The History of Rock - The 50's

The date most commonly accepted as the creation of rock and roll is the release of the song ("We're Gonna") Rock Around The Clock "by Bill Haley and The Comets, on April 12th 1954, although dozens of previous recordings already presented one or another characteristic of what would come to be known as rock and roll.

Bill Halley - "We're gonna rock around the clock"🎵

Bill Haley

The dream of finding a white capable of singing like a black had been made by record producer Sam Phillips, from a small record company called Sun Records.

At the beginning of his career with the single "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky", then followed by "Good Rockin 'Tonight" and "I Do not Care If The Sun Don't Shine", few could believe that the Elvis Presley who was listening on the radio was a young white man. Obviously it seemed healthier to conservative and racist society accept that kind of music from a young handsome man.

Elvis Presley

Although it was created a year before, rock and roll would only come to explode definitively in 1955, largely influenced by the inclusion of "Rock Around The Clock" as opening music for the movie "Blackboard Jungle" (Seeds of Violence) about tumultuous relationships between students and teachers (an analogy to something much broader, the relationship between the establishment and the desire for change).

                                                      

Obviously the new type of music quickly became associated with the degeneration of youth, which made their fascination even greater, in an irresistible vicious cycle. And when everyone thought that nothing worse could influence American youth on such a large scale, there appears a black man, Chuck Berry, who climbs the charts with a version for the country hit "Ida Red".

Chuck Berry

Although he never got the title that could have recognized him as king of rock (usurped by white Elvis) his importance was never discussed.

Then a second black singer, Little Richard, would appear in the lists, although he was a little effeminate, with an exotic hairstyle and would sing what would become forever the best known song of rock and roll "Tutti Frutti".

Little Richard

In 1956, Elvis Presley consolidated his success with new songs such as "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Blue Suede Shoes". As a pianist, the singer who would try to match the success of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, would appear in a short time.

Jerry Lee Lewis

With a slightly different sound, more marked by the black music of origin, mainly gospel, began to appear the talent of James Brown with the almost soul "Please Please Please".

James Brown

In the meantime, the entrepreneur Tom Parker took advantage of Elvis' talent also in the cinema in the movie "The Reno Brothers", later renamed "Love Me Tender" by virtue of the great success of the song. Meanwhile, in England and with some delay, the film Blackboard Jungle took rock and roll to the United Kingdom.

With the mandatory enlistment of Elvis Presley in the armed forces in 1957, the end of rock and roll was announced for the first time. After all, what would be in this rhythm that could make it more durable than so many others like the cha-cha-cha, the rumba or the mambo?

With the entry of Elvis into the armed forces, Jerry Lee Lewis was the natural candidate for his position, rebellious, charismatic and white. "Great Balls Of Fire" quickly became the success of the year 1958.

In the case of Chuck Berry, he released two of the greatest rock classics of all time, "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Johnny B.Goode". The cute and romantic rock in turn reacts with "All I Have To Do" by the Everly Brothers and James Brown launches his first big hit, "Try Me".

The Everly Brothers

* Also you might be interested: The History of Rock - The Beginnings 

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The History of Rock - The 60's

Enjoy reading while listening to this playlist with the songs and 
artists mentioned in the article: CSA - History of Rock - 60's

While the rock declined in its country of origin, on the other side of the Atlantic, in England, mainly in the port cities (because it had easier access to the songs that came from the American continent), there was growing interest in rock and roll.

Billy Fury

Billy Fury was the first English rock artist to have an impact in the United States, still based on the commercial concepts of the original rock, with songs on demand. In the city of Liverpool, a cultural movement that took the name of a local music magazine, Mersey Beat, was taking shape. Among the local bands the Beatles already stood out.

In opposition to the youthful and innocent rock of the 50's, artists more concerned with passing important messages through music began to emerge in the United States. Based on folk music and playing in bars, artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez emerged, who in a very short time would change the face of rock.

Joan Baez & Bob Dylan

The intellectual movement called Beatnik was of great importance in the formation of this new style. The Beat was characterized by the valorization of individuality, free will, experimentation and change, in contradiction to the maintenance of the old values ​​considered important by the bourgeoisie.


In 1963 Bob Dylan was already a star of relative impact and his intelligent lyrics caught the attention of the public and critics, unprecedented until then in pop music. In April he made his first big show in New York, and had a performance on Ed Sullivan's television show cancelled due to the "revolutionary" content of his lyrics. Rapidly folk music and mainly Bob Dylan would be taxed by communists and degenerates, which obviously attracted the attention of the young audience and increased the appeal of the new style.

