Rock N Roll
Jason Ramgel
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, rock 'n' roll, rock n' roll or Rock n' Roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s.[1][2] It originated from African American music such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie-woogie, electric blues, gospel, and jump blues,[3] as well as country music.[4] While rock and roll's formative elements can be heard in blues records from the 1920s[5] and in country records of the 1930s,[6] the genre did not acquire its name until 1954.[7][2]
According to journalist Greg Kot, "rock and roll" refers to a style of popular music originating in the United States in the 1950s. By the mid-1960s, rock and roll had developed into "the more encompassing international style known as rock music, though the latter also continued to be known in many circles as rock and roll."[8] For the purpose of differentiation, this article deals with the first definition.
In the earliest rock and roll styles, either the piano or saxophone was typically the lead instrument. These instruments were generally replaced or supplemented by the electric guitar in the mid-to-late 1950s.[9] The beat is essentially a dance rhythm[10] with an accentuated backbeat, almost always provided by a snare drum.[11] Classic rock and roll is usually played with one or more electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm) and a double bass (string bass). After the mid-1950s, electric bass guitars ("Fender bass") and drum kits became popular in classic rock.[9]
Rock and roll had a profound influence on contemporary American lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language, and is often portrayed in movies, fan magazines, and on television. Some people believe that the music had a positive influence on the civil rights movement, because of its widespread appeal to both Black American and white American teenagers.[12][13]
The term "rock and roll" is defined by Greg Kot in Encyclopdia Britannica as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later developed "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music".[8] The term is sometimes also used as synonymous with "rock music" and is defined as such in some dictionaries.[14][15]
The phrase "rocking and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean,[16] but by the early 20th century was used both to describe the spiritual fervor of black church rituals[17] and as a sexual analogy. A retired Welsh seaman named William Fender can be heard singing the phrase "rock and roll" when describing a sexual encounter in his performance of the traditional song "The Baffled Knight" to the folklorist James Madison Carpenter in the early 1930s, which he would have learned at sea in the 1800s; the recording can be heard on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website.[18]
In 1934, the song "Rock and Roll" by the Boswell Sisters appeared in the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round. In 1942, before the concept of rock and roll had been defined, Billboard magazine columnist Maurie Orodenker started to use the term to describe upbeat recordings such as "Rock Me" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe; her style on that recording was described as "rock-and-roll spiritual singing".[23][24] By 1943, the "Rock and Roll Inn" in South Merchantville, New Jersey, was established as a music venue.[25] In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style, and referring to it as "rock and roll"[26] on his mainstream radio program, which popularized the phrase.[27]
Several sources suggest that Freed found the term, used as a synonym for sexual intercourse, on the record "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and his Dominoes.[28][29] The lyrics include the line, "I rock 'em, roll 'em all night long".[30] Freed did not acknowledge the suggestion about that source in interviews, and explained the term as follows: "Rock 'n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm".[31]
In discussing Alan Freed's contribution to the genre, two significant sources emphasized the importance of African-American rhythm and blues. Greg Harris, then the executive director of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, offered this comment to CNN: "Freed's role in breaking down racial barriers in U.S. pop culture in the 1950s, by leading white and black kids to listen to the same music, put the radio personality 'at the vanguard' and made him 'a really important figure'".[32] After Freed was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the organization's Web site offered this comment: "He became internationally known for promoting African-American rhythm and blues music on the radio in the United States and Europe under the name of rock and roll".[33]
Not often acknowledged in the history of rock and roll, Todd Storz, the owner of radio station KOWH in Omaha, Nebraska, was the first to adopt the Top 40 format (in 1953), playing only the most popular records in rotation. His station, and the numerous others which adopted the concept, helped to promote the genre: by the mid 50s, the playlist included artists such as "Presley, Lewis, Haley, Berry and Domino".[34][35]
