The musical basis of rock and roll is its beat, usually accompanied by lyrics.
The beat is basically a rhythm with an accentuated , the latter almost always provided by a snare drum. Classic rock and roll is played with one electric guitar or two electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm), an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit. Keyboards are a common addition to the mix.
In the rock and roll style of the early 1950s, the was often the lead instrument, replaced by guitar in the mid 1950s. In the earliest form of rock and roll, during the late 1940s, the piano was the lead instrument, and indeed, among the roots of rock and roll is the boogie woogie piano of the big band era that dominated American music in the 1940s.
The massive popularity and eventual worldwide scope of rock and roll gave it an unprecedented social impact.
Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. Many of its early stars, notably , built movie and/or television careers around their music.
summed it up and stated: "If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ' '.
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Rock and roll began to emerge as a defined musical style in in the late 1940s as an offshoot of both the music, or R B, of culture, and of white America's . Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in records as far back as the 1920s, it did not acquire its eventual name until the 1950s. An early form of rock and roll was , which combined the above elements with , influences from traditional , and .
Going back even further, rock and roll can trace one lineage to the old district of mid- , the scene of the first fusion of heavily rhythmic African shuffles and sand dances with melody-driven European genres, particularly the Irish .
Rocking was a term first used by black gospel singers in the American South to mean something akin to spiritual . By the 1940s, however, the term was used as a , ostensibly referring to dancing, but with the subtextual meaning of sex, as in 's " .
" This type of song was usually relegated to " " outlets (music industry code for rhythm and blues stations) and was rarely heard by mainstream white audiences.
During the 1920s and 1930s, many white Americans enjoyed African-American jazz and blues performed by white musicians. They often objected to the music as performed by the original black artists, but found it acceptable when performed by whites.
A few black rhythm and blues musicians, notably , the , and , achieved crossover success. While rock and roll musicians increasingly wrote their own material, many of the earliest white rock and roll hits were covers of earlier rhythm and blues or blues songs. Blues would continue to inspire rock performers for decades.
artists such as and also proved to be important inspirations for - such as , , and .
In , began playing this type of music for a multi-racial audience. Freed is credited with coining the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the rollicking R B music.
While working as a disc jockey at radio station in Cleveland, he also organized the first rock and roll concert, called "The " on , . The event, attended mainly by , proved a huge drawing card — the first event had to be ended early due to overcrowding. Thereafter, Freed organized many rock and roll shows attended by both whites and blacks, further helping to introduce African-American musical styles to a wider audience.
There is much debate as to what should be considered the . was 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.
" Another artist who was singing hard-rocking blues/gospel to a boogie piano was Big Joe Turner, whose 1939 recording, "Roll 'em Pete," is almost indistinguishable from '50s rock and roll. Other significant records of the 1940s and early 1950s included (" ", 1947), more ("Honey, Hush", 1953, and "Shake, Rattle and Roll", 1954), Paul Bascomb ("Rock and Roll", 1947), (" ," 1949), (" ," 1951)
magazine argued in 2004 that " " (1954), Elvis Presley's first single for in Memphis, was the first rock and roll record . 's 1955 hit "Bo Diddley" backed with "I'm A Man" introduced a new, pounding beat, and unique guitar playing that inspired many artists.
This is an error because by this time, Alan Freed's rock and roll jubilees had been drawing crowds of thousands for years.
's " " ( ) became the first rock and roll song to top 's main sales and airplay charts, and the door was opened for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock 'n' roll hits were and , as well as many vocal groups.
Within the decade crooners such as , , and , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.
Both rock and roll and boogie woogie have eight beats to a bar, and are twelve-bar blues. Rock and roll however has a greater emphasis on the than boogie woogie.
Little Richard combined boogie-woogie piano with a heavy and over-the-top, shouted, gospel-influenced vocals that the says "blew the lid off the '50s." He has also been credited by , , and many other major recording artists for starting a new sound. and others have credited Little Richard's band for first putting in the rock and roll beat.
Elvis Presley too cited Little Richard as an inspiration. However, others before Little Richard were combining these elements, including , , , , and . Little Richard's wild style, with shouts and "wooo wooos," had itself been used by female gospel singers, including the 1940s' .
did a Little Richard style "yaaaaaaww" long before Richard in "Ain't No Rockin no More."
Rock and roll appeared at a time when racial tensions in the United States were coming to the surface. African Americans were protesting of schools and public facilities.
The " " doctrine was nominally overturned by the Supreme Court in , and the difficult task of enforcing this new doctrine lay ahead. This new musical form combining elements of white and inevitably provoked strong reactions.
The phrase "rock and roll" was heard on and His Tympany Five's version of "Tamburitza Boogie", recorded on , in New York City.
However, there are earlier usages of the term, such as the 1949 record "Rock and Roll Blues" by Erline Harris, and the 1948 record by Wild Bill Moore, "Rock And Roll," as well as a record by Paul Bascomb with the same title, though a completely different song, in 1947. Even as early as 1922, had a song titled "My Man Rocks Me with One Steady Roll," but the essence of the phrase was first recorded in 1916, on the record label, in a song called "The Camp Meeting Jubilee", where the singers say "We've been rocking and rolling in your arms, in the arms of Moses."