The Beach Boys

From the rock to the old style perhaps the only great novelty at the beginning of the decade of the 60's were The Beach Boys, band of beginning directed basically to the community of surfists but that ended up having an unexpected repercussion with the hit "Surfin 'Usa" (a cheeky plagiarism" Sweet Little Sixteen "by Chuck Berry, for whom they would be prosecuted that same year). Other artists with surf themes, such as Jan & Dean, would appear on its trail.

In England, hired by George Martin of EMI, after having been despised by the label Decca, in 1963 the Beatles were already an unprecedented success using the formula of bringing the easy appeal of captivating songs to great presence, good humor and some cynicism in interviews, which caught the attention of the press. It was strange also for the time that the own members of the band were responsible for great part of their compositions. 

Rolling Stones

With a cover of "Come On" (music by Chuck Berry) he also debuted in England, still without much impact, the band Rolling Stones.

Herman's Hermits

The news did not take so long to spread to other countries. Bob Dylan and other folk artists from the United States finally penetrated the English market while at the same time the Beatles conquered America. Interestingly, in April 1964 Bob Dylan was number one in England with the music "The Times They Are A Changin" while the Beatles occupied the top five positions in the US charts (with "Can't Buy Me Love" in first place) . There was no friction or dispute between the opposing musical styles, the lyrics and the political stance of Bob Dylan were always openly praised by the Beatles.

The Kinks

The Rolling Stones became a great worldwide success with their trip to the United States shortly after the Beatles (the irreverent attitude of the Stones, with their frequent scandals, was the perfect antithesis to the education and good looks of the Beatles, conquering the most rebellious part of the public). Other English bands like Herman's Hermits, The Kinks and The Animals also emerged.

The Animals

As of 1965, with the band Yardbirds (of so short career as influential, that had among its members to Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck) and The Who, the rock began to gain an unpublished aggressiveness, with guitars more distorted and more amplification.

                         The Yardbirds

The Who

In 1966, with the single "Substitute" The Who finally brought hard rock for the first time to the top of the charts, while Eric Clapton formed the power trio Cream. In the United States the novelties were less aggressive: the definitive fusion between the folk and the rock of the band The Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel and the vocal harmonies of the band The Mammas and The Pappas.

Cream

The Byrds

The drugs were no longer consumed to eliminate fatigue, but to seek pleasure and altered states of perception. The music of the time was strongly influenced by drugs like LSD. The new type of music was called psychedelic.

Simon & Garfunkel

The Mammas and the Pappas

On the LSD effect the Beatles recorded what was possibly the most revolutionary album in the history of rock, "Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band", in 1967. For the first time a rock band definitively broke with the extremely commercial format of hit music, releasing a work in which each song was only part of the whole. After spending more than 700 hours and six months of recording, it was an instigating album from its cover (a collage of personalities admired by the Beatles) to the last groove of the album (a cycle without end).

For many Sgt. Peppers is considered the birth of progressive rock (which does not follow any predefined concept, based on experimentation and originality). The band became one of the most successful bands of the decade and most successful in the history of pop music.

Jimi Hendrix

Discovered and taken to England by the ancient Animals, Jimi Hendrix would be another great revelation of 1967. With his second single, Purple Haze (the first was Hey Joe, a year earlier) Hendrix caught the attention not only of the Public, but of stars as Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, creating a new sound and definitely expanding the role and resources of the electric guitar in rock.

Grateful Dead

Jefferson Airplane

Based on the aggression to the establishment and freedom (sexual and experimentation) inherited from beat thinking, the United States appeared in the hippie movement, concentrated mainly in San Francisco, and having as exponents bands as Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane (clearly influenced by drugs ) and The Doors (with their first single, Light My Fire) and artists derived from folk music like Janis Joplin.

The Doors

It is the time of the flowers in the hair (hence the term flower power), the long hair and alternative communities. The three-pointed symbol related to the slogan "peace and love" was taken from the military signage that meant "cease bombing". Nothing more appropriate in the Vietnam war era. 

The great event of the year 1967 would be the Monterey Pop Festival that brought together in California Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Animals, Simon and Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, among others.

In 1968 with the end of the band Yardbirds, Jimmy Page formed the New Yardbirds soon renamed as Led Zeppelin, at the same time that Cream achieved a deserved success. Another hard rock band, Steppenwolf, with the song "Born To Be Wild", coined the term 'heavy metal' for the first time. The sound of Led Zeppelin was unprecedented, and although very based on the blues, more aggressive than any previous song. Virtuous instruments, solos and indefinite time improvisations began to stand out. Hard rock began its heyday at the same time that the classics like the Beatles and Pink Floyd, went through increasing problems of coexistence (although the Beatles still had their career ahead for almost two years, Pink Floyd underwent a great change with the exit of Syd Barret).

