You can trace the roots of rock & roll back to wherever and whatever you want. As with most cultural tidal waves, it didn’t suddenly spring up overnight. Years of groundwork produced seemingly sudden change and nothing about the evolution is definitive.
For my purposes, I usually simplify the origin story to the head-on collision between black rhythm & blues and white hillbilly music that created a sort of big bang in the years following WWII.
It was a perfect storm. Technology – specifically the proliferation of local radio – allowed artists and audiences alike to hear new sounds. Culturally, the post-war years were filled with existential questions about mankind’s future on the planet. The old ways of doing things were in doubt and something new was needed. Oh yeah, and teenagers had some spending money in their pockets.
That the "something new" came primarily from the south and from the poor, regardless of color, isn’t surprising in retrospect. What is surprising some seventy years later is how fast it all changed and how great the music was, almost from the very beginning.
Eleven great rock & roll albums from the genre’s earliest days
If you want to call Jackie Brentson’s 1951 song “Rocket 88” the beginning of rock & roll, I won’t argue. It’s as good a place to start as any. But even if you want to dispute the origin, no one can deny that within a decade, the new genre had produced enduring classics and changed the world. It set the stage for the final element in the original trinity – the introduction of British skiffle rhythms which would arrive in the 1960s.
But before we get there – before the Beatles added a second booster to Brentson’s rocket – there was a lot of sensational music in the 1950s. Here are eleven of the very best albums released in the decade that preceded the British invasion. Why eleven? Because ten just couldn't contain things.
11. Berry Is on Top by Chuck Berry (1959)
Chuck Berry’s third full studio album would be flirting with the top spot on this list had it stopped at ten songs. The nature of pop music releases in the ‘50s meant that most of Berry’s best-known hits were released as singles first. Berry Is On Top then collected a bunch of them on one original album. This is not a greatest hits compilation because these songs had never been released on an album prior to Berry Is on Top.
Therefore, you get “Johnny B. Goode,” “Maybellene,” “Little Queenie,” and “Roll Over Beethoven” all on one album. And most of the other tracks – “Carol,” “Sweet Little Rock & Roller” – are also gems. Then you get to the final two tracks. The last song is the only completely original track – a rather tepid instrumental called “Blues For Hawaiians.”
Preceding it, originally released as the B-side of “Carol,” is “Hey Pedro.” Berry fans will tell you “My Ding-a-Ling” is the worst thing he ever recorded. “Hey Pedro,” with its slumbering “Latin” beat and one of the worst accents ever put on a pop record, rivals it. Those two songs take this from being an all-timer to merely being a great collection sans two.
10. What’d I Say by Ray Charles (1959)
Stay with me here because I’m using almost the exact opposite logic I used on the Chuck Berry disc for placing Ray Charles on the list. Such is the nature of rock & roll. It’s not supposed to make sense – just feel right.
First, let’s say this: What’d I Say is an astonishingly great album – arguably better than at least some I will rank higher. That gets into the tricky area of genre. What’d I Say not really a rock & roll album.
That was true of Charles throughout his career. One genre could never confine him. So “What Kind of Man Are You” is top-flight blues (not even sung by Charles), while “My Bonnie” is a folk song that does not get the rock & roll treatment that the Beatles would eventually give it. It remains a great jazzy take, but can we call it rock?
But there are plenty of proto rock songs on What’d I Say. And the title track is so sublime … what can I say? Musically, it ushers in a brand of blues rock that would be huge in the next decade. And in terms of attitude, it was an even more important precursor. Actually, screw “precursor.” When Ray Charles sings “What’d I say,” rock & roll is already here.
9. Blue Jean Bop by Gene Vincent (1956)
When you hear the opening notes of the title track “Blue Jean Bop,” Gene Vincent sounds like a typical 40’s or early ‘50s crooner. But that’s just a teaser. Pretty soon, the guitar kicks in and Vincent cranks up the pace. That’s a pattern Vincent employs on other songs as well, providing a clear example of the transition from the old to the new.
An American rocker who eventually left for the UK. Vincent was an early wild man and this debut studio recording only captures a part of his incendiary live performances. Still, on tracks like “Who Slapped John?,” “Jump Back, Honey, Jump Back,” and “Jumps, Giggles, and Shouts”
Vincent and his Hall of Fame backing band, the Blue Caps, help provide some of the DNA of early rock. This album might have been even higher had Capitol included his biggest hit, “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” which was a non-album single. It was standard to include a single like that on a subsequent album, but it didn’t happen in this case.
8. Cliff by Cliff Richard (1959)
You can now buy Richard’s first two albums – Cliff and Cliff Sings – packaged together and it is well worth it if you like early rock. Cliff is a slight favorite, though both are classics. Cliff was recorded live in studio with some fan screams accompanying the music.
