Rock and Roll History and The Blues

by guest author Ed Parker

In July 2004, America celebrated the “50th anniversary of rock ‘n’ roll,” for it had been fifty years earlier, on July 5, 1954, that Elvis Presley recorded his first commercial record, “That’s All Right,” for Sun Records. I was inspired to feature songs, styles, and artists to support my theory that Elvis did not create rock ‘n’ roll, that rock ‘n’ roll was not “born” in the 1950s, and that DJ Alan Freed did not coint he phrase “rock and roll.” None of this is meant to downplay the importance of Reed, Elvis, or any of his musical contemporaries, but an attempt to simply shed light on a much-misunderstood topic.

Unfortunately, most of the world’s population will forever place rock’s beginnings in the 1950s, which simply goes to show that whenever something is said often enough, it becomes “fact.”

Even Rolling Stone magazine devoted an issue to the “50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Not surprisingly, it begins with Elvis, with the headline in big, black letters: “Truck Driver Invents Rock,” and when RCA released Elvis’ #1 hits on CD, the TV promotion for the disc declared “Before anybody did anything, Elvis did everything.” Rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t really “invented” – especially by one person. Rather, it evolved over time, thanks to many, both known and unknown.

I tend to view some prewar recordings as rock ‘n’ roll, such as “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” by Pinetop Smith from 1928, and “How You Want It Done” by Big Bill Broonzy from 1930, which I consider to be the first rockabilly record thanks to the guitar riff. I also tend to view the 1940s as the first real decade for rock and roll; the decade of jump blues, hillbilly boogie, and the first “bird” groups, such as The Ravens and The Orioles.

Jump blues great Louis Jordan was the biggest black recording artist of the 1940s; a huge inspiration to such future stars as Bill Haley, Bo Diddley, B.B. King, Little Richard, James Brown, Chuck Berry, and, much later, Joe Jackson, who once stated that “everyone should have a Louis Jordan record in their medicine cabinet.” The Delmore Brothers, Alton and Rabon, first recorded in 1931, and became stars of the Grand Ole Opry during that decade. In the 1940s, they became pioneers of hillbilly boogie, the precursor to rockabilly.

The 1950s was when it all went mainstream, thanks in no small part to the birth of youth culture. As for the name “Rock and Roll,” it actually had several meanings:

1. “Rock and Roll” was black slang for sex. This is the most popular meaning. The best early example of this is the 1922 recording of “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)” by Trixie Smith (no relation to Bessie or any other Smith who recorded during this period). The song was recorded for one of the first black-owned record labels, Black Swan, and features Fletcher Henderson on piano.
2. “Rock and Roll” was a spiritual phrase. Around 1910, a group of unknowns recorded a cylinder for Little Wonder entitled “The Camp Meeting Jubilee.” One passage goes this way: “Rockin’ and rollin’ in your arms, rockin’ and rollin’ in your arms, rockin’ and rollin’ in your arms… in the arms of Moses.”
3. “Rock and Roll” was a nautical term used by seamen to describe the motions of a ship. The best example of this meaning is a recording by pop vocal group The Boswell Sisters. The song, simply entitled “Rock and Roll,” was recorded on October 4, 1934, for Columbia Records – long before The Velvet Underground and Led Zeppelin recorded songs with the same title.
4. “Rock and Roll” – and here’s where it gets interesting – was used to describe musical rhythm. The first record to use the phrase ‘rock and roll” as such is “Rock It For Me” by none other than Ella Fitzgerald, who recorded it with the Chick Webb Band on September 21, 1937, for the Brunswick label. Miss Fitzgerald sings: “It’s true that once upon a time the opera was the thing… but today the rage is rhythm and rhyme, so won’t you satisfy my soul with the rock and roll? You can’t be tame while the band is playing, it ain’t no shame to keep your body swaying… beat it out in the minor key, oh, rock it for me.” Louis Jordan, one of the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1940s, was a member of the Webb band but was absent the day “Rock It For Me” was recorded.

All of this clearly shows that Alan Freed did not coin the phrase “rock and roll,” nor was he the first to use it to describe musical rhythm. He was simply the most influential of those who had. Now that we’ve cleared up the history of the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll,” I want to examine some more musical examples.

I want to begin this section with a quote from one of my favorite music writers, the late Nick Tosches. The following comes from his excellent book Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Birth of Rock In The Wild Years Before Elvis (Harmony Books, 1991). It is as follows: “Rock ‘n’ Roll was not created soley by blacks or by whites, and it certainly did not come into being all of a sudden. It evolved, slowly, wrought by blacks and by whites, some of them old and some of them young, in the South and in the West, in the North and in the East. Its makers were driven not so much by any pure creative spirit, but rather the desire to make money. Nothing can bring together a black man and a white, a young man and an old, a country man and a city man, than a dollar placed between them. Rock ‘n’ roll flourished because it sold.”

Rock ‘n’ roll embraces many styles (i.e. blues, jazz, gospel, country), which is exactly what makes citing the “first rock ‘n’ roll record” subjective as opposed to factual. When Elvis cut his version of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right” rockabilly-style for Sun Records in 1954 (Crudup cut the original in September 1946), they didn’t know how to promote the record. Was Elvis black or white? Was the record country? Blues? Pop? I think it’s safe to say that it’s a mixture of all three.

The following songs also defy category on the country side of things long before anyone ever heard of Elvis Presley.

