December 15th, 1922 Johnstown, Pennsylvania Died January 20th, 1965 Palm Springs, California Alan Freed was the most effective prose- lytizer rock and roll has ever known. Spreading the word from a radio pulpit that kicked off nightly to the strains of Freddie Mitchell’s “Moondog Boogie,” Freed kept time to the music by smashing his hand on a telephone book. He first conquered Cleve­ land over WJW, and then moved his show to New York’s flagship WINS. Alan not only spun the music; he wrote it, promoted it, starred in its early movies and became one of its first scapegoats. He dis­ covered the Moonglows and helped bring countless other performers to prominence. Later, the tangled favors of this period SAM PHILLIPS independent record producer, working with would recoil against him in the payola scan­ January 5th, 1923 artists like Chester Burnett (a.k.a. Howlin’ dals of the late Fifties. In the atmosphere of Florence, Alabama Wolf), B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland and a witch hunt, arrested for “anarchy” and Roscoe Gordon. When he began Sun, his “inciting to riot” (in Boston), Freed main­ The sound of Sun Records was the epit­ original roster consisted of bluesmen Little tained that he never played a record he ome of rock and roll’s origins. Owner Sam Junior Parker, Rufus Thomas and a group didn’t like. His stage shows remain the es­ Phillips not only recorded the varied of inmates from the Tennessee State Peni­ sential revues of the era. streams of ethnic music throughout the tentiary, the Prisonaires. He called it “rock ’n’ roll” (“It seemed to South, from blues to country, but was con­ “It’s one thing to watch musicians per­ suggest the rolling, surging beat of the mu­ vinced he could bring them together in one form, and it’s another to get that feeling of sic”), and his enthusiasm was infectious. irresistible pop package. It was at his Mem­ excitement onto a record,” he said of his Though he died before his forty-third birth­ phis Recording Service that he first suc­ production philosophy. “But once you’ve day, exiled from the business he loved, his ceeded in finding a white gospelized singer got it, the color of a man’s skin doesn’t show missionary spirit lives on. with “the Negro sound and the Negro feel” on a record.” To prove it, working through “I hope you’ll take my hand,” he wrote on — Elvis Presley. the early months of 1954, he hit upon the the back of one of his many oldies albums, If Phillips had only discovered Presley, he notion of trying Elvis on Arthur “Big Boy” “as we stroll together down our musical would have earned a lasting place in history. Crudup’s “That’s All Right.” For a flip side, Memory Lane. ‘The Big Beat in American But his Sun label was also home to Jerry Lee he sim ilarly modernized a country favorite, Music’ was here a hundred years ago — it will Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl P er­ Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” be here a thousand years after we are all kins and an honor roll of the South’s finest Sunlight broke through the clouds, herald­ gone. talent. Before he’d formed Sun, Sam was an ing a brand-new day. “SO - L E f S ROCK ’N’ ROLL!” THE S U R P H ^ OF AN AMERICAN MUSIC BY LENNY KAYE Mickey and Sylvia Scream in’ Jay Hawkins But I can’t remember wfteihl^or when . merely secondhand musicians — though sacrificial life-is-art swan song at the Alamo did rock and roll begin? that’s how they were generally regarded by offered some grander purpose than mere Was a new era dawning oil July Stb, 1954, their professional peers. Primitive or not, prosperity? James Dean’s meteoric rise to when Sam Phillips spokelthe immortal these were aware and dehhpilStWereators — fame in the six months between his March words - “That’s fine, man. Hell, that’s A f­ often driven visionaries — whbse goal was 1955 screen appearance in East o f Eden and ferent. T h at’s a pop song n<iw” — to Elvi?* simplicity inste^^of intrhyfcy. Reacting his own flaming demise (the self-fulfilling Presley over a studio interconiat 760 Union ^gainst the passivity of audience-performer prophecy of Rebel without a Cause) p ro ­ Avenue in Memphis? ihteruction, rock celebrated and indulged moted similar existential questions. It was Was it March 31st, 1955lwhen T h e its subliminal urges. Itjcracked one beat in only when the newly ubiquitous medium of Blackboard Jungle formally eljuated Bill place of six and projected lyrics naked in television met rock’s first icon, Elvis Pres­ Haley’s “Rock around the Clock” with ju­ their unadorned desire, along with melodic ley, that rock became something more than venile delinquency, providing a theme song phrases so pointe^T they became mnemonic music. It went pop. for adolescent rebellion? hooks, as America s (and later