as the first song in which he fully found his sound. B. B. King credits Walker as inspiring him to take up the electric guitar, [64] but his influence extended far beyond the blues to jazz and rock and roll.

[65] Among other innovations, ""Mean Old World"" has a two-string guitar lick where Walker bends notes on the G string up to the notes on the B string, which would be used by Chuck Berry in "" Johnny B. Goode "" and other songs.

[66]"" Caldonia "", first recorded by Louis Jordan and then by Erskine Hawkins and others, seems to have been the first song to which the phrase ""right rhythmic rock and roll music"" was applied by Billboard magazine in 1945. Jordan, by the time of his recording of the song, was an established star, whose novelty performances had been influenced in particular by Cab Calloway.

Jordan's 1944 disc "" G. I. Jive "" had been the first record by a black performer to top both the pop and R&B charts. Big bands became increasingly less economically viable, and smaller groups such as Jordan's Tympany Five became more popular.

[16] Many of his recordings, including "" Choo Choo Ch'Boogie "" (recorded in January 1946) and "" Let the Good Times Roll "", were hugely influential in style and content, and popular across both black and white audiences. Their producer Milt Gabler produced Bill Haley 's hits, and Jordan's guitarist Carl Hogan, on such songs as "" Ain't That Just Like a Woman "" (also 1946), was also a direct influence on Chuck Berry's guitar style, and specifically Berry's solo in "" Johnny B. Goode "".

[35]""Rock Me Mamma"" by Arthur ""Big Boy"" Crudup, recorded on December 15, 1944, was the blues singer's first and biggest R&B chart hit, but in later decades became overshadowed by his – at the time, much less successful – 1946 recording of "" That's All Right "", later to be covered by Elvis Presley in 1954 as his first single.

[67]"" Strange Things Happening Every Day "" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, recorded in 1944 with pianist Sammy Price, was a boogie-woogie flavored gospel song that ""crossed over"" to become a hit on the ""race records"" chart, the first gospel recording to do so.

[68] It featured Tharpe on an electric guitar and is considered an important precursor to rock and roll.

[69]"" The Honeydripper "" by Joe Liggins, recorded on April 20, 1945, synthesized boogie-woogie piano, jazz, and the riff from the folk chestnut "" Shortnin' Bread "", into an exciting dance performance that topped the R&B ""race"" charts for 18 weeks (a record later shared with Jordan's ""Choo Choo Ch'Boogie"") and also made the pop charts.

The lyrics proclaimed urban arrogance and were sexually suggestive – ""He's a solid gold cat, the honeydripper... he's a killer, a Harlem diller..."". [49]"" Guitar Boogie "" by Arthur Smith, originally recorded in 1945 but not a hit until reissued in 1948, was the first boogie woogie played on the electric guitar, and was much imitated by later rock and roll guitarists.

The tune was based on ""Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"" from 1929. [49]"" The House of Blue Lights "" by Freddie Slack and Ella Mae Morse was recorded on February 12, 1946.

The song was co-written by Slack with Don Raye, and, like Raye's ""Down the Road a Piece"", was recorded later by many rock and roll singers. Morse was one of the first white singers to perform what would now be regarded as rhythm and blues music.

[49]"" Route 66 "", was recorded by the Nat Cole Trio on March 15, 1946. Written by Bobby Troup, the song was a big hit for Cole – who by that time already had 11 top ten hits on the R&B chart, starting with ""That Ain't Right"" in 1942 – and was later widely covered by rock and roll performers, including Chuck Berry.

[70]""Boogie Woogie Baby,"" ""Freight Train Boogie"" and ""Hillbilly Boogie"" by the Delmore Brothers, featuring harmonica player Wayne Raney, were typically up-tempo recordings, heavily influenced by the blues, by this highly influential country music duo, who had first recorded in 1931.

[71] [72]"" Open the Door, Richard "" was a novelty R&B record based on a comedy routine performed by Dusty Fletcher, Pigmeat Markham and others. It was first recorded in September 1946 by Jack Mc Vea, and immediately covered by many other artists, including Fletcher, Count Basie, The Three Flames, and Louis Jordan, all of whom had hits with it.

It was the precursor of many similar novelty R&B-based records, which became a mainstay of early rock and roll in recordings by groups such as the Coasters. [49]"" Move It on Over "" by Hank Williams was recorded on April 21, 1947. It was Williams' first hit on the country music charts, reaching no.

4. It used a similar melody to Jim Jackson's 1927 ""Kansas City Blues"" and was adapted several years later for "" Rock Around the Clock "". [49]"" Good Rocking Tonight "", in separate versions by Roy Brown (1947) and Wynonie Harris (1948), led to a craze for blues with ""rocking"" in the title.

""Rock and Roll"" by Wild Bill Moore was recorded in 1948 and released in 1949. This was a rocking boogie where Moore repeats throughout the song ""We're going to rock and roll, we're going to roll and rock"" and ends the song with the line ""Look out mamma, going to do the rock and roll.""

Another version of this song (with songwriting credit to Moore) was recorded in 1949 by Doles Dickens. [73] Also related were ""Rock and Roll Blues"" by Erline 'Rock and Roll' Harris, a female singer, with the lyrics ""I'll turn out the lights, we'll rock and roll all night"" and ""Hole in the Wall"" by Albennie Jones, co-written and produced by Milt Gabler, with the lyrics ""We're gonna rock and roll at the hole in the wall tonight"".

[49] [74]"" Boogie Chillen' "" (or ""Boogie Chillun"") is a blues song written by John Lee Hooker and recorded in 1948. It was Hooker's debut record release and became a No. 1 Billboard R&B chart hit in 1949. The guitar figure from ""Boogie Chillen'"" has been called ""the riff that launched a million songs"", [75] inspiring many popular blues and rock songs.

It is considered one of the blues recordings most influential on the forthcoming rock 'n' roll. [76]""Rock Awhile"" by Goree Carter was recorded in April 1949. It has been cited as a contender for the ""first rock and roll record"" title and a ""much more appropriate candidate"" than the more frequently cited ""Rocket 88"" (1951).

Carter's over-driven electric guitar style was similar to that of Chuck Berry from 1955 onward. [77]"" Rock the Joint "", recorded by Jimmy Preston in May 1949, was a prototype rock and roll song which was successful in its own right and highly influential in that it was recorded three years later in 1952 by Bill Haley in the same hard rocking style.

Although Haley first recorded in 1946, his early recordings, including ""Rovin' Eyes"", were essentially in the Western swing style of country music as was his 1951 cover of ""Rocket 88"" (see below).

""Rock the Joint"" became the first of his records in the style that became known as rockabilly. [49]"" The Fat Man "" by Fats Domino, recorded in New Orleans on December 10, 1949, featured Domino on wah-wah mouth trumpet as well as piano and vocals.

The insistent backbeat of the rhythm section dominates. The song is based on ""Junker's Blues"", by pianist Willie Hall. It was the first of Domino's 35 US top 40 hits and helped establish his career; he also played piano on Lloyd Price 's big 1952 hit "" Lawdy, Miss Clawdy "". [49]Early 1950s [ edit]""Boogie in the Park"" by Joe Hill Louis, recorded in July 1950 and released in August 1950, featured Louis as a one-man band performing ""one of the loudest, most overdriven, and distorted guitar stomps ever recorded"" while playing on a rudimentary drum kit at the same time.

It was the only record released on Sam Phillips ' early Phillips label before founding Sun Records.

[78] Louis' electric guitar work is also considered a distant ancestor of heavy metal music. [79]"" Hot Rod Race "" recorded by Arkie Shibley and His Mountain Dew Boys in late 1950, another early example of ""rockabilly"", highlighted the role of fast cars in teen culture.

[49]"" Sixty Minute Man "" by the Dominoes, recorded on December 30, 1950, was the first (and most sexually explicit) big R&B hit to cross over to the pop charts. The group featured the gospel-style lead vocals of Clyde Mc Phatter (though not on this song), and appeared at many of Alan Freed 's early shows.

Mc Phatter later became lead singer of the Drifters, and then a solo star. [49]"" Rocket 88 "" was recorded on March 5, 1951 by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats – actually Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm – and covered later in the year by Bill Haley and the Saddlemen.

Brenston's version – produced in Memphis by Sam Phillips and leased to Chess Records – was highly influential for its sound and lyrical content, and was a big hit.

It reached no. 1 on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues chart on June 9, 1951, and set Phillips on the road to success by helping to finance his company Sun Records.

Haley's version was one of the first white covers of an R&B hit. [49] The song also features an early example of distortion, or fuzz guitar, played by the band's guitarist Willie Kizart. [80]"" How Many More Years "" recorded by Howlin' Wolf in May 1951. Robert Palmer has cited it as the first record to feature a distorted power chord, played by Willie Johnson on the electric guitar.

[40] [81]"" Cry "" by Johnnie Ray was recorded on October 16, 1951. Ray's emotional delivery – he was mistaken for a woman, as well as for a black man – set a template for later vocal styles, and more importantly, showed that music could cross racial barriers both ways by topping the R&B chart as well as the pop chart.

[49]""Rock and Roll Blues"" by Anita O'Day recorded on January 22, 1952. One of Anita O'Day's few compositions, she was one of the best jazz singers ever, and recorded this blues single on Mercury Records with her own orchestra.""

Hound Dog "" by Willie Mae ""Big Mama"" Thornton was recorded on August 13, 1952. A raucous R&B song recorded with Johnny Otis ' band (uncredited for contractual reasons), it was written by white teenagers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, covered three years later by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys (Teen Records 101), and then more famously by Elvis Presley.

[49]""Love My Baby"" and "" Mystery Train "" were recorded by Junior Parker with his electric blues band, the Blue Flames in 1953, ""contributing a pair of future rockabilly standards"" that later would be covered by Hayden Thompson and Elvis Presley, respectively. [82] For Presley's version of ""Mystery Train"", Scotty Moore also borrowed the guitar riff from Parker's ""Love My Baby"", [83] played by Pat Hare.

[84]"" Gee "" by the Crows was recorded on February 10, 1953. This was a big hit in 1954, and is credited by rock n' roll authority, Jay Warner, as being ""the first rock n' roll hit by a rock and roll group"".

[85]"" Crazy Man, Crazy "" by Bill Haley and his Comets, recorded in April 1953, was the first of his recordings to make the Billboard pop chart. This was not a cover, but an original composition, and has been described as ""the first white rock hit"".""

Mess Around "" by Ray Charles was recorded in May 1953, one of his earliest hits. The writing credit was claimed by Ahmet Ertegün, with some lyrics riffing off of the 1929 classic ""Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"". ""

I've Got a Woman "", recorded in November 1954 and first performed when Charles was on tour with T-Bone Walker, was a bigger hit, widely considered to be the first soul song, combining gospel with R&B; [86] [87] its tune was derived from the gospel song ""My Jesus Is All the World to Me"" by Alex Bradford.

[49]"" The Things That I Used to Do "" by Guitar Slim was recorded on October 16, 1953. It was an electric blues song that had a major impact on rock and roll and featured distorted overtones on the electric guitar a full decade before Jimi Hendrix.

[88] It is listed as one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. [89]"" Work with Me, Annie "" by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, was recorded on January 14, 1954.

Despite, or because of, its salacious lyrics, it was immediately successful in the R&B market, topping the R&B chart for seven weeks, and led to several sequels, including Ballard's ""Annie Had a Baby"" and Etta James ' first hit "" The Wallflower "", also known as ""Roll with Me, Henry"".

Although the records were banned from radio play and led to calls for rock and roll to be banned, the lyrics were soon rewritten for a more conservative white audience, and Georgia Gibbs topped the pop charts in 1955 with her version ""Dance with Me, Henry"". [49]"" Shake, Rattle and Roll "" by Big Joe Turner was recorded on February 15, 1954, and was covered early in July by Bill Haley and his Comets, whilst Turner's version topped the Billboard R&B chart in June. Haley's version, which substantially was different in lyric and arrangement, [90] reached no. 7 in the pop chart at the end of August and predated his much wider success with ""Rock Around the Clock"" by almost a year. Elvis Presley's later 1956 version combined Haley's arrangement with Turner's lyrics, but was not a substantial hit. [49]"" Rock Around the Clock "" by Bill Haley and His Comets (recorded on April 12, 1954) was the first no. 1 rock and roll record on the US pop charts. It stayed in the Top 100 for a then-record 38 weeks. The record is often credited with propelling rock into the mainstream, at least the teen mainstream. At first it had lackluster sales but, following the success of two other Haley recordings, ""Shake Rattle and Roll"" and ""Dim, Dim the Lights"", was later included in the movie Blackboard Jungle about a raucous high-school, which exposed it to a wider audience and took it to worldwide success in 1955. [91] The song itself had first been recorded in late 1953 by Sonny Dae & His Knights, a novelty group whose recording had become a modest local hit at the time Haley recorded his version. [49]James Cotton 's "" Cotton Crop Blues "" and Pat Hare 's ""I'm Gonna Murder My Baby"" (both recorded in May 1954), were electric blues records which feature heavily distorted, power chord -driven electric guitar solos by Pat Hare that anticipate elements of heavy metal music. [40] The other side of Cotton's ""Cotton Crop Blues"" single ""Hold Me in Your Arms"" also featured a heavily distorted guitar sound by Hare that resembles the ""distorted tones favored by modern rock players."" [92]"" That's All Right "" by Elvis Presley was recorded on July 5, 1954. This cover of Arthur Crudup 's tune was Presley's first single. Its B-side was a rocking version of Bill Monroe 's bluegrass song ""Blue Moon of Kentucky"", recognized by various rock singers as an influence on the music. See also: Elvis Presley's Sun recordings Views on the first rock and roll record [ edit]

The identity of the first rock and roll record is one of the most enduring subjects of debate among rock historians. [93] Various recordings dating back to the 1940s and 1950s have been cited as the first rock and roll record.

[94] A number of sources have considered the first to be "" Rocket 88 "", which was recorded in 1951 by Ike Turner and his band, but credited to his saxophonist and the song's vocalist Jackie Brenston. [95] According to The Boston Globe ' s Joan Anderman, most rock historians cite it as the first, [96] while The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll and the website of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said that it is ""frequently cited"" and ""widely considered the first"", respectively.

