The Birth of Rock & Roll

"Big Joe Turner" is mentioned in the Queen's Gambit on Netflix, in the lounge singer's song before Beth goes on a bender.

The rebels of the 50s weren't rebelling against anyone or anything in particular (Rebel Without A Cause), it's that they all had money and cars, and they all had fathers that won the great war, and they all were cocky badasses.  The gang element was completely different from today, they were more like groups of friends that pulled stunts rather than actual crimes.  There were fistfights, some knife fights, but not much in the way of guns.  I think it was the prosperity plus the children of the war heroes that inspired the cocky attitude, and combine that with the constant bombardment of the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation and they came up with a "live fast and leave a good looking corpse" attitude that can be mistaken for rebellion.  The rebellions of the 60s were completely different, and so was the music.  The 50s saw the birth of the electric guitar, and while it changed the scene, most of the early rock hits were played on piano.  The 60s were mostly guitar, and with feedback towards the end.  And if you listen to the hits of the late 50s and early 60s, you'll hear a lot of songs about suicide, or car crashes, or some other tragic theme.  It's why the Beatles made it so big so fast--they were a complete change from what was on the radio.

My main interests and always been in folk music, both the old ballads from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland that sailed the pond along with emigres to America as well as the music that led to and became part of the great folk music revival in England and the US during the mid +- 20th century.  But Rock & Roll is an integral part of most people's life as it is with my own. 

The roots of R&R are pretty evident and well known and while it may be an interesting discussion all on its own (and touched on here since everything is intertwined), here I'm primarily concerned with the "Why" of R&R.

A previous topic on mine (Come on guys!), talks a lot about the Wrecking Crew and its place in the evolution of popular music in the 1960s. Here, I'd like to look backwards and not so much at the music but at the culture that dictates the music.

I hope people with better insight than myself can add to or even correct, if need be, my narrative.

America, pre-WWII was a very adult-oriented society. Adults controlled the money; adults, especially fathers, dictated the behavior, beliefs and even the preferences of the youths. Of course, this isn't an absolute statement, but rather a culturally accepted given at the time.  The music was mainly Big Band and Swing for more urbanite and Country and Western for the rural poor and Jazz and Blues for the Blacks.  Again, nothing absolute and there was a lot of crossover.  Radios weren't portable and were somewhat limited and because of that, what people heard on the radio was also limited to not only what one could receive (and a lot of it was pre-TV "shows" rather than music) but also what the master of the household would prefer or allow.  
One has to keep in mind that the Great Depression that started in 1929 really hurt the newly developing recording industry and vinyl records didn't even exist for home use to any extent until post-WWII.  During the 1930s the 78.2 rpm records were primarily made either of shellac or a plastic compound. Both were far more fragile than later vinyl and very limited in the number of tracks.  Phonographs were an expensive alternative to the free airwave radios and limited to the middle class. Records were also expensive and collections tended to be small with the content mostly limited.  

So what does that tell me?  I picture that during the pre-WWII era, kids exposure to musical variety was mainly dependent upon radio and possibly a handful of records, all limited yet again by the adults' preferences.  Of course there was live music and I imagine the more adventurous and motivated kids gravitated towards those places, but that would have been a small number and only in specific areas.  

Then WWII happened.  The kids became men overnight and men who travelled far and saw many things.  These men (and women) returned home and the repressed economy that had fashioned them was suddenly giving way to an unprecedented economic expansion with jobs, mobility and disposable income.  Children born just prior to and during the war years were teenagers unlike any teenagers from the past.  Kids had a bit of money, keys to cars, free time and independence from their parents' preferences.  Meanwhile the recording industry had mostly switched to vinyl 45s and 33s.   The parents who listened to Swing .. Bing Crosby, the Andrew Sisters, Frank Sinatra... during the war years provided a market for this type of music and the big recording studios focused on artists like Tony Bennet, Pat Boone, Mitch Miller but small independent studios had been putting out Black music (jazz, R&B, gospel, blues) and others country & western.  Something else that shouldn't be underplayed is the technological advancements in electric guitars and electric bass guitars, pickups, amplifiers, studio sound track layering and effects such as echo chambers... all from the early 1950s on. 

Groups like Bill Haley and His Comets (formerly Bill Haley and the Saddlemen) blurred the line between C&W and R&B when he covered the R&B song "Rocket 88" in 1951 and "Rock This Joint" in 1952.

"Crazy, Man, Crazy in 1953 tried to appeal to the youth using modern vernacular:

In 1954 he cover Joe Turner's R&B classic "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

All these songs had been huge hits, mostly with white kids, but the biggest, probably because it provided the background for a hit movie, "The Blackboard Jungle," was  his 1955 cover of Sonny Dae's R&B song, "Rock Around the Clock" :

Also in 1954 Elvis, who had found his way into Sam Phillips Sun studio the year before, became what Phillips has been looking for, a Black voice with White skin.  Elvis' first release was a somewhat white palatable cover of Arthur Crudup's 1946 "It's Alright Mama" but still with a notable edge.

But on the flip side, was a fantastic cover Bill Monroe's CW hit, "Blue Moon of Kentucky"

Although only a regional hit, it laid the foundation for his soon to be phenomenal success but more importantly the foundation for the melding of Black & White which was the basis for Rock & Roll.  
Elvismania proved beyond any reasonable doubt the viability of Rock & Roll, even if many major labels refused to see it, (which in itself indicated that the rebellious element was a driving force behind this genre from the very start) and groups like Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Everly Brothers as well as individuals such as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard quickly emerged and sold tons of records to the kids with cash for their now affordable record players. 

Elvismania:

So, this end my foray into the birth of Rock & Roll.  I'd really like to hear what others might know or how they might interpret this phenomenon (an overused word, but totally applicable to this mainstream shift that took place in the music industry).

One last observation: although the instrumental lineups vary a lot at this point, all these group members are real instrumentalists, ie real musicians.... as Rock & Roll was found to be super profitable, much of that changed during the following decade.