Rock And Roll

Buddy Holly and his band on a promo

The rock and roll (also rock 'n' roll or rock & roll; in Spanish, rocanrol) is a musical genre with a marked rhythm, derived from a mixture of various genres of American folk music (doo wop, rhythm and blues, hillbilly, blues, country and >western are the most prominent) and popularized since the 1950s. The most popular singer was Elvis Presley; his most influential guitarist, Chuck Berry; his most important pianist, Jerry Lee Lewis and his most prominent predecessors, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly and Bill Haley, among others. The expression rock and roll had already been used in the lyrics of rhythm and blues since the late 1930s, but it was the American broadcaster Alan Freed who began to use it to describe the style.

Meaning of the term

The announcer Alan Freed popularized the term rock and roll

The word rock and roll comes from the slang used by African-Americans during the first half of the xx century, with apparently sexual connotations. According to the Royal Spanish Academy, the term "rock and roll" refers to a characteristic musical genre popularized in the 50s, while "rock", in addition to a meaning that is equivalent to "rock and roll", can also refer to " each of the various musical genres derived from rock and roll". However, in practice there are many artists within rock music who, without performing rock and roll in the style of the 50s, continue to call their music "rock and roll" by considering it directly heir to that.

On the other hand, the Dictionary of the Spanish language recognized, in its twenty-second edition, the term rock and roll as an English word by way of Anglicism, in the twenty-third edition the article has been amended taking "rocanrol" as a term in Spanish derived from English.

Literally, the term rock and roll refers to two types of movement: on the one hand, rock is a movement from front to back and back to front (like the of a rocking chair, which in English is called a rocking chair); and on the other hand, roll is an alternating vertical roll movement (translated in air navigation terms as roll).

History

Origin of the term

American disc jockey Alan Freed began broadcasting rhythm and blues radio to an audience of diverse non-ethnic backgrounds. Freed was credited with being the first to use the expression rock and roll to describe the music he spread; its use has also been attributed to Freed's patron Leo Mintz, who encouraged him to spread that style of music.

The expression, in turn, was taken by Freed from the black music that he spread that used to contain it in the lyrics of the songs, such as the theme Rock and rolling (1939) by Bob Robinson, Rock and rolling mamma (1939) by Buddy Holly and Cherry Red (1939) by Big Joe Turner. Three different songs with the title Rock and roll were recorded in the late 1940s, coined by Paul Bascomb in 1947, Wild Bill Moore in 1948, and Doles Dickens in 1949. By then the expression was in common use in R&B lyrics. In 1949 Erline Harris, recorded the song Rock and Roll Blues, in which he constantly repeats the expression and which earned him the nickname Erline "Rock and Roll" Harris.

The expression was also included in the 1950 advertisement for the film Wabash Avenue, starring Betty Grable and Victor Mature, where Grable was said to be "the first lady of rock and roll".

Early singers and origins

In the 1950s, in the United States, teenagers were looking for new sounds, new sensations. For the first time, a type of music addressed them directly: rock and roll.

In times of slavery in the United States, black communities developed a musical potential in which religious chants and their own rhythms that marked the days of work on the various plantations they inhabited at that time predominated. On a musical level, the influence of African rhythms and sounds were present, generating a unique and diverse style that later materialized in the blues, which would become the musical ingredient that would later revolutionize music worldwide. On the other hand, the influence of white musicians through the musical genre called country and the appearance of the electric guitar would give birth to what was called rhythm and blues, father of rock and roll. .

The term rock and roll began to be used to musically lessen the popular rhythm rhythm and blues, which denoted too much racial struggle for the time, and although in essence the two musical genres represented what At the same time, they wanted to differentiate one from the other to make way for white singers and music that does not mention racial conflict.^{[citation required]}

Its beginnings combine elements of blues, boogie-woogie, and jazz, with influences from Appalachian folk music, (hillbilly), gospel, country, and specialized western. Muddy Waters is often credited as the musician who "paved" the path to rock and roll.

Some people date its origin in 1954, with the recording work of Bill Haley and his group Bill Haley & His Comets, especially with Crazy man crazy (1954) and his great success Rock Around the Clock (1954), or with the recordings of Elvis Presley at the Memphis Sun Record where Elvis, together with the musicians Bill Black on double bass, Scotty Moore on guitar and Sam Phillips on the recording console, fused rhythm blues, country and gospel becoming precursors of the rockabilly genre. Others consider Chuck Berry or Little as creators Richard. It is also possible that it originated with the recordings The Fat Man by Fats Domino (1949) and Rocket 88 by Ike Turner (1951). Notable musicians of the time include Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, and Gene Vincent, among others.

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley is considered the founding myth of rock and roll and its cornerstone. He was to become a hero and king of that musical and cultural style. Little Richard himself would comment: Elvis was an integrator. A blessing. They didn't let black music appear and he opened the door for us. Elvis brought together two qualities that would prove essential in dealing with America's racial problems at the time, he was ethnically white and he sang like a black man. Tommy Hunt, star a soul fan and an admirer of Elvis, attributes his success to that very quality. Since the new sounds that were brewing at the time sounded too African-American in the hands of Berry or Little Richards, who were still closer to rhythm and blues being considered artists of that genre just a few years before or too soft and white in the hands of Bill Halley, Elvis managed to amend that, achieving a product black enough not to lose its origins and at the same time white enough to conquer the new public. Elvis didn't even know he was doing rock and roll, which is why for a while his circuit was sustained in country and western venues. Elvis met all the requirements to become an exclusive idol for rebellious teenagers; he was not African-American like Berry nor somewhat advanced in years like Bill Halley, he could vocally go from a honeyed tone to the scream of the black gettho, combined with an athletic, sensual, youthful and defiant image. His merit was to externalize what he had inside and achieve a mixture of country, western and hillbilly with the southern blues and the gospel of the church he attended. However, there was no shortage of those who in the current historical revisionism have wanted to minimize the contribution Elvis's musical compared to that of African-American artists such as Berry or Richard, relegating everything to purely racial issues without taking into account the series of qualities that Elvis gathered to become the leader of the new wave.

