•acent Chuck Berry describing his first car: “A ’33 Ford. cret life of the typical fan (“Sweet little Sixteen”) and It cost me thirty-four dollars. Man, it took me three the lay of the land (“Back in the U.S.A.” ). And he months to pay for it, and I had to have some older gave rock and roll its central character and all-pur friend sign for it, ’cause I was only seventeen.” Chuck pose metaphor: the autobiographical “Johnny B. Berry’s first car song, “Maybellene,” released on the Goode.” (Berry substituted “country boy” for “col Chess label in 1955, was also his first smash, reaching ored boy” to suit pop radio.) His disarming live per Number Five on the pop chart and Number One on formances were featured in the teen movies of the the R&B chart. time — Rock Rock Rock', Mister Rock and Rod ; G o, If it had been up to Berry himself, though, “May Johnny, Go — and his famous duckwalk was recorded bellene” would have been the B-side of “Wee Wee for posterity in ja z z o n a Sum m er's D a y, a documenta Hours,” a Hues number that Berry had hoped Leon ry look at the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival ard Chess would use as his debut. After all, Chuck had “Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me,” he been playing; the blues, working nights with a locally has said, “but about the people listening.” While that successful trio in his native St. Louis (and working made him popular with one generation, it threatened days as a beautician). Berry got to know Muddy Wa another. Run-ins with the law did damage to his posi ters, who was impressed with Berry’s guitar playing, tion as a hifmaker. Despite a few mid-Sixties successes and through Waters he was introduced to Leonard (“Nadine,” “No Particular Place to Go,” “You Can Chess. Chess was impressed not so much by “Wee Never Tell”), Berry found himself eclipsed on the Wee Hours” as by “Ida Red,” a chugging tune that charts by upstarts like the Beatles and the Rolling combined country and western guitar over a rhythm Stones, who had respectfully appropriated his songs and blues beat and wry, clearly enunciated lyrics. and style and made them their own. Berry wouldn’t Suggesting a name change to “Maybellene,” Chess re reach Number One on the pop charts again until leased the song— and Berry shifted gears into the sim 1972, when, back on the Chess label, he released the ple and stunning sound that gave shape and style to naughty novelty “My Ding-a-Ling.” rtK'k and roll. Berry’s work has taken on a life of its own. His rep Between 1955 and 1959, Berry, like an astute ertoire is required learning for all serious rockers and oral historian, charted the course of the burgeoning essential listening for anyone who wants to know what sound and its eager, ever-growing audience. He de rock and roll is all about — where it came from, the scribed the basic attitude (“Roll Over Beethoven”), dreams it embodies and, of course, how much fun it the roots of the style (“Rock & Roll Music”), the se can he. 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 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. Elvis pop charts to the extent that rock and roll If we can’t pinpoint our opening “where was hardly a surprise, given all that had became the dominant American music. Bill or when” question, the who, what and how come before. What was amazing was how board acknowledged the transition when it that make up the raw materials of this Rock much he foreshadowed all that was yet to <§mme. Beginning almost twoicenturies ago, social hne^- be theydravpii along class, racial or economic boundaries — have proved most porous whereflihusic is concerned. This melting pot orsound has brought vitality to American music - be it folk, jazz, country, western, blue! or other - which sees styles evdfve h | a vimilent democracy at a some times bewuderi|ig pace. / For those whq think in terms of black and nvhite, there are only shades of gray. Per formance styles and rhythms imported di rectly from Africa found Anglo-Irish har monies and melodies greeting them on their arrival to the new continent. Playing the game of one-upping dozens, rudiments of style were exchanged, helped along by a growth in mass communication that made once-regional styles accessible to a national audience. By the late Forties, this had resulted in several unique genres, most still considered Diablos m I f * f t - Penguins J r -'1?