1. “I Ain’t Got Nobody” by Emmett Miller, recorded on June 12, 1928. Personnel includes jazz musicians Tommy Dorsey on trombone, Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet and alto sax, and Eddie Lang on guitar. They were billed as “The Georgia Crackers.” This is the same song that was recorded by both Louis Prima and David Lee Roth (interestingly, Van Halen’s 1982 album Diver Down includes their version of “Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now,” cut by Mr. Miller in 1925 and again in 1929.) Miller, a white man who performed in blackface, was a pop singer with hillbilly overtones supported by some of the hottest jazz artists of the day, influencing the likes of Bob Wills and Hank Williams in the process.
2. “Freight Train Boogie” by The Delmore Brothers was recorded on February 12, 1946, for King Records. A perfect slice of hillbilly boogie, this cut features Jethro Burns on electric guitar, one half of the country comedy duo Homer and Jethro. Take away the harmonica, and you’re left with the same style that Elvis recorded almost ten years later at Sun with Scotty Moore and Bill Black.
3. “Move It On Over” by Hank Williams, recorded on April 21, 1947, for M-G-M Records. Perhaps if black music had gained the popularity that it had in the in 1940s, Hank would have been promoted as a rock ‘n’ roller. Of course, the song was covered in 1978 by George Thorogood and The Delaware Destroyers and is still in rotation on classic rock radio.

And then there’s Jimmie Rodgers, variously called “The Singing Brakeman,” “America’s Blue Yodeler,” and “The Father of Country Music.” Rodgers was heavily influenced by black blues musicians, as was pretty much every country artist, really. Jimmie, who was born in 1897 and recorded from 1927 to 1933, with his final session taking place a mere two days before his death at age 35, has been hailed as the Elvis of his day – a hugely influential artist who embraced black music.

While it’s common knowledge that plenty of white artists were inspired and influenced by their black counterparts, it is not nearly as common that black artists were also influenced by whites. The following songs were first recorded by white country artists that were then remade by black R&B musicians.

1. “Bloodshot Eyes” by Hank Penny, recorded for King Records on March 9, 1949. Steel guitar: Speedy West. The tune, co-written by Penny, became a #4 C&W hit in 1950. Blues shouter Wynonie Harris (“Mr. Blues”), cut his version for King on February 27, 1951, and it became a #6 R&B hit later that year.
2. “Jambalaya (On The Bayou)” by Hank Williams, recorded on June 13, 1952, for M-G-M Records. It was remade by Fats Domino on November 6, 1961, for Imperial. And then, of course, there’s the groundbreaking albums by Ray Charles consisting of his covers of country classics, Modern Sounds In Country And Western and Modern Sounds In Country and Western Volume Two, both released in 1962. Chuck Berry has always been a fan of country music. His debut single for Chess in 1955, “Maybellene,” is based on the country standard “Ida Red,” and Kansas City’s own Charlie Parker would play country records on jukeboxes while his bandmates would ask if he was serious. He was.

The following blues and R&B songs qualify (to my ears, at least) as rock ‘n’ roll, but were recorded before the 1950s.

1. “Anticipatin’ Blues” by The Southern Negro Quartette. In my opinion, this is the closest example of doo-wop before doo-wop. Recorded in June 1921, its hollers and shouts that whoop and glide like a rollercoaster make it easy to imagine it being sung on a Brooklyn street corner in 1954.
2. Hastings Street” by ragtime blues guitarist Blind Blake and boogie woogie pianist Charlie Spand, recorded on August 17, 1929, for Paramount Records. Here, the rock ‘n’ roll beat is undeniable. Its intro is identical to that of Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man,” recorded a little over twenty years later (“The Fat Man,” in turn, is Fats’ version of “Junker Blues,” recorded by blues pianist Champion Jack Dupree in 1941).
3. “Strange Things Happening Every Day” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, recorded for Decca on September 22, 1944. A fine slice of gospel boogie. Jerry Lee Lewis: “I tell you, man, that woman could sing some rock ‘n’ roll! First time I ever heard her, in Natchez, Mississippi, I was eight or nine, and she was singing religious music, but she was hitting that guitar, man, she’s shakin’, and she is singing rock ‘n’ roll. I said, “‘Whoo-ooo!'”
4. “T-Bone Boogie” by T-Bone Walker with Marl Young & His Orchestra, recorded possibly May 1945 for Rhumboogie Records. Here we have Chuck Berry licks a full ten years before Chuck Berry emerged on the scene.
5. “Ain’t That Just Like A Woman” by Louis Jordan & His Tympani Five, recorded for Decca on January 23, 1946. The guitar intro was taken note-for-note twelve years later by Chuck Berry for “Johnny B. Goode.” Jordan’s guitarist, Carl Hogan, was an early idol of Berry’s.
6. “That’s All Right” by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, recorded for RCA’s Bluebird imprint on September 6, 1946. As previously stated, this became Elvis’ first commercial record, recorded rockabilly-style for Sun in 1954.
7. “Good Rockin’ Tonight” by Wynonie Harris, recorded on December 28, 1947, for King Records. By June 1948, this was a #1 R&B hit, and paved the way for countless songs having the word “rocking” or “rock” in the title. It’s been said that it was Wynonie whom Elvis was copying when you saw the latter swivel his hips and curl his lip.

Placing the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s is similar to walking into a movie theater when the movie’s half over – you’re missing half the plot! The important thing to remember is that music is all connected. All one has to do is listen.

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