For his part, Elvis never failed to recognize the contribution of African-American artists when in 1968 he expressed Rock and Roll music is basically gospel and rhythm blues.

The British journalist Roy Carr of the New Musical Express believes that it was with the recordings of Elvis at the Sun Records company that the basic rock combo was created and that despite the fact that artists such as The Beatles, Credence or Bob Dylan tried in some time to pay homage to that sound, they never managed to recreate either the innocence or the essence of those recordings.

Critic Nick Cohn said: What rock needed at the time to get off the ground was a universal hero, a symbol. Someone who was very young, special, incomparable —an exclusive property of teenagers. Someone who could crystallize the entire movement, give it size and direction. Obviously, Bill Haley (the first rocker with his "Rock Around The Clock") didn't measure up, but Elvis did.

His great contribution was to show how far the economic capacity of teenagers could go. Before Elvis, rock had been a gesture of vague rebellion; as soon as he arrived it became something solid and of its own content, which imprinted his style on clothing, language and sex; a total independence in almost all aspects, in things that today are taken for granted.

That's when the biggest teen breakup happened, and Elvis was the one who caused it. In this way, and without even having proposed it, she became one of the people who have most radically affected the way people live and think.

In the same way, the writer and specialized journalist for the magazine «Rock and Pop» Marcelo Gobello, considers that only Elvis can be considered the father and king of rock and roll.

Presley's arrival on the scene made artists who were beginning to emerge in the same period, such as Buddy Holly, who met him during an Elvis recital in Lubbock, Texas, definitely lean towards rockabilly and at the same time time inspired Sam Phillips to continue looking for talent for his company Sun Records after he sold Elvis's contract to RCA, emerging from there artists such as Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis among others.

Legendary Composers

Carl Perkins starting in 1955 composed songs within the rockabilly style such as «Blue Suede Shoes», «Matchbox», «Honey Don't» and «Everybody's trying to be my baby» some of the which would reach the top positions on Billboard and would be covered over the years by various artists such as Elvis, The Beatles and later Stray Cats. Something similar happened with Chuck Berry and compositions like Johnny B. Good or Sweet Little Sixteen although in this The latter case and despite the fact that it was never recognized as such, the authorship of several of its songs was disputed by the pianist Johnnie Johnson.

The Beach Boys in the early 60s

Development and evolution

From Presley both in the United States and in England, the rocker subculture was born from the music and the aesthetic image imposed mainly by him. The staging of Elvis that would be reflected in several of the films he made in that period, would give rise to the first video clip in history with the Jailhouse Rock choreography within the homonymous film. Likewise and without meaning to, years later in 1968 he would create a precedent for what would later become the unplugged.

By the late '50s and early '60s, those in the music industry were going to condemn the product and in an attempt to soften and pare it down, artists like Pat Boone emerged with recorded versions of Little Richard songs like "Tutti Frutti" and created a legion of beautiful young crooners like Frankie Avalon and Fabian who thrived and would essentially serve as the Perry Comos and Bing Crosbys to a new generation of listeners. In 1958 Presley had been drafted into the army, Buddy Holly along with Richie Valens and Big Booper had been killed in a plane crash, and Little Richard had turned to religion. The golden age of rock and roll was winding down. At that time, another musical variant within rock and roll emerged, more oriented towards dance, the twist, with artists like Chubby Checker or groups like Sam the Sham and the pharaohs. The entire music would pass into a phase characterized by greater sophistication like the orchestral sound erected by Phil Spector, the "hit factory" and the vocal harmonies embodied in the songs of a dream life around surfing created by The Beach Boys. It was not until the 1960s when it declined and ceased to be the rhythm that represented the young rebels in the 50s, giving way to the genre called rock or rock music, which would mark a milestone among the rising young generation of the 60s. In the mid-60s, the musical sophistication that was emerging allowed for greater freedom and variety of styles.

In this way, different subgenres such as rockabilly or hard rock were born from it, and phenomena such as teen idols or the girl groups, the latter mainly sponsored by Phil Spector and from him have derived genres such as garage rock, punk rock, progressive rock, glam rock, gothic rock and, among all of them, there are still common elements from rock and roll. Thus, some hard rock artists such as AC/DC and Mötley Crüe like to define themselves as rock and roll musicians, to show their musical influence.

Music analysis

In its beginnings and in its less evolved state, the term rock and roll was used to designate the more accelerated style of rhythm blues.

Apart from the guitar, the drums and the piano were equally fundamental elements.

Rock and roll follows the blues structure, finding songs of 12, 16 or 8 bars. The rhythm is generally in 4/4 time with the accentuation falling on beats 2 and 4, this being marked by an aggressive blow on the snare drum on the aforementioned beats.

Improvisation also plays a role within the genre, using the pentatonic scale with a couple of accidentals, which will later be known as the "blues scale".