SUN TAKES ROCK N’ ROLL TO NEXT LEVEL
Rock n' Roll was not invented in Memphis or by a Memphis recording artist. That honor belongs to Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five traveling band, who pioneered what was variously called Jump Blues, Race Music and R&B in the 1940s. White-owned music distributors and white DJs were comfortable with those names because it kept Jordan's music mostly limited to sales in the Black community, even though he performed live before Black and White audiences. Seems innocent today, but Rock & Roll euphemistically meant engaging in sex to Black audiences who originated the idiom. Louis Jordan was the first big name performer to use the term "Rock n' Roll" in the context of describing his music. Since early R&B and Rock n' Roll are the same musical genre and Louis Jordan, Louis Jordan is the true Father of R&B and Rock n' Roll.
A former DJ and white record producer in Memphis, Sam Phillips, entered the Rock n' Roll picture in the early 1950s. Phillips was arguably the first White Southern record producer to hire African American Blues artists -- that spoke volumes about his vision as an entrepreneur when he founded Sun Records. Having hired Rufus Thomas as his first recording artist in 1951, B.B. King and other Black recording artists followed. A smart businessman, Sam Phillips was open to any musical artist and genre that made money.
Rock & Roll exploded when Sam stumbled into a song featuring with up-tempo rhythm by the Ike Turner Bandand and lyrics performed with electric guitar by Black vocalist Jackie Brenston in a 1952 Sun Studio jam session. Sam thought the time was right to exploit this sound to both Black and White music markets, so his studio recorded the song Rocket 88. This chart-topper had a danceable rhythm, strong lead vocals and lead guitar to drive the melody. Although done for understandable reasons, this R&B piece was NOT marketed as an R&B song because it was published by a white record company (Sun Records) to white and black audiences alike. So for accuracy, Sun Records only deserves credit for elevating the commercial success of Rock n' Roll records and artists.
Shortly after the success of Rocket 88, Sun Records began recording Ike & Tina Turner and other R&B artists. Black-oriented radio stations first promoted and Black record stores sold tons of R&B records, giving early recording artists their first decent paychecks. But few white-oriented radio stations would play it and few white-owned stores would sell it. So up-tempo, guitar-lick R&B was market-limited and classified as “Race Music” along with Blues and Gospel.
Ultimately, Sam Phillips benefited from a brilliant piece of marketing by white radio DJ and former musician in Cleveland, Alan Freed. A former musician and enthusiast of Black music and idioms, Freed picked up on lightly used “Rock & Roll” catchphrase for R&B from Black audiences, then presented it as a perfect marketing brand to white audiences in 1952. The original sexual meaning of Rock n' Roll morphed into a new idiom for both dance and music that sold like sun tan lotion to rebellious white youth of the 1950s.
To further convince white youths to join Black youths purchasing up-tempo R&B records, Sun Studio began recording white rockabilly artists such as Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis using R&B songs. Some of those songs were originally written and performed by Black artists, a practice called "covering.” Since they sold more ad time on radio, white-owned radio stations were quite eager to promote “covered” R&B songs as though they were originals. This clandestine packaging scheme got all of Sun Studio discs placed on the shelves of Southern white retailers and increasingly more Northern retailers too. As long as the checks kept coming, Black artists who wrote and arranged the songs had little choice but to go along with the artistically offensive scheme. Nevertheless, an indication that all market segments remained important to Phillips is the obvious promo picture of a young BB King and Elvis Presley standing shoulder to shoulder at Sun Records Studio.
Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley made lead guitar a staple of the Rock & Roll genre. Fats Domino and Little Richard did the same thing with piano. But Black performers in Memphis who had an exciting stage persona delivered the greatest impact on young Elvis Presley who absorbed more of Black culture than either Jerry Lee Lewis or Carl Perkins. Elvis was as comfortable around Black folks in the 1950s as Bill Clinton was in the 1990s. To paraphrase Nelson George in his seminal book, The Death Of Rhythm & Blues, a pre-stardom Presley hung out on Beale Street and in the Black churches of Memphis to inhale the vibe of Blues, R&B and Gospel artists down to the last detail. He dressed like them, styled his hair like them, ate Soul Food like them, talked like them, strutted like them, and sang like them. The Black idioms of Memphis were as one with Presley's early persona to the extent that some candidly referred to him as a "White Negro."
When one considers the potential of what could happen to Hip-Hop, it is important to emphasize the long term damaging of effects of covering. When you hear the songs Hound Dog and Rock Around the Clock Tonight, you should always consider their origin. As originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton, both songs had explicit sexual connotations performed to a thunderously rhythmic beat. They became watered-down, highly danceable performances by Elvis Presley and the equally popular at that time, Bill Haley. With massive radio and TV play, it is no surprise that they became two of the most commercially successful songs of the era. Today, it is difficult to find a radio station that plays the original versions of the songs by Big Mama Thornton, who should have reaped greater artistic and financial reward.
Elvis Presley was one of the great performers, but marketing professionals take his significance to excess, when they paper him with that all encompassing moniker, “The King.” Black folks know Elvis is not the King, since he "covered" many early songs by Black artists. He was not the best at his adopted vocal style, nor was he the innovator of pelvis swaying on stage. The early Elvis Presley of Memphis was very charming and respectful of the cultural art forms that spawned his artistry, justifiably earning him adulation from fans of all colors.
After leaving Sun Studio and Memphis for RCA Records and Hollywood, Presley did not evolve in musically creative ways like Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Ike & Tina Turner or Little Richard who frequently returned to their creative roots in Memphis, St. Louis and the South. Becoming more of a marketing icon distanced from his formative cultural influences, Elvis would later discover that his ‘mojo required home-fed replenishment, hence a return to Graceland.
In spite of a huge hit called The Twist by Chubby Checker, by the 1960s Rock & Roll evolved more to the sensibilities and idioms of European Americans and later, Europeans. As a result, white youths sent the careers of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley on a stratospheric trajectory, while the innovators of Rock & Roll, such as Ike Turner, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Rufus Thomas, Bo Diddley, BB King and Chuck Berry achieved comparatively modest crossover Rock & Roll success, yet remained durable in an artistic sense.
Following someone else’s musical sensibilities and idioms has never been the modus operandi of a people who define “Hip.” So, developing Soul Music was next on the Black agenda, even as Jackie Brenston became a footnote in music history.
BLACK CULTURAL TRAVEL MADE EASY