Rock

Rock and roll began to emerge as a musical style in the United States of America during the late 1940s and early 1950s, as a mixing together of various popular musical genres of the time. These included the blues - particularly the electric forms being developed in Chicago, New Orleans, Texas, California and elsewhere - piano-based boogie woogie, and jump blues, which were collectively becoming known as rhythm and blues. Also in the melting pot creating a new musical form were country and western music (particularly Western swing), and gospel music.
Going back even further, rock and roll can trace one lineage to the old Five Points, Manhattan district of mid-19th century New York City, the scene of the first fusion of heavily rhythmic African shuffles and sand dances with melody-driven European genres, particularly the Irish jig[citation needed].
The term "rock and roll", as secular black slang for dancing or sex, appeared on record for the first time in 1922 on Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me With One Steady Roll". Even earlier, in 1916, the term "rocking and rolling" was used with a religious connotation, on the phonograph record "The Camp Meeting Jubilee" by an unnamed male "quartette."[1]
The word "rock" had a long history in the English language as a metaphor for "to shake up, to disturb or to incite". Rocking was a term used by black gospel singers in the American South to mean something akin to spiritual rapture. By the 1940s, however, the term was used as a double entendre, ostensibly referring to dancing, but with the subtextual meaning of sex, as in Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight." The verb "Roll" was a medieval metaphor which meant "having sex". Writers for hundreds of years have used the phrases "They had a roll in the hay" or "I rolled her in the clover"[2]. The terms were often used together ("rocking and rolling") to describe the motion of a ship at sea, for example as used in 1934 by the Boswell Sisters in their song "Rock and Roll" [3]. Country singer Tommy Scott was referring to the motion of a railroad train in the 1951 "Rockin and Rollin'". [4].
Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in blues records from the 1920s, rock and roll did not acquire its name until the 1950s. An early form of rock and roll was rockabilly, which combined the above elements with jazz, influences from traditional Appalachian folk music, and gospel music.
During the 1920s and 1930s, many white Americans enjoyed African-American jazz and blues performed by white musicians. More raunchy or obviously "black" music was usually relegated to "race music" outlets (music industry code for rhythm and blues stations) and was rarely heard by mainstream white audiences. A few black rhythm and blues musicians, notably Louis Jordan, the Mills Brothers, and The Ink Spots, achieved crossover success, in some cases (such as Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie") with songs written by white songwriters. The Western swing genre in the 1930s, generally played by white musicians, also drew heavily on the blues and in turn directly influenced rockabilly and rock and roll, as can be heard, for example, on Bob Wills' "Ida Red" (1938) and Buddy Jones' "Rockin' Rollin' Mama" (1939).
While rock and roll musicians increasingly wrote their own material, many of the earliest white rock and roll hits were covers or partial re-writes of earlier rhythm and blues or blues songs. Blues would continue to inspire rock performers for decades. Delta blues artists such as Robert Johnson and Skip James also proved to be important inspirations for British blues-rockers such as The Yardbirds, Cream, and Led Zeppelin.
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[edit] Early Rock and Roll records



Main article: First rock and roll record

There is much debate as to what should be considered the first rock & roll record. According to some experts, a leading contender is "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm), recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in 1951. Three years later, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Rolling Stone magazine argued in 2004 that "That's All Right (Mama)" (also 1954), Elvis Presley's first single for Sun Records in Memphis, was the first rock and roll record[5]. But, at the same time, Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll", later covered by Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B charts.
Turner was one of many forerunners. His 1939 recording, "Roll 'em Pete," is close to '50s rock and roll. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was also recording shouting, stomping music in the 1930s and 1940s that in some ways contained major elements of mid-1950s rock and roll. She scored hits on the pop charts as far back as 1938 with her gospel songs, such as "This Train" and "Rock Me", and in the 1940s with "Strange Things Happenin Every Day", "Up Above My Head", and "Down By The Riverside." Other significant records of the 1940s and early 1950s included Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight" and Hank Williams' "Move It On Over" (both 1947); Jimmy Preston's "Rock the Joint" and Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" (both 1949); and Les Paul and Mary Ford's "How High the Moon" (1951).
Both rock and roll and boogie woogie have four beats (usually broken down into eight eighth-notes/quavers) to a bar, and are twelve-bar blues. Rock and roll however has a greater emphasis on the backbeat than boogie woogie. Little Richard combined boogie-woogie piano with a heavy backbeat and over-the-top, shouted, gospel-influenced vocals that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says "blew the lid off the '50s." However, others before Little Richard were combining these elements, including Esquerita, Cecil Gant, Amos Milburn, Piano Red, and Harry Gibson. Little Richard's wild style, with shouts and "wooo wooos," had itself been used by female gospel singers, including the 1940s' Marion Williams. Roy Brown did a Little Richard style "yaaaaaaww" long before Richard in "Ain't No Rockin no More."
Bo Diddley's 1955 hit "Bo Diddley" backed with "I'm A Man" introduced a new, pounding beat, and unique guitar playing that inspired many artists. Other artists with early rock 'n' roll hits were Chuck Berry and Little Richard, as well as many vocal doo-wop groups. Within the decade crooners such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.
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[edit] Early North American Rock and Roll (1953-1963)