[95] People in the music industry have also called it the first, among several others. [97] ""Rocket 88"" is cited for its forceful backbeat and unrefined, distorted electric guitar. [98] By contrast, writer and musician Michael Campbell wrote that, ""from our perspective,"" it was not the first rock and roll record because it had a shuffle beat rather than the rock rhythm originally characteristic in Chuck Berry's and Little Richard's songs, although he added that ""Rocket 88"" had basic characteristics of rock music such as the emphasis on guitar and distortion.

[99] Its characterization as a rock and roll or rhythm and blues song continues to be debated. Nigel Williamson questions whether it was really an R&B song ""with an unusually fast, bottom-heavy eight-to-the bar boogie rhythm and a great lyric about cars, booze and women"".

[100]The music historian Robert Palmer wrote that Goree Carter 's earlier 1949 song ""Rock Awhile"" is a ""much more appropriate candidate"" than ""the more frequently cited"" ""Rocket 88"", primarily because of the presence of loud electric guitar work on the former song.

[77] Palmer wrote that ""Rocket 88"" is credited for its raucous saxophone, boogie-woogie beat, fuzzy amplified guitar, and lyrics that celebrate the automobile. [101] However, he regards ""Rock Awhile"" to be a more appropriate candidate for the ""first rock and roll record"" title, because it was recorded two years earlier, and because of Carter's guitar work bearing a striking resemblance to Chuck Berry's later guitar work, while making use of an over-driven amplifier, along with the backing of boogie-based rhythms, and the appropriate title and lyrical subject matter.

[77] Roger Wood and John Nova Lomax also have cited ""Rock Awhile"" as the first rock & roll record.

[102] [103] Others have taken the view that the first was Roy Brown 's "" Good Rocking Tonight "", or Wynonie Harris ' 1948 version; the song received greater exposure when Elvis Presley covered it in 1954.

[104] Sister Rosetta Tharpe 's 1944 song "" Strange Things Happening Every Day "" has also been viewed as among the first. [69]Most rock historians have cited Bill Haley 's 1953 song "" Crazy Man, Crazy "" as the first rock and roll record to reach the Billboard charts.

[105] Haley's "" Rock Around the Clock "" released in 1954 was the first rock and roll record to achieve significant commercial success and was joined in 1955 by a number of other records that pioneered the genre. [94] Along with ""Rock Around the Clock"", several rock critics also have pointed to Presley's "" That's All Right "" from 1954 as a candidate for the first rock and roll record.

[106]The 1992 book What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record? by Jim Dawson and Steve Propes [49] discusses 50 contenders, from Illinois Jacquet 's ""Blues, Part 2"" (1944) to Elvis Presley's "" Heartbreak Hotel "" (1956), without reaching a definitive conclusion.

In their introduction, the authors claim that since the modern definition of rock 'n' roll was set by disc jockey Alan Freed 's use of the term in his groundbreaking The Rock and Roll Show on New York's WINS in late 1954, as well as at his Rock and Roll Jubilee Balls at St. Nicholas Arena in January 1955, they chose to judge their candidates according to the music Freed spotlighted: R&B combos, black vocal groups, honking saxophonists, blues belters, and several white artists playing in the authentic R&B style ( Bill Haley, Elvis Presley ).

The artists who appeared at Freed's earliest shows included orchestra leader Buddy Johnson, the Clovers, Fats Domino, Big Joe Turner, the Moonglows, Clyde Mc Phatter and the Drifters, and the Harptones. That, say Dawson and Propes, was the first music being called rock and roll during that short time when the term caught on all over America.

Because the honking tenor saxophone was the driving force at those shows and on many of the records Freed was playing, the authors began their list with a 1944 squealing and squawking live performance by Illinois Jacquet with Jazz at the Philharmonic in Los Angeles in mid-1944.

That record, ""Blues, Part 2,"" was released as Stinson 6024 and is still in print as a CD on the Verve label. Several notable jazz greats accompanied Jacquet on ""Blues"", including Paul Leslie and Slim Nadine (the monikers employed by Les Paul and Nat ""King"" Cole, respectively, in order to appear at the JATP concert incognito).

In 2004, Elvis Presley's "" That's All Right Mama "" and Bill Haley's "" Rock Around the Clock "" both celebrated their 50th anniversaries. Rolling Stone felt that Presley's song was the first rock and roll recording. [107] At the time, Presley recorded Big Joe Turner's "" Shake, Rattle & Roll "", later covered by Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B charts.

[108]The Guardian felt that while there were rock and roll records before Presley's, his recording was the moment when all the strands came together in ""perfect embodiment"".

[109] Presley is quoted as saying: ""A lot of people seem to think I started this business, but rock and roll was here a long time before I came along."" [110]Also formative in the sound of rock and roll were Little Richard and Chuck Berry. [111] From the early 1950s, [112] Little Richard combined gospel with New Orleans R&B, heavy backbeat, [113] pounding piano and wailing vocals.

[114] Ray Charles referred to Little Richard as being the artist that started a new kind of music, which was a funky style of rock and roll that he was performing onstage for a few years before appearing on record in 1955 as "" Tutti Frutti .""

[115] [116] [117] Chuck Berry, with "" Maybellene "" (recorded on May 21, 1955, and which reached # 1 on the R&B chart and no. 5 on the US pop chart), "" Roll over Beethoven "" (1956), "" Rock and Roll Music "" (1957) and "" Johnny B. Goode "" (1958), refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar intros and lead breaks that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

[117] Early rock and roll used the twelve-bar blues chord progression and shared with boogie woogie the four beats (usually broken down into eight eighth-notes/quavers) to a bar.

Rock and roll however has a greater emphasis on the backbeat than boogie woogie. [118] Bo Diddley 's 1955 hit "" Bo Diddley "", with its B-side "" I'm a Man "", introduced a new beat and unique guitar style that inspired many artists without either side using the 12-bar pattern – they instead played variations on a single chord each.

[119] His more insistent, driving rhythms, hard-edged electric guitar sound, African rhythms, and signature clave beat (a simple, five- accent rhythm), have remained cornerstones of rock and pop.

[120] [121] [122]Others point out that performers like Arthur Crudup and Fats Domino were recording blues songs as early as 1946 that are indistinguishable from later rock and roll, and that these blues songs were based on themes, chord changes, and rhythms dating back decades before that.

[95] [ not in citation given] Wynonie Harris ' 1947 cover of Roy Brown 's "" Good Rocking Tonight "" is also a claimant for the title of first rock and roll record, as the popularity of this record led to many answer songs, mostly by black artists, with the same rocking beat, during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

[2] Big Joe Turner 's 1939 recording "" Roll 'Em Pete "" is close to 1950s rock and roll. [123] Sister Rosetta Tharpe also was recording shouting, stomping music in the 1930s and 1940s, such as "" Strange Things Happening Every Day "" (1944), that in some ways contained major elements of mid-1950s rock and roll.

[69] Pushing the date back even earlier, blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow has stated that ""Crazy About My Baby"" by Blind Roosevelt Graves and his brother, recorded in 1929, ""could be considered the first rock 'n' roll recording"". [50]By contrast, musician and writer Billy Vera argued that because rock and roll was ""an evolutionary process"", it would be foolish to name any single record as the first.

[124] Writer Nick Tosches similarly felt that, ""It is impossible to discern the first modern rock record, just as it is impossible to discern where blue becomes indigo in the spectrum.""

[5] Music writer Rob Bowman remarked that the long-debated question is useless and cannot be answered because ""criteria vary depending upon who is making the selection."" [125]References [ edit]^ a b Bordowitz, Hank (2004). Turning Points in Rock and Roll. New York, New York: Citadel Press.

p. 63. ISBN 978-0-8065-2631-7.^ a b c d e f g h Morgan Wright's Hoy Hoy.com: The Dawn of Rock'n'Roll, 1998-2008^ Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs, calculated for the meridian of Scotland ..., A. Constable and Co., 1821^ The United Service Journal, 1835, p.406^ a b Nick Tosches, Country: the twisted roots of rock 'n' roll, New York : Da Capo Press, 1985.

The quote with the blue and indigo comparison is on page 32.^ John Ward's ""Shanties and Sea Songs"": Johnny Boker^ ""Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"" at Ingeb.org^ ""Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"" at Cyberhymnal.org^ ""Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"" by the Original Bison City Quartet^ Tim Brooks, Lost sounds: Blacks and the birth of the recording industry, 1890–1919, University of Illinois Press, 2004, p.99^ ""Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"" by John W. Myers^ ""Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"" by Gus Reed^ Victor Records number 4003.

A video of this record being played is here [1].^ Scott Reynolds Nelson, Steel Drivin' Man, p. 75.^ Bill Haley & The Comets^ a b c d e f Richie Unterberger, Birth of Rock & Roll, Allmusic.com^ A. De Curtis, Present tense: rock & roll and culture ( Duke University Press, 1992), p. 20.^ N. Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather (Little Brown And Company, 2002), p. 125.^ a b Trixie Smith^ Bill Wyman and Richard Havers, Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey, Dorling Kindersley, 2001, ISBN 0-7513-3442-1, p.110^ a b Uncle Dave Macon discography^ Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934)^ C. Perkins and D. Mc Gee, Go, Cat, Go!

(Hyperion, 1996), p. 76, ISBN 0-7868-6073-1.^ The Sisters^ ""Sister Rosetta"" Tharpe (1915–1973) – Encyclopedia of Arkansas^ Wald, Gayle, Shout, Sister, Shout!, p. 42^ Eve Golden, Vernon and Irene Castle's Ragtime Revolution, University Press of Kentucky, 2007, p.245^ English Language & Usage: Why do exciting things ""rock""?^ The Musician, vols 44–45, 1939, p.219^ a b Billboard, May 30, 1942, page 25^ J. J. Hayes's Amazing Antifolk Explicator & Philosophic Explicator^ Billboard, April 25, 1945, page 66^ Billboard, June 22, 1946, page 33^ R. Aquila, That old-time rock & roll: a chronicle of an era, 1954–1963 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp.

4–6.^ a b c Nick Tosches, Unsung Heroes of Rock'n'Roll, Secker & Warburg, 1991, ISBN 0-436-53203-4^ Jamm Upp – Issue no. 11, e-magazine, http://home.earthlink.net/~jaymar41/otherfems.html, retrieved 05/08/09.^ Gilliland 1969, show 55, track 3; show 3, track 3.^ ""Freed, Alan"".

The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Case Western Reserve University. 2007. Retrieved November 27, 2010.^ Robert Palmer, ""Rock Begins"", in Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, New York : Rolling Stone Press/Random House, 1976-1980, pp. 3–14 (UK edition)^ a b c d e f g De Curtis, Anthony; Palmer, Robert; et al. (1992). ""Church of the Sonic Guitar"".

Present Tense. Duke University Press. pp. 13–38. ISBN 0-8223-1265-4.^ Szatmary, David P. (2014). Rockin' in Time. New Jersey: Pearson. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-205-93624-3.^ Cosby, James A. (2016). Devil's Music Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll.

Jefferson, NC: Mc Farland & Co., 2016. Print. 6-9, 112-19^ Francis Davis, The History of the Blues: The Roots, the Music, the People, p,122^ The Fiddler's Companion: Sail Away Ladies^ Comparative Video 101: ""Rockabout My Saro Jane""^ Trail of the Hellhound: Jim Jackson^ a b c Peter J. Silvester, A Left Hand Like God : a history of boogie-woogie piano (1989), ISBN 0-306-80359-3.^ Lyrics of ""Jealous Hearted Blues"" Archived April 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Jim Dawson and Steve Propes, What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record?, Boston [etc.]

: Faber and Faber, 1992^ a b Gayle Dean Wardlow, Chasin' That Devil Music, 1998^ Press release – Roots of Rock and Roll to be honored with Blues Trail Marker [ permanent dead link]^ Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother Archived December 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.^ Ted Ownby, Jimmie Rodgers: The Father of Country Music, Mississippi History Now, July 2004Archived October 7, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.^ Yanow, Scott, ""Washboard Rhythm Kings: Biography""^ WFMU's Beware of the Blog, 22 February 2010^ Sleevenotes to CD Let's Get Drunk and Truck, Fabulous FABCD 253, 2003^ David Rickert, Count Basie: ""One O'Clock Jump"", All About Jazz, 4 March 2005^ Gayle Wald, Shout, Sister, Shout!, p. ix^ Bob Wills^ Port of Harlem Jazzmen at Allmusic.com^ Classic Jazz Guitar: Rockin' The Blues^ Biography: John Lee Williamson^ The Andrews Sisters Bio^ Helen Oakley Dance and B.

B. King, Stormy Monday, p. 164^ Dahl, Bill, T-Bone Walker: Biography^ Rubin, Dave (2007). Inside the Blues: 1942 to 1982. Hal Leonard. p. 11. ISBN 978-1423416661.^ ""Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup"". The Online Roots of Rock.

Retrieved March 4, 2012.^ Dan De Luca, Sister Rosetta Tharpe got rock rolling long before Elvis, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 February 2007^ a b c G. F. Wald (2007). Shout, Sister, Shout! : The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Beacon Press.

p. 68. ISBN 0-8070-0984-9. Retrieved August 11, 2013.^ Nat ""King"" Cole Discography^ Delmore Brothers at Country Musc Hall of Fame Archived July 23, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.^ Delmore Brothers discography^ The Vocal Group Harmony Web Site: Doles Dickens^ Erline Harris^ Koda, Cub.

""Boogie Chillen' — Song review"". Allmusic. Rovi Corp. Retrieved June 18, 2013.^ Dawson, Propes 1992^ a b c Robert Palmer, ""Church of the Sonic Guitar"", pp. 13–38 in Anthony De Curtis, Present Tense, Duke University Press, 1992, p. 19. ISBN 0-8223-1265-4.^ De Curtis, Anthony (1992). Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture (4. print. ed.). Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-1265-4.

His first venture, the Phillips label, issued only one known release, and it was one of the loudest, most overdriven, and distorted guitar stomps ever recorded, ""Boogie in the Park"" by Memphis one-man-band Joe Hill Louis, who cranked his guitar while sitting and banging at a rudimentary drum kit.^ Miller, Jim (1980). The Rolling Stone illustrated history of rock & roll. New York: Rolling Stone. ISBN 0-394-51322-3.

Retrieved July 5, 2012. Black country bluesmen made raw, heavily amplified boogie records of their own, especially in Memphis, where guitarists like Joe Hill Louis, Willie Johnson (with the early Howlin' Wolf band) and Pat Hare (with Little Junior Parker) played driving rhythms and scorching, distorted solos that might be counted the distant ancestors of heavy metal.^ Shepard, John (2003).

Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Performance and Production. Vol. II. Continuum International. p. 286.^ Palmer, Robert (1992). ""Church of the Sonic Guitar"". In De Curtis, Anthony. Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture.

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Retrieved July 6, 2012. ""Love My Baby"" in particular featured some blistering guitar playing by Pat Hare, which inspired the rockabilly style discussed elsewhere.^ Warner, Jay, American Singing Groups: A History from 1940 to Today (2006), published by Hal Leonard Corporation, p.137^ Lydon, Michael, Ray Charles: Man and Music, p. 113^ Ray Charles (inducted 1986), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum^ Aswell, Tom (2010).

Louisiana Rocks! The True Genesis of Rock & Roll. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company. pp. 61–5. ISBN 1-58980-677-8.^ ""Specialty Album Discography"". Archived from the original on November 16, 2006. Retrieved November 25, 2006.^ Gilliland 1969, show 4, track 5.^ Gilliland 1969, show 55, track 2; show 5, track 2.^ Koda, Cub.

""Pat Hare"". Allmusic. Retrieved January 25, 2010.^ Campbell, Michael (2008). Popular Music in America: And The Beat Goes On: And the Beat Goes on. Cengage Learning. p. 157. ISBN 0-495-50530-7. Retrieved August 16, 2013.^ a b Ruhlmann, William (2004). Breaking Records: 100 Years of Hits. Routledge. p. 118. ISBN 0-203-64403-4. Retrieved August 8, 2013.^ a b c Farley, Christopher John (July 6, 2004).

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""The Man Who Wasn't There"". The Boston Globe. Retrieved August 12, 2013. He had a band by 1949 and wrote and recorded what most historians consider the first rock and roll record, 1951's ""Rocket 88"" (singer Jackie Brenston's on the label, but it's Ike's band and Ike's song).^ Gillett, Charlie (1978). The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock 'n' Roll (3rd ed.). Laurel/Dell. p. 147.^ Schinder, Scott; et al.

(2007). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever. ABC-CLIO. p. 4. ISBN 0-313-33845-0. Retrieved August 13, 2013.^ Campbell, Michael (2011). Popular Music in America, 4th ed. : The Beat Goes on. Cengage Learning. p. 164. ISBN 0-8400-2976-4. Retrieved August 20, 2013.^ Williamson, Nigel (2007). The Rough Guide to the Blues. Foreword by Robert Plant. p. 112. ISBN 1-84353-519-X.^ Palmer, Robert; et al. (1992). The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music.

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Retrieved March 4, 2012.^ a b M. Campbell, ed., Popular Music in America: And the Beat Goes on (Cengage Learning, 3rd edn., 2008), pp. 168–9.^ P. Hurry, M. Phillips, M. Richards, Heinemann advanced music (Heinemann, 2001), p. 153.^ P. Buckley, The rough guide to rock (Rough Guides, 3rd edn., 2003), p. 21.^ ""Bo Diddley"". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved October 27, 2008.^ ""Bo Diddley"". Rolling Stone. 2001. Retrieved April 26, 2012.^ Brown, Jonathan (June 3, 2008). ""Bo Diddley, guitarist who inspired the Beatles and the Stones, dies aged 79"". The Independent. Retrieved April 26, 2012.^ M. Campbell, ed., Popular Music in America: And the Beat Goes on (Cengage Learning, 3rd edn., 2008), p. 99.^ Billy Vera, Foreword to What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record?, by Jim Dawson and Steve Propes, Faber & Faber 1992^ Bowman, Rob (2013). The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 1. Routledge. p. 397. ISBN 1-136-09570-5. Retrieved August 12, 2013. Sources [ edit]Gilliland, John (1969). ""Crammer: A lively cram course on the history of rock and some other things"" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries. [ hide]v t e Rock music Components Backbeat Distortion Rock band Electric guitar Electric bass Rhythm section Drum kit Genres by decade of origin1950s Instrumental rock Latin rock Pop rock Rock and roll British Rockabilly1960s Acid rock Anatolian rock Art rock Baroque rock Beat music Blues rock Boogie rock Christian rock Comedy rock Country rock Electronic rock Experimental rock Folk rock Flamenco rock Garage rock Hard rock Heavy metal Jam Jazz rock Krautrock Power pop Progressive rock Psychedelic rock Raga rock Roots rock Samba rock Southern rock Space rock Surf music1970s Arena rock Cock rock Dance-rock Funk rock Glam rock Gothic rock Heartland rock Ostrock Post-progressive Pub rock (United Kingdom) Pub rock (Australia) Punk rock Soft rock Visual kei Yacht rock1980s Alternative rock Rap rock Trop rock1990s Stoner rock Sufi rock Viking rock Radio formats Active rock Adult album alternative Album-oriented rock Classic rock Mainstream rock Modern rock Progressive rock (radio format)History Culture Origins of rock and roll Electronics in rock music Social effects Rock Against Communism Rock Against Racism Rock Against Sexism Rock music and the fall of communism Rockism and poptimism Women in rock Related List of rock genres Motorik Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Progressive music Rock concert Rock musical Rock opera Rock festival Wagnerian rock Wall of Sound Book Category Portal Categories: Origins of music genres African-American cultural history Rock music "

Rock and roll developed in the early 1950s from a kind of music called rhythm and blues performed by black singers and musicians. At first, this music was popular only with African-Americans. In the later 1950s and in the 1960s, rock and roll became popular across the United States and in Europe.

Rock and roll

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedianavigation search Rock and roll Stylistic origins Gospel • Folk music •Country music • Jump blues •Chicago blues • Swing music •Boogie-woogie • R&BCultural origins 1940s, United States Typical instruments Electric guitar, string bass or later bass guitar, drums, piano, saxophone (occasionally)Mainstream popularity One of the best selling music forms since the 1950s Derivative forms Rock • Rockabilly • Soft rock • Pop Other topics Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Rock and roll is a form of rock music developed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Rock music combines many kinds of music from the United States, such as country music, folk music, gospel music, work, blues and jazz.

Contents1 History of rock and roll1.1 1950s: Rockabilly1.2 1960s: From Motown to Folk Rock1.2.1 Motown: African-American popular music1.2.2 Surf music1.2.3 Folk rock1.3 1970s: From Psychedelic Rock to Punk and Disco1.3.1 Rock and Psychedelic Rock1.3.2 Progressive rock1.3.3 Heavy metal1.3.4 Disco1.3.5 Punk rock1.3.6 New wave1.4 1980s1.4.1 Glam metal1.4.2 Alternative music2 Related pages2.1 Sources3 Other websites History of rock and roll [ change | change source]1950s: Rockabilly [ change | change source]Elvis Presley, rock and roll singer During the early 1950s, the popularity of rhythm and blues music spread.

It became very popular among young white people. [1] They listened to this music on radio stations that broadcast across the country late at night. Some teenagers began buying rhythm and blues records as a form of rebellion. This music was very different from the music that was popular with most of their parents.

The music was exciting, and it had a very strong rhythm and beat. Some of the songs had words which suggested sexual themes. In other cases, the singers made sexually suggestive gestures or movements while they were singing.

Some adults strongly objected to rhythm and blues music. They did not think young people should listen to it. Alan Freed had a radio show in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1950s. He is said to be the first person to use the expression ""rock and roll"" to describe rhythm and blues music. Alan Freed was one of the first to play rock and roll music on his radio show, and he organized the first rock and roll concert in Cleveland in 1952.

Songs by black performers like Fats Domino and Little Richard soon became popular with teenagers. [2] These singers recorded their records in the southern city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Some early rock and roll music was created in the southern United States city of Memphis, Tennessee.

In Memphis, a white record producer called Sam Phillips produced records by local black musicians. One day, an eighteen-year-old truck driver came to his studio to record a song for his mother. The young man was Elvis Presley.

Phillips produced Presley's first real record in 1954, a song called ""That's All Right."" [3]Bill Haley and his Comets recorded ""Rock Around the Clock"" in 1954. It was not popular at first. Then it was used in a movie about rebellious teenagers, called ""The Blackboard Jungle"".

The movie caused a lot of debate on the origin of rock and roll. It also made the song a huge hit. [4] ""Rock Around the Clock"" became a song of teenage rebellion. The song was recorded in April, Elvis' ""That's All Right"" was recorded in July. However, Cecil's Grant's 'We're Gonna Rock' recorded in mid 1950 is a song that many people have forgotten that was an early influence on rock n roll.

Its lyrics and music were like those that would be in later songs. The drums and bass guitar would be similar to rock and roll songs that would be made later.

Many other rock and roll singers became popular in the 1950s. They included Buddy Holly, [5] Jerry Lee Lewis, [6]Chuck Berry [4] and Bo Diddley.

[1] Each performer created his own kind of rock and roll. Chuck Berry's music was a mixture of country and rhythm and blues. In 1955, his song ""Maybellene"" was one of the most popular songs in the country. [4]Before Bill Haley, grant goatbeurry recorded ""Move It On Over"" in 1947, however similar version of the song was recorded by blues artist Jim Jackson called ""Kansas City Blues"".

The melody is similar to both ""Move It On"" and ""Rock Around Clock"", but latter has different tonal subtleties and chords.1960s: From Motown to Folk Rock [ change | change source]Motown: African-American popular music [ change | change source]In the 1960s, black music and musicians became recognized as an important part of the music industry in America. This was because a company in Detroit, Michigan, called Motown Records that produced some of the most popular songs in American music. Berry Gordy started Motown Records. He presented ""black"" music in a way that both black people and white people would like.

[7] One of Motown's most successful groups was the Supremes, led by Diana Ross. One of their hits was ""Come See About Me"".

[8]Surf music [ change | change source]A different kind of rock and roll music called surf music was being made in Southern California. Five young men from Los Angeles formed a group called the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson wrote, performed, and produced the group's records. [9] The Beach Boys' songs had complex music and simple words. The words were about the local teenage culture.

The group sang about riding surfboards on the ocean waves. One of their most popular songs was ""Surfin' USA,” which used the same musical track as Chuck Berry's ""Sweet Little Sixteen."" [4]Folk rock [ change | change source]In the 1960s, rock and roll music began to change. The words became as important as the music.

Bob Dylan began writing folk rock songs that many young people considered to be poetry. Dylan was influenced by folk singers and songwriters like Woody Guthrie. [10] Dylan's early songs were about serious social issues. He wrote about war and racial injustice. Some of his songs were used as protest songs for the anti-war and civil rights movements in America.

Later, Dylan wrote more personal songs. One of his most popular songs was “Mister Tambourine Man,"" which many people thought was a song about drug use. [11]In 1964, a new rock and roll group from England called The Beatles visited the United States. The Beatles were very popular.

[12] They completely shaped the sixties pop era along with the Rolling Stones. [13] They were icons, and still to this day could be considered icons.1970s: From Psychedelic Rock to Punk and Disco [ change | change source]Rock and Psychedelic Rock [ change | change source]By the 1970s, rock and roll was often just called ""rock"".

In the 1970s, rock music bands such as Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones played huge, loud concerts in outdoor stadiums. Rock music from the 1970s was usually louder and harder than the rock and roll from the 1950s. In the early 1970s, many rock bands played psychedelic rock, a type of rock music which had words that described the use of legal drugs.

Psychedelic rock described the experiences of taking illegal drugs such as marijuana and LSD and often encouraged people to take illegal drugs. Psychedelic rock bands included Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, [14] Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, Pink Floyd, and The Doors.

Progressive rock [ change | change source]Another type of rock music from the 1970s was progressive rock. Progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and The Moody Blues played music that was more complex. Some progressive rock bands used strange instruments, or created music that sounded weird.

Other progressive rock bands include: Electric Light Orchestra, Pavlov's Dog, King Crimson, Caravan, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Gentle Giant, The Nice, Yes, Gong, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Soft Machine, Steve Hillage, Barclay James Harvest, Magma, Camel, Can, Rush and Faust. Heavy metal [ change | change source]In the 1970s, a harder form of rock music called "" Heavy metal "" was invented.

Bands such as Cream and Led Zeppelin played loud rock music based on blues music. Other bands such Deep Purple and Black Sabbath played even louder, harder heavy metal rock music.

Disco [ change | change source]In the late 1970s, groups such as Donna Summer, K. C. and the Sunshine Band, Barry White, Gloria Gaynor, and CHIC, developed a pop music style called disco. Disco was dance music with a strong beat. A popular disco band was The Bee Gees, who wrote the music for the movie Saturday Night Fever. Punk rock [ change | change source]Another rock music style from the 1970s was punk rock. Punk rock was crude, loud, simple music.

Many punk rock songs were rude or used bad words. Punk rock musicians often dressed in ripped or torn clothes, leather jackets, and black leather boots. Punk rock musicians sometimes had strange hairstyles, such as hair ""spiked"" with hair gel or shaved off.

Well-known punk rock bands from Britain were the Sex Pistols and The Clash. Well-known punk musicians in the United States were the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie and Black Flag. New wave [ change | change source]In the late 1970s, another type of rock called New wave music became popular.

Bands such as INXS and Midnight Oil from Australia became popular. In the United States, New Wave bands such as Talking Heads and Devo played. In the 1980s, New Wave music bands such as Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Psychedelic Furs, and the Eurythmics were popular.

These bands used the synthesizer keyboard a lot in their songs.1980s [ change | change source]Glam metal [ change | change source]In the 1980s, a new type of rock and roll was invented, called glam metal.

Glam metal rock bands mixed pop music with heavy metal music. Glam metal bands such as Mötley Crüe, W. A. S. P. and Ratt became popular. Glam metal rock bands had long hair and the men wore make up and leather pants and boots. Many glam metal songs were about sex, illegal drug use, and drinking alcohol.

In the late 1980s, groups such as Guns N' Roses were very successful. Alternative music [ change | change source]Another rock music trend from the 1980s was alternative music. Bands such as R. E. M., Sonic Youth, The Smiths, Pixies, Hüsker Dü, The Cure, and others were popular with teens and young adults.

The most immediate type of alternative music was ""grunge,"" a combination of punk, rock and metal. Proponents of grunge included Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam with themes of sadness and loneliness.

Related pages [ change | change source]Rockabilly, an early form of Rock and Roll from the 1950s New wave, a form of pop music from the late 1970s Disco, a popular dance music style of music from the 1970s Punk rock, a form of rebellious pop music from the late 1970s Heavy metal music, a loud, aggressive form of rock from the 1970s and 1980s.

