Rock and roll
[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.
[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.
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".
[36] There is general agreement that it arose in the Southern United States – a region that would produce most of the major early rock and roll acts – through the meeting of various influences that embodied a merging of the African musical tradition with European instrumentation.
[37] The migration of many former slaves and their descendants to major urban centers such as St. Louis, Memphis, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Buffalo meant that black and white residents were living in close proximity in larger numbers than ever before, and as a result heard each other's music and even began to emulate each other's fashions.
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.
[55] 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".
[56] 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.
[2][66][67] Journalist Alexis Petridis argued that neither Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" nor Presley's version of "That's Alright Mama" heralded a new genre: "They were simply the first white artists' interpretations of a sound already well-established by black musicians almost a decade before.
[61] Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent.
[79] Further, Little Richard built his ground-breaking sound of the same era with an uptempo blend of boogie-woogie, New Orleans rhythm and blues, and the soul and fervor of gospel music vocalization.
The Hall remarked that her "fiery fusion of blues, jazz and R&B showcased her alluring vocals and set the stage for the rock and roll surge of the Fifties".
[81][82] Presley was greatly influenced by and incorporated his style of music with that of some of the greatest Black musicians like BB King, Arthur Crudup and Fats Domino.
[82] Many other popular rock and roll singers of the time, such as Fats Domino and Little Richard,[83] came out of the black rhythm and blues tradition, making the music attractive to white audiences, and are not usually classed as "rockabilly".
[89] Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, R&B music had been gaining a stronger beat and a wilder style, with artists such as Fats Domino and Johnny Otis speeding up the tempos and increasing the backbeat to great popularity on the juke joint circuit.
[90] Before the efforts of Freed and others, black music was taboo on many white-owned radio outlets, but artists and producers quickly recognized the potential of rock and roll.
[92] The racial lines, however, are rather more clouded by the fact that some of these R&B songs originally recorded by black artists had been written by white songwriters, such as the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Songwriting credits were often unreliable; many publishers, record executives, and even managers (both white and black) would insert their name as a composer in order to collect royalty checks.
For example, Bill Haley's incompletely bowdlerized cover of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" transformed Big Joe Turner's humorous and racy tale of adult love into an energetic teen dance number,[89][98] while Georgia Gibbs replaced Etta James' tough, sarcastic vocal in "Roll With Me, Henry" (covered as "Dance With Me, Henry") with a perkier vocal more appropriate for an audience unfamiliar with the song to which James's song was an answer, Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie".
[100][101] Other white artists who recorded cover versions of rhythm and blues songs included Gale Storm (Smiley Lewis' "I Hear You Knockin'"), the Diamonds (The Gladiolas' "Little Darlin'" and Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
[102][103] The retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher (October 1957), the departure of Presley for service in the United States Army (March 1958), the scandal surrounding Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin (May 1958), riots caused by Bill Haley's ill-fated tour of Europe (October 1958), the deaths of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash (February 1959), the breaking of the Payola scandal implicating major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs (November 1959), the arrest of Chuck Berry (December 1959), and the death of Eddie Cochran in a car crash (April 1960) gave a sense that the initial phase of rock and roll had come to an end.
[105] Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including multitrack recording, developed by Les Paul, the electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek, and the "Wall of Sound" productions of Phil Spector,[106] continued desegregation of the charts, the rise of surf music, garage rock and the Twist dance craze.
The most notable of these was Johnny Rivers, who with hits such as "Memphis" (1964), popularized a "Go-go" style of club-oriented, danceable rock and roll that enjoyed significant success in spite of the ongoing British Invasion.
[120] Other leading acts included Billy Fury, Joe Brown, and Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, whose 1960 hit song "Shakin' All Over" became a rock and roll standard.
[113] As interest in rock and roll was beginning to subside in America in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was taken up by groups in British cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and London.
[133] This involved not just music, absorbed via radio, record buying, jukeboxes and TV programs like American Bandstand, but also extended to film, clothes, hair, cars and motorcycles, and distinctive language.
[134] In Britain, where postwar prosperity was more limited, rock and roll culture became attached to the pre-existing Teddy Boy movement, largely working class in origin, and eventually to the rockers.
