Who invented rock and roll?

In that case, rock may have been invented by Sam Phillips

If rock'n'roll existed before that, then some bluesman probably invented it.

The Memphis Jug Band sound pretty proto-rock and roll to me.

1.) Stealing fire from gods is pretty rock and roll
2.) Vultures eating at yr. liver is a good analog for drugs/booze
3.) Lead to Pandora's box being opened
4.) Taught "metalworking" to mankind

I'd say that is a workable resume.

Now then, most of what I know comes from research prompted by my obsession with Bo Diddley. I've read a bunch of Robert Palmer stuff, Diddley's biography, and various overviews whose names I've forgotten by now. I also have a Nick Tosches book on the unsung pre-Elvis RnR heroes. I know all about Diddley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Elvis. I know I need to know more about Louis Jordan, W. Harris, Jackie Brenston/ Ike Turner, Sam Phillips, Alan Freed, Little Richard, Bill Haley/Bob Wills/Western Swing.

And it seems to me that Rock and Roll came from R&B came from Swing came from Blues, as opposed to the Blues begat Rock and Roll business I've been used to.

Any help will result in my eternal gratitude; any heckling will make me cry.

http://s59.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3RSXZEX4WZV961ST9V0VVZ5M15

here she is in 1949 with then-husband jimmy brown. she was 21. the song is basically a rip-off of 'caledonia,' but it's a pretty scuffed-up rip-off, definitely edging toward little richard from louis jordan.

and is right at her superstar peak. #1 on the r&b chart for seven weeks in 1952.

and then by 1957, she already sounds a little past her time. i actually really like this song, but you can tell the childishness is already a little beyond her reach. she's almost 30 and not really quite a rock'n'roller.

Now it's ugly gay.

Okay, I'm gonna answer this sincerely. I actually took a class on this subject taught by Robert Palmer about 20 years ago.

First, if you need recordings, here's the place:

http://www.propermusic.com/

Loius Jordan's Caledonia is a good a candidate for first RnR song as I've ever heard.

Some of the recordings that Palmer played for me, that I'll never forget:

Bob Wills - "Who Walks in When I Walk Out". This one has a solo that could almost be surf. And a really driving beat that doesn't swing so much as rock. I think it's from the late 30s.

Muddy Waters - "Still a Fool" The blues did have a baby, and it was hard rock. One of the heaviest of the pre-rock tracks

Johnny Burnette and the R&R trio - "Train Kept a Rolling". Burlson plucks the thickest and thinest string on the guitar simulataniously to get that guitar riff- that sort of disregard for playing *correctly* is the start of texture mattering more than melody.

Volume II of the Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-1974 has a lot of key tracks too, especially:

Ray Charles - the Mess Around
Ruth Brown - Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean

There was a CD a few years ago, that I can't find now, called "Roots of Presley" that's got the original versions of the songs Elvis covered on the Sun Session and early RCA recording. Comparing and contrasting those is pretty interesting.

You could argue that Hound Dog was the first rock song to- it was originally cut by Big Mama Thornton, but it was written by Leiber/Stoller, and popularized by Elvis, so there you've got the Urban white kids meeting the Southern African Americans meeting the Hillbillies.

*integrated jazz/swing(black)and western/hillbilly(white)influences into pop w/a pronounced rhythmic thrust.

Sepia music/race records/whatever have been around since the days of Boogie Woogie. Juke joint music. The earliest piece I own is 1928, but I'm sure it preadtes that.

Western Swing morphs into Hillbilly Bop when it embraces R&B. 1943's Pistol Packin' Mama is checked here, but Hank Penny's 1943 stuff sounds waaay more R&B influenced to me.

Lucky Millinder & Wynonie Harris's Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well came out in 1944 and *really* hit home with the R&B goes gospel sound. This practically spawns a whole genre of the 2/4 "rockin'" beat for the end of 40's race records.

WDIA is the 1st "all Black" radio station in Memphis (the entire staff was not black, but whatever). It went on the air in 1947. DJ's included Nat D Williams, Rufus Thomas, BB King, etc.

White DJ Dewey Phillips at WHBQ in Memphis followed suit palying Black R&B in 1949. It could be said that it was Dewey's country rambling and speed fueled personality that pumps energy into listeners, generating White fans for "race music".

These were small local Memphis stations, but in Nashville, WLAC had a white ran black radio show by Gene Nobles, John R, and Hoss. They were 50,000 watts, so on a clear night, it reached everywhere on the east coast. They began playing race music due to Fisk university students requesting it.

1951 was the year of "Rocket 88", which all the so-called historians now claim as the first rock record (the original Jackie Brenston/Ike Turner version is always cited). The thing about Rocket 88 was it was just a reworking of Ida Red, which had been traded back and forth between R&B and Hillbilly Bop for years...and the other Jackie Brenston/Ike Turner songs from 1951 sounded similar.

I personally think the criteria that cites Rocket 88 comes from a revisionsit standpoint...but it is pretty damned important to note that Bill Haley and The Saddlemen covered it that year while ditching the majority of their country leanings. The earlier Haley stuff liek Cnady Kisses are pretty much straight-forward country.

So yeah, Alan Freed. In Akron, I don't think he played exclusivly R&B, but rather, had something like a Jazz show that incorporated some race records...but when he moved to Cleveland, Leo Mintz convinced Alan to play all race records records as a way to advertise Leo's Record Rendezvous record store as it specialized in race music.

In 52 Jerry Wexler and Billboard changed the term "race music" to R&B.

