The 50s: A Decade of Music That Changed the World

... were recorded by producer Sam Phillips of Sun Label including Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis among other stalwarts.

The tunes were mostly rebellious, catering to the teen crowd, and the ‘Marginal Americans’, those living in the ghettos or doing lowly jobs. This segment helped rock & roll explode in the mid-Fifties, making it a social and generational disruption of the highest degree.

Many Rock & Roll legends of the Fifties started in the sidelines as small-time artists, playing to a handful of audience, while the major music labels concentrated on high-volume sales using disposable songs.

The ‘50s saw the rise of a white rocker, Elvis Presley, to assure the triumph of rock & roll. One look at Elvis Presley and one couldn’t take the eyes off him. His magnetic presence was unheard and unseen, with no match even till now. He became an idol of millions in no time.

The name of this brand of music was coined by an R&B disc jockey, Alan Freed, and it was known to many (but not too many) people that the term ‘Rock & Roll’ was slang for sex.

Rock & Roll was carried to the top by the teens, who had spending money, a rebellious nature, in-group secret codes and ‘slanguage’, which they used to express themselves. They got along with this brand of music like a house on fire.

... were multi-ethnic hybrids with a variety of origins.

• The Bo Diddley beat, inspired by Afro-Caribbean music, caught on well with many performers putting it in their records, from Johnny Otis to Buddy Holly.
• A bass guitar riff was conveniently used by Elvis and Fats Domino among many others was from Cuban music.
• Mexican rhythms were popularized by Ritchie Valens.
• The swinging saxophone heard in the Fifties rock was derived out of the Forties Big-Band swing, along with the stop-time breaks.

The 1955-56 era released from the cage the rock & roll heavyweights like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and of course Elvis Presley.

The dark horse, who can be credited with defining rock & roll as a mainstream genre, was drummer Earl Palmer.

The Fifties rock & roll culture succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, turning out to be an inspiration of every subsequent musical innovation from punk to hard rock.

The few years of high-octane rock & roll were like a fever dream, when it reigned unchecked by any law or political correctness, with limitless possibilities and a free hand to live and create on the edge.