MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Today rock music is universal, and world-wide. It has so i0mmersed itself in world culture that it is almost hard to imagine life before rock. Yet few understand exactly how rock and roll came about—or even how the first rock and roll record came about. The popular, oddly vague myth is that black bluesmen in the Delta were being treated badly, they had the blues, and then…Elvis invented rock and roll? Something like that? In truth, many factors were at work and many individuals (before Elvis) played key roles in the birth of this world-altering musical genre. How exactly did arguably the most important cultural phenomenon in American history even begin? What does it mean that society does not better understand this fact? This paper is excerpted from the just published Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll (McFarland). Examined here is the socio-economic conditions of Memphis, the underappreciated impact of Memphis radio at the time, e.g. WDIA and WHBQ deejay Dewey Phillips, in particular, and some other highly familiar names that, unbeknownst to most, then had direct roles in the recording of what is the consensus choice as the first rock and roll record (e.g. B.B. King and Ike Turner). It took all of this, plus a lot of attitude—and some dumb luck—to shake (or rock) the world’s foundations.