Rock & Roll belongs to Boomers. Later generations have tried to claim a slice of the Rock & Roll pie with groups like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Springsteen and others, but they were only Great Pretenders – not Johnny Be Goode’s, but Johnny Come Lately’s. Boomers know that true Rock & Roll was a product of the 1950’s.
Following WWII, music was all over the place – Big Band, Swing, Gospel, Blues and Rockabilly. It all fell into place in April 1954 when Bill Haley & The Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock, used in the opening scenes of Backboard Jungle. This movie and its exposure to a national audience was the fuse that lit the incredible Rock & Roll fireworks display to follow.
Alan Freed, a disc jockey from Cleveland, is credited as the first to assign the label of Rock & Roll to the new genre of music. Freed would later star in a number of Rock & Roll movies, with all of the old fuddy-duddy’s suggesting that the new sound was nothing but the Devil’s Music, and would soon fade away.
Hardly.
Once Haley cut Rock Around the Clock, other giants of that era began recording on labels like Atlantic, Sun, Decca and Chess. Early megastars included Carl Perkins with Blue Suede Shoes and Little Richard with Tutti-Fruiti, Good Golly Miss Molly, Long Tall Sally, Ready Teddy, Keep a Knocking and Rip It Up, Jerry Lee Lewis then climbed aboard the Rock & Roll Bandwagon with Whole Lotta Shakin’, Breathless and Great Balls of Fire. The immortal Buddy Holly added That’ll Be the Day, Maybe Baby, Peggy Sue, Oh Boy and other classics.
Rock & Roll was permanently enshrined when Chuck Berry put Rock & Roll Music (Hail, Hail Rock & Roll) on wax in 1957. Other Berry smash hits included Maybellene, Johnny Be Goode and Sweet Little Sixteen.
Rock & Roll was overwhelmingly adopted by young Boomers because it was great dancing music and it was affordable. Most recordings were done on small 45-rpm records, which cost 79-cents in the early years before working their way up to a one-dollar bill. Boomers bought the records because of the A-Side, the hit, while Side B was usually an afterthought.
Boomers look back fondly on dances and “hops” held in basements and garages on Friday and Saturday nights. Each guest brought a stack of 45’s and placed them on the spindles. When the ice was broken and kids started to dance, it was non-stop until the parents came to drag their wobbly, legged kids home.
But not all of the music of that era had a “back beat you can’t lose it”. There was also “Make Out” music. After all, it was hard to slow dance to Great Balls of Fire.
In 1955, The Platters set the gold standard card in “Make Out” music with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Only You and The Great Pretender. Other romantic hits included Still of the Night, Silhouettes, Earth Angel and Blueberry Hill.
Boomers think back and remember the girls wearing poodle skirts and with their ponytails flopping while the guys squeezed into pegged pants and did their hip-swiveling best to innate Elvis. These were the glory days of Rock & Roll with the “shades pulled and drawn, way down tight.”
That era of Rock & Roll music was the greatest of all.