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Don Raye - Pipe Dreams: an inside look at free-base cocaine - The Family Publishing Company - 1980 (cover illustration by Richard C. Ward)

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Roots of Rock and Roll

You have probably seen this or that opinion on the "first" rock and roll record. The problem with most of those opinions is that they are describing the acknowledged era of rock and roll, the era in which Alan Freed and others were calling it by that name.

In reality, music that sounded little different goes back to the 1920's. The first song that might possibly be described as rock and roll comes from an unlikely source: A proto-country musician who goes back so far that his music is called "old time" rather than country, one "Uncle" Dave Macon.

While West African rhythms form the basis of most rock and roll, there were fast fiddle reels (County Donegal, Ireland comes to mind) that had similarly scorching rhythms, and in one song, "Sail Away Ladies" (1927), Macon, originally from Tennessee, released a song that not only had a rockabilly feel and tempo, but included the lyrics, "Don't she rock, daddio?"

"Minnie the Moocher" (1931) by Cab Calloway set the tone for Calloway's career, which, while generally placed in the jazz genre, had sharper syncopation and far edgier lyrics than any jazz in the mainstream, at least in his era.

Bob Wills was the chief innovator of Western swing, from which one Bill Haley later emerged. He grew up in Texas, and unlike most people in a tragically segregated era, was allowed to befriend other children regardless of race, and as such, heard boogie-woogie and similar "fast blues", which African-American musicians in Texas played at a faster tempo than their counterparts in the southeast.

Wills's most proto-rockabilly (or, arguably, rockabilly) song might be "Steel Guitar Rag" (1936). Wills famously said of rock and roll, "Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!"

It may have been of Wills's music that Don Raye (not from Texas) was thinking in the song "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" (1940), with the lyrics, "In a little honky tonky village in Texas". It is often cited as the first rock and roll record, and a case could be made to that effect.

World War II interrupted musical innovation to some extent, that being the least of a generation's concerns, so the final piece of what was rock and roll in everything but name was provided by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.

Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)", released in his, the original 1946 version, was not only later covered by Elvis Presley, but contains the first recorded guitar "breaks", adding another, jolting layer of syncopation to the increasingly fast blues of the era. By this time, rock and roll was alive and well, by any name, and so was rockabilly, as a listen to "Freight Train Boogie" (1946) by The Delmore Brothers, demonstrates.

Unhappy Hour in the Loner's Lounge with Puddles Pity Party

You Killed My Love

Lush Life

In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

My Funny Valentine

Autumn Leaves

I (Who Have Nothing)

You Don't Know What Love Is

Nature Boy

Charade

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)

Star eyes... senza fine

Star Eyes, canzone jazz del 1943 di Gene De Paul e Don Raye, inizia con una frase molto orecchiabile. La si può ascoltare ad esempio nei primi 40 secondi in questa versione di Stèphane Grappelli: