Elvis Presley’s recording career started out on the country charts. His first five releases, on Sun Records in Memphis, moved up the regional country charts, with his fifth record (“I Forgot to Remember to Forget” and “Mystery Train”) hitting #1 and #10 on the national country chart in early 1956. At that point, after he had moved to RCA Victor, he immediately hit the top of the pop (and country) charts. Elvis placed sixty-seven songs on the country charts in his lifetime, ten of which hit #1 (almost all between 1955 and 1957).12
See figure 11. “High Water Everywhere, Part 1,” by Charley Patton
See figure 12. Early blues singers
See figure 13. Twelve-bar blues form
See figure 14. Some key independent record labels, 1940s–1950s (date founded and artist’s debut recording)
See figure 15. “Choo Choo Ch-Boogie,” by Louis Jordan
See figure 16. Electric blues guitarists, 1950s–1960s (R&B Top 10 single hits and pop LP debuts)
See figure 17. Women R&B singers, 1940s–1950s (R&B Top 10 single hits and crossovers to pop Top 40)
1 A plaque commemorating the location is embedded in the sidewalk on West Twenty-Eighth Street near the southeast corner with Broadway.
2 For more on Tin Pan Alley and Broadway, see Hamm (1979), Gottlieb (2004), Gilbert (2015), Yagoda (2015), Furia and Patterson (2016), Mathieu (2017), Kantor (2004-v), and savetinpanalley.org.
3 See also Waters interviewed in Murray (1977) and Lomax and Work’s Library of Congress recordings of Muddy Waters (1993-d) and Son House (2013-d).
4 For more on blues, see Titon (1977), Palmer (1981), Barlow (1989), Santelli (1993), the documentary by Dall (1989-v), and a rare film performance of Bessie Smith (Murphy 1929-v).
5 The term rhythm and blues appeared sporadically in Billboard in 1947 (Csida 1947: 22; Ackerman 1947) and was used as a style heading in an RCA Victor ad in early 1949.
6 Jordan’s short film Caldonia (Crouch 1945-v) includes several performances.
7 Seven-year-old child prodigy Frankie “Sugar Chile” Robinson performing Louis Jordan’s “Caldonia” in the 1946 Hollywood film No Leave, No Love provides an extraordinary example of a boogie woogie bass in the left hand, given his age.
8 For more on R&B, see A. Shaw (1978), George (1988), Gillett (1996), and Mahon (2011). See Kohn (1955-v) for performances by Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, and Nat King Cole and Price (1956-v) for LaVern Baker.
9 King James version.
10 For more on gospel music, see Reagon (1992), Schwerin (1992), and Boyer (1995).
11 This section on country music is based on Malone and Neal (2010).
12 For more on country music, see Crichton (1938), Green (1965), Peterson (1997), Russell (2010), Pecknold (2013), Hubbs (2014), Stimeling (2014), and H. Gleason (2017).
3
1954–1959 / EARLY ROCK AND ROLL
Rock and roll (often stylized as rock ‘n’ roll) as a distinct named genre emerged in the mid-1950s, with 1955 being a key year for its commercial breakthrough. The term was used in blues and R&B recordings since the 1920s, typically as a double entendre referring to both dancing and sexual activity. The earliest title may be “My Man Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll),” written by J. Berni Barbour and recorded by Trixie Smith in 1922 for the African American–owned Black Swan label (musically, the song is closer to New Orleans style jazz than blues). In the post–World War II era, such references became more common: Manhattan Paul Bascomb’s “Rock and Roll” (1947); Wild Bill Moore’s “We’re Gonna Rock, We’re Gonna Roll” (1947) and “We’re Gonna Rock and Roll” (1949); Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” (1947), covered by Wynonie Harris (1947) and Elvis Presley (1954); and Wynonie Harris’s “All She Wants to Do Is Rock” (1949). Country singer Buddy Jones recorded “Rock and Rollin’ Mama” in 1939.
Let’s be clear at the outset about the origins of rock and roll: no one person invented it and no single record was the first rock and roll recording. A cohort of individuals converged on a sound (and an audience for it), and there are too many candidates for the first rock record. Any designation of “king” devalues the communal effort and should be viewed with skepticism. Three artists stand out, however, and there was enough shared brilliance among them. Chuck Berry’s songwriting, guitar playing, and singing provided a model of elegance in its simplicity; Little Richard channeled outrageous youthful energy with his songwriting, piano playing, and singing and an irresistible signature beat; and Elvis Presley pulled disparate streams together with a youthful, magnetic charisma and versatile singing capabilities, achieving unprecedented mass impact (see figure 18). They all have cited earlier artists from whom they drew in their own development.
One arrival point, in terms of the music industry, came in the summer of 1955, several months after the release of Blackboard Jungle, a film about juvenile delinquency set in an urban high school. The film’s theme song, “Rock around the Clock,” performed by Bill Haley and His Comets, shot to #1 on all three of Billboard’s pop charts in July: Best Seller in Stores, Most Played by Jockeys, and Most Played in Juke Boxes. For all of August 1955 it was at the top of the three charts. It was a ripe moment, allowing veteran R&B artist Fats Domino (“Ain’t It a Shame”) and newcomer Chuck Berry (“Maybelline,” his debut recording) into the pop charts that summer for the first time. Little Richard debuted on the R&B chart in November (“Tutti Frutti”) and then crossed over to the pop chart two months later. Elvis Presley, who debuted on the national country chart in July with his fourth single on the independent Sun Records label, would hit #1 on that chart with his fifth and last single, entering in September and taking many months to reach the top, in February 1956. He would not debut on the pop chart until March 1956 (“Heartbreak Hotel”), after he moved to the major RCA Victor label.
The year 1956 would see the domination of the pop charts by twenty-one-year-old Elvis Presley and the significant presence of the first generation of solo black artists to be called rock and roll: Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley (see figures 19 and 20). Film musicals began capitalizing on the sudden rise of rock and roll, featuring Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley and His Comets, Frankie Lymon, LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter, and disc jockey Alan Freed, and Elvis’s Hollywood film career began this year.1
Not only were black artists more frequently appearing on the pop charts, but some southern white rockabilly artists began appearing on the R&B charts. Carl Perkins (“Blue Suede Shoes”) was the first to do so, hitting #2 on both the pop and R&B charts and #1 on the country and western chart in early 1956; Presley (“Don’t Be Cruel”) hit #1 on all three charts later that year; and in 1957 Jerry Lee Lewis (“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On”) hit all three charts: pop #3, R&B #1, C&W #1. About the same time, Buddy Holly (“That’ll Be the Day”) hit #1 on the pop chart and #2 on the R&B chart.2
The initial energy of this era would dissipate by the end of the decade, in part because of a series of unrelated events that took the major players off the scene with no generation behind them to pick up the slack. Or, rather, the music industry caught on and promoted photogenic clean-cut white