Who was the first Rock 'n Roll star?

[Radical Activist]

Poll question: Who was the first Rock 'n Roll star?

Who do you think was the first rock star?
Name your star if I left him/her off the list.

[Tom Kitten]

1. Elvis Presley duh!

"star" is the keyword after all...

[Radical Activist]

2. maybe

but several people on the list had hits before elvis.

[Tom Kitten]

3. but were they ***stars?***

I know where you come from but Elvis the Pelvis was the first ***star*** in rock and roll...

[Radical Activist]

21. I'm going with Fats Domino

His first big hit in 1949 sold over 1 millions copies. He had a string of hit songs after that including a couple that crossed over to the top 40 pop charts. He wasn't big with white audiences until '55, about a year after Elvis' first hit, but he was already a nationwide star for several years before that.
I'd rank Bill Haley second since he was famous before Elvis.

[Jamastiene]

8. They named Rock and Roll just for Elvis,

because of his gyrating hips that made all the women scream and cry. My vote goes to Elvis as well.

[ghostsofgiants]

10. I thought it was coined in reference to a style of music when a DJ wanted to make rhythm and blues..

Appeal to white audiences as well as black ones, a few years before Elvis got started. Been a long time since I read anything on the origin of rock and roll though, so I could be wrong.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

16. Close, but no cigar...

In the 1920s the words "rock" and "roll," used separately or together, were employed by blacks to mean partying, carrying on, and/or having sex. According to rock historian Nick Tosches, blues singer Trixie Smith recorded a tune in 1922 called "My Daddy Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)" for Black Swan Records. "Daddy," suffice it to say, was not trying to rock little Trixie to sleep. This song inspired such variations as "Rock That Thing" by Lil Johnson and "Rock Me Mama" by Ikey Robinson.

By the 1930s the term had begun to be associated with the idea of music with a good beat to it. In 1931 Duke Ellington did "Rockin' in Rhythm" for Victor. The Boswell Sisters did a song called "Rock and Roll" in the 1934 United Artists flick Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round. In 1939 Buddy Jones recorded "Rockin' Rollin' Mama" (String), in which he soulfully shouted, "I love the way you rock and roll!" But rockin' and rollin' did not really catch on until 1948, when Wynonie Harris released "Good Rockin' Tonight" (King). An earlier version by Roy Brown (Deluxe, 1947) had bombed, but Wynonie's cover became a number one hit. That was the beginning of a flood of tunes that worked "rock" into the title, such as Bill Haley's "Rock-a-Beatin' Boogie" (1952), which contained the deathless words "Rock, rock, rock, everybody/Roll, roll, roll, everybody."

In 1952 Alan Freed visited a Cleveland record store and learned that R&B records were being snapped up by white teenagers. Immediately sensing the makings of Something Big, he changed the name of his popular music show on radio station WJW from the lame "Record Rendezvous" to "Moon Dog's Rock 'n' Roll House Party" and began playing R&B tunes. Freed apparently used the term "rock 'n' roll" to describe the music because he thought the racial connotation of "rhythm and blues" might turn off the white audience. In any case, the term stuck.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/382/who-invented-the-term-rock-n-roll

:toast:

[XemaSab]

4. Kurt Cobain

:P

[Oeditpus Rex]

5. First, you have to define 'star'

[Radical Activist]

18. Use your own definition

and let us know what it is.

[enigmatic]

6. Wynonie Harris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynonie_Harris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXpxf8iTC3k

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. Depends on the perspective of the star's audience.

Muddy Waters was a rock star from the minute he stepped onto a stage until the minute he went to that big roadhouse in the sky. Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker, too...rock stars.

Chuck Berry's first single, Maybelline, was released in 1955, the same year that gave us Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and Johnny Cash's "Cry, Cry, Cry," "So Doggone Lonesomem" and "Folsom Prison Blues."

In 1956, Jerry Lee Lewis released his first two singles, "Crazy Arms" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On."

Elvis, however, was the first "rock star" to set the world on fire. Yes, a lot of it had to do with the fact that he fulfilled Sun Records owner Sam Phillips' vision of a "white man who could sing like a black man." But he had the voice and star power that transcended any marketing gimmick. So I don't know...I've posted the chronology, you decide.

In 1954, Elvis released:



That's All Right (Mama)
Blue Moon Of Kentucky
(US) SUN 209 (78/45)
Released: July 19, 1954
Recorded: Sun Studios, Memphis, July 5, 1954



Good Rockin' Tonight
I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine *
(US) SUN 210 (78/45)
Released: September 1954
Recorded: Sun Studios, Memphis, September 9, 1954

[mitchum]

12. For me, Howlin' Wolf is the greatest rock star of all time

he had everything
one of the greatest voices
a dirty rocking band
a genius electric guitarplayer in Hubert Sumlin
singular presence and charisma
command of the stage
that name
and he rocked

[Amerigo Vespucci]

14. One of Eric Clapton's greatest sins....

...is the terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE version of "Goin' Down Slow" on THIS album:



He treats it like a light shuffle or something, I don;t know...Hey ERIC! This is "Goin' Down Slow," not "Wonderful Tonight!" I know Clapton takes two approaches...purist or modernist...but this song definitely did not benefit from "the Slowhand treatment."

When he sings the lines:

"Please, write my mama, tell her the shape I'm in.
Please, write my old mother, tell her the shape I'm in.
Tell her to pray for me, forgive me for my sin."

...I'd never heard pain channel through a performer like that before. Another "rock star," Jim Morrison, understood all of this. I wonder how many people think "Back Door Man" is "a Doors song?"

:toast:

[Radical Activist]

19. I went back and forth on including muddy waters in the poll.

I finally went with BB King because his use of horns and a bigger band was a more genre-crossing sound than the straight up blues that Muddy Waters was doing in the 50's. But now that I think about it I don't know when King started doing that.

There's an often repeated quote from King where he says he always thought Rock 'n Roll was the word used for blue or rhythm & blues sung by white people because it was otherwise the same style of music.

[6000eliot]

9. Ike Turner, "Rocket 88," 1951.

The term "rock and roll" was used as a euphemism for sex for many years before Elvis on rhythm and blues records.

[Radical Activist]

20. The problem with Ike

is that he wasn't known as a big star for years after that even though Rocket 88 was a hit. But I have read that Elvis used to watch Ike concerts to copy his style.

[mitchum]

11. Stephen Foster...he stole African American music, took drugs...

and died at a young age.

Or maybe Lord Byron

[JitterbugPerfume]

13. Bill Haley and the Comets

I know they sound really corny now , but in the early '50S they were sensational . I remember going to Indianapolis with some friends when I was about thirteen or fourteen and seeing "Rock around the clock" and the place was wild! They started a trend with white teenagers

[Radical Activist]

22. Yeah, I'd say he was the first white rock star.

I'd put Fats Domino before him though.

[rcrush]

15. Elivs stole rock and roll.

Plus he couldnt sing.

[Taverner]

17. This Austrian guy, Moe Zart

Had a hit back in the 80's called "Rock me Amadeus"

[yonisareyin]

23. Bill Haley was first...Elvis didn't arrive until 1956, if I am correct

One of my fave books is Billboard's Story Behind the #1 Hits book. The whole Haley thing is a tragic story.