The immediate roots of rock and roll lay in the rhythm and blues, then called "race music",[41] in combination with either boogie-woogie and shouting gospel[42] or with country music of the 1940s and 1950s. Particularly significant influences were jazz, blues, gospel, country, and folk.[36] Commentators differ in their views of which of these forms were most important and the degree to which the new music was a re-branding of African-American rhythm and blues for a white market, or a new hybrid of black and white forms.[43][44][45]
Contradicting Larry Birnbaum, the author of Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock 'n' Roll, and notwithstanding early forms of white rock and roll then called "country boogie", musicologist and rock historian Bruno Blum argues that early, fully-formed rock and roll music really surged in America at least as early as 1945, but was segregated, thus making it unavailable to the general public and widely undocumented. According to Blum, true rock tracks from the 1940s included "Rock Woogie" by Jim Wynn's Bobalibans (1945), "Rockin' the House" by Memphis Slim and the House Rockers (1946), "Aladdin Boogie" by Amos Milburn (1947), "Rock and Rye" by Jimmy McCracklin (1947), "We're Gonna Rock" (1947) and "Rock and Roll" (1948) by Wild Bill Moore, and many others. His discussion of the topic is as follows:[46]
In the 1930s, jazz, and particularly swing, both in urban-based dance bands and blues-influenced country swing (Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and other similar singers), were among the first music to present African-American sounds for a predominantly white audience.[44][47] One particularly noteworthy example of a jazz song with recognizably rock and roll elements is Big Joe Turner with pianist Pete Johnson's 1938 single "Roll 'Em Pete", which is regarded as an important precursor of rock and roll.[48][49][50] The 1940s saw the increased use of blaring horns (including saxophones), shouted lyrics and boogie-woogie beats in jazz-based music. During and immediately after World War II, with shortages of fuel and limitations on audiences and available personnel, large jazz bands were less economical and tended to be replaced by smaller combos, using guitars, bass and drums.[36][51] In the same period, particularly on the West Coast and in the Midwest, the development of jump blues, with its guitar riffs, prominent beats and shouted lyrics, prefigured many later developments.[36] In the documentary film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, Keith Richards proposes that Chuck Berry developed his brand of rock and roll by transposing the familiar two-note lead line of jump blues piano directly to the electric guitar, creating what is instantly recognizable as rock guitar. This proposal by Richards neglects the black guitarists who did the same thing before Berry, such as Goree Carter,[52] Gatemouth Brown,[53] and the originator of the style, T-Bone Walker.[54] Country boogie and Chicago electric blues supplied many of the elements that would be seen as characteristic of rock and roll.[36] Inspired by electric blues, Chuck Berry introduced an aggressive guitar sound to rock and roll, and established the electric guitar as its centerpiece,[55] adapting his rock band instrumentation from the basic blues band instrumentation of a lead guitar, second chord instrument, bass and drums.[56] In 2017, Robert Christgau declared that "Chuck Berry did in fact invent rock 'n' roll", explaining that this artist "came the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together".[57]
Rock and roll arrived at a time of considerable technological change, soon after the development of the electric guitar, amplifier, 45 rpm record and modern condenser microphones.[36] There were also changes in the record industry, with the rise of independent labels like Atlantic, Sun and Chess servicing niche audiences and a similar rise of radio stations that played their music.[36] It was the realization that relatively affluent white teenagers were listening to this music that led to the development of what was to be defined as rock and roll as a distinct genre.[36] Because the development of rock and roll was an evolutionary process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously "the first" rock and roll record.[2] Contenders for the title of "first rock and roll record" include Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Strange Things Happening Every Day" (1944),[58] "That's All Right" by Arthur Crudup (1946), "Move It On Over" by Hank Williams (1947),[59] "The Fat Man" by Fats Domino (1949),[2] Goree Carter's "Rock Awhile" (1949),[60] and Jimmy Preston's "Rock the Joint" (1949) (later covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952),[61]
"Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm and sung by Brenston), was recorded by Sam Phillips in March 1951. This is often cited as the first rock n' roll record.[62][63] In an interview however, Ike Turner offered this comment: "I don't think that 'Rocket 88' is rock 'n' roll. I think that 'Rocket 88' is R&B, but I think 'Rocket 88' is the cause of rock and roll existing".[64][65]
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