Led Zeppelin

Steppenwolf

Pink Floyd

1969 was the year of the great festivals. The death of a fan during a Rolling Stones show during a free presentation at the Altamond, California, festival was the negative frame of the year. But even this bad impression would not be able to stifle the realization of what was possibly the biggest music event of all time, between August 15th and 17th, at Woodstock, interpreted by many as the framework of the beginning of a new era of peace and love, with presentations among others by Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and The Who.

Joe Cocker

Woodstock Festival

In the Newport Jazz Festival, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, John Mayall, Ten Years After, Jeff Beck, James Brown, Johnny Winter, among others. With bands of virtuoso musicians such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jethro Tull and Deep Purple, and Frank Zappa's super-experimental Mothers of Invention, associated with the increasingly elaborate works of old bands like The Beatles and The Who (which had launched the rock opera Tommy, definitely elevating rock to the category of art) the characteristic simplicity of early rock had disappeared.

Jethro Tull

John Mayall

Ten Years After

Jeff Beck

* You might also be interested in: The History of Rock - The 50's

James Brown

Johnny Winter

Mothers of Invention

* You might also be interested in: The History of Rock - The Beginnings

The History of Rock - The Beginnings

The Beginnings of Rock

The war economy and the development of industry had brought more people from the countryside to the city, forcing the relationship between whites and blacks and social and racial tension, but also favoring the mutual influence between black music (blues) and white music (mainly country and jazz).

Rhythm and blues emerged from the fusion of the original blues with the more danceable rhythms of whites, which brought black music to the knowledge of the consumer population.

In the early 1950s, with the end of World War II and the Korean War, the United States emerged as a great world power. More than at any other time in history, the enjoyment of life was encouraged, a way that society had to overcome the years of suffering of war. The population in general and even minorities for the first time had money to spend on superfluous items such as music.

With the announcement of the explosion of atomic bombs by the Soviet Union and a possible "end of the world" at any moment, the general order was to take advantage of each moment as if it were the last.

In full capitalist economic growth consumption was considered a prime factor for the generation of jobs and foreign exchange, as well as the best antidote against communism, and the search for new consumer markets was incessant.

Obviously the youngest part of the population quickly became more easily influential and for the first time the adolescent public was given the right to have products destined for their exclusive consumption, also as a power of choice. Strangely, the white youths largely refused to consume the music normally consumed by the white majority and began to look for something different in the music of the ghettos.

With the large record industry not ready to supply the consuming public with this type of music, small labels of black music have gained importance. The acceptance of this type of music by the public of greater purchasing power led the incipient record industry of the time to invest in the evolution of style and the search and hiring of new talents, mainly in the search for a young white man who could tame that style allying to him an image that could be sold more easily.

Re-releases of songs by blacks re-recorded by white artists became common, which ended up taking the true creators of the style from the top of the charts.

Another great revolution of manners was in progress. Sex was no longer taboo and was considered fun (both for men and women). The songs of love by pressure of the buying public happened to give rise to more vulgar letters, although many times it was necessary to create attenuated versions of more direct verses. The explosive mix of thrilling black music with teenage white consumerism had been created ... the explosion was a matter of time.

But who would have been the man who deserved to be crowned as responsible for the "creation" of rock and roll? Obviously such a complex musical style could not have its invention indisputably attributed to a single individual or group of individuals. But if someone deserved to have his name associated with the "creation" of rock as we know it, this would not be Elvis or Bill Haley or Chuck Berry or any other leading singer or band. The "inventor" of the term rock and roll and responsible for the dissemination of the style was the disk jokey Alan Freed, promoter of rhythm and blues programs in Cleveland, Ohio, who first captured and invested in the lack of the young consumer for a new type of music more energetic and first perceived the commercial potential of black music.

The term rock and roll was a slang for black Americans, referring to the sexual act, present even in many blues lyrics. Allan Freed was responsible for using the sound name to name the new musical style in which he was investing.

While young people adopt the new rhythm as their trademark, adults mainly from the most conservative sectors of society, blamed it as a cause of all juvenile delinquency... despite the exaggeration of the protests, they were not so wrong, the taste for rock was really part of the youth gang style.

Alan Freed on Spotify