Fact #4409
When:
Short story:
Regarded by many as the first rock'n'roll
record, Rocket 88 by
Jackie
Brenston and Ike Turner is recorded at Sun Studios, Memphis, Tennessee, USA, with Sam Phillips as producer.
Full article:
Ike Turner : They say I'm the first somebody to do rock'n'roll. But why do they call what I play rhythm and blues? How did I cut the first rock'n'roll record if everything I cut is r'n'b? It's the most racist statement I ever heard in my goddamn life.
Ike Turner : Some dude at the record company beat me, and I only got $40 for writing, producing, and recording it. And the lead singer (Jackie Brenston) took the band from me and went on his own. (Source : Rolling Stone magazine interview, 1971, issue 93)
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THE BIRTH OF ROCK'N'ROLL by Johnny Black
Put a bunch of experts together in a room to debate precisely when and where rock'n'roll started, and one of them will point out that the terms 'rock' and 'roll' were in common use among America's black population back in the 1920s, as fairly interchangeable synonyms for a man a woman, usually horizontally inclined, enjoying a real good time.
Another expert will insist, however, that it's not really until the two terms came together in a song that rock'n'roll can be said to have existed. For example, in the 1934 movie Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, jazz vocal trio The Boswell Sisters can be seen singing a ditty entitled Rock And Roll and, in 1939, when country vocalist Buddy Jones recorded Rockin' Rollin' Mama for Decca Records, he could be heard yelling, "I love the way you rock and roll."
Expert No3 will be quick to interject, with some justification, that neither of those sound remotely like rock'n'roll songs, so the genre's start date should be pushed forward to March 5, 1951, when the up-tempo, stomping Rocket 88 was recorded by Jackie Brenston, backed by Ike Turner's Kings Of Rhythm, in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Brenston's finest moment is often claimed as the first rock'n'roll record, and one point in its favour is that the profits from Rocket 88 enabled its producer, Sam Phillips, to start his Sun Records studio and label which, in due course, launched Elvis Presley on an unsuspecting world. Yet, in terms of its sound, style and beat, this hymn to the fastest car on American roads at the time, the Oldsmobile 88, is actually no more a rock'n'roll record than Rock The Joint by Jimmy Preston, or The Fat Man by Fats Domino, both recorded two years earlier.
Just about all that is clear is that, by the start of the 1950s, the term rock'n'roll was already in circulation, and various streams of American music were unwittingly poised to fuse together into something that everyone would, by the middle of the decade, be calling rock'n'roll.
It cannot be stressed to often, or too loudly, that music does not exist in isolation. Music is, to a large extent, a reflection of an evolving society, and it is that society which gives birth to the music, nurtures it and ultimately dictates whether it will live or die. Thus, any examination of the growth of rock'n'roll in the fifties must take account of that decade's culture, and also its technologies, fashions, politics and philosophies.
Politics And The Changing Society of the 1950s
It's arguable that US Senator Joseph McCarthy ranks high on the list of those who set the agenda that made rock'n'roll inevitable. As the fifties opened, democratic America was in the grip of McCarthy's Communist witch hunts. The Senator was convinced that the US State Department was riddled with and possibly even controlled by "Reds under the beds", and his obsession with rooting out this evil extended into the arts. His lists of potential Communists for investigation included actors, painters, poets and musicians.
As with most artists, musicians in general don't like being categorised, and particularly despise anything that smacks of repression or censorship. McCarthy's witch hunts created a climate in which many musicians felt obliged to respond by challenging his hypothetical status quo. Anything that upset the McCarthy applecart would be seen as good, so the time was ripe for something new and radical to emerge.
Fortuitously, there was also an audience out there waiting for that emergence. The term teenager had been coined in the 1940s to describe those increasingly outspoken young people who, unlike the youth of previous generations, now had the benefit of a college education. Even more importantly, teenagers either controlled a significant amount of their parents' disposable income, or earned their own. The increased spending power of this newly identified group would become a vital spur to the growth of rock'n'roll by the mid-fifties.
Another burning political issue of the era was segregation. In theory, America was an integrated nation, a land of equal opportunity. In practice, the black and white communities lived dramatically different lives and, especially in the southern states, blacks were routinely barred from theatres, bars and restaurants. Their job prospects were severely limited, they could only sit in the back seats of buses, and their children were obliged to go to all-black schools. This was a situation which the new generation of teenagers would soon begin to find unacceptable.
