Sunday blog: The car that started Rock and Roll
Did the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 usher in Rock and Roll?
I saw an Oldsmobile Rocket 88 at the Last Run Car Show in Arkansas City. I thought about the song “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston. Many people, myself included, think this was the first true rock and roll record.
James Jordan
Many early rock and roll songs are about cars, and the love affair with the automobile was at its peak in the 1950s as rock and roll music was developing. The Rocket 88 itself was a lighter car with a powerful V8 and is regarded as the first muscle car. It dominated NASCAR for a few years.
Whether it was the first rock and roll song can be debated, but its significance and influence on the rock and roll world cannot be overstated. It is as good of a choice as any for the first rock and roll record, though it is pretty much impossible to single out the first one.
The song was recorded and released in April of 1951 in Memphis. Sam Phillips recorded under Memphis Recording Service or the Chess label. He had started his studio but had not yet named it “Sun Records.” By June of that year, it topped the R&B charts and stayed there for a while.
In the heavily segregated world of the 1950s, radio stations played either “white” or “black” music.
Phillips managed to get a “white” radio station to play the song, which took off with young white listeners. It was one of the first songs by black artists to be played on “white” radio stations.
Roots of Rock and Roll
Some say rock and roll is just blues music cleaned up for white kids. Rock and Roll was a euphemism for sex among blues musicians and for a religious experience in some churches. Cars were also symbols of sexual adventures in songs at that time. Rocket 88 fits that description, but it was not cleaned up all that much.
The more significant thing it did was break musical barriers, and soon more stations played both “white” and “black” people’s music. This song was the first “hit” among white teenagers, who were the first consumers of rock and roll.
To that point, there was adult music and child music, but nothing for teenagers. In fact, even the idea of a “teenager” was new. Before WWII, you started being an adult and working when you were not a child; there was nothing in between.
Rock and Roll was the first music aimed at this new age classification called “teenager.”
Rocket 88 was the first song that became a hit among the new age bracket.
About the song
Rocket 88 is attributed to Jackie Brenston and the Delta Kats. Brenston was the saxophone player for Ike Turner’s band, the Kings of Rythm. It was the same band and musicians, but Brenston sang it on the record. Brenston and Turner wrote it together.
They wrote it on the drive from Clarksdale to Memphis and finished the writing in the studio.
Much later, Turner is quoted as saying the song was the foundation for rock and roll, whether it was really the first one or not.
“It was the reason for rock and roll existing,” Turner said.
According to Turner, this song gave Philips the idea of finding a white guy to sing black people’s music. He saw how much white kids liked this new style of music but knew it would be more socially acceptable if a white guy were singing. Soon he found Elvis, and the rest is history, as they say.
Don’t think of Phillips as a racist, though, he saw the reality of the culture. He launched the careers of Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston, BB King, and several other black musicians. He just saw how money could be made crossing over the barriers.
Brenston and Turner credited inspiration for the song from “Cadillac Boogie,” recorded by a jump blues band in 1947. The sound is very similar.
One of the things that makes this a rock and roll song came about by accident. According to legend, they drove from Clarksdale, MS., to Memphis to make the record. On the way, their amp was damaged. Turner stuffed some newspapers in it to hold the pieces in place, which distorted the sound of the electric guitar. He liked the sound, and they used it, and the fuzzbox was invented. It also features the guitar more than jump blues bands did at the time, which is another thing in its favor.
Broader picture
Even if Rocket 88 is the first rock and roll song, the genre was long in the making. There were a lot of influences that came together. To say it was just re-imagined blues is short-sighted. Blues, jazz, country, gospel, and other styles all came together to create what we know as rock and roll today.
In 1922, blues singer Trixie Smith recorded “My Man Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll),” the first song to use the words rock and roll, and it has a nice blues rock sound. You could make a case for that being the first rock and roll record, and there are other candidates as well.
Many records were made in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, leading up to the creation of rock and roll.
Technology was also huge. In 1947 the 45-rpm record was invented, the transistor radio was invented, and record-making equipment got cheap enough for anyone to afford. Those three things made it possible to mass produce records and broadcast music to the world, just in time for a budding new style of music to emerge.
Rocket 88 may have been the first song to benefit from those technologies coming together, and that is why I think it’s the first rock and roll record.
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For more stories by James Jordan, a Sumner Newscow contributor, click here.
