The Real Roots of Rock and Roll

IN THE HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF ONE OF MUSIC’S MOST IMPORTANT GENRES, BLACK VOICES GO UNHEARD

By Rachel Hale, Culture Editorial Assistant Illustrated by Channing Smith, Art Director

From the electric vibrations of Van Halen’s “Dancing In The Street” to the reverberated strings of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” there is no doubt that rock and roll has cemented itself as a quintessential genre of music. However, this powerhouse music scene’s past of whitewashing often goes unheard.

In the 1950s, American teens populated local diners, drove fast cars and let their hearts throb to the beat of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Jailhouse Rock.” The economic prosperity of the decade, combined with a distinct youth culture, created the perfect breeding ground for rock music to flourish. But prior to Elvis’ rise to fame, Black artists paved the way for musicians across the country as the driving force behind the Rhythm and Blues movement of the 1940s and ‘50s.

Coming off the end of the big band era, R&B music thrived throughout cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York. Combined with its popularity in the south, the genre expanded beyond its traditionally Black audience to reach listeners of both white and Black teens who embraced the music amid changing race relations in the United States. The popularization of the electric guitar in the 1940s created a whole new sound for R&B and Pop, as vibrant tones and dynamic chords allowed for endless possibilities of note combinations. A fusion of jiving blues and gospel, rock originated as a form of boogie, jazz, country and R&B.

Throughout the ‘50s, rock and roll was pioneered by Black artists, highlighted by the likes of Fats Domino, Bo Diddley and Sam Cooke. Black female artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, sometimes called the godmother of rock and roll, paved the way for artists like Etta James and Aretha Franklin, who brought forth their own takes on soulful blues throughout the ‘50s and beyond. Like Tharpe and Franklin, many Black artists got their start performing gospel music, indicating the influence that traditional R&B had on rock’s origins. Black artists like Little Richard and Chuck Berry had true rock hits in 1955, and by 1957, rock was appearing on most popular music charts. By the end of the decade, rock and roll records made up 43% of all records sold.1

The beginning of the 1960s marked a change in the tone for the rock and roll genre. As bigger record labels and the general public began to take more notice of rock and roll, white leaders in the industry took charge and co-opted the genre. This split led to the classification of rock music as “white” and soul music as “Black,” confining Black artists within the walls of what was considered socially acceptable.

In a cruel juxtaposition, artists like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin were applauded for tackling racial issues in their music, while Black artists struggled to break the molds set by the music industry. As artists like Elvis made appearances on talk shows and Hollywood movies, traditional Black artists like Chuck Berry struggled to fill theatres. The bands that gained traction in the following years made Black rock and roll a distant chord, faintly echoing under the roar of crowds for white artists.

In 1963, The Beatles’ explosion onto the music scene marked the beginning of the British Invasion, followed by the likes of the Rolling Stones and The Who. But Beatlemania, as it was so fondly

1 Joel C. Mellor, “1950’s Decade Overview,” 1950’s Music Decade Overview, 2016 called, neglected to pay tribute to earlier inspirations from Black artists — the Everly Brothers and Little Richard and the Miracles, among others. Many of the bands from that era started by covering traditional, R&B influenced rock, gaining popularity off of the work created by Black artists, but none are more notable than the Rolling Stones.

The Rolling Stones expressed an interest in R&B music early on in their career, pointing to artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker as inspirations.2 As the band’s relationship with Black music grew more complex throughout the ‘60s, they embraced a peculiar role of conservators of a musical past that they had borrowed by their own admission and doggedly tried to make their own.3 In a twist that indicates the racial inequality of the time, the Rolling Stones went from being regarded as a white band with notions to Black music, to being seen as an entirely new type of rock, leaving their Black inspirations behind.

It’s no surprise that the names of the songwriters behind many popular hits went largely unheard: many Black songwriters of the time died without the fame, airtime or money of the white artists who profited from their work. For example, Otis Blackwell, who is to thank for Presley’s “All Shook Up” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” is largely unknown outside of the rock genre despite his songs having sold more than 200 million copies.4 Blackwell is joined by writers like Big Mama

2 Jack Hamilton, “How the Rolling Stones, a Band Obsessed With Black Musicians, Helped Make Rock a White Genre,” Slate Magazine (Slate, October 6, 2016) 3 Ibid. 4 Tony Fletcher, “Otis Blackwell,” Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 2010

Thorton, Luther Dixon and Lorraine Ellison, among others, all of whom missed out on the fame surrounding the white artists performing their life’s work.

