Posted on 03/27/2011 5:41:19 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Perhaps the official start of the Rock 'n' Roll era should be moved back from 1954's release of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" to 1946 to this Tex Beneke (formerly with the Glenn Miller Band) song, HEY-BA-BA-RE-BOP.
Call me crazy but this sure sounds like Rock 'n' Roll except it was a full 8 years before what is generally acknowledged as the beginning of the Rock era.
"Rock 'N Roll's been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died."
In recent years? How old are you, sir? Pop music pretty much died out in the mid-1970s in terms of quality. As I was driving along the other day I decided to listen in to several "popular music" radio stations. To a song it was awful. A collection of exceeding dull and pedestrian lyrics backed up by a collection of overly-loud guitars and what appeared to be a computer-generated set of drums. But more importantly there was no discernible melody. Were all the tunes taken by, say 1975? It would appear so.
The sad part is today's young people think they are listening to real rock 'n roll. Apparently they have never heard the real thing or else they wouldn't support this hot and cold running crap.
I should have put in my “commentary” the fact that I have been listening on and off (mainly off) to pop music since the onset of the “melody-less” stuff of the latter 1970s and all of the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and I haven’t detected anything of quality during that period. So, my little listen-in the other day confirmed that things haven’t changed.
Of course, others’ mileage will vary. I know some Freepers think the “rock ‘n roll” of these periods are the cat’s meow. So be it. Different experiences, different opinions.
What about Bohemian Rhapsody? Kashmir?
March, 1951: Rocket 88.
This!
Rock and Roll goes back to indeterminable roots.
Early Delta Bluesmen learned their lick somewhere....??..no guitars in Africa...a diddly bow ain’t the same
Old Appalachin-Bluegrass-Hilbilly is another component...who knows where it came from?
Old Gospel..both Black and White..again who knows?
Even English folk music found as a root of much British rock again...extremely old.
Earliest Rock and Roll sounding stuff?
hmm...not googling...maybe Son House famous railroad track recording in Itta Beena Mississippi...or some Charley Patton or Memphis Minnie
or Hank Williams earliest stuff or some cowboy who kicked it up somewhere or even earlier Jimmy Rodgers or the Carters
there is a reason Haley gets credit for first big record...cause it was really the first termed as such
The great Mannish Boy notwithstanding, the notion rock and roll is just a rip off of black music is a notion of the times not founded in reality
and hence?
would it be fair to say then that Delta Blues which I love..I have a signed Alan Lomax print of Son House on my mantle...was a rip off by black plantation workers in Mississippi who at some point probably picked up a guitar from a white guy or worked on some old white written spirituals or work songs
it's a tar pit ..Rock and Roll came from a lot of sources and yes Blues based rock..now mostly dead...did come largely from Blues
I love old Blues...my favorite genre probably
But Country-Hillbilly-Western Cowboy-Southern Gospel all had as a big an influence on rock and roll as well.
And let us not forget the back beat.
Sorry, but no sale.
The song is nice, and it does have a rock feel to it, but it sounds more like a scat/swing hybrid than the blues-based rock and roll Bill Haley put out. You could probably find a lot of similar songs throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s. Heck, somebody could probably argue for some song or another from the 19th century if they wanted to. (Wikipedia actually has a very fair entry for “Rock and Roll”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll )
Due mainly to some happy coincidences, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ popularized the genre for the world, and Bill Haley was the original “rock guitarist”, for better or worse. His shows got the teenagers rockin’ and rollin’. Some things are best left alone.
nah....that was more big band sounds. Good but...not Rock and Roll. Bill Haley was it with Rock Around the Clock hands down in my opinion.
Of interest to you.
When my father introduced me to Big Band music and swing in the early 1970s, I was a teenager raised on the rhythms of rock, a devotee of the AM Band, the transistor-under-the-pillow league.
In all truth, I don't know whether he or I was more surprised by my immediate and visceral affinity for Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Artie Shaw, whose records he sat me down for and had me listen to while he talked for hours about his exploits as a youth of my age. It remains one of my most treasured memories of him.
Louis Jordon’s post war and early 50’s stuff can truly be considered proto rock and roll. It was different than swing and big band and even be-bop. Louis Jordon truly belongs in the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame
I should have known that you'd be all over it even without a ping. ♥
I didn’t get involved...the usual lack-of-time thing...
Heads must roll!
Call for congressional hearings!
Then, impeach Casey Kasem!
Listen to the record: like Lionel Hampton's the year before it's big band jazz.
Too much brass to be R 'n R.
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