Various recordings that date back to the 1940s have been named as the first rock and roll record, including the frequently cited 1951 song “Rocket 88”, although some have felt it is too difficult to name one record. Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” is often cited as the first rock and roll record to achieve significant commercial success and was joined in 1955 by a number of other records that pioneered the genre. Rolling Stone Magazine felt that Presley’s song “That’s All Right” was the first rock and roll recording. (More from Wikipedia)
Everyone knows about “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, the 1954 classic that is likely regarded by the general public as the first rock and roll record. The inclusion of the song in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle (starring a young Sidney Poitier) is what truly made it a hit. However, Bill Haley’s rock roots actually go much deeper and much earlier than that.
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Sometime in the 1949 to 1952 period, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen were formed; this was the band that would later evolve into Bill Haley and His Comets. This band recorded a cover version of “Rocket 88” on Holiday Records that was released on June 14, 1951, barely two months after the original release of this song by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm (though this original record was actually credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats).
Now, Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88” is named by many rock critics and music historians as “the first rock and roll record”; what’s more, “Rocket 88” as recorded by Bill Haley and the Saddlemen is one of the very earliest recordings in what would later become known as “rockabilly”, the musical style pioneered by Elvis Presley and others. The Saddlemen’s follow-up single, “Rock the Joint” is yet another contender for the first rock record, that is, the version of “Rock the Joint” as performed in 1949 by Jimmy Preston.
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So, you might well ask, what is the earliest song on the list of contenders for the first rock and roll record? According to Wikipedia, that would be the 1944 recording “Strange Things Happening Every Day” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. As might be imagined from her name, Tharpe was a traveling evangelist who became the first superstar of gospel music in the 1930’s and 1940’s. As Wikipedia puts it, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was “willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of ‘light’ in the ‘darkness’ of the nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her”. However, she never abandoned her first love of gospel music.
I first encountered Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s music on Michelle Shocked’s fascinating 2007 gospel CD, ToHeavenURide. The CD was recorded live at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival; the album name is a takeoff on the nickname for the festival, “To Hell You Ride”. Shocked launched her concert with a long introduction about Tharpe’s legacy and then performed “Strange Things Happening Every Day”. More recently, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was featured in the opening program on the 2013 season of the PBS series American Masters.
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Sister Rosetta Tharpe is the only woman mentioned in the Wikipedia list, but she is not the only one that I have heard talked about. Rosemary Clooney had one of her biggest hits with “Hey There” b/w “This Ole House”; both songs individually reached #1 in 1954 on the Billboard singles charts (in case you think – as I had – that the Beatles were the first to have double-sided #1 hit singles). The latter song is one that I have heard discussed as the first rock and roll record – or at least, one of the first (before doing the research for this post, I had thought that her recording dated from 1953).
(June 2013/1)
