Rock & Roll

The search for rock's 'first record' is impossible to resolve definitively—and the attempt reveals how we construct origin myths. 1944: Sister Rosetta Tharpe's 'Strange Things Happening Every Day'—gospel with electric guitar distortion, crossing to the secular R&B chart. 1947: Roy Brown's 'Good Rockin' Tonight'—the word 'rock' used musically rather than sexually. 1949: Fats Domino's 'The Fat Man'—first rock record to sell one million copies.

Then there's 1951: 'Rocket 88' by Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm. Often cited as the first rock and roll record. Features distorted guitar—Willie Kizart's amplifier broke en route to Sun Studio; Sam Phillips stuffed newspaper in the cone to stop rattling, creating the first recorded distortion.

Nick Tosches wrote: 'It is impossible to discern the first modern rock record, just as it is impossible to discern where blue becomes indigo in the spectrum.' The impossibility of the question reveals the truth: rock emerged from a continuum of Black musical innovation. There was no single moment, no single inventor. There was a convergence.

The music existed before the name. African American artists and audiences knew what they were hearing. But for the music to cross the racial divide, it needed a new vocabulary.

Leo Mintz ran Record Rendezvous in Cleveland. In the late 1940s, he noticed something strange: white teenagers were coming into his store to buy R&B records marketed to Black audiences. They were dancing to music not meant for them. Mintz saw opportunity.

He approached local DJ Alan Freed with an idea: a radio show featuring this music, pitched to white teenagers. On July 11, 1951, Freed debuted 'The Moondog Rock 'n' Roll Party' on WJW Cleveland. The term 'rock and roll' had existed in Black culture for decades. Freed didn't invent it; he appropriated it, sanitizing the term for white consumption.

On March 21, 1952, Freed organized the Moondog Coronation Ball at Cleveland Arena—capacity 10,000. Over 20,000 people showed up. The fire department shut it down after one song. It was the first major rock and roll concert—and it nearly ended before it began.

Rock and roll was not just performed with new technologies—it was constituted by them. The physics of solid-body guitars, the electronics of tube amplifiers, the economics of 45 RPM singles: these shaped the music's fundamental character.

The acoustic guitar's hollow body created feedback when amplified. Leo Fender—who never learned to play guitar—solved this with a solid slab of wood: the Broadcaster (later Telecaster, 1950) and Stratocaster (1954). The solid body eliminated feedback and enabled volume. Rock's aggression became possible.

When vacuum tube amplifiers were pushed past their intended limits, they distorted the signal. This 'flaw' became rock's signature sound. The 45 RPM single (1949) made records affordable for teenagers and shaped song structure—rock songs had to be short, immediate, impactful. The Regency TR-1 transistor radio (1954) let teenagers listen privately, away from parents. Rock became youth property.

New Orleans gave rock and roll its rhythm. The city's unique musical culture—blending Caribbean, African, French, and American traditions—produced the backbeat that would define the music.

Drummer Earl Palmer is 'correctly identified as the man who put the backbeat in rock 'n' roll'—emphasizing beats 2 and 4 rather than 1 and 3. This rhythmic innovation, rooted in New Orleans second-line tradition, became rock's defining pulse.

Cosimo Matassa opened J&M Recording Studio at 838 North Rampart Street in 1945. In just 15 x 16 feet, he captured virtually every New Orleans R&B hit from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. Producer Dave Bartholomew and artist Fats Domino created over 40 Top 10 R&B hits together. Their partnership defined the New Orleans sound.

Memphis was where the races met in music—not without tension, not without exploitation, but with revolutionary results. Sam Phillips opened Memphis Recording Service (later Sun Studio) at 706 Union Avenue on January 3, 1950.

In August 1953, an 18-year-old truck driver paid $4 to record a demo for his mother. Elvis Presley's voice impressed Marion Keisker, Phillips's assistant. A year later, on July 5, 1954, Elvis returned to the studio. After hours of frustrating attempts at ballads, he started fooling around with Arthur Crudup's 'That's All Right.'

Phillips recognized the sound immediately. On July 7, 1954, DJ Dewey Phillips played 'That's All Right' on WHBQ Memphis. The phone lines exploded. A white boy singing Black music—not imitating, not sanitizing, but inhabiting it. The crossover began.

When the Delta blues came to Chicago, it got loud. Leonard Chess (born Lejzor Czyz) and Phil Chess (born Fiszel Czyz)—Polish Jewish immigrants—owned nightclubs on Chicago's South Side where bluesmen performed. In 1950, they founded Chess Records. At 2120 South Michigan Avenue, they built a catalog that defined electric blues.

Muddy Waters brought the Delta blues north and plugged it in. His 1958 UK tour shocked British audiences—electric blues at volume levels they'd never experienced. He planted seeds that would grow into the British Invasion.

Chuck Berry was the complete package: guitar innovation, lyrical wit, showmanship, and business sense. 'Maybellene' (1955) was his breakthrough—#1 R&B, #5 Pop. But Berry lost royalties for 31 years. Alan Freed demanded co-writing credit as payment for radio play. Berry didn't regain full ownership until 1986.

Rock and roll's history cannot be separated from the history of American racism—in its creation, exploitation, erasure, and eventual (partial) integration.

In the 1950s, white artists routinely covered Black artists' songs with sanitized arrangements for segregated radio markets. Big Mama Thornton's 'Hound Dog' (1953) topped the R&B chart for seven weeks. She received a flat fee of $500. No royalties. Elvis's 1956 version sold 10 million copies. Thornton died penniless in 1984.

Little Richard's 'Tutti Frutti' was covered by Pat Boone, who outsold the original. LaVern Baker's 'Tweedle Dee' was covered by Georgia Gibbs using nearly the identical arrangement. Baker was so frustrated she petitioned Congress to outlaw note-for-note covers.

Yet something else was happening. At rock and roll shows, the segregated seating—often enforced by literal ropes—began to collapse. Ralph Bass, Chess Records producer: 'Then, hell, the rope would come down, and they'd all be dancing together.' Music became a space where integration happened in practice before it was achieved in law.