About the Author
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Jim O'Connor is the author of What Was Pompeii?,
What Was the Battle of Gettysburg?, and Who Is Bob Dylan?
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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What Is Rock and Roll?
In August of 1953, an eighteen-year-old truck driver walked into
a small building in Memphis, Tennessee. The neon signs in the
windows read “Memphis Service.”
The young man was named Elvis Presley. He wanted to record two
songs, “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” as
a birthday present for his mother. The receptionist, Marion
Keisker, was also the sound engineer that day. So she led Elvis
into the studio and put him in front of the microphone.
Then she went into the tiny control room and recorded what he
sang.
There was something about the yearning quality in Elvis
Presley’s voice that intrigued her. So she decided to make a copy
for her boss, Sam Phillips, to hear.
That was the beginning of Elvis Presley’s career.
It was also a breakthrough for rock and roll.
Chapter 1: The Roots of Rock
Rock and roll is true made-in-the-USA music. But in the early
1950s, if you asked kids what rock music was, most of them
wouldn’t have had a clue what you were talking about.
Rock music didn’t just spring up one day out of nowhere. Its
sound owes a lot to the rhythm and blues (R&B) music of the 1940s
and ’50s.
Rhythm and blues was the popular music of black Americans. The
songs were exciting, with a strong, insistent beat. R&B music was
completely different from what was played on radio stations for
white audiences. Those stations played a mix of big band, jazz,
and silly pop hits like “Doggie in the Window.” The music was
safe and parent friendly.
Then white performers began covering popular black songs.
(“Covering” means doing a new version of an older song.) Elvis
Presley had a huge hit with “Hound Dog.” It had first been
recorded by a black singer named Big Mama Thornton in 1952.
Elvis rocketed to stardom in the mid-1950s. In large part he
owed his success to a man named Sam Phillips. Sam grew up very
poor in Florence, Alabama. He was white. But as a young boy he
picked cotton in the fields alongside black laborers who sang
while they worked. Sam loved their music.
Sam later moved to Memphis, Tennessee. There he opened a
studio and started his own record company—Sun Records.
He signed up many African American performers. Sam wanted to
bring their music to white audiences.
Sam also let amateurs, black and white, record in his tiny
studio. That’s how Elvis Presley got started. Sam believed Elvis
had a special talent. So Sam got two musicians he knew, guitar
player Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, to back up the young
singer.
Often producers recorded a song in one or two takes. (A “take”
is a single complete of a song.) This kept costs low.
But Sam believed that singers—most of all, new singers—needed
time to get it right. He would record the same song, or parts of
a song, over and over.
Sam did the same thing with Elvis.
In 1954, Sam Phillips recorded Elvis, Scotty, and Bill playing
the old blues song “That’s All Right” and a speeded-up cover of
the country music classic “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
On August 5, 1954, Elvis performed the songs at an outdoor
concert in Memphis. The show sold out. Neither Elvis nor his
bandmates had ever been in front of such a huge crowd. They were
very nervous.
In fact, Elvis was so nervous, his legs kept shaking and
tw while he sang. The crowd thought it was part of the
act. Girls started screaming with excitement.
After that, Elvis kept on shaking and swinging his hips at every
performance. Teenagers loved it, but their parents hated it.
Elvis went on to become the biggest rock star in the world. He
had twenty-eight number-one singles and ten number-one albums.
John Lennon of the Beatles once said, “Before Elvis there was
nothing.” After Elvis, rock and roll was here to stay.
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