[10] The original version of the twelve-bar blues song was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, which reached number one on the R&B charts.

[15] Drawing on the template of jump blues and swing combo music, Turner made the style even rawer, superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, distorted guitar played by Willie Kizart (the first use of such a sound on record), and tenor saxophone solos by 17-year-old Raymond Hill.

A review of the record in Time magazine included:[16]Rocket 88 was brash and it was sexy; it took elements of the blues, hammered them with rhythm and attitude and electric guitar, and reimagined black music into something new.

If the blues was about earthly troubles, the rock that Turner's crew created seemed to shout that the sky was now the limit.The legend of how the sound came about says that Kizart's amplifier was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee.

[17][18] Peter Guralnick, in his biography of Sam Phillips, has the amplifier being dropped from the car's trunk when the band got a flat tire and was digging out the spare.

Ike Turner's piano intro on "Rocket 88" influenced Little Richard who later used it for his 1958 hit song "Good Golly, Miss Molly.

'"[34] It has been suggested by Larry Birnbaum that the idea that "Rocket 88" could be called "the first rock'n'roll record" first arose in the late 1960s; he argued that: "One of the reasons is surely that Kizart's broken amp anticipated the sound of the fuzzbox, which was in its heyday when 'Rocket 88' was rediscovered.

"[37] Echoing this view, Bill Dahl at AllMusic wrote:[38]Determining the first actual rock & roll record is a truly impossible task.

But you can't go too far wrong citing Jackie Brenston's 1951 Chess waxing of "Rocket 88", is a seminal piece of rock's fascinating history with all the prerequisite elements firmly in place: practically indecipherable lyrics about cars, booze, and women; Raymond Hill's booting tenor sax, and a churning, beat-heavy rhythmic bottom.

Rock art historian Paul Grushkin wrote:[39]Working from the raw material of post-big band jump blues, Turner had cooked up a mellow, cruising boogie with a steady-as-she-goes back beat now married to Brenston's enthusiastic, sexually suggestive vocals that spoke of opportunity, discovery and conquest.

Still, the distortion and the central place of the guitar in the overall sound certainly anticipate key features of rock style.Ike Turner himself said, in an interview with Holger Petersen:[2] I don't think that "Rocket 88" is rock'n'roll.

[41] No matter which version deserves the accolade, "Rocket 88" is seen as a prototype rock and roll song in musical style and lineup, as well as its lyrical theme, in which an automobile serves as a metaphor for sexual prowess.