the world’s) Projected into millions of unsuspecting Or was it the early Fifties^?rossover suc­ Top Forty chart?would soon devastatingly living rooms, as important for what hea cess of the Chords’ “Stf-Boom,” the Pen­ learn. couldn’t show (the famous waist bisection) guins’ “Earth An^ei,” the Crows’ “Gee,” The subculture offered was part Atomic as for what he did (gold records galore), El­ Big Joe Tqptflr’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” Age and part Media M odern^tepping back vis not only combined the tangled musical and a Cleveland .disc jockey’s prescience in from the siege mentality of postwar para­ strains of rock’s prehistory into a sultry taking the “race records** known as rhythm noia. Times were good in the micNFifties. whole, he took a mutated step forward. His and blues and changing their name lb at­ Smokestack Amerm&Was booming: the pay was an inspirational leadership that came to tract (or acknowledge) a multiracial audi­ of a lactory worker with three dependents embody the new music itself. Long live the ence? averaged seventy dollars a week. Time mag­ King! The truth is that despite an all-too-human azine said that along with the highest Gross His — and, by extension, rock’s — was an urge to define music in neat bloodlines! the Rational Product in history, “bomb shelters electric sound, tilting the balance from am­ roots of rock and roll remain frustratiligly were on sale in Los Angeles, and hardly any­ plification to AC current. You could hear it elusive. As much a self-conscious lifestyjte as one was buying them.” President Eisenhow­ in the slapback echo with which Phillips a collection of rhythms and melodiel, iy er heralded a return to confidence, while surrounded Presley’s voice in “That’s All seemed to pick at will from the discard! #F Davy Crockett was the national hero. Right” and in the bite of Scotty Moore’s other music forms, recycling scorned chords But did the public like Davy because he electric guitar. It seemed tailor-made for and pariah riffs. said things like “Be sure you’re right, then “Hi-Fi,” a car radio, a live stage show. This is not to say rock and rollers were go ahead,” or because his coonskin cap and And yet, as much as rock and roll was “specialty” music, but certainly influential styles in their own right. Vocal techniques and improvisations from the hlues; a hard, hig-band swing; the call-and-response of gospel; the dance blues of New Orleans; the frantic bop of West Coast jazz; the twang of hillbilly boogie and western swing; the close-harmony serenade of groups like the Ink Spots and the Four Freshmen - all of these found their way into rock and roll. “Rock and roll was probably the first music with regional origins to be commer^ally Moonglows Chantéis expanded its rock and roll record chart from 3(^to 100 songs on November 12th, 1955 — nht so coincidentally, the same month that^Colonel Tom Parker signed El­ vis to recor^ihg giant RCA-Victor. Pop musics older guard had initially tried to subvert rock’s emotional intensity with sanitized cover versions; they hoped that all this loud bravado would soon go away. But they never stood a chance. The swapfest between rhythm, hlues, country, western and plain old Tin Pan Alley contin­ successful on a nationwide scale,” writes ued wildly apace. In the hands of maverick Charlie Gillett in The Sound of the City, independent labels and their equally unruly and small wonder, since it managed to touch artists, a marketplace free-for-all was initi­ so many reference points along the way. ated that harked hack to the days of the Add to rock and roll the manic exhibi­ frontier West. tionism of youthful exuberance, the sense of “This is what makes rock and roll so in­ contrariety that kept the music moving fur­ triguing,” Nick Tosches notes in his chroni­ ther out on its own limb of the family tree, cle of the “dark and wild” years before El­ and the outrage (and subsequent attraction) v is, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll. it could provoke, and the result was music “Whether one regards it as art or as busi­ that had an explosive impact on America in ness, its history — one of greed and inno­ the Fifties. It would be a nigh-exclusive na­ cence, tastelessness and brilliance, the ri­ presented as a strikingly original concept tional phenomenon until the decade turned. diculous and the sublime (not to mention when it came along, it was a product of the At that point, it would be reflected back sex, violence and pink silk suits) — is a fun- same frantic bartering of style that has across the Atlantic with a vengeance by the house-mirror reflection of the American characterized American music since there British Invasion, and it would take over the dream gone gaga.” was an American music to speak of.