Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The origins of rock and roll are rooted in a blending of African-American musical genres, mainly rhythm and blues, with stylistic influences from gospel, jazz, boogie-woogie, electric blues, jump blues, swing, and folk music. While rock and roll's early elements can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until 1954.
By the mid-1960s, rock and roll had developed into "the more encompassing international style known as rock music, though the latter also continued to be known in many circles as rock and roll". For the purposes of differentiation, this article deals with the first definition.
In the earliest rock and roll styles, either the piano or saxophone was typically the lead instrument. These instruments were generally replaced or supplemented by the electric guitar in the mid-to-late 1950s. The beat is essentially a dance rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, almost always provided by a snare drum. Minimal blues chord progressions such as the twelve-bar blues are commonly used. Classic rock and roll is usually played with one or more electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm) and a double bass (string bass). After the mid-1950s, electric bass guitars (first mass-produced by Fender in the early 1950s) and drum kits became popular in classic rock.
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. According to G.C. Altschuler the music had a positive influence on the civil rights movement because of its widespread appeal to both Black American and White American teenagers.
Terminology
The term "rock and roll" is defined by Greg Kot in Encyclopædia Britannica as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later developed "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music". The term is sometimes also used as synonymous with "rock music" and is defined as such in some dictionaries.
The words rock and roll had become associated in the late eighteenth century, when "Rock and Roll" brimstone (i.e. sulfur) was advertised;Dublin Evening Post 19 July 1785, p.3. rock brimstone being the naturally-occurring form and roll brimstone being in the form of sticks or blocks, made by allowing liquid sulfur to solidify in (esp. cylindrical) moulds.Oxford English Dictionary. The phrase "rocking and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but by the early 20th century was used both to describe the spiritual fervor of black church rituals and as a sexual analogy. A retired Welsh seaman named William Fender can be heard singing the phrase "rock and roll" when describing a sexual encounter in his performance of the traditional song "The Baffled Knight" to the folklorist James Madison Carpenter in the early 1930s, which he would have learned at sea in the 1800s; the recording can be heard on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website.
Various gospel, blues and swing recordings used the phrase before it became widely popular. "Bosom of Abraham", an African-American spiritual that was documented no later than 1867 (just after the Civil War), uses the phrase "rock my soul" frequently in a religious sense; this song was later recorded by musicians from various genres, including various gospel musicians and groups (including The Jordanaires), Louis Armstrong (jazz/swing), Lonnie Donegan (skiffle), and Elvis Presley (rock and roll/pop/country). Blues singer Trixie Smith recorded "My Man Rocks Me with One Steady Roll" in 1922. It was used in 1940s recordings and reviews of what became known as "rhythm and blues" music aimed at a black audience. Huey "Piano" Smith credits Cha Cha Hogan, a jump-blues shouter and comic in New Orleans, with popularizing the term in his 1950 song "My Walking Baby".
In 1934, the song "Rock and Roll" by the Boswell Sisters appeared in the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round. In 1942, before the concept of rock and roll had been defined, Billboard magazine columnist Maurie Orodenker started to use the term to describe upbeat recordings such as "Rock Me" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe; her style on that recording was described as "rock-and-roll spiritual singing".Billboard, May 30, 1942, page 25. Other examples are in describing Vaughn Monroe's "Coming Out Party" in the issue of June 27, 1942, page 76 ; Count Basie's "It's Sand, Man", in the issue of October 3, 1942, page 63 ; and Deryck Sampson's "Kansas City Boogie-Woogie" in the issue of October 9, 1943, page 67 . By 1943, the "Rock and Roll Inn" in South Merchantville, New Jersey, was established as a music venue. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style, and referring to it as "rock and roll" on his mainstream radio program, which popularized the phrase.
Several sources suggest that Freed found the term, used as a synonym for sexual intercourse, on the record "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and his Dominoes. The lyrics include the line, "I rock 'em, roll 'em all night long". Freed did not acknowledge the suggestion about that source in interviews, and explained the term as follows: "Rock 'n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm".
In discussing Alan Freed's contribution to the genre, two significant sources emphasized the importance of African-American rhythm and blues. 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 American 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. 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".
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".
Early rock and roll
Origins
While the history has been subject to debate, modern scholarship increasingly centers the genre as a direct descendant of the black experience in the American South and the urban centers of the North. At its core, rock and roll is the electrification and acceleration of African-American musical traditions. While European instrumentation provided the physical tools; the rhythm, structure, and soul of the genre were forged in the black community. 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.R. Aquila, That old-time rock & roll: a chronicle of an era, 1954–1963 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp. 4–6.J. M. Salem, The late, great Johnny Ace and the transition from R & B to rock 'n' roll Music in American life (University of Illinois Press, 2001), p. 4. Radio stations that made white and black forms of music available to both groups, the development and spread of the gramophone record, and African-American musical styles such as jazz and swing which were taken up by white musicians, aided this process of "cultural collision".M. T. Bertrand, Race, rock, and Elvis Music in American life (University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 99.
The immediate roots of rock and roll lay in the rhythm and blues, then called "race music", in combination with either boogie-woogie and shouting gospel or with country music of the 1940s and 1950s. Particularly significant influences were jazz, blues, gospel, country, and folk. Commentators differ in their views of which of these forms were most important and the degree to which the new music was a re-branding of African-American rhythm and blues for a white market, or a new hybrid of black and white forms.A. Bennett, Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions (Routledge, 1993), pp. 236–238.K. Keightley, "Reconsidering rock", in S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 116.N. Kelley, R&B, Rhythm and Business: The Political Economy of Black Music (Akashic Books, 2005), p. 134.