On , in Cleveland, (also known as Moondog) organized an early rock and roll concert, titled "The ".
The audience and the performers were mixed in race. The evening ended after one song in a near-riot as thousands of fans tried to get into the sold-out venue. The soon understood that there was a white market for black music that was beyond the stylistic boundaries of .
Even the considerable prejudice and racial barriers could do nothing against . Rock and roll was an overnight success in the U.S.
, making ripples across the Atlantic, and perhaps culminating in 1964 with the .
From this early-1950s inception through the early 1960s, rock and roll music also spawned a new dance craze. Teenagers found the irregular rhythm of the backbeat especially suited to reviving the dancing of the big-band era.
"Sock-hops," gym dances, and home basement dance parties became the rage, and American teens watched 's to keep up on the latest dance and fashion styles. From the mid-1960s on, as "rock and roll" yielded gradually to "rock," later dance genres followed, starting with the , and leading up to , , and .
Through the late and early , R B music had been gaining a stronger beat and a wilder style, with artists such as and speeding up the tempos and increasing the backbeat to great popularity on the circuit.
Before the efforts of Freed and others, black music was taboo on many white-owned radio outlets. However, savvy artists and producers quickly recognized the potential of rock, and raced to cash in with white versions of this black music. White musicians also fell in love with the music and played it everywhere they could.
Many of Presley's early hits were covers, like "That's All Right", "Baby, Let's Play House", "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "Hound Dog".
Covering was customary in the music industry at the time; it was made particularly easy by the provision of (still in effect ). One of the first successful rock and roll covers was 's transformation of 's "Good Rocking Tonight" from a to a showy rocker.
The most notable trend, however, was white pop covers of black R B numbers. Exceptions to this rule included Wynonie Harris covering the Louis Prima rocker "Oh Babe" in 1950, and Amos Milburn covering what may have been the first white rock and roll record, Hardrock Gunter's "Birmingham Bounce," in 1949.
Black performers saw their songs recorded by white performers, an important step in the dissemination of the music, but often at the cost of feeling and authenticity (not to mention revenue).
Most famously, recorded sanitized versions of songs, though Boone found "Long Tall Sally" so intense that he couldn't cover it. Later, as those songs became popular, the original artists' recordings received radio play as well. Little Richard once called Pat Boone from the audience and introduced him as "the man who made me a millionaire.
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The cover versions were not necessarily straightforward imitations. 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, while Georgia Gibbs replaced Etta James's 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 , Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie."
In 1959, , , and ( ) were killed when a plane had chartered from , , to crashed in a corn field, after a performance at the Winter Dance Party.
, fed up with the conditions on the buses, decided to charter a small plane for himself and the to get to the next show on time, get some rest, and get their laundry done. After the February 2, 1959 performance at the in , Holly, Richardson (who pleaded with for his seat because he was stricken with flu), and Valens (who had won 's seat after a coin toss), were taken to Clear Lake airport by the manager of the Surf Ballroom.
The plane, a four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza, departed into a blinding snowstorm and crashed into farmer Albert Juhl's cornfield shortly after takeoff.
The crash ended the lives of all three passengers, as well as the 21 year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. This event inspired singer 's popular 1971 ballad " ", and immortalized February 3 as "The Day the Music Died". The event also inspired the song "Three Stars", which specifically mentions Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Valens.
Besides , Holly, Valens, and Richardson were known as three of the first rock and roll teen idols. They were followed by other artists with massive appeal to a teenaged audience, such as the , , , and later, the .
Teen idols were not only known for their catchy pop music, but good looks also played a large part in their successes.
It was because of this that certain fan magazines, exclusively geared to the fans of teen idols ( , , etc.), were created. These monthly magazines typically featured a popular teen idol on the cover, as well as pin-up photographs, a Q A, and a list of each idol's "faves" (i.
e. favorite color, favorite vegetable, favorite hair color, etc.).
The movement brought blues artists to Britain, and in 1955 's version of " " began which inspired many young people to have a go, including and , whose " ", formed in March , would gradually change and develop into . These developments primed the to respond creatively to American rock and roll, which had an impact across the globe. In Britain, skiffle groups, record collecting and trend-watching were in full bloom among the youth culture prior to the rock era, and colour barriers were less of an issue with the idea of separate "race records" seeming almost unimaginable.
Countless British youths listened to R B and rock pioneers and began forming their own bands. Britain quickly became a new center of rock and roll.
In 1958 three British teenagers became and the Drifters (later renamed Cliff Richard and the Shadows).
The group recorded a hit, " ", marking not only what is held to be the very first true British rock 'n' roll single, but also the beginning of a different sound — . Richard and his band introduced many important changes, such as using a "lead guitarist" (virtuoso ) and an .
The British scene developed, with others including , and vying to emulate the stars from the U.
S. Some touring acts attracted particular popularity in Britain, an example being . This inspired many British teens to begin buying records and follow the music scene, thus laying the groundwork for .
At the start of the 1960s, instrumental dance music was very popular. Hits such as " " by and " " by form a British branch of music.
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