PRIMARY STYLES
It can be convenient to get a handle on the first wave of early rock and roll (1954–56) by categorizing its diverse streams into five primary styles, as suggested by Gillett (1996: 23–35). Each of these styles has strong regional associations (see figure 22).
Northern Band Rock and Roll
Bill Haley (1925–81) and His Comets exemplify this stream with their hits “Crazy Man, Crazy” (1953), “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (1954), and “Rock around the Clock” (1955). Comparing Haley’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” with Joe Turner’s original, one can hear one way in which R&B was reshaped for a young white mainstream audience, taking off some of the blues-drenched edge from both the musical beat and the lyrics. The saxophone, a staple of R&B, is still present, although paired with a country-style electric guitar and given less room for improvisation on recordings. Sam “The Man” Taylor’s saxophone solos on R&B recorded in New York City in the mid-1950s set a standard difficult to retain in the new world of rock and roll (e.g., his baritone sax solo on Turner’s original and his tenor sax solo on the Chords’ “Sh-Boom” recorded the following month). Haley, born in 1925 in Michigan, was pushing thirty years old during his initial years of popularity (1953–56), no match for Elvis, who was a decade younger. Haley moved to the major label Decca in 1954 after his first hit.
New Orleans Dance Blues
The two major artists in this stream are pianists Fats Domino (1928–2017) from New Orleans and Little Richard (1932–) from Macon, Georgia, who made his first commercially successful recordings in New Orleans with some of Fats Domino’s musicians. They recorded at the famed studios run by Cosimo Matassa: J&M Studio, open from 1945 to 1956, and then Cosimo’s Studio at a new location.
Fats Domino’s debut record, “The Fat Man,” the B side of a ten-inch 78 rpm single on the New Orleans Imperial label, hit #2 on the R&B Juke Box chart in 1950. Featuring Earl Palmer, a future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and one of the most recorded drummers who contributed much to the development of rock and roll (Scherman 1999), the song established Domino and his signature laid-back New Orleans–based boogie woogie sound as a major force. Domino was the most experienced and commercially successful (excepting Elvis), and one of the oldest (behind Bill Haley and Chuck Berry) of the first generation of rock and rollers, with thirteen songs in the R&B Top 15 before he crossed over to the pop charts with “Ain’t It a Shame” in 1955. That initiated an extraordinary run of thirty-six Top 40 songs in the pop charts between 1955 and 1962. Domino recorded exclusively on the Imperial label from his debut through the peak of his recording career (1950–63); his Complete Imperial Singles collection contains over 130 songs.
Little Richard Penniman was born and raised in Macon, Georgia, singing in various churches (African Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, Pentecostal) and playing saxophone in his high school marching band. Richard has attributed his unique piano style to capturing the sound of the train rolling by his home as a child. After touring with various bands (occasionally appearing in drag attire), he recorded with RCA Victor in 1951 (no chart success) and Houston-based Peacock in 1953 (not released at the time) and then regrouped with a new band, the Upsetters. He signed with the Los Angeles–based Specialty label, which sent him to New Orleans to record at J&M Studio in October 1955 with Specialty producer Bumps Blackwell and Fats Domino musicians Lee Allen (saxophone) and Earl Palmer (drums). That session yielded “Tutti Frutti,” a lewd song with lyrics cleaned up on the spot by songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie, which hit #2 on the R&B charts and crossed over to #18 on the pop Best Seller chart. His next session (February 1956) yielded “Long Tall Sally,” his greatest crossover success (R&B #1, pop #6) (see figure 20). He made appearances in three films in 1956–57 (Don’t Knock the Rock, The Girl Can’t Help It, and Mister Rock and Roll) and enjoyed some financial success as a result of his touring and record sales. Little Richard left rock and roll in late 1957 to study for the ministry at a Seventh Day Adventist university, returning in 1962. His peak recording years, just 1955–57 on Specialty, yielded close to forty songs.8
Memphis Rockabilly
In the mid-1950s southern white artists, primarily on independent Memphis-based Sun Records, merged country (formerly called “hillbilly”) with R&B, typically featuring string instruments: acoustic and electric guitars and bass. Jerry Lee Lewis playing piano would be the exception. Saxophones were absent. The style came to be known as rockabilly, a term that Billboard magazine began using about June 1956, two years after Elvis Presley’s first recordings. By early 1957 Billboard noted the dominance of both rock and roll and rockabilly on the pop charts (see figure 23).9
The genre was kicked off on Sun with Elvis Presley’s (1935–77) first single, “That’s All Right Mama” (backed with “Blue Moon of Kentucky”), recorded and released in July 1954.10 Elvis would release a total of five seven-inch 45 rpm singles for Sun over the next year, each with an R&B cover on one side and a bluegrass or country cover on the other side. Five additional songs recorded at Sun would be released on his first album (Elvis Presley), on RCA Victor in early 1956. His group initially consisted of a trio, with Elvis on acoustic guitar and vocals, Scotty Moore on electric guitar, and Bill Black on acoustic bass; various drummers joined the trio for his fourth (“I’m Left, You’re Right”) and fifth (“Mystery Train”) releases, until D. J. Fontana settled in by the time Elvis moved to RCA Victor. The sequence of Elvis’s Sun singles and his entry into the country charts is as follows:
“That’s All Right”/“Blue Moon of Kentucky” (rec. July 5, 1954; rel. July 19, 1954)
“Good Rockin’ Tonight”/“I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine” (rec. September 10, 1954; rel. September 25, 1954)
“Milkcow Blues Boogie”/“You’re a Heartbreaker” (rec. December 8, 1954; rel. December 28, 1954)
“Baby Let’s Play House” (#5 country)/“I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” (rec. February 1 and March 5, 1954; rel. April 10, 1955)
“I Forgot to Remember to Forget” (#1 country)/“Mystery Train” (#10 country) (rec. July 11, 1955; rel. August 6, 1955)
In late 1955, after a year of Elvis breaking out of Billboard’s regional country charts to the top of its national country chart, the major label RCA Victor bought his contract from Sun recording studio and record-label owner Sam Phillips for $35,000 plus $5,000 in owed royalties. Phillips’s quote—“If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars”—is one of the most famous in rock and roll history.11 Elvis’s massive success beginning from his very first single on RCA Victor in early 1956 marked the arrival of rock and roll as a high-profile commercial recorded product. That single (“Heartbreak Hotel”) entered the pop charts in early March, reached #1, and stayed there for eight weeks. His first album, Elvis Presley, was released in March and hit #1, staying there for ten weeks; it was the first rock and roll album to hit #1. This was an era of independent record labels scouting talent and bringing them to national audiences before the major labels caught on. The majors had the influence and finances to market Presley, and he appeared on national television shows almost every month in 1956, culminating with three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show toward the end of the year.
Presley’s standing in the history of rock and roll can be appreciated by looking at his recording track record: he had nineteen Top 10 hits between 1956 and 1959, twelve of which went to #1. “Don’t Be Cruel” (backed with “Hound Dog”) stayed at #1 for eleven weeks in the summer of 1956 and hit #1 on the pop, R&B and C&W charts, indicating that a broad cross section of American youth was listening to him. His Sun recordings (1954–55), made when he was nineteen to twenty years old, are among the most seismic in the history of rock. Drawing
