Origins of Rock and Roll

Origins Of Rock And Roll

Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid 1950s. It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, boogie woogie, jazz and swing music, and was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid 1960s, has been generally known as rock music.

The phrase rocking and rolling originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but was used by the early twentieth century, both to describe a spiritual fervor and as a sexual analogy. Various gospel, blues and swing recordings used the phrase before it became used more frequently - but still intermittently - in the late 1930s and 1940s, principally on recordings and in reviews of what became known as rhythm and blues music aimed at a black audience. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the term rock and roll to describe it.

Because the development of rock and roll was an evolutionary process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously "the first" rock and roll record. In terms of its wide cultural impact across society in the US and elsewhere, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", recorded in April 1954 but not a commercial success until the following year, is generally recognized as an important milestone, but it was preceded by many recordings from earlier decades in which elements of rock and roll can be clearly discerned.