The origins of rock and roll

We can be confident “Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay.” Its roots go back further than two centuries, and they are as integral to Western culture as “The Marseillaise,” the “Hucklebuck” and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

In mid-1949, Billboard magazine began a chart listing for “Rhythm & Blues.” The magazine could have as easily listed this as “Rock & Roll,” because within six years, much of rhythm & blues was rock & roll.

Rhythm & blues of the period was the melting pot for the earlier musical forms. All of those musical forms until then were thrown into a pot, spiced up by the artists of the day, then mixed like a good gumbo. Rhythm & blues was the gumbo; rock & roll was what boiled out of the pot.

During 1954-55, Sam Phillips and his Sun Records studio began recording Elvis. One of the first cuts Elvis recorded was “Mystery Train”, a rhythm & blues tune co-written by Phillips and Little Junior Parker. Overshadowed by the Elvis emergence with Sun Records is that Sam Phillips had already produced Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, and B.B. King. Sam had his feet firmly in the rhythm & blues genre.

Rhythm & blues developed in urban America during the Forties because the money was there...War production pay checks and post-war prosperity reaching even into the ghettos set people to buying. They bought radios and they bought record players; they fed juke boxes and they bought records; they went to concerts at the Apollo and at the Hollywood Bowl. They made rhythm & blues profitable.

The electric guitar was multiplying musical options for blues players. Popular during the period were pioneers like Lightening Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker and, a bit later, Bo Diddley, almost all of whom conceded some influence to the earlier,

brightest of guitar nova, Charlie Christian.

Another signal of change was the shift from the Big Bands to small combos. Lionel Hampton was a major figure in that transition during the late Forties, recalling as well, that nurtured with his combo for two years was a future icon of rhythm & blues and, later, rock & roll, Ruth Jones,known to us as Dinah Washington.

Others musicians and composers contributed to the transition. Music was shaped by the venues in which it was performed. Singers sang louder, amps were cranked up, because small noisy club venues, common then, needed loudness to be heard.

Names familiar in the Forties still thread through our music fifty years later. John Lee Hooker was a popular rhythm & blues artist then, cutting his first big hit in 1949. On the west coast, he recorded for L.A.-based Modern Records, along with Etta James and Jimmie Witherspoon, among others.

Ike Turner, somewhat infamous ex-husband of Tina Turner, arranged B.B. King’s first recording contract. “The Thrill Is Gone” was a huge hit for B.B. King twenty years after it was written and recorded in 1951 by Ray Hawkins for the rhythm & blues market.

The transition to rock & roll might not have occurred without the continuity provided by some key artists. Covering of black rhythm & blues tunes by white artists became rampant in the mid-Fifties, notably 1954-56. Not that it hadn’t happened before. Notable though, Pat Boone built his career on covers from rhythm & blues. In 1954, Bill Haley & the Comets covered a Big Joe Turner tune, “Shake, Rattle & Roll.” A comparison of the two affirms the links and influences more than any other piece of music.

Dinah Washington brought along the gospel flavored side of rhythm & blues, Ray Charles provided the blend of blues and gospel that hop-skipped popular music to soul as we identify it now.

The music we listen to today is as much shaped by influences from the past as from our expectations for today. The thrill is definitely not gone! Life did not begin with Elvis; it only reached new heights.