Rock And Roll

[youngmoigle]

If you are into 1950's rockabilly (as I am) you may occasionally get into an argument about which was the first rock and roll record.

Most people say "Rocket '88" recorded in Sun Studios 1951

The oldest in my collection is "We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll", recorded by Wild Bill Moore in 1947

"Rock and Roll" was recorded by the Boswell Sisters in about 1934. It's not really a contender (because it's not rock and roll), but you might win a few bets if you ask what was the first song with Rock and Roll in the title.
fqQ_uYqUyx8
And while I'm on the subject (my favourite subject)...

Many rock and roll songs were recorded by black artists several years before the white artists had a go at them. Elvis Presley's Hound Dog was first recorded by Big Mama Thornton and Bill Haley's Shake Rattle And Roll was a first recorded by Joe Turner.

Most of those originals had fairly sexy lyrics which had to be toned down before the white artists were able to record them (and play them on white radio). Bill Haley was always pleased that the censor allowed him to record Shake Rattle And Roll with at least one line unchanged: "Like a one-eyed cat, peeping in a sea food store..." (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

[Mister Pervert]

Many rock and roll songs were recorded by black artists several years before the white artists had a go at them. Elvis Presley's Hound Dog was first recorded by Big Mama Thornton and Bill Haley's Shake Rattle And Roll was a first recorded by Joe Turner.

Louis Jordan's band was arguably the first rock and roll band long before the term was coined although, like everything in music, it was a blend of many elements that all have their roots in the late 19th century New Orleans. Interestingly, Jordan was Decca's biggest star in the mid-40s but was dropped in favor of Bill Haley.

It's also the case that many black artists weren't permitted by their record companies to cover rock and roll tunes once Haley and others made it popular for white audiences. Peter Doyle's book "Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900 - 1960" discusses this and particular, the rise of the "record producer as auteur".

[youngmoigle]

Louis Jordan's band was arguably the first rock and roll band long before the term was coined although, like everything in music, it was a blend of many elements that all have their roots in the late 19th century New Orleans. Interestingly, Jordan was Decca's biggest star in the mid-40s but was dropped in favor of Bill Haley.

It's also the case that many black artists weren't permitted by their record companies to cover rock and roll tunes once Haley and others made it popular for white audiences. Peter Doyle's book "Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording, 1900 - 1960" discusses this and particular, the rise of the "record producer as auteur".

I'm only working on fallible memory here, but I think we had a similar situation in Australia. Not with every song of course, but if an Australian artist covered an overseas song, the original wasn't released until about three months later.

[Seamus]

@Young Moigle

Thanks for that clip;I''d never heard of the Boswell sisters;they're umm "'very white" musically.They sound like the Andrew's Sisters.


I really like Wanda Jackson,"The Queen of Rockabilly"--and she can really yodel too! (but I think The Schneider Sisters are easilyas good yodellers)


@Lapsed atheist:

I agree with you about Louis Jordan, that guy was great (and very funny) and played a mean alto Sax.. According to Wiki,He's ranked as FIFTH most successful black recording artist of all time.


At least one of his record titles entered the vernacular at the time.("Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens") he was very popular in the 1940's but not the 50's.. "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (1949) has also been claimed as an early rock and roll record.

[Mister Pervert]

I'm only working on fallible memory here, but I think we had a similar situation in Australia. Not with every song of course, but if an Australian artist covered an overseas song, the original wasn't released until about three months later.

My memory of it is also faulty, but the Australian Musicians' Union had a fair amount of clout and the cover versions were a form of local music industry protectionism.

The history of Australian rock and roll is very interesting, particularly as so many of its pioneers are still alive to tell first-hand stories. For example, in the very earliest days of rock and roll, local musicians would go to the cinema to watch Elvis and other seminal rock and roll movies and transcribe their parts so they could cover all the newest tunes on their gigs.

A few years ago, I played keyboards with a band called The Flamingos - originally from Brisbane and reputed to be the first rock and roll band in Australia. Those guys had plenty of stories from "the old days". Back then (late 50s) there was a rock and roll circuit of venues from the National Hotel in Brisbane city to venues in Redcliffe and as far away as Toowoomba. What happened was a bunch of bands would all start at one of the venues, play for an hour, and then drive drive to the next venue etc. - rotating through the night. It would be unheard of today, but they would leave all their amps at the first place they played and use each other's gear. If they were "lucky", their last gig for the night would be somewhere close to where they started so they could pack up their own gear. However, it wasn't uncommon to start the night in Brisbane, finish up in Toowoomba, and have to drive back to Brisbane in the middle of the night to pick up their own gear.

[Mister Pervert]

I agree with you about Louis Jordan, that guy was great (and very funny) and played a mean alto Sax.. According to Wiki,He's ranked as FIFTH most successful black recording artist of all time.

At least one of his record titles entered the vernacular at the time.("Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens") he was very popular in the 1940's but not the 50's.. "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (1949) has also been claimed as an early rock and roll record.

Joe Jackson's "Jumpin' Jive" album from the early 80s is mostly covers of Louis Jordan's tunes. It's great music - still - and Jackson's arrangements are supurb.

[youngmoigle]

I really like Wanda Jackson,"The Queen of Rockabilly"--and she can really yodel too! (but I think The Schneider Sisters are easilyas good yodellers)

You might also like Janis Martin. She never got into the Top Forty charts (I think #80 was her best appearance) but she made a fortune recording for the Juke Box industry. She was still performing until about a year or two ago, suddenly got sick and died about three months after her last performance.