Sun Recorsd also comes around in 1952, who early on had somewhat erratic releases, but focusing on Blues and R&B.

It was 1952 when Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball probably grabbed the nation's attention as it more than sold out. Freed was using his term "Rock and Roll" at that time. So many specualtions on where Freed grabbed it from, but it's enough to say that a lot of 1947-1949 R&B songs had the words rock and roll in the title. For all we know, Freed missed out on Billboard changing the name to R&B.

Bill haley still the lone ranger on this thing as he hit it big with Crazy Man Crazy in 1953. Not country...not straight forward R&B either. wasn't this also the year of Doo-Wop? Doo-Wop lacks the beat of Jump Blues styled R&B, but represents the oldies perspective of Rock and Roll more. The Crows' Gee came out in 1953 and represents this well.

At the same time Sam Phillips at Sun claimed to be searching for "a white man that can sing black", which eventually spawned Rockabilly when Rock and Roll wasn't really even a genre per say...more like a marketing scheme. Elvis's first singles for Sun are 54.

Around the same time Sam Phillips was trying to figure it out, Bill Haley finally came crashing through with Rock Around the Clock as it was included in the movie Blackboard Jungle. The song was recorded and released in 1954, but BB Jungle hit in 1955, spreading it everywhere that year.

Needless to say this amounts to Elvis signing his major deal, although Elvis-mania supposedly didn't hit until Heartbreak Hotel in 1956

The question then becomes how much did the R&B market A&R themselves to bend to this new marketing scheme that was Rock and Roll? Seems Chuck Berry wasn't aiming at traditional R&B charts. We know that Alan Freed was "proposistioned" for marketing Berry's Maybeline, so clearly the R&B labels knew this was the new market. Does the bending itself constitute music that was Rock and Roll?

Sort of like House Music...the Disco Frankie Knuckles played at the Warehouse was called House at the time, but we pinpoint the start of the House genre proper when producers began to mimic that old Disco in a contemporary way.

"The clarion guitar intro differs hardly at all from some of the intros Chuck Berry would unleash on his own records after 1955; the guitar solo crackles through an overdriven amplifier; and the boogie-based rhythm charges right along. The subject matter, too, is appropriate -- the record announces that it's time to 'rock awhile,' and then proceeds to show how it's done. To my way of thinking, Carter's 'Rock Awhile' is a much more appropriate candidate for 'first rock and roll record' than the more frequently cited 'Rocket '88'…"

I dispute Rock and Roll even being a proper genre at that time though, and citing records from then is revisionist. In fact, in 1949, it wasn't even the marketing scheme it became.

But a point is well made - that Chuck Berry didn't grab his sound out of the blue. Then again, Goree and his Hepcats were T Bone Walker copycats. I don't get digging through proto-rock records and citing any of them as "the one".

But then again, yeah, Bill Haley was doing something different from everybody else and his sound got engulfed by the genre as it developed later. Maybe his just missed his target, and the target moved for him after he shot.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), May 7th, 2001.

OTM

Elvis's Sun catalog didn't catch on much more than any other 1954 era Sun artist. Heartbreak Hotel in 1956 spawned Elvis mania, and the media went back and made Mystery Train/That's Alright hits.

i think they were aiming for the new sound (whether it was called rnr at that point i dont know) to get the teenagers already.

Yeah, the way I see it is the earlier days of R&B thought the Jazz audience made up a large fraction of their non-Juke Joint crowd (and vice versa as Jazz artists did R&B records often in the 40's). It's when the radio station DJ's I describe above identify the teenage market that the R&R marketing scheme becomes something within the industry. I do suggest that the R&B marketing machine changed direction and coached acts as a result.

so whatever the white version of R&B was, that was basically renamed rock n roll.

I doubt that. There were soooo many white covers of black R&B songs that hit, but did not become part of the R&R canon. In the long run, we think of The Chords' version of Sh-Boom as R&R, and The Crew Cuts' version gets play on the easy listening station. Tom Dowd claimed that the major labels were using indie black R&B songs as demos for their material. He listed a dozen white covers of Lavern baker or Ruth brown songs that I've never heard and didn't "rock". This was on the heels of Sinatra bobby-soxers, so I imagine the majors thought to bridge it all.

whether it was inferior or by accident or bastardised, that version was renamed rock n roll

I'm saying to opposite. It wasn't until much later that we revised it. There was always a clean line between R&B, Doo Wop, Rockabilly, and Teen Crooners. These combined make 50's R&R. It seems to be a canon, but not a genre. Once the industry institutionalized it in the 60's, it all merges into one genre.

and the black version stayed R&B.

So is Chuck Berry R&B marketed as R&R, or does it differ from other 1955 R&B? (and I think the guitar argument is revisionist). Also, Ray Charles and James Brown had already developed Soul between 1954 and 1956 (I Got a Woman and Please Please Please). This moved the Black audiences away from music based on the Jump Blues template, leaving it for white audiences. I think that's what made the R&R tag stick.

Additionally, wasn't Bo Diddley actually in the booth with Alan Freed the first (generally accepted) time the term 'rock n' roll' was used?

Alan Freed (and most onlookers in hindsight) suggest white middle aged people didn't like it because it was made by black people.

Dunno about who invented it, but I'm going to second Bo Diddley as a major turning point and influence with that rhythm of his. I simply can't hear a Buddy Holly song without thinking of the Bo Diddley beat.

Very few acts in the R&R canon made use the hambone rhythm.

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