D Vautier
8/2013
I think the origins of Rock & Roll music can be traced way back to as early as 1897 with the first appearance of popular ragtime. In fact the word ragtime itself carried about the same kind of insouciant spirit that Rock & Roll always did. Popular Ragtime (as opposed to Classic Ragtime) was a type of free moving fast tempo music stressing a heavy down-beat usually in full time and marked by a stress on syncopation, all very much like R&R. The tempo had to be such as to increase heartbeat to a point of moderate exercise and this itself is something that encourages deniability. I did address this in my discussion of the long continuing but little noted controversy between ragtime purists and the popular ragtime culture around the turn of the previous century. But that's another discussion.
Popular ragtime was a fad which
flared up beginning in 1897 but by 1905
had generally died out only to be shortly revived again by Irving Berlin with
his hugely successful Alexander’s Rag Time Band which appeared
some
ten years later, and which many critics some said was not ragtime at all.
So my suggestion is
that the spirit of this
genre never really died although it slumbered away for 45 years or so obscured by other popular
forms of music that came and went.
But that all changed in the mid 1950's.
There seems to be no question that the undisputed beginning of modern Rock &
Roll started in July 1955 with Haley’s Rock Around the Clock which
topped the charts that month, although Haley had first made the charts
almost a year earlier with Shake Rattle and Roll which
in itself was awfully R&Rish. Certainly some will dispute these claims I suggest but there is no denying that Haley
and his group were the first prominent leaders in this type of music.
As regards to the first Rock & Roll song, it is my opinion that Teresa Brewer beat everybody with her Ricochet in December 1953, well ahead of the rest of the pack and even a good six months before Sh-Boom by the Crew-cuts. Sh-Boom is more like Rhythm & Blues or Do-wap and it doesn't seem to belong in this genre. The whole issue of who was first seems moot anyway. It all happened just the same and it happened quite fast.
In all events, those heady times were well
remembered and very exciting to live through for me as a kid because I spent all my time listening to KJR out of
Almost one year later we youngsters had the same reaction to Rock around the Clock and it wasn’t until almost two years later in may 1956 that Elvis completely destroyed the pop charts with Heartbreak Hotel. What fun times! what memories!