Rock and roll
, also called
rock ’n’ roll
or
rock & roll
, style of
popular music
that originated in the
United States
in the mid-1950s and that evolved by the mid-1960s into the more
encompassing
international style known as
rock
music, though the latter also continued to be known as rock and roll.
Bill Haley and His Comets
Bill Haley and His Comets.
© David Redfern—Redferns/Retna Ltd.
Britannica Quiz
Rock Music and Rock ’n’ Roll
You may be familiar with Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, but how familiar are you with the first rock opera? Sift through this quiz and expand your knowledge of all things rock and roll.
Rock and roll has been described as a merger of
country music
and
rhythm and blues
, but, if it were that simple, it would have existed long before it burst into the national
consciousness
. The seeds of the music had been in place for decades, but they flowered in the mid-1950s when nourished by a volatile mix of Black
culture
and white spending power. Black vocal groups such as
the Dominoes
and
the Spaniels began combining gospel-style harmonies and call-and-response
singing
with earthy subject matter and more aggressive rhythm-and-blues rhythms. Heralding this new sound were disc jockeys such as
Alan Freed
of
Cleveland
, Ohio,
Dewey Phillips
of
Memphis
, Tennessee, and
William (“Hoss”) Allen
of WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee—who created rock-and-roll radio by playing hard-driving rhythm-and-blues and raunchy blues records that introduced white suburban teenagers to a culture that sounded more exotic, thrilling, and illicit than anything they had ever known. In 1954 that sound coalesced around an image: that of a handsome white singer,
Elvis Presley
, who sounded like a Black man.
Presley’s nondenominational taste in music incorporated everything from hillbilly rave-ups and
blues
wails to pop-crooner
ballads
. Yet his early recordings with producer
Sam Phillips
, guitarist
Scotty Moore
, and bassist
Bill Black
for in Memphis were less about any one style than about a feeling. For decades African Americans had used the term
rock and roll
as a
euphemism
for sex, and Presley’s music oozed sexuality. Presley was hardly the only artist who embodied this attitude, but he was clearly a
catalyst
in the merger of Black and white culture into something far bigger and more complex than both.
In Presley’s wake, the music of Black singers such as
Fats Domino
,
Little Richard
,
Chuck Berry
, and
Bo Diddley
, who might have been considered rhythm-and-blues artists only years before, fit alongside the
rockabilly
-flavoured tunes of white performers such as
Buddy Holly
,
Eddie Cochran
, and
Jerry Lee Lewis
, in part because they were all now addressing the same audience: teenagers. For young white America, this new music was a soundtrack for rebellion, however mild. When
Bill Haley
and His Comets kicked off the 1955
motion picture
Blackboard Jungle
with “
Rock Around the Clock
,” teens in movie houses throughout the United States stomped on their seats. Movie stars such as
Marlon Brando
in
The Wild One
(1953) and
James Dean
in
Rebel Without a Cause
(1955) oozed sullen, youthful defiance that was echoed by the music. This emerging rock-and-roll culture brought a wave of condemnations from religious leaders, government officials, and parents’ groups, who branded it the “devil’s music.”
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The music industry’s response was to sanitize the product: it had clean-cut, nonthreatening artists such as
Pat Boone
record tame versions of Little Richard songs, and it manufactured a legion of pretty-boy crooners such as
Frankie Avalon
and
Fabian who thrived on and who would essentially serve as the Perry Comos and
Bing Crosby
s for a new generation of listeners. By the end of the 1950s, Presley had been inducted into the army, Holly had died in a plane crash, and Little Richard had converted to gospel. Rock and roll’s golden era had ended, and the music entered a transitional phase characterized by a more sophisticated approach: the orchestrated wall of sound erected by
Phil Spector
, the “hit factory” singles churned out by
Motown
records, and the harmony-rich
surf
fantasies of the
Beach Boys
. By the mid-1960s this sophistication allowed the music greater freedom than ever before, and it fragmented into numerous styles that became known simply as rock.
Greg Kot
Learn More
in these related Britannica articles:
Australia: The ascendance of Australian popular culture
...sparked by the rise of rock and roll, the arrival of which in Australia is usually dated to the theatrical release in 1955 of
Blackboard Jungle
; the movie featured the hit single “Rock Around the Clock” by the American band Bill Haley and His Comets, whose Australian tour in 1957...
radio: The rise of Top 40 radio
The rise of rock and roll music in the 1950s greatly aided radio’s sometimes difficult transition. The early and mid-’50s saw the development of “Top 40” programming dependent on hit music and the personality of the local disc jockey, or deejay. Station owners Todd Storz in Omaha, Nebraska,...
Richard Brooks: Early films
...the drama helped launch the rock-and-roll revolution by using “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets as its theme. Brooks received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay....
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