Wasn't rock called "Bop" back then?
BTW, I was born just a few months before this became number one. I don't remember it though...
"Wasn't rock called "Bop" back then?"
I don't recall...
I was born in '48 so I reeeeely didn't get into music until the late fifties and rock & roll was well on it's way...
Actually there were attempts to push "rock and roll" out the door as a fad, rolling along with the hula-hoop.
There were definite efforts to replace it with bop jazz, folk music, and calypso music. All prominent music forms of radical leftists and drug users. Louis Farakhan got his start back then as Calypso Louie/Louis, Harry Belafonte has showed his pinko stripe, so did numerous folk singers. Rock and roll of the 1950s was completely devoid of politics.
Older people seemed to want to shove it out of the arena for more "mature" music even though the first rock and roll songs were party records for adults at home or bars.