It continued in the 1990s and 2000s. Hardcore punk, a louder, more aggressive form of punk rock, from the 1980s Alternative rock, a pop-rock style from the 1980s Grunge, a hard rock style from the 1990s Pop-punk, a popular music from the 1990s which blends pop music with punk rock Hip-hop, a popular music from the 1990s and 2000s Sources [ change | change source]↑ 1.0 1.1 Gilliland 1969, show 3.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 6.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 7.↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Gilliland 1969, show 5.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 12.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 8.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 25.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 26.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 20.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 31.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 32.↑ Gilliland 1969, shows 27-28.↑ Gilliland 1969, show 30.↑ Gilliland 1969, shows 41-42.

Parts of the above article reused and rewrote public domain material provided by Voice of America Special Englishwebsite. Other websites [ change | change source]Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rock and roll. Visitors to America can learn more at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. Or visit, on the Internet --- http://www.rockhall.com/Gilliland, John (1969). ""Hail, Hail, Rock 'n' Roll: The rock revolution gets underway"" (audio).

Pop Chronicles. Digital.library.unt.edu.v t e Rock music Genres Acid rock Alternative rock Anatolian rock Arena rock Art rock Azerbaijani rock Bangla rock Baroque pop Beat music Blues-rock Cello rock Celtic rock Chicano rock Chinese rock Christian rock Comedy rock Country rock Dance-rock Dark rock Electronic rock Experimental rock Flamenco rock Folk rock Funk rock Garage rock Glam rock Gothic rock Hard rock Heartland rock Heavy metal Instrumental rock Jam Japanese rock Jazz rock Korean rock Krautrock Latin rock Math rock Ostrock Pop rock Power pop Progressive rock Psychedelic rock Pub rock (UK) Pub rock (Australia) Punk rock Raga rock Rap rock Rockabilly Rock and roll Rock en españole Roots rock Samba rock Soft rock Southern rock Space rock Stoner rock Sufi rock Surf music Symphonic rock Trop rock Visual kei Wagnerian rock Radio formats Active rock Album-oriented rock Classic rock Mainstream rock Modern rock Progressive rock (radio format)Related List of rock genres Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Social effects of rock music Rhythm section Electric guitar Bass guitar Drum kit Wall of Sound Book Categoryv t e World rock Albania • Argentina • Armenia • Australia • Belarus • Belgium • Bosnia • Brazil • Canada • Chile • China • Colombia • Costa Rica • Croatia •Cuba • Denmark • Dominican Republic • Estonia • Finland • France • Germany • Greece • Hungary • Iceland • India • Indonesia • Iran • Ireland •Israel • Italy • Japan • Korea • Latvia • Lithuania • Malaysia • Mexico • Nepal • Netherlands • New Zealand • Norway • Pakistan • Peru •Philippines ( Visayas ) • Poland • Portugal • Romania • Russia ( Tatarstan ) • Serbia • Slovenia • Spain • Sweden • Switzerland • Taiwan •Thailand • Turkey • Ukraine • United Kingdom • United States • Uruguay • Venezuela • Yugoslavia • Zambia Category: Rock music "

.also rock 'n' roll, 1954 in reference to a specific style of popular music, from rock (v.2) + roll (v.). The verbal phrase had been a Black English euphemism for ""sexual intercourse,"" used in popular dance music lyrics and song titles since at least the 1930s.

rock-and-roll

"rock-and-roll [ rok - uh n- rohl]Spell Syllables Word Origin See more synonyms on Thesaurus.comnoun1. rock-'n'-roll.rock-'n'-rollor rock-and-roll, rock 'n' roll [ rok - uh n- rohl]Spell Syllablesnoun1. a style of popular music that derives in part from blues and folk music and is marked by a heavily accented beat and a simple, repetitive phrase structure.adjective2.

of or relating to this music.verb (used without object)3. to dance to or play rock-'n'-roll. Origin of rock-'n'-roll Expand1950-19551950-55; contraction of phrase rock and roll; see rock 2Related forms Expandrock-'n'-roller, noun Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018. Cite This Source British Dictionary definitions for rock and roll Expandrock and rollnou

n1.a type of pop music originating in the 1950s as a blend of rhythm and blues and country and western. It is generally based upon the twelve-bar blues, the first and third beats in each bar being heavily accented ( as modifier ): the rock-and-roll era2

. dancing performed to such music, with exaggerated body movements stressing the beatverb3. ( intransitive) to perform this dance Derived Formsrock and roller, rock'n'roller, noun Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © Harper Collins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Cite This Source Word Origin and History for rock and roll Expandn

rock-and-roll

But that is only a minor facet of rock 'n' roll's place in American, indeed in world society since 1955, and the larger elements of rock's influence reach far beyond the traditional cultural adhesive status of other folk musics.

Changing the World:

"© 2011 David N. Townsend ( Disclaimer)Changing the World: Rock 'n' Roll Culture and Ideologyby David N. Townsend Chapter 1Origins (This is the html version of this chapter. If you would rather download the file to print or read offline, click here for the Wordperfect version, or click here for the MS Word version.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any comments, questions, or villifications. Inquiries from prospective publishers are also welcome. )All you really need to know about the origins of rock 'n' roll is that it started with slavery. The history books can give you the details; what's important is that rock 'n' roll can be traced in a direct line to an utterly unnatural phenomenon: the forced uprooting of tens of thousands of Africans from their native lands and cultures, and their transplantation to a new world as different from what they had known as black is different from white.

Add in the fact that families were split apart, slaves from different tribes were thrown together on the same plantations, and, of course, these reluctant visitors were chained, whipped, imprisoned, and compelled to perform excruciating hard labor for barely subsistence nourishment.

Keep in mind that these conditions continued, on this continent, for well over a century, until less than 150 years ago.

I realize that this is hardly news, but sometimes it seems that white Americans have forgotten, or want to forget, that slavery ever existed, let alone so recently as the 1860s.

There are any number of ways to put it in revealing perspective. Think of the condition that European culture had achieved by the mid-1800s: the emergence of Impressionist art; the great novels of Hugo, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Dickens; the intellectual enlightenment of de Tocqueville and Descartes; the revolutionary ferment of Marx. Any average liberal arts student encounters most of these great cultural developments to some degree: the core of modern Western civilization was formulating overseas.

Meanwhile, Americans still thrashed fellow humans into pitiful servitude, and treated them legally as no more than personal property.

This unavoidable element of our nation's history is ignored over and over by ideological chauvinists who oppose Affirmative Action and civil rights legislation, who decry ""reverse discrimination"" and claim it is ""unfair"" to try to force integration or to ameliorate African Americans' disadvantages at the expense of innocent European (or Asian) Americans. (""Hey, my ancestors immigrated in 1912. I'm not responsible for slavery!"") That anyone could find in the predominance of poverty within black communities in America anything but the continuing legacy of human bondage is unfathomable, and truly frightening.

The only conceivable explanation is that some people keep forgetting about slavery:""Why the hell are you so bent over and weak? """"Well, I was a slave for forty years. They beat me twice a week. """"Oh, that's right. I forgot.

""Why the hell are so many blacks stuck in hopeless ghetto lives, resorting to drugs, crime, and violence to fill the void of their existence?

Because their great great great grandfathers were slaves; their great great grandfathers were illiterate, disenfranchised sharecroppers; their great grandfathers were dirt poor farmers or laborers who moved to Northern cities when the Depression wiped out what meager opportunities remained in the South; their grandfathers were equally poor children of the first ghettos, jobless and uneducated, with no hope for escape; and their fathers found scarcely better chances despite the prosperity of the post-War years, the hope of the civil rights movement, and the slowly emerging sense of unity among African Americans as a race.

Many of today's young blacks, of course, cannot look back through a lineage of fathers, grandfathers, and so on, because so many ""fathers,"" themselves often little more than children, disappeared before or soon after their progeny were born.

Such is the cycle of deprivation where hope is unknown. Public policy and individual determination have only dented this tragic legacy; for the majority of African Americans today, slavery's evil scars remain open. Yet the white establishment forgets about slavery, forgets about blacks, really. A ""Roots"" comes along and poignantly revives the suppressed collective memory for a while, but amnesia soon returns.

When a Jesse Jackson persists in underlining the injustice between the races, white America is concerned, or bemused, or insulted, but only occasionally inspired, the way they should be, the way otherwise despairing blacks are inspired.

Other countries have endured slavery and pay the price in their own way. In America, slavery was more dominant, more integral to the nation's economic and social fabric than anywhere else, and in the most wealthy and advanced country on earth, slavery's price is the highest of all -- and the bill has not been paid in full.

To understand rock 'n' roll, therefore, we must understand what slavery was, and where it left the sons and daughters of Africans who knew nothing of the European roots of American culture.

For slavery provides the perfect rationale, the perfect explanation for why rock 'n' roll should stand apart from other musical forms, as a cultural revolution unto itself. Every society, after all, has its indigenous music, which serves as entertainment, accompaniment to ritual and ceremony, bonding force, story teller, preserver of history. Rock 'n' roll, certainly, is modern American folk music in these respects, successor to Stephen Foster and Cole Porter.

But that is only a minor facet of rock 'n' roll's place in American, indeed in world society since 1955, and the larger elements of rock's influence reach far beyond the traditional cultural adhesive status of other folk musics.

To solidify this claim, and to explain it, we can point directly to slavery, which forcibly mixed the radically different elements of two cultures in a boiling cauldron (rather than a melting pot), bringing to white, rural, agrarian America a series of rhythmic and vocal traditions that originated on the other side of the planet in Africa, and adding an important spiritual, melancholy, almost fatalistic sensibility that grew up by itself in the slaves' imprisoned souls. This last ingredient is crucial: they didn't sing the Blues back in Africa. Rock 'n' roll is an African-American hybrid, but its strongest root is the very suffering, and survival, of generations of slaves, who learned how music could help a man to transcend earthly pain for awhile.

The Blues sings of sadness, toil, and loss, but the reason for singing the Blues is to relieve the hurt these things cause. The Blues, with its simple, repetitive rhythms and chords and lyrical phrases, provides a comforting communal message that musician and audience can share, as long as they know where the singer is coming from.

It's no wonder that Blues singers were so popular during the Depression, especially in the South, among both black and white audiences. It's also easy to understand the strong bonds between the Blues (and later R&B and rock 'n' roll) and Gospel music: from a secular point of view, singing about the Lord lifting you up and singing about the Blues fallin ' down like rain are spiritually equivalent acts.

So while the musical innovations brought to America by the Africans involved rhythm primarily, along with new variations on the use of the human voice for both melody and rhythm, their more fundamental contribution to the legacy that was to spawn rock 'n' roll was the use of the music itself for emotional, spiritual purposes.

The rhythms especially, of course, figured prominently in this application, because the drudgery of repetitious work -- picking endless bales of cotton, chopping wood, etc.

-- could be relieved somewhat by a superimposed musical rhythm. In this way the function and form of the music reinforced themselves. When the Blues evolved into a more general style in the decades following emancipation, the repetitious element remained intact, partly because it made the music easy to learn for folks who had no access to refined teaching or expensive instruments. The spiritual function also remained, but evolved, as the oppression of the slaves transformed into mere deprivation, hopelessness grew into mere purposelessness.

But it is not nearly sufficient to identify black musical heritage from slave work songs through Ragtime, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, R&B, and the like, and simply extrapolate the line further to encompass Rock 'n' Roll. Rock 'n' roll starts from these foundations, but it adds more, and what it principally adds is white America, both in the music and in the audience. White America slowly discovered the endearing, inspiring musical heritage that had become central to African Americans' lives, and, establishing a tradition that is practiced to this day, began to imitate and adapt black music.

Thus the hybrid forms arrived; at one time or another, rock 'n' roll has incorporated Country and Western, Swing, Classical, Big Band, Folk, and even Tin Pan Alley musical elements, just as it has incorporated Blues, R&B, and the other indigenous black styles.

It would be wrong, therefore, to claim that rock 'n' roll is an inherently ""black"" music, although clearly without the presence of African slaves and their descendants there would have been no rock 'n' roll to speak of. It's harder to say that without whites there wouldn't have been rock 'n' roll, partly because it's hard to imagine what that would mean in practice--American Apartheid, perhaps: no opportunity for or attempts at cultural integration.

But since white America was where all the wealth and power lay, there was never any question that the natural economic evolution of black music--or other arts, or business, or politics--would be toward gaining white favor, if only to share in the pie. White America, on the other hand, must have taken to black music solely because it was enjoyable, since there was no pecuniary incentive in the pre-civil rights era to embrace the relatively isolated, unknown African American culture.

In any event, the two groups met and formed the first and strongest cross-cultural art form in America. Rock 'n' roll belongs to that heritage only: the meeting of peoples. In America, such a meeting on practical physical terms was unique after the Civil War, although the history of international immigration and assimilation in the New World forms something of a precedent for the learning of alien traditions in this country that is probably unheard of anywhere else.

To my knowledge, no other country publicly acknowledges St. Patrick's Day, the Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, Halloween, St. Valentine's Day, all the Jewish religious holidays, and the full spectrum of Christian holidays to anything approaching the degree that the United States does.

More than a token recognition of international coexistence, however, rock 'n' roll has become a culture unto itself. It is in fact one of the few uniquely identifiable elements of what can be described as ""American"" culture: something that does not exist anywhere else in the world except as derived from its American roots.

Some other such elements might include our preoccupation with television, professional team sports, and automobiles, and perhaps our capitalist industrial imperative (not that capitalism originated here, but we may have elevated it to an industrial economy sooner and more extensively than other nations). High Tech--whatever that means, presumably industrial applications of post-World War II scientific research, especially in semiconductors and in the physical and biological sciences--may also be a part of American culture, but it is moving and changing so fast across the globe that it is perhaps one of the first features of World culture.

If so, it might compete with post-1950s rock 'n' roll (or ""rock music"" generally) for that honor, since rock has long since moved well across almost all national boundaries. Lest we forget, it is worth contemplating briefly the other significant historical events between the emancipation of the slaves and the birth of this intercultural infant in the mid-1950s.

A couple stand out: World Wars I and II. The first was important, in this context, mostly for indirect reasons, i.e., it set the stage for the second.

The time period and circumstances of World War I also brought about rapid developments in the technology of radio communication, whose commercial application starting in the 1920s lay the single most vital industrial foundation for rock 'n' roll's eventual emergence. Quite simply, prior to radio, there was almost no means of hearing music without being present at its live performance.

