Black History & Rock 'n' Roll
Little Richard once said, “The blues had an illegitimate baby and we named it rock ‘n’ roll.”
When you celebrate Black culture and music this Black History month, be sure to celebrate rock ‘n’ roll, because that’s where it came from.
Most of you who know me know I’m a rock chick. Many who barely know me also know this because I never shut up about it.
It doesn’t mean I don’t listen to country, rap, pop, or even opera. I have a real love for the violin and Spanish guitar, but I always dance with the one that raised me.
I was rock ‘n’ roll born and rock ‘n’ roll bred, and when I die I’ll be rock ‘n’ roll dead.
But how did I get so lucky?
Let me tell ya.
Blues music originated in the Deep South roundabouts the 1860s, a profound musical form that blended the work songs and field hollers of enslaved African-Americans, their chants, rhymes, and spirituals.
Big Bill Broozy (1893-1958) brought the Blues to Chicago from Mississippi. Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893-1929) didn’t live long, but he left his mark. Jefferson is the Father of the Texas Blues.
Singer/guitarist Charley Patton was born in Mississippi in 1891. His powerful Delta Blues inspired players from Son House to Stevie Ray Vaughn, from Robert Johnson to Jimi Hendrix.
House and Johnson were also from Mississippi.
By the 1920s we had the lovely Bessie Smith (“The Empress of the Blues”) and we all know the iconic Leadbelly, from Louisiana, who also was significant in the NYC folk scene in the 1940s. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Bob Dylan said Leadbelly’s recording of “Cotton Fields” changed his life.
There’s a fistful of other greats from early in the game. Just ask any Blues aficionado.
Rhythm & Blues followed, again blending the expressions of Black culture into a swirl of sound composed of jump blues, big band swing, and boogie-woogie music. As the kids say today, it slapped.
Then came rock ‘n’ roll. Oh happy day.
Rock ‘n’ roll started to gain its energy in the late 1940s/early 1950s, birthed out of R&B, jazz, boogie-woogie, gospel, and Southern country music.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe recorded gospel songs in the 1940s, singing and playing her electric guitar. She’s often called “The Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
Alabama’s Big Mama Thornton was a blues/R&B player and songwriter and the first to record and have a hit with “Hound Dog” in 1952.
By 1953, Chuck Berry was playing the thang, and so was the Georgia-born dynamo Little Richard, often called “The Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
All this delicious music was being made, played, shouted, swayed and danced to. And it didn’t escape the notice of one particular Mississippi kid with talent, Elvis Aaron Presley.
And he became the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
But no, dear folks, Elvis didn’t invent the genre.
He was not the conceiver. He was the receiver.
Presley was perfection’s doppelganger. A great singer, a fabulous interpretive artist, handsome, stylish, and rhythmic. Oh, and white. That was enough in widely-racist 1950s America to propel the music, and Elvis, into a worldwide phenomenon.
It was a hard sell in some sectors at first.
Some people said he was playing “N-word music.” Presley didn’t care and neither did the legions of white kids who were losing their collective minds over his hips and hits.
Presley acknowledged his debt to Black music more than a few times, often bringing up artists like BB King, Fats Domino, and Ivory Joe Hunter.
I acknowledge that debt too. And so should you.
As I said, I’m a rock ‘n’ roll chick. Without Black music, there’s no Elvis. If there’s no Elvis, there’s no me.
Please stop slagging the South, y’all. That’s where America’s music comes from.
Celebrate Black History.
Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, but didn’t have the nerve to venture to the South Side clubs to see Howlin’ Wolf. No, my rock indoctrination would wait until the Brits sought out every scratchy blues LP the could get their hands on and send it back to us American white kids. Saw The Beatles in south side Comiskey Park- just around the corner from Muddy Waters, Muddy Waters, and Buddy Guy. Crazy.
Love your writing, but will have to learn to like cats.
Brilliantly written