The whitewashing of rock and roll is not an isolated incident. On the contrary, white appropriation of Black music has occurred for years. In the 1800s, blackface minstrel shows developed as the first distinctly American theatrical form. Popularized by Thomas Rice, the shows appropriated Black culture as a commodity, depicting Black people as lazy, unintelligent and superstitious. Black performers were also in demand to perform the skits, although they were not compensated more for their extra emotional labor. As the popularity of the shows declined, songs by Black writers were stolen and put into white shows. A Harpers magazine article from 1973 shared that, “White composers, updating Stephen Foster’s habit of borrowing melodies from black churchgoers and boatmen, spent hours in black clubrooms writing down the tunes they heard and copyrighting them as their own.”5 Minstrel shows influenced American dance, song and comedy, yet Black artists didn’t reap their benefits, foreshadowing the role white supremacy would play in rock and roll.

Rock music went on to take the world by storm, culminating in iconic festivals like Woodstock and the 1985 Live Aid concert. Later artists like David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, Van Halen, Def Leppard, Queen and Bruce Springsteen have gone down in history as some of the greatest musicians of all time, attributed with shaping not only rock but music as a whole. These artists are showered with praise in the form of publicity, book deals and general notoriety, without considering the factor their race had to play in their success.

Meanwhile, Black artists are often described as the supporting characters to white musicians, as seen in a 2011 obituary for Clarence Clemons, the only Black member of the E Street Band. In an article for the New Yorker, he is described as “a vessel of many great soul, gospel, and R&B players who came before him” and “an absolutely essential, and soulful, ingredient in both the sound of Springsteen and the spirit of the group.”6 Despite →

5 Margo Jefferson, “Ripping off Black Music,” Harper’s Magazine, January 1973 6 David Remnick, “Bloodbrother: Clarence Clemons, 1942-2011,” The New Yorker (The New Yorker, June 20, 2017)

“IT’S NO SURPRISE THAT THE NAMES OF THE SONGWRITERS BEHIND MANY POPULAR HITS WENT LARGELY UNHEARD: MANY BLACK SONGWRITERS OF THE TIME DIED WITHOUT THE FAME, AIRTIME OR MONEY OF THE WHITE ARTISTS WHO PROFITED FROM THEIR WORK.”

good intentions, this description only allocates Clemons a supporting role in Springsteen’s success, falling short of acknowledging him as a powerhouse of his own. Furthermore, the common tendency to describe Black artists as providing a “soulful” element indicates that the 1960s divide between soul and rock still reverberates through the music community today, with Black musicians often confined to “traditional” music in their praise.

Black artists were faced with a crossroads: their music was deemed too inauthentic to fall under the rock and roll category, yet not soulful enough to be authentically Black. The most notable example of this is seen in Jimi Hendrix, who faced intense scrutiny due to his race. Hendrix’s race “confirmed a view of rock music that was quickly rendering blackness definitively other, so much so that at the time of his death, the idea of a black man playing electric lead guitar was literally remarkable— “alien” —in a way,” according to a Slate article on the whiteness in rock and roll.7 As rock and roll evolved during the ‘70s and ‘80s, Black artists became fewer and farther between, their powerful sound in the ‘50s now merely a faint whisper.

Today, the sense of reckless freedom and spirit provided by rock and roll is alive and well, transcending generations, indicating its popularity and importance to music history. Despite the progressive actions we have taken as a country since the genre first resonated with America’s youth, rock and roll’s history is still one of segregation. A 2011 poll conducted by a New York classic rock radio station to determine the “Top 1,043” songs of all time found that only 2% of songs listed were recorded by Black musicians, indicating that there is still a lack of appreciation and knowledge surrounding Black artists.8 There is no doubt that white artists played a vital role in the rock music scene. But while white musicians helped popularize the genre, Black artists were there when rock and roll took its first steps, laying the foundation for its growth. In discounting white supremacy’s role in rock music, our historical accounts simply fall flat: Black artists deserve a chorus in the symphony of music history. ■

7 Jack Hamilton, “How the Rolling Stones, a Band Obsessed With Black Musicians, Helped Make Rock a White Genre,” Slate Magazine (Slate, October 6, 2016) 8 Ibid.