The occasional exception was for the fortunate few owners of phonographs, and the fortunate fewer among musicians who had their music recorded. Of course, radio and recording technology have been cohabitating since the earliest amateur broadcasters spun classical discs into makeshift transmitters from their garages for neighborhood listeners. Recording is the older of the pair, and recorded music predates the twentieth century, but only with the advent of radio did records obtain the vehicle to become a truly mass medium.

Perhaps the oldest truism in what has come to be called the ""Recording Industry"" is that people won't buy a record unless they've heard it first (especially one by a new group or musician).

Radio created a means for people to sample records, and thus the opportunity for record sales to produce significant profits--significant enough by the middle of the century to make millionaires out of a few ""recording artists,"" and to create an incentive for countless small time entrepreneurs to get into the business of finding, developing, and marketing such artists on their own independent record labels. That radio is the spinal chord in this industry's nervous system is fairly obvious today; what is worth remembering is how relatively new radio is to the history of music. Its dramatic rise as an entertainment medium in the late 1920s, and dominance of American culture in the subsequent two decades before television's ascension, directly and crucially paralleled the transformations and cross-pollinations of musical styles that finally became rock 'n' roll.

In a way, although most nostalgic memories of the Golden Days of radio focus on proto-television-type dramas, comedies, news flashes, and advertisements, radio's most enduring legacy may be this musical metamorphosis that began with the inception of radio technology and reached maturity just as radio was giving way to television in America's living rooms.

Indeed, even radio's relative fall from prominence as a multi-faceted, universal entertainment source may have spurred rock 'n' roll's success, because with television taking over all the serial and variety programs, there was a lot of spare air time needing to be filled, and recorded music was the ideal, inexpensive choice.

During radio's heyday, however, music was only one of a potpourri of selections available along the dial--but it was this very diversity of programming that allowed music itself to evolve. Never before had it been possible for different racial and regional populations to encounter each other's native musical styles without actually venturing out to a live performance, which in the case of the Blues might have meant an impromptu backyard boogie session, or just as likely a spirited gathering behind state prison walls; or in the case of white country music, a hoedown on the farm.

In either event, white and black music lovers would not have felt particularly comfortable in the others' environment. With radio's non-discriminatory access to transmissions from anywhere within the vicinity--which on a clear night can amount to hundreds of miles in any direction--widely diverse groups could meet and learn about each other without having to travel, or to hang out where they were drastically out of place.

It was even possible to encounter appealing, unfamiliar music somewhere along the dial and not realize how relatively alien was its source.

That is, it was no secret that certain stations or programs played primarily black or ""race"" music, and more often than not vocal distinctions alone would reveal a singer's ethnicity, but to notice those distinctions one had to be reasonably aware of the other group in the first place, and furthermore one had to be thinking in terms of racial differences, rather than music for its own sake.

For many listeners, it was enough to discover something different and exciting on the radio; they could enjoy it without worrying about its larger social significance.

And when the ""audience"" consisted of musicians themselves--people who were interested in developing their own stylistic variations--racial or cultural differences were truly irrelevant compared with the inspiration afforded by a new sound. Imagine how that odd beat, or use of guitar or horns, or that funny lyrical twist or uplifting voice, crackling across the evening airwaves, must have sounded to the musical entrepreneurs of the 1920s and 1930s.

Imagine how hearing Blues greats like Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson for the first time affected fledgling composers struggling to adapt their songs to contemporary tastes.

Even the Jazz giants of the era--Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and the rest--extended their influence through radio play and record sales, as well as through movies and sheet music distribution, to reach distant audiences that would have been inaccessible otherwise, and their consequent effect upon the growth of such hybrid forms as Western Swing and urban ""Jump"" Blues was considerable.

Still, the bulk of this musical experimentation was taking place far from the awareness of the general public, at what might be thought of as the ""cutting edge"" of U. S. cultural development.

Most Americans were little concerned with music at all, as the country struggled to withstand the ravages of the Depression, and hurtled once again toward War overseas.

What music they did attend to consisted mostly of Hollywood and Broadway show tunes, big band numbers, and the crooning of such emerging stars as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and the Andrews Sisters. Music itself, although always important, was simply not as central an element of average Americans' daily lives as it has been for those of us who grew up in the Rock Era. There were, of course, no ""stereos"" nor any equipment capable of reproducing music at a quality level remotely approaching live or in-studio sound.

Most rock fans, I would guess, would soon tire of the music if the best sound systems they had available were equivalent to 1940s vintage monaural phonographs, or even the best radios of the time. In such an environment, a catchy tune and sing-along lyrics were about the best one could expect to hold a wide audience's interest; it's doubtful that a fuzz-box and Hendrix-style feedback would have made much of an impression.

Owning a large record collection, which today is as common as filling a few bookshelves with paperbacks, was for seriously devoted fans only, usually Classical or Jazz aficionados.

Life in the 1930s and 1940s just involved other sets of tastes, interests, and priorities for the majority of the population. And as of December 7, 1941, the principal preoccupation of virtually the entire population became the War.

Now here's another topic that a lot of us don't keep in perspective, I think. The War. The entire rock 'n' roll era, the entire rock generation, has been a ""post-War"" phenomenon, which means that nearly all of us, almost everyone involved with and interested in rock, did not experience and does not remember the War. As the years go by, the percentage of the U. S. population answering to that description grows larger and larger; we've long since been a majority.

As a post-War child myself, by about 14 years, I can no better speak from personal knowledge of that period than I can of slavery or the Depression, but I sense--in my parents and grandparents, in the older generation of politicians, businesspersons, retirees, and veterans, in the recollections of books, films photographs, headlines--something of the meaning of the War for those who lived through it.

Or perhaps more accurately, I sense the absence of that meaning for those of us who did not know the War.

For America, World War II lasted only 3 years and 8 months: not long from the point of view of one's entire lifetime. To most of us, the memories of any specific four year period of adulthood soon become blurred as we grow and change and encounter perpetual newness through life. Change, in fact, is so constant for us these days that the mid-1970s, say, 1974 through 1978, seem ancient and largely irrelevant to today's world.

For those who lived through the War, however, I believe it was different. For two or three entire generations of Americans--school children, young adults, older citizens, all of the 100 million or so people living and aware in this country during the years 1941 through 1945--the War became the most significant, indelible memory of their lives, coloring and shaping and controlling their every thought and perception of the world for all the decades that followed.

This is to say nothing in particular of those who actually fought in the War, and came home injured or heroic or not at all; nor do I refer at the moment to Europeans and their front yard view of the War, nor even to the refugees who fled here from destruction and genocide--all these were naturally changed forever by World War II: they were among its victims.

I'm pointing rather to the vast group of Americans who had no direct personal involvement with the Hell-on-Earth occurring overseas, who simply stayed home and did their part, sending off sons and husbands and brothers to fight, buying war bonds, writing letters, running air raid drills, watching newsreels, and hoping that the boys would come home safely.

This was by far the majority of Americans: the spectators to the War, the audience. They had no idea, just as those of us who never went near Vietnam have no idea, what the war was really like, in the trenches, the camps, the airplanes and ships.

But because they were the audience, and because the show was so absolutely all encompassing, they too were profoundly affected by it, forever. Four years may be short to present memories, but imagine watching a movie that lasts for four years.

A movie that is excruciatingly tense, with thousands of subplots, spectacular heroes and heroines, hideous villains, constant gut-wrenching plot twists, tremendous poignancy, anguish, excitement, fear, and whose ending--cataclysmic and joyous, horrifying and exultant--is uncertain until the very last hours. You go to bed with the latest developments on your mind, you wake up to learn what has happened while you slept, while the four-year movie played continuously.

And you have no choice but to watch it, to follow the story, because it is on every screen, covered on the front pages of every newspaper, every day, bulletins flashing from every radio, and everyone around you is watching at the same time.

For four years. Now try to imagine, more than all of this, that it's no movie, it's real life, out there, somewhere: it's colossal evil and immeasurable fear, untold sacrifice and suffering, superhuman heroism, pain and death, glory and triumph, every day, unrelenting, overwhelming.

You may not experience any of it yourself (perhaps if you did, it would be easier to cope with, to understand), but you are acutely aware at every breathing moment that it is happening, that its outcome is supremely important to your future, the world's future, there's little you can do to help but you are compelled to join in with everyone else and try, and even when those occasional moments arrive when some nearby distraction (a party?

your wedding? your child's birth?) takes your attention away, you only feel all the more inside how insignificant is everything in your life in comparison with what's happening over there, in the War.

Try to imagine it, and realize that you cannot possibly begin to imagine it, but know that for tens of millions of Americans, your parents and grandparents, it happened.

Don't think for a nanosecond that you've been through anything remotely similar because you haven't, because there hasn't been a World War III: the Koreas and Vietnams and Iraqs are but a blip on the screen by any standard of comparison. The bottom line on World War II is that modern American (and world) history began when it ended; World War II was the Genesis, the Big Bang, that set in motion all that has occurred in the subsequent decades; nothing since that time is unrelated to the War.

So it's all very good to talk about historical trends in American music from a detached perspective: Blues, Jazz, Swing, Tin Pan Alley, Rhythm and Blues, Country, Rock 'n' Roll .

. . and, oh yeah, those ""patriotic"" songs during the War era. But the truth is that life stopped, evolution ceased, and music was swallowed along with the rest of America by the War, and what it spit out afterward was not simply a continuation of what had already been going on before, but a new, different, clean slate: post-War music, or a post-War stage on which to strike up a brand new band. Because the War generations, you see, were destined to live with the War, and all of its trappings, permanently thereafter. The image of the War would remain vivid in infinite glorifying films, shows, stories, fiction and truth.

The music of the era would continue too, in Sinatra and Glen Miller tunes, in Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, in all the stars and sounds that rose to prominence in that time, and whose entertaining provided bittersweet respite from the anxiety and intensity.

For the War generation, new music, invented afterward, could serve no purpose, perhaps because there was no purpose left to serve. With War over, there was less reason for these veterans to become passionate, to look for escapes or inspirations; placid, repetitive entertainment, basking in the mellow glow of victory over despair, might be enough.

Rock 'n' roll fans and critics tend to deride Tin Pan Alley ""crooners"" for their slow, syrupy love songs, with no beat and sleepy string arrangements (Joe Piscopo's Sinatra goof is the quintessential rock satire of this style), but I'm not sure we always understand where that audience of ""Music of Your Life"" listeners is coming from.

Why would they need upbeat, loud, exciting, fast music like rock 'n' roll? They had World War II, enough excitement to last a lifetime, thank you.

If we begin to understand that perspective, then we can find some insight into how rock 'n' roll did appeal to the post-War generation. By 1954, anyone who was a teenager was personally unacquainted with World War II; even a 19 year-old had only been ten when it ended, and the younger teens had been infants while the War raged. By the mid-1950s, the Baby Boom--kids born in droves to returning soldiers and their wives, and to the generally jubilant and prosperous population of post-War America--was starting to grow up, and to listen to rock 'n' roll.

This vast new chunk of humanity between our shores could not possibly share the feelings and memories of their parents, could not know what the War had meant, and how profoundly it had influenced the older generations.

They could not, in truth, share their parents' complacency with the post-War world, peaceful and prosperous and unthreatening as it was in contrast to what came before.

If anything, it was the absence of any great challenge, whether war, depression, industrialization, or political change, that spawned the celebrated restlessness of young Americans in the 1950s. The symbol of the generation, James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause, testified to the itching need of teenagers to discover some purpose in their lives.

Whereas a decade before, every moment of every day had brought vitally important developments and concerns that affected the entire country, mid-1950s daily life was, on the surface, drab and unchanging. Ike was President for eight years. The Korean conflict and the Cold War were disturbing, but remote and ultimately meaningless to kids.

The situation was a little different for young African Americans, however. Their restlessness did find an outlet, a purpose, in their own home towns: the cause of justice and dignity.

Perhaps--and this is only a guess--the presence of an underlying sense of purpose embodied in the emerging black music of the time is what appealed so much to white youth. It wasn't the lyrics, really. The Blues talked of pain, but usually man/woman pain, not social injustice.

The newer, upbeat style known as Rhythm and Blues as often spoke of dance (""Good Rockin ' Tonight,"" ""Shake, Rattle, & Roll""), or cars (""Rocket 88""), or sex (""Work with Me, Annie,"" ""Sixty Minute Man""), or dreamy love ("" Sh -Boom,"" ""Earth Angel,"" ""Sincerely""), as it did of hurt (""Hound Dog,"" "" (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean,"" "" Ain't It a Shame"").

It may have been that specific words weren't necessary, that the feeling of the music was enough. Black music in the late '40s and early '50s was finding newer and stronger means to express the solidarity felt within the black community, how that community differed from the white controlled world, and how, in truth, African Americans were becoming proud of the difference.

Music itself, with a steady, upbeat rhythm, was central to the community identity, and the pleasures and passions of life that blacks expressed through their music may have seemed more immediate and authentic because of the composers' and performers' real sense of alienation.

The political purpose of civil rights was only just beginning to surface as a unifying cause among blacks, and it was arguably the tightening of the community through cultural communication that gave rise to civil rights awareness in the first place, not the other way around. Thus, the purposefulness to be found in black music was perhaps no more complicated than the joy with which the made it, the joy of a close-knit people discovering themselves.

Most white Americans lacked any sense of group alienation--after all, their ""kind"" had ruled the land for centuries--but white teenagers, who felt cut off from their parents' past, might have been attracted to black communal expressions because of their own emerging sense of loneliness.

Liking black music was tantamount to wanting to join the group. In any event, the rock 'n' roll legends tell of how it slowly became apparent to a few foresighted record store owners, and then disc jockeys, and then producers, that black music was appealing to more and more young whites, that a new social trend was underway, far from the mainstream of popular entertainment, but not so far that there wasn't any money to be made from it. Sometime in the early 1950s, the term Rhythm and Blues entered the popular lexicon, and a handful of entrepreneurs began trying to exploit the commercial possibilities of this newly defined genre.

Hindsight relates that the likes of Alan Freed, Sam and Dewey Phillips, the Bihari and Chess Brothers, and Ahmet Ertegun were visionaries who single-mindedly forged ahead through the doubts and rejection of the traditional radio and recording industry establishment and arrived at the glorious new horizon that they had always perceived before them.