And it is some great music courtesy of the Shadows (who you also see listed as the Drifters on the early recordings). They rocked out on classics like “My Babe”, “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and Shadow's/Drifter’s great cover of the previously-mentioned “Be-Bop-a-Lula.” And that only scratches the surface.
7. Lavern Baker Sings Bessie Smith by Lavern Baker (1958)
Baker’s third album may not be pure rock & roll but it rocks out better than almost any pre-Invasion album you will hear. This is classic R&B with jump blues...horns and piano carry the day and there is hardly a guitar within earshot.
Still, “Gimme a PIgfoot” is a rocker, regardless of when it was initially written. Baker remains underrated to this day. One of the greatest American post-war vocalists, she was equally at home on fast-paced numbers like “They’ll Be Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and more melancholy cuts like “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”
This album has a more consistent collection of rockers than her self-titled albums album, released in '56 and ' 57, which have her best-known numbers like “Jim Dandy” and “Tweedle Dee” (which will be reappearing in a different context before we are finished.)
6. Oh! Suzy-Q by Dale Hawkins (1958)
It is long past time to rediscover Dale Hawkins. These days, he is more likely known as the cousin of Ronnie Hawkins, the rockabilly star who helped launched his backing band – who would come to be known simply as The Band.
But Dale was a force in and of himself. In addition to writing the classic title track of this album, he helped establish the guitar as the bedrock instrument of the new genre. Oh! Suzy-Q has so much more than the title track, including the swampy “Tornado,” the supreme bop of “Mrs. Merguitory’s Daughter,” and the rockabilly textbook sample “Little Pig.”
5. Here’s Little Richard by Little Richard (1957)
We’ve reached the point where any of the remaining albums could top the list. Little Richard certainly doesn’t take a back seat to anyone. From the opening seconds of "Whop bob b-luma b-lop bam bom” of “Tutti Frutti,” we know the rules of pop music are changing right in front of us.
Little Richard’s debut album was jam-packed with other hits like “Long Tall Sally,” “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” and “Ready Teddy,” all built on Richard’s cranked up stride piano and one of the most explosive vocal styles rock & roll would ever know.
4. Buddy Holly by Buddy Holly (1958)
Take your pick between this and Holly’s first album The Chirping Crickets. I just toss a coin when forced to choose between them. This one has “Peggy Sue,” “Every Day,” “Rave On,” and “Words of Love” – all classics of the new form.
His “Ready Teddy” matches Little Richard for raw power, even if the vocals are bound to come up a bit short. And his “You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care)” adds an effervescence that Cliff Richard can’t quite reach. A sensational collection of rock & roll.
3. There’s A Party Goin’ On by Wanda Jackson (1959)
Jackson, who was seen as the female version of Elvis and Buddy Holly for a brief period in the late ‘50s. released a very good self-titled album in 1958. Wanda Jackson veered toward country, treading a line between old-school arrangements and some modern touches. On the final track, “Let’s Have a Party,” she blew out the speakers on unrepentant rockabilly.
It was so damn good that her second album picked up the thread and blasted through a dozen numbers in 29 minutes that are as good as any rock music produced by a female artist for more than a decade to come.
From the opening title track to the finale – “Man We Had a Party” – Wanda does not let up. “Tongue-Tied” ought to be considered proto-punk but rarely is. “Hard Headed Woman” is just one of many tracks that takes advantage of the sensational guitar-playing of a young Roy Clark.
I’ll take this moment to note that Lavern Baker and Wanda Jackson could have easily been joined by other women on this list had the music industry been more welcoming to a group of flat-out rockers in the ‘50s. Check out the story of Janis Martin – which I figure I’ll tell in a later article.
She released brilliant rock and roll, but like Suzi Quatro, the Runaways, X-Ray Specs, and The Slits in years to come, she was never given the promotion her male counterparts received.
Jackson, despite being as good a rockabilly artist as the ‘50s would see, eventually found a more welcoming home in the world of gospel music, which she also enjoyed performing, and was considered more appropriate for her gender.
2. Here’s Larry Williams by Larry Williams (1959)
I’m not sure why Larry Williams isn’t on the Mount Rushmore of early rockers. “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” “Bony Maronie,” and “Short Fat Fannie” are seminal numbers. He wrote three of those songs, thus establishing himself as one of the most important early songwriters in rock in addition to being one of its finest singers.
Williams had a troubled life, plagued by drug abuse and run-ins with the law. He died at 44 in 1980, long after his early fame had faded. John Lennon considered him a giant and recorded “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” with the Beatles.
1. Elvis Presley by Elvis Presley (1956)
Hard to say much about this game-changer that hasn’t been said one hundred times. It opens with “Blue Suede Shoes.” Things would never be the same.
Elvis could sing tenderly from the beginning, though he would develop that skill as he matured as an artist. But the flat-out rockers on his debut album, including “I Got a Woman,” “Just Because,” and a quality take on “Tutti Frutti,” are hard to beat, regardless of the who or the when of the recording.
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