Rock and Roll – What’s It All About?

by Erika Cox

Rock and Roll music is here to stay. A popular saying but a true one, it was not a fad it was a new music form that developed from a combination of various music genres. Rock and roll combined elements of blues, rhythm and blues, country western, hillbilly, and boogie woogie.

There was also some influence from folk and jazz as well. Although the term was coined by Alan Freed, who stated he named it rock and roll because of the way the beats in the song seemed to roll, the word Rocking was used prior to Freed naming it by black gospel singers referring to a spiritual feeling.

Later in the 1940’s, Blacks used the term rock and roll when referring to dancing and sometimes sex. Many race records (records by Black artists and later known as rhythm and blues), often used the terms Rockin’, Rock and Roll, and Rolling for instance, Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” and Etta James’s “Roll With Me Henry”. Each song referred to the two different meanings of rock and roll, the former song about dancing and the latter about sex. Whatever the original meaning, in 1951 Alan Freed began to play race records and called the new sound rock and roll.

There is much debate about what is the first rock and roll song. Although, Rolling Stone magazine declared Elvis Presley’s “That’s Allright, Mama” as the first rock and roll song, this has been highly criticized and probably not accurate. Perhaps, Presley’s song is credited as such because of Presley’s statue as “the King of Rock and Roll” and was the first artist to introduce rock and roll to mainstream America, but his song was not the first rock and roll song.

Many sources go all the way back to the 1940’s and credit songs like Louis Jordan’s “Let the Good Times Roll”, Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, and Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle, and Roll; all with the words “rock” or “roll” in them. If you listen to these songs it is very obvious that any one of them could be the first rock and roll song, not only do they include the words “rock” and “roll” but they represent the true essence of rock and roll with the tempo, beats, and good times.

Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, the preeminent rock and roll record label establishing the careers of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins to name a few, stated that Jackie Bernstein’s “Rocket 88” was the first rock and roll song. Other sources have credited Bill Haley and the Comets’s song “Rock around the Clock” as the first. As you can see there are many different songs that could be considered the first true rock and roll song and perhaps there is no first one but a few very good ones that paved the way for rock and roll music and made it what it became and is today.

On March 21, 1952, Alan Freed organized the first rock and roll concert titled The Moondog Coronation Ball, which was held in Cleveland – the future place of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The audience and the performers were mixed, this could have been attributed to Alan Freed (and other DJ’s) playing race records (R&B records) to a white audience, making possible to some degree the races coming together through music in what was a segregated society. It also created the onset of covers, although a negative experience for many black artists (they were not getting recognized for their work), covers did help their songs receive exposure and drive rock and roll music to mainstream America.

Fortunately, years later many black artists did get the recognition they deserved. Since rock and roll was a combination of several different music genres, artists in other areas like R&B, Hillbilly, Jazz, Blues, Folk, and Country Western have been recognized as being major influences in the development and success of rock and roll and influencing rock and roll artists. Rock and roll created different forms of music from Rockabilly to Surf music and has had some influence in the development of Hip-Hop music.

At the end of the 1950’s rock and roll was in a decline, in part due to several well-known artists no longer being in the forefront. However, in 1964 the British Invasion put rock and roll back in the forefront, creating different forms of rock and roll music from Hard rock to Rock Theater. The music has stayed strong ever since.

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