Hindsight, however, is usually even less clear than foresight; what is more likely is that these and other pioneers took chances on new music because they had no opportunity to succeed by pushing traditional music. They were outsiders, innovators, small time gamblers without connections into the big time corporations that dominated fields, and they had nothing to lose by exploring new paths.

If Sam Phillips could have recorded Perry Como and Nat ""King"" Cole at the peak of their careers, don't doubt that he would have. In that event, however, it is just as likely that Elvis Presley would have happened upon some other, equally hungry upstart, and history might not have changed too much. In this sense, the emergence of numerous alternative radio programs and independent labels, and the parallel growth of R&B, is perhaps creditable less to specific individuals than to the general economic health of the nation during the early 1950s.

An improved economy created the excess leisure time and spending money that teenagers invested in musical entertainment, and it established the relatively favorable conditions that permitted small start-up companies to enter the marketplace, with low initial costs, and expanding demand that was not being served by the existing, risk-averse and prejudiced giants of the industry.

From an economic perspective, in fact, one can make a good case that the popular music revolution of the 1950s is extremely comparable to the personal computer revolution of the 1980s--but that would be a rather dull digression, so I won't pursue it.

Certainly Sam Phillips and company had some vision, however, and more important, they had taste. The founding producers of rock 'n' roll liked the music they created, and were undoubtedly driven in their quest to make it popular by their own enjoyment of what they were doing as well as by the profit motive.

It bothers me that Phillips's most well known pre-Elvis observation was something to the effect that ""If I could find a white man who sings like a black man, I could make a fortune"".

Dwelling upon this quote creates the impression of a cynical, racist, dispassionate greed in the man, as if he almost resented having to record black singers.

I don't know what Phillips's prejudices might have been, but it's unlikely he was a racist given the business he was in and his role in developing R&B as well as rockabilly performers.

His statement was obviously an accurate characterization of the entrenched segregation in the music industry, and an astute analysis of how it was evolving. If it would take a white performer to open the ears of the parochial masses, then that would be (and was) a good thing, since the white audience's new found awareness of this captivating musical form would benefit its original (black) practitioners as much as the white imitators who first spread the word.

Indeed, the endless white covers of R&B numbers like "" Sh -Boom,"" ""Hearts of Stone,"" and ""Sincerely"" that topped the pop charts in 1953-54 directly helped to ""legitimize"" R&B as a style (albeit watered down) with a wider audience, and rather than stealing revenues from the original artists, provided a further opportunity for them to prosper as a group. To rock 'n' roll purists, these cover recordings are nauseating, lacking the very soul that makes the originals so enticing, but to the uninitiated older white mainstream, the schmaltzy dilution of rhythms and instrumentation and lily white vocal styles were just close enough to the more familiar Tin Pan Alley sound to be both appealing and unthreatening.

As far as a large portion of the white audience was concerned, rock 'n' roll was more plausible as an evolutionary than as a revolutionary concept.

The Crew Cuts were no menace to God and Country. For teenagers, however, restlessness and alienation must have been approaching historic proportions by 1955, for all at once the levee broke, and a tidal wave swept through.--END CHAPTER 1--Go to Chapter 2, Beginnings Return to Summary DNT Rock 'n' Roll Pages David N. Townsend: The Site Disclaimer: This is an unpublished manuscript, made available to the public for your personal interest and reaction.

It may not be reprinted, copied, or distributed in any manner, without express permission of the author.

I neither ask nor receive any financial compensation for this document. Hence, although I use quotes from several published song lyrics without having obtained formal permission of the copyright owner, there is no violation of copyright, since this document is not ""published"" or sold in any meaningful sense. "

punk rock; punk Hypernyms (""punk"" is a kind of...):rock; rock 'n' roll; rock and roll; rock music; rock'n'roll; rock-and-roll (a genre of popular music originating in the 1950s; a blend of Black rhythm-and-blues with White country-and-western)

PUNK

"Audio English.org » Dictionary » P » Punctually ... Purana PUNKPronunciation (US): Dictionary entry overview: What does punk mean?• PUNK (noun) The noun PUNK has 5 senses:1. an aggressive and violent young criminal 2. substance that smolders when ignited; used to light fuses (especially fireworks) 3. material for starting a fire 4. a teenager or young adult who is a performer (or enthusiast) of punk rock and a member of the punk youth subculture 5. rock music with deliberately offensive lyrics expressing anger and social alienation; in part a reaction against progressive rock Familiarity information: PUNK used as a noun is common.• PUNK (adjective) The adjective PUNK has 1 sense:1. of very poor quality; flimsy Familiarity information: PUNK used as an adjective is very rare.

Dictionary entry details• PUNK (noun)Sense 1 punk [BACK TO TOP]Meaning: An aggressive and violent young criminal Classified under: Nouns denoting people Synonyms:toughie; hood; hoodlum; punk; strong-armer; thug; tough; goon Hypernyms (""punk"" is a kind of...):criminal; crook; felon; malefactor; outlaw (someone who has committed (or been legally convicted of) a crime)Sense 2 punk [BACK TO TOP]Meaning: Substance that smolders when ignited; used to light fuses (especially fireworks)Classified under: Nouns denoting substances Hypernyms (""punk"" is a kind of...):igniter; ignitor; lighter (a substance used to ignite or kindle a fire)Sense 3 punk [BACK TO TOP]Meaning: Material for starting a fire Classified under: Nouns denoting substances Synonyms:kindling; touchwood; spunk; tinder; punk Hypernyms (""punk"" is a kind of...):igniter; ignitor; lighter (a substance used to ignite or kindle a fire)Sense 4 punk [BACK TO TOP]Meaning: A teenager or young adult who is a performer (or enthusiast) of punk rock and a member of the punk youth subculture Classified under: Nouns denoting people Synonyms:punk rocker; punk Hypernyms (""punk"" is a kind of...):adolescent; stripling; teen; teenager (a juvenile between the onset of puberty and maturity)Holonyms (""punk"" is a member of...):punks (a youth subculture closely associated with punk rock music in the late 1970s; in part a reaction to the hippy subculture; dress was optional but intended to shock (plastic garbage bags or old school uniforms) and hair was dyed in bright colors (in Mohican haircuts or sometimes spiked in bright plumes))Sense 5 punk [BACK TO TOP]Meaning: Rock music with deliberately offensive lyrics expressing anger and social alienation; in part a reaction against progressive rock Classified under: Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents Synonyms:

• PUNK (adjective)Sense 1 punk [BACK TO TOP]Meaning: Of very poor quality; flimsy Synonyms:punk; crummy; chintzy; cheesy; bum; sleazy; tinny; cheap Similar:inferior (of low or inferior quality)Domain usage:colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)Learn English with... Proverbs of the week""Give the Devil his due."" (English proverb) ""Two watermelons can’t be grabbed in one hand."" (Afghanistan proverb) ""Movement is a blessing.""

(Arabic proverb) ""He who has money and friends, turns his nose at justice."" (Corsican proverb)PUNK: related words searches» What does ignitor mean?

» Meaning of teenager » Meaning of rock 'n' roll » What does rock'n'roll mean? » inferior: pronunciation in phonetic transcription PUNITIVELYPUNITORILYPUNITORYPUNJABPUNJABIPUNKPUNK ROCKPUNK ROCKERPUNKAHPUNKEYEnglish learning courses About Practical English About Telephone English About Accounting English Learn English Free English Language Dictionary British and American English pronunciation Other popular searches:» what does travesty mean » oaxaca » coveted meaning » tailorbird » what does intimidating mean Page delivered in 0.1103 seconds "

ill.1951: Willie Kizert with Ike Turner & His Kings of Rhythm The song widely credited with being the first rock and roll single of all time also offers, with similar broad acceptance, the first distorted guitar tone on record.

The Kinks Guitarists have long enjoyed a torrid love affair with the sound of a filthy guitar — whether achieved by overdriven amp, distortion pedal, or fuzz box — but it was not always thus. Right up until the late 1960s, tube guitar amplifiers were designed to maximize clean headroom, and recording studio engineers were likewise trained to banish distortion from their signal chains.

If a fuzzy or distorted sound reared its beautifully ugly head, it was considered a mistake, a fault, a problem… Until, that is, one adventurous guitarist after another bent that fat hairy tone to their creative needs and dragged distortion kicking and screaming into the realm of the legitimate musical tool.

Even well into the mid ’60s guitarists had to fight straight-laced engineers, who still sought to banish distortion from the studio (and you can’t really blame these guys: they were trained by the book, and they also had a lot of expensive gear to look after).

Only after a raft of songs containing distorted guitars landed major radio hits in the USA and the UK did the sound become widely accepted.

Rockers will argue incessantly about which early ’60s guitarist recorded the first distorted electric guitar sound. But distortion — fuzz, overdrive, call it what you will — occurs plenty naturally in tube amps when you treat ’em mean, so this tone easily predates the invention of the fuzz box.

So, while we still argue about first recorded fuzz tone or distorted guitar, and so on, it’s hard to believe that blues guitarists by the bucketload even back in the late ’30s and ’40s weren’t cranking up their amps and wailing for all they were worth in juke joints across the country, even if no one was on hand to roll tape.

We can only imagine the creamy sweet overdriven tones that were lost to posterity, but lets check out a list of five early pioneers who bent such sounds to their w

Backing up singer Jackie Brenston and recording as the imaginary band “His Delta Cats”, Ike Turner & His Kings of Rhythm dropped their tweed Fender amplifier on the way into the studio one dark, rainy night in 1951. The jolt shorted one of the amp’s output tubes, but with no replacement available guitarist Willie Kizert soldiered on with the fuzzy, sputtering tone of a push-pull amp firing on just one output tube, and in the process recorded what is widely accepted as the first distorted guitar sound, heard on the single “Rocket 88”.

A fortuitous and gloriously absurd confluence of failings, but that’s so often the way sonic history is made. Watch and listen to this …1961: Grady Martin with Marty Robbins (courtesy of engineer Glen Snotty)While recording Marty Robbins’s soon-to-be hit single “Don’t Worry” in a Nashville studio, engineer Glen Snotty suffered a faulty tube preamp in the mixer channel into which Grady Martin was DI’ing his tic-tac (6-string) bass.

The jarring, fuzzy sound that ensued helped to make “Don’t Worry” a major smash, and after retaining the faulty tube pre as-is for a time — offering it to clients to use as requested – snotty reverse-engineered the broken channel, and reproduced it in a transistorized unit that would be sold to Gibson, to be manufactured as the Maestro Fuzz-Tone.

And, what goes around comes around, as we shall see a little further below…Watch and listen below …1963: Bernie Watson with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages Churning out an odd blend of rock and roll, early goth, and British proto-psychobilly, Screaming Lord (David) Sutch penned and sang songs with a distinctly Halloween-ish bent, none more so than his most famous single, 1963’s “Jack the Ripper”.

In addition to the morbid lyrics and hilariously atrocious backing singers, the song also featured fuzzy guitar noodlings throughout, performed by Savages guitarist Bernie Watson.

Even more fun than all of this is the fact that the still-vampirishly-clad Sutch would later found the Monster Raving Loony Party in the UK and run against Margaret Thatcher time and again in the British parliamentary elections. Watch and listen below …1964: Dave Davies with The Kinks Although there were clearly other examples of recorded distortion in the charts before his, Dave Davies’s fab filth on The Kinks’ hit “You Really Got Me” still deserves its place in history.

The result, once again, of faulty gear in the truest sense, the broken link in the sound chain was, this time, entirely intentional, rendered by Davies himself. Having messed around with a little Elpico student amp patched through a Vox AC30 in his efforts to achieve the sound he was seeking for the track, and failed, the Kink sought more drastic measures.

“I started to get really frustrated,” Davies told me in an interview conducted in 1999, “and I said, ‘I know — I’ll fix you …’ I got a single-sided Gilette razor blade and cut round the (speaker) cone like this [demonstrates slitting from the center to the edge of the cone], so it was all shredded but still on there.

I played and I thought it was amazing, really freaky. I felt like an inventor.” You were Dave, and you landed one classic and rocking track in the process.

Watch …1965: Keith Richards with The Rolling Stones Purportedly written around a riff that stones guitarist Keith Richards had heard in a dream, “ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was recorded in May of 1965, and featured the now-famous guitar hook played through a Maestro Fuzz-Tone.

Some stories have it that Richards never liked the honking, nasal tone of that guitar track, and originally laid it down as the holding place for a horn riff to eventually follow. Certain reports indicate that the rest of the band convinced him to keep it, others that they tried the horns and the result didn’t improve the track, so Richards agreed to let it stand. Either way, it became a major milestone in fuzz history. Watch this …

By the 1950's, the double bass found its way into many popular groups at the dawn of rock'n'roll's inception, including notable favorites like Bill Haley and the Comets. Today, the double bass is still widely used, and within this section of options, you'll find a wide variety of exceptional models to choose from.

Double Basses

25Items Display: Sort by: Page:115% off with code Silver Creek Thumper Upright String Bass Outfit5.0 (1 Reviews)$1,299.99Compare20% off with code Silver Creek Rocker Upright String Bass Outfit3.5 (4 Reviews)$1,599.99Compare15% off with code Bellafina Musicale Series Bass Outfit3.0 (1 Reviews)$1,399.99Open Box: $1,301.99Compare Best Seller Engelhardt C1 Concert Double Bass & Outfit5.0 (1 Reviews)$1,379.99Compare Best Seller Ren Wei Shi Academy Series Double Bass Outfit4.5 (2 Reviews)Starting at $1,399.99Open Box: $1,127.99Compare Best Seller Stentor Student Series Double Bass Outfit0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$1,539.99Compare Best Seller Palatino Billy Bass 3/4-Size Upright Bass3.5 (3 Reviews)$1,124.99Compare20% off with code Knilling 1200 Sebastian Deluxe Laminate Series Double Bass...0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$1,695.00Compare10% off with code Florea Lupeni Double Bass Outfit4.0 (1 Reviews)$1,399.99Compare Top Rated Engelhardt ES1 Supreme Double Bass5.0 (3 Reviews)$1,979.99Compare Top Rated Engelhardt ES9 Swingmaster Double Bass5.0 (3 Reviews)Starting at $2,079.99Compare Engelhardt M3 1/4 Size Junior Double Bass5.0 (1 Reviews)$1,169.99Compare20% off with code Bellafina Prodigy Series Double Bass Outfit0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$1,899.99Compare Silver Creek LR-102 Lee Rocker Tuxedo Bass3.0 (1 Reviews)$1,999.99Compare10% off with code Cremona SB-2 Premier Student Series Bass Outfit2.0 (2 Reviews)$1,174.99Open Box From: $939.99Compare Cremona SB-3 Upright Bass0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$1,499.99Compare20% off with code Knilling 1202 Sebastian Hybrid Series Double Bass Outfit0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$1,995.00Compare15% off with code Etude String Bass Outfit0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$879.99Compare15% off with code Etude BASS-ICS String Bass Outfit0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$999.99Open Box From: $639.99Compare Maple Leaf Strings Model 140 Craftsman Collection...0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$4,950.00Compare Maple Leaf Strings Model 130 Craftsman Collection...0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$4,600.00Compare Maple Leaf Strings MLS 110 Apprentice Collection Double...0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$2,659.00Compare Maple Leaf Strings MLS 120 Apprentice Collection Double...0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$3,159.00Compare Maple Leaf Strings Model 150 Craftsman Collection Gamba...0 Reviews (0 Reviews)$7,200.00Compare Ren Wei Shi Model 705 Double Bass5.0 (1 Reviews)$3,199.99Compare Display: Sort by: Page:1The largest and lowest-pitched member of the viol family, the double bass dates back to the 15th century, and is generally considered to be the grandfather of the string family.

