Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Stay, but an awful lot of the music that has influenced its birth and development are a far more endangered species, mostly due to the lack of curiousity of many of the writers, scholars and researchers about the earlier influences. Rock ‘n’ Roll (please note the correct spelling) was and still is influenced by almost all the music that went down before–not just the obvious roots like blues, gospel and country music, but how those kinds of music as well the popular music, vaudeville, show tunes, radio programs and the incredibly huge influence of the earliest cylinders and 78s on later styles. At the AMHF, we have learned that the only way to completely understand the music of any artist requires checking out who they listened to and then what those artists listened to going all the way back to the earliest ragtime, brass band and popular music discs and cylinders. If you really want to understand this music, or for that matter, any other genre, you need to learn that every style of music has a history and a pre-history that must be investigated in depth if you are seriously interested. To grok the music of the 1960s, you have to know the 50s, 40s, 30s, 20s and all the way back to the beginning of recorded sound, because those 60s artists were influenced directly or indirectly by this evolution. You don’t have to bother about the 70s or later, as that music was not an influence on the sixties. If you really want to learn about about your favorite living musicians then ask them what they listen to and check that shit out. If you don’t “get” what they listen to, then repeat until you do.
Many “authorities” claim that the first rock ‘n’ roll (excuse me, they usually misspell it as “rock and roll”) record was “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston. This record was chosen because these writers had actually heard of Ike Turner (the session leader), the label it came out on (Chess) and the recording studio where it was made (Sam Phillip’s famous Sun Studios in Memphis). Most of them don’t know or care anything about Mr. Brenston’s post-“Rocket 88” career. He has become just another “name check” for professional amateur rock journalists. One of Frank Zappa’s most enduring and endearing quotes is: “Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk or people who can’t read. I call them column inch-worms, because they get paid to pad a news hole, a living, I suppose, but a fate I was happily able to escape. Our collection has several contenders that are far older, but most of these “experts” are unfamiliar with the depth of the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and are generally not very interested in just how far back its origins go, which is actually well before the invention of the phonograph. We’ll get around to talking about that later.
The 7 Real Kings of 50s Rock ‘n’ Roll
Elvis Presley is often called the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, but we disagree but we would call him easily the greatest “teen idol” of all time, handily beating Fabian, Annette and even Bobby Darin. Had he remained on the Sun label, he would have easily had a place in our Pantheon. If he had not joined the army and had his hair shorn off, we could still argue that even though RCA’s producer Steve Sholes and his hand-picked senior citizen session musicians set about to tame and sanitize Mr. Presley from just about the moment he set foot in their studio, a large amount of his pre-induction recordings were almost good enough to induct him into our own list of the 7 Real Kings of rock ‘n’ roll if he hadn’t sold out so quickly, so thoroughly and so embarrassingly. The man who returned from Germany in 1960, was, quite simply, somebody else, a victim of brainwashing, legal drugs, or two of my favorite outsider explanations, that he was replaced by a former Hitler Youth doppelganger or was a graduate of the CIA’s MK-Ultra program. Even as a child, I knew that “It’s Now or Never” was Enrico Caruso’s “O Sole Mio,” but Elvis himself didn’t know the Caruso version, just Mario Lanza’s “There’s No Tomorrow,” the first English lyrics to that old Italian folk song. “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” came from a late 40s Al Jolson Decca 78, and Jolie learned it from Henry Burr’s 1927 Victor 78–not exactly “rock ‘n’ roll, especially if you know who Henry Burr was. Not that everything Elvis did after returning from the army was complete garbage, but compared to his early work, very little of it comes close to the high standards he set for himself early on. “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” is a great record, but it’s not rock ‘n’ roll and Nat “King” Cole could have done it just as well and if not better.
Chuck Berry
During the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, when it was called “race music” and even later when it was changed by a white victim of racism, Jerry Wexler to Rhythm and Blues, the guitar was usually not featured as much as the sax and the piano. St. Charles Berrily chucked that idea out the window (along with the sax) and put the guitar out front and center where is remains today, although with the shear explosion in numbers of terminally white and or heavy muddle guitar wankers, not always for the better.
Coming out of the starting blocks in ’56, Chuck could do not wrong with his songwriting or his guitar playing, which is why he was treated so harshly by the 50’s era adult (and adultress) authority figures who were trying to pretend that payola hadn’t existed since the early sheet music industry and that if the disk jockeys hadn’t been bribed their innocent little children would have never been aware of this communist-inspired “nigger” music. The deejays were likewise bribed to play whitebread “pop” music like Crosby, Sinatra, Patti Page’s “Doggie in the Window” and everything else at the time. Chuck did a couple of years in the slam on a trumped-up charge invoking the Mann Act, a law passed by earlier Congressional racists specifically or the purpose of jailing the World Champion boxer Jack Johnson for the twin crimes of beating the shit out of EVERY white challenger and marrying a very willing white woman and taking his wife across state lines “for immoral purposes,” which was namely the presumption that they were having otherwise legal marital relations. Those late 1950s ASSHOLES in the “best Congress money can buy” that manufactured the “payola scandal” were every bit as racist and hypocritical as their predecessors and I hope they burn in hell for what they did to kill not just rock ‘n’ roll, but jazz artists like Mingus, Billie and Bird and American Music in general.
Too much has already been written about Mr. Berry for me to regurgitate and up-chuck the endless amount of ink spilled over his contribution to American Music. It is disturbing that there are now people claiming to be rock ‘n’ roll guitarists who quite obviously never learned anything from this Master. I could say the same about the rock ‘n’ roll songwriters 3 or 4 decades. Nothing that anyone can write is more important than hearing and in this case viewing vintage Chuck Berry film clips
One of the problems for the “adults” in the teenage film industry was in the placing this very popular music in films was because so much of the music was by “those” people. Here they solve the problem by hiring some honky-ass amateurs as a backing band. The result is eliminating 3/4 of the black faces on the screen, everybody but the “name.” Never mind that ANY black band, let alone Chuck’s would have done a much better job. Still, it is the Chuckster in 1959, right before the righteous racists framed him to get this music off the radio and the charts.
