“If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him ‘pop.’ Buddy Holly warned a fellow musician. “Don’t tell him ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ or they won’t even let you in the hotel.” Sound advice during rock’s infancy in the 1950s, when this subversive and perverse “devil’s music” struck all the wrong chords with middle-American polite society. But for alienated and bored suburban teenagers electrified by pent-up energy, sexuality, and individuality, rock was a godsend. And since inception in 1954, the music remains a common language of rebellious expression, attitudes, ideas, and behaviors. The soundtrack of young America.
So, roll over Beethoven.” I’m Joel Rhodes “Telling History.”
When thinking of rock’s first decade, there are really two distinct periods: several years of artistic innovation between 1954 and 1959, then a commercialized time of teen idols, doo wop, and girl groups until the Beatles showed up in 1964. We’ll save that second one for another time.
The South gave birth to the first era. Every one of rock’s fathers was Southern: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Ray Charles, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino.
Southern sensibilities animated their music. As a genre, rock is basically a combustible recipe of Rhythm and Blues beat and percussion, Country and Western’s twang and emotional resonance, with an electric guitar catalyst. Mass migrations during World War II crosspollinated and racially integrated these diverse musical traditions along with jazz and gospel influence. Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”
These raw musical styles were usually played live in seedy bars, local dance halls, and brothels. The rambunctious musicians often ran afoul of the law. So, not really a going concern above the Mason-Dixon.
Until Cleveland DJ Alan Freed noticed Northern white kids buying these taboo, so-called “race” records, and began playing them on his pioneering radio show, "The Moondog Rock & Roll House Party." Legend has that Freed got the music’s name from a risqué African American slang term for, well, uh…
“If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him ‘pop.’ Buddy Holly warned a fellow musician. “Don’t tell him ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ or they won’t even let you in the hotel."
Anyway, in early 1954 Freed took rock with him to New York’s larger radio market, but the outsider music still lacked a performer acceptable to white middle-class youth.
That very same spring Elvis Aaron Presley recorded his first sessions at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio in Memphis. That “white boy with the negro sound” as Phillips called him, released “That’s Alright Momma” which quickly knocked Perry Como’s song “Wanted” out of the number one spot, the first of Elvis’ 737 records on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Presley’s cross-over appeal consummated rock’s artistic and commercial marriage that played out on Top 40 AM Radio. As if overnight, Baby Boomers couldn’t get enough. Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day.”
Teenagers – a term that hadn’t really existed before the war – found their musical voice. It was relevant to their lives, a music by, for, and about youth. Sam Cooke’s “Only Sixteen.” Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.”
Rough, loud, unsophisticated… rebellious without a specific cause. Elvis looked a lot like James Dean: hoodlums with ducktails and sideburns guaranteed to offend your elders. Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”
That insistent beat and subtly sexy lyrics conjured all sorts of naughty impulses. Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Mollie.”
And danceable, of course. Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.” “If you like it, if you feel it,” Elvis explained, “you can’t help but move to it.”
