Rock & Roll Dance

The Rock Roll beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, the latter almost always provided by a snare drum.  Classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm), a string bass or (after the mid-1950s) an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit.  In the documentary film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, Keith Richards proposes that Chuck Berry developed his brand of rock and roll, by transposing the familiar two-note lead line of jump blues piano directly to the electric guitar, creating what is instantly recognizable as rock guitar.  Similarly, country boogie and Chicago electric blues supplied many of the elements that would be seen as characteristic of rock and roll. Rockabilly usually refers to the type of rock and roll music which was played and recorded in the mid-1950s primarily by white singers such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drew mainly on the country roots of the music.  Many other popular rock and roll singers of the time, such as Fats Domino and Little Richard, came out of the black rhythm and blues tradition, making the music attractive to white and black audiences.

The development of rock and roll was an evolutionary process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously the first rock and roll record.  Contenders include Goree Carter's Rock Awhile (1949); Jimmy Preston's Rock the Joint (1949), which was later covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in March 1951.  Although only a minor hit when first released in 1954, Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, was featured in the opening sequence of the movie Blackboard Jungle a year later, and set the rock and roll boom in motion.  The song became one of the biggest hits in history, and was a breakthrough for both the group and for all of rock and roll music.  If everything that came before laid the groundwork, Rock Around the Clock introduced the music to a global audience. Many of the earliest white rock and roll hits were covers or partial re-writes of earlier black rhythm and blues or blues songs.  Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, R&B music had been gaining a stronger beat and a wilder style, with artists such as Fats Domino and Johnny Otis speeding up the tempos and increasing the backbeat to great popularity on the juke joint circuit.  Before the efforts of Alan Freed and others, black music was taboo on many white-owned radio outlets, but artists and producers quickly recognized the potential of rock and roll.  Most of Presley's early hits were covers of black rhythm and blues or blues songs, like That's All Right was a countrified arrangement of a blues number.

Rock and Roll was in a decline by the late 1950s and early 1960s.  By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash (February 1959), the departure of Elvis for the army (March 1958), the retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher (October 1957), the scandal surrounding Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin (May 1958), the arrest of Chuck Berry (December 1959), and the breaking of the Payola scandal implicating major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs (November 1959), gave a sense that the initial phase of rock and roll had come to an end. There was also a process that has been described as the "feminisation" of rock and roll, with the charts beginning to be dominated by love ballads, often aimed at a female audience, and the rise of girl groups such as The Shirelles and The Crystals leading to Motown's Mary Wells and The Supremes.  Innovative developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including multitrack recording, developed by Les Paul, the electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek, and the Wall of Sound productions of Phil Spector, continued the desegregation of the charts, the rise of surf music, garage rock and the Twist dance craze of the 60's.

Rock and roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language.  Many songs dealt with issues of cars, school, dating, and clothing. The lyrics of rock and roll songs described events and conflicts that most listeners could relate to through personal experience.  Topics such as sex that had generally been considered taboo began to appear in rock and roll lyrics.  This new music tried to break boundaries and express emotions that people were actually feeling but had not talked about.  An awakening began to take place in American youth culture.  In addition, rock and roll may have contributed to the civil rights movement because both African-American and white American teens enjoyed the music. As interest in rock and roll subsided in America, it was taken up by groups in major British urban centres like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and London.  About the same time, a British blues scene developed, initially led by purist blues followers such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies who were directly inspired by American musicians such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.  Many groups moved towards the beat music of rock and roll and rhythm and blues from skiffle, like the Quarrymen who became The Beatles, producing a form of rock and roll revivalism that carried them and many other groups to national success from about 1963 and to international success in 1964, known in America as the British Invasion.

Wanderin' Spirit
October, 2014
"Rock & Roll Dance"

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