At the start of the decade, few of these kids had access to television, but most of them were glued to their radios for long periods. A sign of changing times had come in Oct 1948, when Memphis, Tennessee, USA. radio station WDIA changed to an all-black music format, making it a pioneer in this type of programming. Steve Cropper, later to become the guitarist for Booker T and the MGs, has recalled how, as a white teenager in Memphis during 1951, he "started listening to the black spiritual stations on the radio. That music has such rhythm and feeling
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Ike Turner : Some dude at the record company beat me, and I only got $40 for writing, producing, and recording it. And the lead singer (Jackie Brenston) took the band from me and went on his own. (Source : Rolling Stone magazine interview, 1971, issue 93)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BIRTH OF ROCK'N'ROLL by Johnny Black
Put a bunch of experts together in a room to debate precisely when and where rock'n'roll started, and one of them will point out that the terms 'rock' and 'roll' were in common use among America's black population back in the 1920s, as fairly interchangeable synonyms for a man a woman, usually horizontally inclined, enjoying a real good time.
Another expert will insist, however, that it's not really until the two terms came together in a song that rock'n'roll can be said to have existed. For example, in the 1934 movie Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, jazz vocal trio The Boswell Sisters can be seen singing a ditty entitled Rock And Roll and, in 1939, when country vocalist Buddy Jones recorded Rockin' Rollin' Mama for Decca Records, he could be heard yelling, "I love the way you rock and roll."
Expert No3 will be quick to interject, with some justification, that neither of those sound remotely like rock'n'roll songs, so the genre's start date should be pushed forward to March 5, 1951, when the up-tempo, stomping Rocket 88 was recorded by Jackie Brenston, backed by Ike Turner's Kings Of Rhythm, in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Brenston's finest moment is often claimed as the first rock'n'roll record, and one point in its favour is that the profits from Rocket 88 enabled its producer, Sam Phillips, to start his Sun Records studio and label which, in due course, launched Elvis Presley on an unsuspecting world. Yet, in terms of its sound, style and beat, this hymn to the fastest car on American roads at the time, the Oldsmobile 88, is actually no more a rock'n'roll record than Rock The Joint by Jimmy Preston, or The Fat Man by Fats Domino, both recorded two years earlier.
Just about all that is clear is that, by the start of the 1950s, the term rock'n'roll was already in circulation, and various streams of American music were unwittingly poised to fuse together into something that everyone would, by the middle of the decade, be calling rock'n'roll.
It cannot be stressed to often, or too loudly, that music does not exist in isolation. Music is, to a large extent, a reflection of an evolving society, and it is that society which gives birth to the music, nurtures it and ultimately dictates whether it will live or die. Thus, any examination of the growth of rock'n'roll in the fifties must take account of that decade's culture, and also its technologies, fashions, politics and philosophies.
Politics And The Changing Society of the 1950s
It's arguable that US Senator Joseph McCarthy ranks high on the list of those who set the agenda that made rock'n'roll inevitable. As the fifties opened, democratic America was in the grip of McCarthy's Communist witch hunts. The Senator was convinced that the US State Department was riddled with and possibly even controlled by "Reds under the beds", and his obsession with rooting out this evil extended into the arts. His lists of potential Communists for investigation included actors, painters, poets and musicians.
As with most artists, musicians in general don't like being categorised, and particularly despise anything that smacks of repression or censorship. McCarthy's witch hunts created a climate in which many musicians felt obliged to respond by challenging his hypothetical status quo. Anything that upset the McCarthy applecart would be seen as good, so the time was ripe for something new and radical to emerge.
Fortuitously, there was also an audience out there waiting for that emergence. The term teenager had been coined in the 1940s to describe those increasingly outspoken young people who, unlike the youth of previous generations, now had the benefit of a college education. Even more importantly, teenagers either controlled a significant amount of their parents' disposable income, or earned their own. The increased spending power of this newly identified group would become a vital spur to the growth of rock'n'roll by the mid-fifties.
Another burning political issue of the era was segregation. In theory, America was an integrated nation, a land of equal opportunity. In practice, the black and white communities lived dramatically different lives and, especially in the southern states, blacks were routinely barred from theatres, bars and restaurants. Their job prospects were severely limited, they could only sit in the back seats of buses, and their children were obliged to go to all-black schools. This was a situation which the new generation of teenagers would soon begin to find unacceptable.
At the start of the decade, few of these kids had access to television, but most of them were glued to their radios for long periods. A sign of changing times had come in Oct 1948, when Memphis, Tennessee, USA. radio station WDIA changed to an all-black music format, making it a pioneer in this type of programming. Steve Cropper, later to become the guitarist for Booker T and the MGs, has recalled how, as a white teenager in Memphis during 1951, he "started listening to the black spiritual stations on the radio. That music has such rhythm and feeling