* ■H H i ML y Í 0 M oil transcontinental railway of a nascent rock. gan. In calling it rock and roll, a sensibility Longitudinally, the music moved up the of separation was initiated that helped the m Mississippi River from New Orleans, against bandwagon move under its own propulsive the current. From out of the heart of gumbo power. Disc jockey Alan Freed, tipped by ya-ya, the insistent piano-roll triplets of record-store owner Leo Mintz of the across- Professor Longhair gave way to Fats Domi the-board appeal of rhythm and blues, “of ■ k no and Little Richard. An arc stretching ficially” changed the music’s name, in effect ■ from Texas across the Carolinas brought defining this new audience. Thus given its the proverbial bop that wouldn’t stop to own fork in the road, rock proceeded to hundreds of thousands of fans — a crescent strike off resolutely on its own. s of beat centered on two and four. The catchall phrase Freed chose was a Country music, tying together the perso combination of two R&B slang expressions nae of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, that had been around for at least three dec ■ M had settled its first pioneer generation in ades. Like jazz, it was yet another synonym honky-tonkin’ towns throughout the South, for that most musical of interpersonal acts. having their children and watching a whole Nick Tosches has traced it back to the fall of new genealogy of musicians come of age. 1922, when blues singer Trixie Smith re IkThey, too, caught tjprejamped-up fever of the corded “My Daddy Rocks Me (with One Elvis Presley times, sticking theirjdancing feet into Carl Steady Roll)” for Black Swan. By the For and Roll Hall of Fame are more readily Perkins’ “Blu^SueJe Shoes” and doing the ties, “rock” (not to mentionf“roll”) had be available. Their names and facesMegendarj^ “Be-Bop-a*iula” to Gene Vincent. Under come a full-fledged adjective denoting a hits and divine misses, not only prefigure the genejrfc name y^The air of supernatural possession was rbest summed up by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” from 1956. By then, rock andfroll was doubling back on itself, influencing its source musics, a dizzying clo- verleaf that never did find a straightaway. ™ g ^ s >»3 As pop music had opened to rhythm and blues ahdhcountry, these styles in turn l ^ s g M i JstSk opened to pop/the^ension of their compro mise broadening the struggle between real and surreal, lost and found. Groups like the Coasters ¿ria the Drift the Charms’ “Hearts of Stone.” If this was Lymon ancUme Teenagers, from upper ers; solo artists like 'Clyde M cPhatter, Jack commercial, an event like Freed’s Moondog Manhattan*; the Cleftones, from Jamaica, ie Wilgon and Ben E. King; instrumentalists Coronation Ball showed the tip of a demo Queens; Dion and Ihe Belmonts, from the like Duane Eddy and King Curtis; resolute graphic iceberg. Held in March 1952 at the Belmont Avenue subway station in the bluqpmen like B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Cleveland Arena, it allowed the audience to Bronx; the Mystics, the Passions abd the Bland; superb voices like La Yern Baker glimpse one another in the flesh and witness Paragons, from Brooklyn; or the Ele&ants and Joe Turner; teen idols like Ricky Nel- their own power. Instead of the expected ca from Staten Island. Their “hitting nores” son and Dion; Hank Ballard’s blue side of pacity crowd of 10,000, there were 30,000 were shaped to nonsense chants and chimed rhythm; Johnny Otis’ rhythm side of blues; eager fans pouring through the turnstiles, thirds, bass through high tenor. t i e “C.C. Rider” of Chuck Willis and the which resulted in rock’s first riot. They were heard by the tunesmiths of the ’ / “Sleep” of Little Willie John; the orches- Once the floodgates were declared open, Brill Building on Broadway, who sculpted f trated heads-and-tails of Bobby Darin and things began to, ah, roll. The public’s imagi for them songs whose pantheonic scrollwork Roy Orbison; the yet-to-come of Marvin nation may have been captured by Elvis, was astonishing. These pop masterminds in Gaye and Smokey Robinson; the live-fast- but the vast legions of musicians and entre stantly turned to packaging a Teen Idol pro die-young of Eddie Cochran and Johnny preneurs were ready, willing and able to fol totype, though fittingly enough it was in Ace; Ruth Brown, Lloyd Price, Jimmy low him through the pearly gates of enter Philadelphia, home of Dick Clark’s tele Reed. . . . tainment paradise. Suddenly unleashed, vised American Bandstand, that the Fabi The list could go on and on. And still rock burst over America in a great wave, ans and Frankie Avalons were launched to does. carrying with it a grand sense of possibility, ward a heartthrobbing multitude. Along Welcome to the Rock and Roll Hall of of the new taking over the old. with the cheese-steak hero, Philly was also Fame. Perhaps that’s the way it seems at the start of a revolution. Maybe a revolution al ways reacts against what came before, at once predictable and shocking. Surely, oth er radical fusions of form had taken place in American music. What made rock and roll so different was its sudden flaring into con sciousness, heralded by a modern communi cations media with an ability to drum the message throughout the technological world. Everybody wanted to be a rocker, and ‘the distinction between fan and performer was blurred by the music’s accessibility. Th ree chords and stardom. Throughout America, each geographic region contribut ed a particular legacy to the rock and roll mythos. In New York, a doo-wop group held court on every street corner in the five bor oughs — whether the Harptones or Frankie G ene Vincent and his Blue Caps