The rock and roll era

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History of Popular Culture—Week 3, Assignment 3

Elements of rock and roll can be found in music as early as the 1920s, but it was the late 1940s when rock and roll, known then as R&B (rhythm and blues), first began to emerge as its own genre of music. It became known as rock and roll in the early 1950s, a phrase said to be coined by Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed.

Rock and roll, or simply rock, was heavily influenced by many different musical styles that preceded it. “Early rock and roll combined elements of blues, boogie woogie, jazz and rhythm and blues, and is also influenced by traditional folk music, gospel music, black and white, and country and western.” 1 Along with the styles of music, the lifestyles of the music also combined to form a new musical culture.

As a result, this new entity called rock and roll, or simply rock, was often attributed to social decay. The phrase “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” became a popular rhetorical figure of speech among older generations in the 1950s to characterize the younger Silent Generation’s way of life.

The older generations’ concerns about the effects of rock in the younger generations’ lives was apparent in the sensationalized lives of some of rock’s most popular musicians. Although the exact cause of Elvis Presley’s is still unknown, he was found dead in his own vomit, likely as a result of anaphylactic shock brought on by the fourteen drugs found in his system during his autopsy. Guitarist, singer and song-writer Chuck Berry was imprisoned for five years under the Mann Act when a 14-year-old Apache waitress he brought to work at his nightclub was arrested for prostitution.


  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_rock_and_roll [back]

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