_LRY-jxxRYg

[youngmoigle]

The history of Australian rock and roll is very interesting, particularly as so many of its pioneers are still alive to tell first-hand stories. For example, in the very earliest days of rock and roll, local musicians would go to the cinema to watch Elvis and other seminal rock and roll movies and transcribe their parts so they could cover all the newest tunes on their gigs.

Some of the older kids in my hometown would go down to the wharf in Port Adelaide and buy rock and roll records from the merchant seamen who had just returned from overseas. I don't know if was necessary to do that, or they just liked the idea of turning their record-buying episodes into a bit of an adventure. Either way, it was an exciting time for all of us. I wonder if I heard some of the original songs before they were officially realeased in Australia? [Probably not].

[SchizoDeluxe]

And while I'm on the subject (my favourite subject)...

Many rock and roll songs were recorded by black artists several years before the white artists had a go at them. Elvis Presley's Hound Dog was first recorded by Big Mama Thornton and Bill Haley's Shake Rattle And Roll was a first recorded by Joe Turner.



I was just gonna say, black people were definitly the pioneers in what is now known as rock music. Good to know people know that ;)

[Mister Pervert]

Some of the older kids in my hometown would go down to the wharf in Port Adelaide and buy rock and roll records from the merchant seamen who had just returned from overseas. I don't know if was necessary to do that, or they just liked the idea of turning their record-buying episodes into a bit of an adventure. Either way, it was an exciting time for all of us. I wonder if I heard some of the original songs before they were officially realeased in Australia? [Probably not].

It's entirely possible you got to hear pre-official releases. Throughout the 70s and 80s I used to spend a lot of time haunting record "import" shops, armed with lists based on reviews of things written in foreign music magazines. I can claim a minor piece of history in that I had the shop import a copy of Devo's Are We Not Men? album after reading a small review of it in Contemporary Keyboard. The guy in the shop was sufficiently intrigued by the sketchy information I had to import a second copy for himself, which he subsequently played often and made popular on 4ZZZ. The Internet has changed all that, of course...

[Mister Pervert]

This album can be played at my funeral if "they" go against my wishes and have one. After everybody who gets bored or offended has buggered off, then the folk who are still listening can have whatever of the good grog is available.


Hehe! Thanks for the heads-up on that!

[Mister Pervert]

I was just gonna say, black people were definitly the pioneers in what is now known as rock music. Good to know people know that ;)

I once read somewhere you can trace the history of American popular music by starting in New Orleans back when the railroads were first starting to be built and follow the train lines. Two main tracks emerge: one that headed north through St. Louis to Chicago and then across to New York. The other branched off to the west. The northern line was the path of (black) jazz music while the western one yielded (white) hillbilly and country music.

Along the way there were some incredibly interesting fusions. One that stands out to me is the banjo stylings of Flatt and Scuggs in the 1940s. It's clear if you listen to these that the (black jazz) influence of Charlie Parker loomed large in this most unlikely of places to hear it: white, hillbilly music.

Boogie piano playing also came originally out of the 'barrel houses' (makeshift saloons) that existed for the railway workers of the 19th century. Albert Aamons, Meade Lux Lewis and others made it popular again in the 1930s but it disappeared again only to resurface as one of the staples in the rock and roll stylings of the 50s and later.

Count Basie's contributions can't be ignored either. In the 30s, Basie's sound was driven by great riffs. Many great arrangers worked for Basie at one time or another - my favorite being Neil Hefti (composer of the Batman theme - arguably one of the most recognizable riffs in the history of riffin'). Quincy Jones also did his apprentiseship with Basie.

So, nothing new under the sun.

There was some interesting music business politics in the early 1940s that also contributed to the evolution of rock and popular music. I forget the details (and am too lazy to Google them) but copyright was at issue. There was a recording ban for several years during which time, and directly as a consequence, bebop was "invented". Big Bands were already in demise, due mostly to petrol rationing in the US, and small groups rose to prominence. But bebop was an "art music" - meaning, a drift away from popular music being predominantly "dance" music (eg: Basie, Billy Eckstein, and others). Louis Jordan was, as mentioned, a leading popular (black) figure in the small band/dance music arena that ultimately morphed into rock and roll for white audiences and into soul music for black audiences.

The UK story is also interesting. The enduring tales about the Beatles as a synthesis of skiffle and American R&B only tell part of the story. The Brits, led by Kenny Ball, got interested in jazz at around the time rock and roll was starting in the US. However, many of the younger Brit musicians were, at the time, more interested in the "modern" jazz - the bebop and hard bop that followed - and not the "old fashioned" trad stuff as exemplified by Kenny Ball's band. Seminal figures in Brit rock music history, such as Charlie Watts, Graham Bond, Jack Bruce, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Ginger Baker, to name a few, are to be thanked for rejecting Kenny Ball's trad aesthetic and giving us bands like The Rolling Stones, Cream, Colisseum, and a raft of others that were in the vanguard of the Brit musical invasion of the US in the 60s.

As a final bit of trivia, Jimi Hendrix was virtually unknown in the US prior to his time in the UK. Had he not gone, he'd still have become a fine jazz guitarist but his rock legend status was created abroad - fronting a band of Brit whiteys!

[Mister Pervert]

Yeah, reminds me of the old "amp-f radio" stuff you did all those moons ago. Somehow you always put me in mind of Viv Stanshall... another garden-bed of vocabulary all run to seed with thorny things and mutant rhubarb.


Heh! I still have that stuff archived somewhere, though my finest hour (4 of them to be exact) were recorded to video tape New Years Eve, 1999 for the amp-f radio program. Not sure if I still have a copy of that - it most likely got junked during my most recent house move. It can now be one of those "missing link" bits of my personal history...