I don’t know about England, but in Texas we were listening to R&B radio and going to R&B reviews to see Berry, Frogman Henry, Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton, Ruth Brown, Bo Diddley, and a whole host of trios and quartets.
You might be interested to know that Presley absorbed that same sound in Memphis and “Hound Dog” was a remake of Big Mama’s original of four years before.
The move into the crossover market by the R&B performers was, however, due to the emergence of Rock& Roll which took the R&B beat and added a little southern Country sound. The white boys popularized the sound and gave the R&B folks a whole new white audience outside of the south.
I was there too. And still have a lot of those R&B 45s I collected later.
I remember this music very well too. I was 15 in 1955 and I saw both Bill Haley and Elvis in Houston during the mid 50’s. I still love this old rock & roll.