The stereotypical rock and roll song uses a fast hard driving offbeat rhythm “borrowed” from gospel music, blues influenced acoustic or electric guitars and lyrics laced with sexual innuendo. The songs were sometimes written by a black author and remade with a white singer that was almost always inferior to the original version. Early rock and roll was much different however. It was heavily piano based and sax driven music that was a bit more heavily influenced by the blues groups of the time and played in underground clubs or "juke joints" by Rock and Roll - The birth of rock music musicians like Big Joe Turner, Chuck Berry, Roy Brown, Bill Haley, Fats Domino and Ike Turner. By 1949 the genre had become a huge movement in the music underground replacing the boogie-woogie style rhythm and blues of the early 40’s with the new faster uptempo fusion of gospel and blues that was now being called rock and roll.

In ‘52 and '53, rock and roll was known by many Americans for its sappy love ballads usually sung by teen-aged crooners with names like the Ravens, and the Cardinals. Unlike many listeners young people had discovered that on the back of these albums were the real rock and roll songs

Rock-and-Roll (räk'n roll') n. first so used (1951) by Alan Freed, Cleveland disc jockey, taken from the song "My Baby Rocks Me with a Steady Roll". The use of rock, roll, rock and roll, etc., with reference to sexual intercourse, is traditional in blues, a form of popular music that evolved in the 1950's from rhythm and blues, characterized by the use of electric guitars, a strong rhythm with an accent on the offbeat, and youth-oriented lyrics. A form of popular music arising from and incorporating a variety of musical styles, especially rhythm and blues, country music, and gospel. Originating in the United States in the 1950s, it is characterized by electronically amplified instrumentation, a heavily accented beat, and relatively simple phrase structure

Son House

[Edited 12/5/09 12:53pm]

2elijah said:

Is that a National Steel Guitar, that Son's playing.