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In the beginning was the word. And the word was A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!
When Rock & Roll exploded on the world in the mid Fifties
with the successive thunderclaps of Bill
Haley, Elvis Presley and
Little Richard, it all seemed to come from nowhere. Rock & Roll
started, like the universe itself, with a big bang - or perhaps a
rapid succession of big bangs, followed by a lot of smaller ones. Or
so it seemed.
Rock & Roll was, in fact, a music with a long history - or
rather, several parallel histories, for it was the result of years
of foundation work in the worlds of country music, blues, gospel,
bluegrass, swing, rhythm & blues (R&B), Doo-Wop and jazz.
None of these forms became Rock & Roll, but each played some
part in the process from which Rock & Roll was distilled.
When the fermentation was complete, Rock & Roll was greeted
in the US with fear and trepidation by racial and religious
segregationists, political opportunists, self-appointed arbiters of
public morality and the previously ultra-complacent old-guard of the
record industry.
In Britain, similar claptrap spouted from predictable mouths,
culminating in May 1958 with the public pillorying of Jerry Lee
Lewis.
British band-leader Ted Heath said;
"I don't think the
Rock & Roll craze will come to Britain. You see, it is primarily
for a coloured population. I can't ever see it becoming a real craze" . . .
 By the time Heath had said that - in May 1956 - he was already
wrong and the 'craze' had arrived. Bill Haley and The Comets
already had six British chart entries, Lonnie Donegan had two hits
to his credit, and on the very day that Heath's prophecy was
published, Elvis Presley first entered the British Top 20 with Heartbreak
Hotel.
A week later Carl Perkins was in the chart too, shortly
followed by Frankie Lymon and The
Teenagers, Fats Domino, Gene
Vincent and The Platters.
The invasion of American Rock & Roll irrevocably changed the
lives of many British teenagers of the 1950s and the first British
artists specifically promoted as Rock & Rollers began to appear.
By 1959 there were as many British rockers vying for success as
there were American originators.
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Kay Starr
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The Kingston Trio
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Kitty Kallen |
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