A staple in classical music, as well as dance and jazz bands, the double bass can be played with a bow, or by plucking the strings with your fingers.

Whether you're a budding orchestral student or a touring rockabilly artist, this selection contains an extensive range of double basses from well-known and renowned brands.

From Bellafina and Engelhardt to Etude, Florea and many more, these companies consist of experienced craftsmen who take pride in assuring that every double bass is made with meticulous attention to beauty, durability and playability. For a double bass with impeccable construction and a rich sound, the Bellafina Model 50 double bass outfit is considered to be one of the finest models available for advancing student players.

With its thumbwheel height adjusters on the bridge to accommodate various playing styles, as well as its slender neck for quick movement on faster orchestral passages, this double bass is the full package at a more than affordable price.

Another option to think about is the Palatino Upright 3/4 â€“ Size Billy Bass. Containing a cutaway design for easy access to the upper mid-section of the fingerboard, this model is actually one of few cutaway upright basses currently available. Plus, the instrument's maple bridge makes changing the tone easy, allowing you to go from hopping rockabilly sounds to cool and warm jazz.

One of the many great things about taking up a musical instrument is coming to realize that you don't have to stick to your instruments commonly associated genre once you master it. The double bass is a perfect example of an instrument that has spanned many genres over countless centuries, which is why anyone with a passion for music can benefit from learning one. Rest assured, if the double bass is something that interests you, a remarkable model can easily be found, right here.

Alan Freed, the Cleveland disc jockey credited with coining the phrase ""rock and roll,"" was the master of ceremonies at many of the first rock concerts, including his 1955 Easter Jubilee. The roots of rock and roll lay in African American blues and gospel.

53d. America Rocks and Rolls

"53d. America Rocks and Rolls The prosperity of the '50s allowed teenagers to spend money on records by their favorite bands and singers.

Rock and roll was everything the suburban 1950s were not. While parents of the decade were listening to Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and big bands, their children were moving to a new beat. In fact, to the horror of the older generation, their children were twisting, thrusting, bumping, and grinding to the sounds of rock and roll.

This generation of youth was much larger than any in recent memory, and the prosperity of the era gave them money to spend on records and phonographs. By the end of the decade, the phenomenon of rock and roll helped define the difference between youth and adulthood. The Roots of Rock

As the Great Migration brought many African Americans to the cities of the north, the sounds of rhythm and blues attracted suburban teens. Due to segregation and racist attitudes, however, none of the greatest artists of the genre could get much airplay. Disc jockey Alan Freed began a rhythm-and-blues show on a Cleveland radio station. Soon the audience grew and grew, and Freed coined the term ""rock and roll.

""Early attempts by white artists to cover R&B songs resulted in weaker renditions that bled the heart and soul out of the originals. Record producers saw the market potential and began to search for a white artist who could capture the African American sound. Chuck Berry's songs about girls and cars hit a nerve with American teens and sent his star rising high in the early days of rock and roll.

Sam Phillips, a Memphis record producer, found the answer in Elvis Presley. With a deep Southern sound, pouty lips, and gyrating hips, Elvis took an old style and made it his own. From Memphis, the sound spread to other cities, and demand for Elvis records skyrocketed. Within two years, Elvis was the most popular name in the entertainment business.

After the door to rock and roll acceptance was opened, African American performers such as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard began to enjoy broad success, as well. White performers such as Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis also found artistic freedom and commercial success.

Satan's Music Elvis Presley brought rock-and-roll music to the masses during the 1950s with hits such as ""Love Me Tender"" and ""Heartbreak Hotel. ""Rock and roll sent shockwaves across America. A generation of young teenagers collectively rebelled against the music their parents loved.

In general, the older generation loathed rock and roll. Appalled by the new styles of dance the movement evoked, churches proclaimed it Satan's music. Because rock and roll originated among the lower classes and a segregated ethnic group, many middle-class whites thought it was tasteless.

Rock and roll records were banned from many radio stations and hundreds of schools. But the masses spoke louder.

When Elvis appeared on TV's The Ed Sullivan Show, the show's ratings soared. Rock and roll is the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression — lewd, sly, in plain fact, dirty — a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac and the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the earth.– Frank Sinatra (1957)The commercial possibilities were limitless.

As a generation of young adults finished military service, bought houses in suburbia, and longed for stability and conformity, their children seemed to take comfort for granted. They wanted to release the tensions that bubbled beneath the smooth surface of postwar America. Above all, they wanted to shake, rattle, and roll. "

Many people believe rock and roll began with Elvis Presley in 1954. However, you can't give credit to Elvis without recognizing the role his producer, Sam Phillips, played in discovering this young talent in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis certainly made rock and roll more popular, but even he didn't claim to have invented rock and roll.

Who Invented Rock and Roll?

"Today’s Wonder of the Day was inspired by Emery. Emery Wonders, “ Where does the term ""rock and roll"" come from?

” Thanks for WONDERing with us, Emery!Listen W e were putting up hay in the Wonderopolis barn loft the other day when we overheard an interesting conversation between a couple of the cows: Cow 1: Hey Bessie! What are you listening to? Cow 2: Howdy Buttercup! I just love this new song by Justin Beefer. He's my favorite!Cow 1: Really?

I've never been a big fan of his. Cow 2: Why not? Who's your favorite musician? Cow 1: I have several favorites: Lady Moo Moo, Green Hay, New Calves on the Block, Fleetwood Milk, Moo Fighters, Udders 'n Hoses. Cow 2: Wow, Buttercup! I had no idea you loved music so much!We had no idea that cows loved music so much either!

As we finished up our work in the loft, the cows' conversation echoed in our minds. They seemed to prefer good old rock and roll music. Has that always been the case? And just who invented rock and roll anyway? Rock and roll — sometimes written rock 'n' roll or rock & roll — can be hard to describe, but people know it when they hear it.

Compared to other styles of music, it's more exotic and thrilling. It's fun. It's spontaneous. It's like an uninhibited soundtrack for rebellion. Rock and roll was born in America in the 1950s and, like America, its creation was the work of many people over many years.

No one person can claim to have invented rock and roll. Instead, rock and roll was the convergence of various paths simultaneously heading to the same destination. Black rhythm and blues artists alongside white pop and country artists learned from one another and began mixing their sounds. Savvy producers and visionary disc jockeys discovered a new audience — teenagers — and began to promote and develop a new style of music that spoke to the youth of the day. It was a new style that brought together the best of what had been brewing for years.

He knew its roots went back farther to the people who influenced him, such as B. B. King, Ray Charles, and Ike Turner.

The new sounds developing in the early 1950s were promoted to a young audience by a variety of influential radio disc jockeys. Perhaps the most influential of these was Alan Freed of Cleveland, Ohio. His late-night radio show, The Moondog Rock & Roll House Party, helped to popularize this new genre as ""rock and roll.

""Freed began organizing concerts in Cleveland. The first such concert caused a riot when so many people showed up that the venue couldn't hold them all. The youth of Cleveland loved Freed's show and the new music he was promoting. Today, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame calls Cleveland home.

Other pioneers of the new sound called rock and roll included Fats Domino, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis. One other early pioneer — Chuck Berry — is often given credit by rock and roll historians as perhaps the single musician who came closest to putting all the essential pieces together and establishing rock and roll as a songwriter's medium. No matter who you give credit to, rock and roll evolved from a mixture of musical styles in a way that seemed inevitable.

If it hadn't been Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, it would've been others in their place. What is sure is that their contributions helped to create a new genre of music that changed music itself forever. Long live rock and roll! "

Presley's session was credited with inventing rock and roll The studio session for Elvis Presley's debut single has been voted the most pivotal moment in rock history. Mojo magazine readers named Elvis' Sun Records session in July 1954, when he recorded That's All Right, as the key world-changing moment in music.

Bob Dylan's switch from acoustic to electric guitars in 1965 came second, ahead of the release of The Clash's debut single White Riot in 1977. Nirvana's 1990 tour was the most recent event in the top 10, at number 9. MOJO'S TOP 10 ROCK MOMENTS1. Elvis Presley records That's All Right, 19542. Bob Dylan goes electric, 19653. The Clash release White Riot, 19774.

The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, 19645. The Rolling Stones release Jumpin' Jack Flash, 1968Have your say on the results Presley recorded That's All Right at the age of 19 after going into the studio the previous year to record a track for his mother's birthday.

His name was kept on file because producers liked his voice. When he was called back, he sang several unspectacular ballads but then broke into a version of That's All Right, which had been a hit for blues singer Arthur ""Big Boy"" Crudup.

Presley added a country edge to it and, together with bassist Bill Black and guitarist Scotty Moore, was credited with inventing rock and roll at that moment.

Moore told Mojo: ""It was still too early to tell what was gonna happen but soon enough we realised that was had a real product on our hands.

""The Beatles do not appear on the list until number four, for their 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in the US, which made them global stars. The release of The Rolling Stones' 14th single, Jumpin' Jack Flash, in 1968, is next in fifth place.

Releases and performances by Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, John Lennon and Led Zeppelin are also included in the top 10. What do you think about the poll? Did Elvis change the course of popular music? Or was something else more important? This debate is now closed. Please see below for a selection of your comments. I agree entirely - Elvis changed EVERYTHING! Absolutely no doubt about that. Thank Goodness Mojo Mag voters know what they are talking about. Nice to see ""The King"" where he belongs ... at the top!

Lyn, UKWhilst Elvis Presley et al are undeniably influential they are not oringinators. They took what existed already and made it popular because the people who made the music were not allowed to reach a wider audience.

As much as I like Elvis and even the Beatles I always bear this in mind. For me the most influential recording session is either A kind of Blue (Miles Davies 1959) or perhaps some recordings of James Brown in 1966 (Papas got a brand new bag) or perhaps Bitches Brew by Miles Davis (1969).

The sessions that really changed music in the 20th century have been ignored. I believe that when the musical history of the 20th century is truthfully told perhaps Bob Dylan and the later Beatles (1967-1970) might survive but in truth names like Miles Davies,James Brown, and even Bob Marley will have an even greater stature.

gav, France It's about time this recording session was recognised for what it was. Even John Lennon said ""they all had Elvis to thank"" Philip E. Woods, Canada How The Clash, a bunch of middle-class apologists and the 'acceptable' face of punk, can come higher than the Sex Pistols in any poll is beyond me.

dezombie, UKDont know what the rest of the charts show, but its funny how Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap, Hip-Hop, Carribean, House, are unacknowledged in this article when it is obvious that rock n roll and rock music all have their roots stemming from black music.

In my opinion music changes when a new creative invention is brought to life, not when opportunists take the music and produce their own variations.

Kiki Menes, Portugal The most influential musical act of our time is unquestionably The Beatles - their performance on the Ed Sullivan Show changed music overnight and the course of popular music for generations to come. To put the release of a Clash album ahead of this event is ridiculous. On a worldwide scale, how many people actually know The Clash, let alone the title of any of their albums?

As far as Elvis is concerned - well I just don't get it - why so many people like that kitschy, corny stuff. Heck, he didn't even write his own music. Bob Dylan goes electric? This is a pivotal moment? He did so because he was influenced by the innovative electric sounds of The Beatles. Obviously, Mojo's editors made up this list with much anti-Beatles sentiment. Tony Scotti, Canada What about Bill Haley?

John Shannon, Hong Kong What about Buddy Holly? Jeffery Peden, USABefore anyone did anything, Elvis did everything. A great tag line, but also very very true. All of musics highs and lows would be different today if it were not for Elvis.

He broke the stasis that 'popular' music was in and blazed a trail so fierce that others couldn't fail to follow.

graeme, UKElvis had the voice, the style and most importantly that ever-elusive x-factor. I agree that first session was probably the most important moment in rock. After Elvis everything changed, Rock 'N' Roll happened, and teenagers finally had something to do. Long live the King. Nico Versluys, England I think your poll is accurate. I was fourteen when Elvis burst upon the music scene and his voice and presentation were so powerful that only the deaf could ignore his potential.

Also, at around the same time the introduction of transistor radios and small portable record players made it a snap to spread his [and the many other great rock and rollers of the fifties] music around the world.

Rock and roll radio stations popped up like mushrooms. The rest is history. Roy M Birkett, Canada While I can't dispute Elvis' debut single, the position of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan at #4 pretty much sums up why I think that these little lists and polls don't mean a great deal at all.

The Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan should sit at #2. Not only was it a seismic event for the history of modern music, but one that left its indelible mark on the landscape of modern culture.

Aaron Clausen, Canada I believe it is absurd to limit the title of ""World-Changing"" to modern commercial music. This shows the bias that all music now has be commercial, and that before commercialism, music wasn't a focal point of culture.

If all commercialism was removed, music would still exist as a focal point of our culture and individual lives, just as it did for uncounted thousands of years before. Michael Nelson, California, USAOf course, Elvis' Sun session changed the direction of music. Nothing else compares!

Wayne Russell, Canada Absolutely, Elvis' Sun sessions in Memphis definitely opened up a new world in music. His early singles inspired me to learn a musical instrument (drums)in 1957, and rock n roll has been a part of me ever since. His later movies separated him from his musical roots, however. Michael Clarke, Canada Of course Elvis started and carried on rock and roll, where the likes of the Clash and Nirvana come into discussion when it comes to world greats is beyond me.

