History of Rock Music and Genres Than Had Influenced It

Rock and roll dominated popular music in the mid 1950s and late 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; with country and western and Pop.[1] In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase 'rock and roll' to describe the music.[2]

The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar (developed and popularized by Les Paul). Paul's hit records like 'How High the Moon', and 'The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise', helped lead to the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing of such complicated exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.[3] Chuck Berry, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of Rock and roll music, refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.[4] A decade earlier, Sister Rosetta Tharpe fused gospel and blues, inventing rock ‘n roll electric guitar by developing sophisticated phrasing and licks that served as the basis for the iconic rock guitar style of the 1950s and beyond.

Artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and His Comets, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene Vincent released the initial rhythm and blues-influenced early rock and roll hits. Rock and roll forerunners in the popular music field included Johnnie Ray, The Crew-Cuts, The Fontane Sisters, and Les Paul and Mary Ford. The Rock and Roll Era is generally dated from the March 25, 1955 premiere of the motion picture, 'The Blackboard Jungle'. This film’s use of Bill Haley and His Comets' '(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock' during the opening credits caused a national sensation when teenagers started dancing in the aisles.

Pat Boone became one of the most successful artists of the 50s with his heavily Pop-influenced 'covers' of R&B hits like 'Two Hearts, Two Kisses (Make One Love)', 'Ain't That a Shame', and 'At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama)'. Boone got his fame by covering black R&B hits, his cover versions of the original artists outsold the originals. Boone removed the raw feel of the original versions and replaced it with his own voice making it safer and appropriate for mainstream pop radio stations at the time. Boone later found success by ballads and less by R&B covers because R&B covers were declining due to the fact that most people at the time were preferring the originals. Boone's traditional pop approach to rock and roll, coupled with his All-American, clean-cut image helped bring the new sound to a much wider audience.

Elvis Presley, who began his career in the mid-1950s, was the most successful artist of the popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances, motion pictures, and chart-topping records. Elvis also brought rock and roll widely into the mainstream of popular culture. Elvis popularized the four-man group and also brought the guitar to become the lead instrument in rock music. Presley popularized rockabilly, a genre that combined country with rhythm and blues which some claimed it was a new sound. Some claimed that Presley invented the genre by combining country with rhythm and blues.

lvis became the biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial during that period. Presley's massive success brought rock and roll widely into the mainstream and made it easier for African-American musicians to achieve mainstream success on the pop charts. Boone and Presley's styles/images represented opposite ends of the burgeoning musical form, Boone was known as being safe while Presley was known as being dangerous, which competed with one another throughout the remainder of the decade.

In 1957, a popular television show featuring rock and roll performers, American Bandstand, went national. Hosted by Dick Clark, the program helped to popularize the more clean-cut, All-American brand of rock and roll. By the end of the decade, teen idols like Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Rydell, Connie Francis, and Fabian Forte were topping the charts. Some commentators have perceived this as the decline of rock and roll; citing the deaths of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a tragic plane crash in 1959 and the departure of Elvis for the army as causes.

On the other side of the spectrum, R&B-influenced acts like The Crows, The Penguins, The El Dorados and The Turbans all scored major hits, and groups like The Platters, with songs including 'The Great Pretender' (1955), and The Coasters with humorous songs like 'Yakety Yak' (1958), ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the period.

Rock and roll has also been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly (see below) in the 1950s, combining rock and roll with 'hillbilly' country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley. Another subgenre, Doo Wop, entered the pop charts in the 1950s. Its popularity would spawn the parody 'Who Put the Bomp'.

Novelty songs, long a music industry staple, continued their popularity in the Rock and Roll medium with hits such as 'Beep Beep'.

In North America and Europe the decade was particularly revolutionary in terms of popular music, as it saw the evolution of rock. At the beginning of the 1960s, pop and rock and roll trends of the 1950s continued; nevertheless, the rock and roll of the decade before started to merge into a more international, eclectic variant known as rock. In the early-1960s, rock and roll in its purest form was gradually overtaken by pop rock, beat, psychedelic rock, blues rock, and folk rock, which had grown in popularity. The country- and folk-influenced style associated with the latter half of 1960s rock music spawned a generation of popular singersongwriters who wrote and performed their own work. Towards the decade's end, genres such as Baroque pop,sunshine pop,bubblegum pop, and progressive rock started to grow popular, with the latter two finding greater success in the following decade.

Furthermore, the 1960s saw funk and soul music rising in popularity; rhythm and blues in general remained popular, and this style was commonly associated with Boy groups of the time, whose fusion of R&B and Gospel with rock and roll enjoyed success until the mid-part of the decade. Aside from the popularity of rock and R&B music in the 1960s, Latin American as well as Jamaican and Cuban music achieved a degree of popularity throughout the decade, with genres such as Bossa nova, the cha-cha-cha,ska,and calypso being popular. From a classical point of view, the 1960s were also an important decade as they saw the development of electronic, experimental, jazz and contemporary classical music, notably minimalism and free improvisation.