Rock and Roll
Origin: 1951
A great advance in American civil
liberties, and a revolution in music,
took place as a result of the introduction
of rock and roll in 1951. The introducer was
Alan Freed, a disc jockey in Cleveland, who
used the term to undermine the segregation
of popular music into black and white.
African-American popular music of the day,
known as rhythm and blues, was
increasingly influential, but radio stations
and the record industry insisted on having
white performers for white audiences. The
only way a song composed and performed by
blacks could reach a wider audience was for
it to be remade by a white group.
Freed was able to get around the
prohibition against African-American music
on his radio station by coining a catchy
name that was new and therefore
all-encompassing. He wouldn't fight to play
the forbidden rhythm and blues; instead, he
would treat his audiences to what he called
rock and roll. And while that term
did not end music segregation overnight, it
eventually made segregation impossible, as
both black and white performers took up the
phrase and together developed the new rock
and roll. From the beginning it was also
known informally as rock 'n' roll. By
the mid-1960s the triumph of rock and roll
was so complete that the name of the genre,
now performed by musicians of all races all
over the world, shrank to rock. No
longer needed for music, the full phrase
rock and roll recently has been used to
mean "get going, move along," as in "Let's
rock and roll."
Freed, who Went on to greater fame and
misfortune, is appropriately memorialized in
Cleveland's Rock 'n' Roll Museum. But he did
not actually invent rock and roll; he
just gave it a new definition. Freed
probably picked up rock and roll from
the lyrics of a 1948 rhythm-and-blues hit
called "Good Rockin' Tonight." Before that,
both rock and roll had sexual
meanings in jazz and blues, as in "My Man
Rocks Me with One Steady Roll," recorded by
Trixie Smith in 1922, which inspired Bill
Haley's famous "Rock Around the Clock" in
1954.
A form of popular music arising from and
incorporating a variety of musical styles,
especially rhythm and blues, country music,
and gospel. Originating in the United States
in the 1950s, it is characterized by
electronically amplified instrumentation, a
heavily accented beat, and relatively simple
phrase structure.
For
the six years the Beatles Were recording for
Capitol Records, the Fab Four ascended to top of
the American and British charts an astonishing
27 times. This single-disc compilation brings
those hits together in one place to span every
phase of the foursome's high demandfluential
career.