Where are the Beatles? Colin Burns, England Pink Floyd ? surely the Floyd were worthy of a mention, after all they did influence all decent modern music.

Dave Floyd, Scotland Rock'n'Roll, as the synthesis of African-American music with Country and other pop forms, the emphasis on the beat, and guitars, was an inevitable American phenomenon. In a nation of immigrants, such cultural cross-over is inevitable, in at least a small degree. This is not to diminish the contribution of Elvis, Sam Phillips, Scotty Moore and their group, as their talent, foresight, and inspiration are probably responsible for many of the particulars of this inevitable synthesis.

Tom Noerper, USAI am very surprised that Buddy Holly didn't feature in the top 10. His music has been a major influence for many latter day rock/pop artists.

Both his guitar sound and vocal interpretation were unique in the fifties and still, all these years after his death, his style is instantly recognisable. Trevor Jones, Braintree, England Remembering the dawn of rock 'n' roll from personal memory, I believe the seminal event was the use of ""Rock Around the Clock"" in the movie Blackboard Jungle. William Bell, USARock and Roll was already being played and heard on the radio at the time that Presley was starting to cut records.

Bill Haley, who seems to have been discarded as a seminal influence by latter-day rock historians, had Shake, Rattle and Roll plus Crazy, Man Crazy out at the time. Christopher Bird, Australia No doubt about it. Elvis music reached everyone everywhere!! Archimedes Lee, Philippines Absolutely.

No doubt about it - and before the naysayers jump in, a full 18 months BEFORE Chuck Berry's ""Maybelline"" and Little Richard's ""Tuitti Frutti"". Elvis defined the look, the sound and the attitude. Gillian Thomas, UKElvis certainly did change cultural attitudes and his '54 and '55 recordings with Sun marked the begining of this phenomenon.

He singlehandedly created the generation gap. Chris Donnelly, Ireland Presley credited with inventing rock and roll? Who came up with that nonsense? I wonder if the story would be different if Chuck Berry had been white?

Brendan Mac Lean, Birmingham, UKThe pivotal moment was the release of Rock Around the Clock Dave Challice, UKTrue, Elvis started it as a point of change in the evolution of music. The recent is all this species seems to comprehend, though. And as for the recent, I belive Tool's ""Lateralus"" to be another confluence in music. Dan Hoveland, USAE-mail this to a friend Printable version "

The most widely held belief is that the first rock'n'roll single was 1951's Rocket 88, written by Ike Turner, sung by Jackie Brenston (the saxophone player from Turner's backing band The Kings of Rhythm), and recorded by Sam Phillips, who later went on to found Sun records and discover Elvis Presley.

Will the creator of modern music please stand up?

"Music Will the creator of modern music please stand up? It wasn't Bill Haley. It wasn't Elvis. And it didn't happen in 1954. Who did make the first ever rock'n'roll record? Alexis Petridis investigates Alexis Petridis@alexispetridis Fri 16 Apr 2004 05.26 EDT05.26 EDT70Ike Turner: wrote Jackie Brenston's 1951 single, Rocket 88 - widely regarded as the first rock'n'roll record Photo: API n the Newcastle offices of Britain's longest-running rock'n'roll magazine, Now Dig This!, editor Tony Cajiao lets out a hollow chuckle.

""It's like who shot JFK,"" he says. ""It's one of those debates that's going to go on forever. It's one of those questions that there's no answer for.

It would be nice for me to tell you that the first rock'n' roll record ever made was by Fred Bloggs, but it's an impossible thing to do.

You're never going to get a definitive answer. ""So it would appear. I have spent the past few weeks in search of the first rock'n'roll record and I am more confused than ever. I have spoken to expert journalists, septuagenarian former record company bosses and, in one notable case, a British rock'n' roll DJ so old he can clearly remember when teddy boys were forced to beat up other teddy boys because no one had invented mods yet. Along the way, I have been ignored by Ike Turner, heard a variety of genuinely tragic tales about forgotten musical pioneers and discovered a bizarre link between the lost world of late-1940s rhythm and blues and Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining.

Nevertheless, I am ready to admit defeat. And to think it once appeared so straightforward. I was spurred into action by the fact that 2004 has been widely proclaimed as rock'n'roll's Golden Jubilee year: the 50th anniversary of the release of Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock and the recording of Elvis Presley's That's Alright Mama. This seems a triumph of marketing over the truth. As every pub quiz bore knows, neither Rock Around the Clock or That's Alright Mama can genuinely claim to be the first rock'n'roll record.

They were simply the first white artists' interpretations of a sound already well-established by black musicians almost a decade before. It was a raucous, driving, unnamed variant of rhythm and blues that came complete with lyrics that talked about ""rocking"" - a term that previously had been used by gospel singers to denote spiritual rapture, but developed more earthy connotations in the postwar world.

However, attempting to define the moment where rhythm and blues turns into rock'n'roll has led me into a sea of bewildering arguments and counter-arguments.

Some of these have involved minutely detailed descriptions of snare drum accents and eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie rhythms. They are the kind of discussions that could, in the parlance of the day, turn even the coolest cat into a real gone daddio in a matter of seconds.

""I've had this argument with many many people over the years, but when people talk about rock'n'roll, my own personal view would be Rocket 88,"" says Wildcat Pete, who has been a rock'n'roll DJ since his schooldays in the mid-50s, and has the sort of phlegmatic manner that presumably comes with a lifetime spent playing records to audiences of baying teds.

""Why? Nobody knows why. It's a chicken and egg situation. ""Some, however, feel that Rocket 88's reputation may have more to do with Sam Phillips's vociferous later claims he had discovered rock'n'roll long before he discovered Elvis than with its actual sound. Despite featuring a distorted guitar and a lyric which, in true rock'n'roll style, conflates the power of the singer's car with his virility, it apparently lacks those all-important snare accents.

Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras Read more My attempts to get the notoriously volatile Ike Turner to talk about snare accents, or indeed anything else, meet with failure. I track him down to Memphis, but he won't come to the phone. ""It's all kind of dependent on whether he's in a good mood,"" explains one of his managers.

Like most people who have read his former wife Tina's biography, I have an inkling of what Ike Turner might be like when in a bad mood.

I decide not to press the issue. In any case, if Turner is not willing to speak about the roots of rock'n'roll, there are plenty of others who are, particularly on the internet. There is, for example, an optician from New York who maintains a website that exists largely to lambast those who dare claim Rocket 88 deserves its pioneering status.

""The reason Rocket 88 has the tradition of being the first rock'n'roll record is the same reason the Brooklyn Bridge has been so marketable over the years,"" it insists.

""There's one born every minute. ""Another website pushes the case for New Orleans singer Roy Brown and his singles Good Rocking Tonight - the first record to pun on the gospel term ""rocking"" - and its follow-up Rocking at Midnight, recorded in 1947 and 1948 respectively.

It claims that Elvis Presley stole so shamelessly from Brown that when he came face to face with him backstage, a mortified Presley immediately wrote Brown a cheque on the first thing that came to hand: a brown paper bag.

There are others that cheerlead for Wynonie Harris, whose 1948 cover version of Good Rocking Tonight was much faster than Roy Brown's original, or claim the title belongs to Rock and Roll, a particularly raucous R&B track recorded in 1948 by a Detroit boxer-turned-saxophonist called Wild Bill Moore.

Former Mojo editor Paul Trynka, who spent two years in the mid-1990s travelling around the deep South, interviewing aged musicians for a book on the blues, notes that ""a lot of black musicians I spoke to would say that Louis Jordan was the first rock'n'roller"". I then discover a book published in America in the 90s, which comes to the disheartening conclusion that any one of 50 records could be candidates for the coveted title.

Finally, I come across a website for a US radio station called WFMU, which seems to suggest that the first rock'n'roll record was something released on a wax cylinder in 1899 called All Coons Look Alike to Me, by Arthur Collins. By this stage, I'm so confused that I'm not entirely sure if they're joking. ""In more recent times it's become more hotly debated, because there's more information available, more room for discussion, things are more easily accessible,"" says Cajiao.

""All these early interesting things have been thrown up that sound like rock'n'roll, they've got that groove. ""But if the flow of information and number of available recordings has increased over the years, then the number of people with first-hand memories of the postwar rhythm and blues scene has dwindled to almost nothing. Ike Turner aside, all the artists in question are dead, as are virtually all the people who recorded and released them. The one exception is Joe Bihari, the former vice-chairman of Modern records, a label best-known for discovering blues star BB King, but which also released Wild Bill Moore's Rock and Roll.

Modern should have released Rocket 88 as well, but Bihari claims Sam Phillips swindled them and gave it to rivals Chess instead. ""You had contracts in those days, but it didn't make a difference,"" he says from his Beverly Hills home.

""Musicians would sign a contract every time someone gave them $100. ""Now 79, Bihari claims that he ""can't remember everything that happened 55 years ago"", but he does highlight why the debate over the first rock'n'roll record has a tendency to become deeply emotive: race.

There is little doubt that Wynonie Harris or Roy Brown failed where Bill Haley succeeded in breaking through to a mass market not because their records sounded significantly different, but because of the colour of their skin.

""Was it hard getting those records played on the radio at that time? Darn right! There was very little airplay for R&B records, because there were very few black DJs, and very few black stations that played black music.

Also, it wasn't easy, particularly in the south, for white kids to bring home black music in the 1940s. Their parents frowned on it. ""I'm rather hoping that Bihari will staunchly defend the claim of the Wild Bill Moore single to the title of first rock'n'roll record, but he seems surprised by the suggestion.

""No. I don't think so. It was titled Rock and Roll, but that title probably just came out of my head. Bill Moore was a saxophone player and that record was released during the hucklebuck era, when that honking sax first became big.

I think Rocket 88 was a more melodic record. Rock and Roll was a lot of saxophone playing. ""The debate gains further pathos because none of the R&B pioneers mooted as the makers of the first rock'n'roll record had much success in the years after Elvis. Wynonie Harris and Wild Bill Moore faded away - the latter became a session musician and played on Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On.

As it turned out, they were the lucky ones. Ike Turner aside, the only figure among them to gain serious celebrity in later years was the least known at the time.

Scatman Crothers sang an uncredited lead vocal on Wild Bill Moore's Rock and Roll, and later became known as an actor in the US: his biggest role was as chef Dick Halloran in The Shining. As for Jackie Brenston, although Rocket 88 was a number one hit in 1951, his life quickly began to unravel.

He left Turner's band, then rejoined, but never had another hit and became an alcoholic. Singer Jimmy Thomas, who joined Turner's band in the late 50s, later recalled Brenston ""drinking that really bad shit - stuff you probably wouldn't allow in your house, not even to wash the floor"". Brenston finally quit music, became a truck driver and died forgotten in 1979. Despite Elvis's debt, Roy Brown had no better luck. In 1952 he attempted to sue his manager for unpaid royalties, but succeeded only in getting himself blackballed from the music industry.

He spent much of his life as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, dying in 1983. Another rock'n'roll DJ I speak to, Tony Thorpe, worries that those who spend all this time obsessing over what was the first rock'n'roll record are missing the point.

""I often wonder if people who are into all the information side actually lose what rock'n'roll is all about,"" he says. ""They're more interested in who was making the coffee in the studio than the actual music, the feeling. You can enjoy a record even if you don't know or care who it's by. ""After a few weeks of reading up on the pivotal importance of snare accents, you can see what he means.

But perhaps the point of all those nitpicking internet arguments, and indeed about the ongoing debate over who produced the first rock'n'roll record, is to afford some musical pioneers a courtesy they were denied while they were alive: a degree of respect.

Meanwhile in Newcastle, Tony Cajiao has changed his mind. Earlier, he had plumped for Rocket 88, on the grounds that ""if it was good enough for Sam Phillips, it's good enough for me"".

Now he's not sure. ""You know, even though you'll find things with an even earlier recording date that sound just like rock'n'roll,"" he muses, ""you have to say that Rock Around the Clock was the first record that really brought everything together, that made tremors around the world.

""I stifle a groan: weeks later, I appear to be back where I started. Topics Musicfeatures Reuse this contentmost viewed in USSinclair TV chairman to Trump: 'We are here to deliver your message'Trump decries 'attack on our country' after FBI raids his lawyer's office To Brits with knickers in a twist over Americanisms: don't get your panties in a bunch Sex workers fear violence as US cracks down on online ads: 'Girls will die'i OS 11.3 update breaks i Phone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens "

n? It's beginnings Rock and Roll music did not exist all until the 1950's. Much of the music that existed before was 'Classical', Folk, Jazz, Blues or Big Band. Rock'n' Roll was crucial to the emergence of teenagers as a social group.

How did rock and roll begin?

Public Create your own Share Embed Like How did rock and roll begin? No descriptionby on 24 February 2014Tweet Comments ( 0)Please log in to add your comment. Report abuse Transcript of How did rock and roll begin? How did rock and roll begi

Rock'n'roll was their music, very distinctive from the music of their parents, and helped to give them an identity. Bill Hayley and the Comets White rock'n'roll was a blend of black rhythm and blues and white country music. Instruments were guitars, piano, drums, double bass, sometimes saxophone. In 1954 Bill Haley recorded a song called 'Rock Around the Clock'.

crazier and wilder By 1957 other crazier and wilder acts started to appear such as: Little Richard ... .... Chuck Berry 'awopbopaloobopalopbamboom' Chuck Berry originally wanted to be a professional photographer. The main reason he started singing and playing in bands was to earn money to buy photographic equipment.

He was also a janitor and a hairdresser at different times before becoming a professional musician. Australian Events ~ Albert Namatjira (famous Australian Aboriginal landscape artist) was presented to the Queen during her Australian tour. ~ 1956 - Melbourne Olympics: Betty Cuthbert wins first gold medal. Dawn Fraser breaks 100m swimming record. Murray Rose won 3 swimming golds. ~ Channel 9 begins television transmission in Australia. ABC begins a month later.

~ average weekly wage: male - $32.92; female- $22.90 ~ 2 bedroom house in $6000 ~ Morris Minor - $1776 ~ TV - $500 Johnny O'Keefe- father of Australian rock'n'roll Full transcript More presentations by Elvis Presley Untitled Prezi Untitled Prezi More prezis by author Popular presentations See more popular or the latest prezis