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95. From Swing to Rock

Swing gave rock another essential ingredient.

The dance floor.

Swing had already demonstrated that rhythm could become a national obsession.

Rock and roll simply changed the rhythm and the audience.

The ballroom became the dance hall.

The big band became the small combo.

The bandleader became the frontman.

The brass section became the guitar and saxophone.

The swing dancer became the teenager.

The cultural mechanism remained remarkably similar.

96. Rock and Roll Was the Next Generation

In that sense, rock and roll was not an enemy of jazz.

It was the next generation.

Jazz had represented modernity to an earlier generation.

Rock represented modernity to teenagers in the 1950s.

Both were accused of being dangerous.

Both were associated with dancing.

Both challenged older ideas about respectable music.

Both elevated Black musical traditions.

Both created stars with distinctive personalities.

Both changed American culture.

97. The Revolution Was Already Underway

By the time Elvis appeared on television, the revolution was already underway.

He simply became its most visible symbol.

The music had been developing for decades.

Black musicians had been pushing boundaries.

Country musicians had been borrowing blues ideas.

Jazz musicians had been transforming rhythm.

Gospel singers had been developing powerful vocal techniques.

Independent labels had been recording new sounds.

DJs had been breaking down barriers.

Teenagers were waiting for a soundtrack.

Rock and roll gave them one.

98. The 1950s Didn’t End the Story

The emergence of rock and roll wasn’t the end of this musical evolution.

It was another beginning.

Rock and roll became rock.

Rock became hard rock.

Hard rock influenced heavy metal.

Blues rock influenced psychedelic rock.

Jazz influenced progressive rock.

Soul and R&B influenced funk.

Funk influenced hip-hop.

The family tree kept growing.

And jazz continued influencing everything.

The original musical revolution of the 1920s never really ended.

It simply changed forms.

99. The Line From 1920 to 1955

So if you draw a line from 1920s jazz to 1950s rock and roll, it looks something like this:

Jazz creates new rhythmic possibilities.

Swing makes those rhythms a national dance phenomenon.

Boogie-woogie intensifies the piano groove.

Jump blues reduces the big-band sound to smaller, louder groups.

Electric blues amplifies the guitar.

Gospel intensifies the voice.

Country adds guitar, storytelling and Southern rhythm.

Rhythm and blues combines these ingredients.

Independent record labels record them.

Radio DJs spread them.

Jukeboxes sell them.

Teenagers adopt them.

Rock and roll explodes.

That isn’t a straight line.

It’s a web.

But every strand eventually points toward the same explosion.

100. The Birth of Something New

By 1955, rock and roll was no longer simply a collection of influences.

It was its own thing.

It had its own stars.

Its own audience.

Its own sound.

Its own controversy.

Its own culture.

The teenagers had claimed it.

The record companies wanted it.

The radio stations couldn’t ignore it.

Television couldn’t stop showing it.

And older generations couldn’t understand why everyone was so excited about it.

That is exactly what a musical revolution looks like.

101. The Real Story

The real story of rock and roll isn’t that one person invented it.

It is that American music spent roughly half a century preparing for it.

Jazz changed the rhythm.

Blues supplied the emotional vocabulary.

Gospel supplied the intensity.

Country supplied the guitar traditions.

Boogie-woogie supplied the piano drive.

Swing supplied the dance culture.

R&B assembled the pieces.

Technology made them louder.

Independent labels recorded them.

Radio spread them.

Teenagers turned them into a movement.

Then Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and countless others gave the movement faces and names.

That is why the history is so fascinating.

Rock and roll wasn’t a sudden break from the past.

It was the past coming back in a completely new form.

102. From Jazz Age to Rock Age

The 1920s were called the Jazz Age.

The 1950s became the beginning of the Rock Age.

Those labels make the two periods sound completely separate.

They weren’t.

The Rock Age grew directly out of the Jazz Age.

The rhythms changed.

The instruments changed.

The technology changed.

The audience changed.

But the fundamental American musical obsession remained the same.

Make people move.

Make people feel something.

Give performers room to express themselves.

Take old ideas and mix them with new ones.

And don’t be afraid to make noise.

That spirit was alive in the jazz clubs of the 1920s.

It was alive in the swing ballrooms of the 1930s.

It was alive in the jump-blues clubs of the 1940s.

It was alive in Memphis, Chicago and New Orleans in the early 1950s.

And by the middle of that decade, it had become rock and roll.

103. The Greatest Musical Family Tree

Rock and roll is sometimes treated as a completely new invention.

It wasn’t.

It was a child of American musical traditions that had been evolving for generations.

That’s what makes the story more interesting.

You can hear Louis Armstrong in the importance of the individual performer.

You can hear Duke Ellington and Count Basie in the importance of the rhythm section and arrangement.

You can hear Louis Jordan in the compact, energetic R&B format.

You can hear boogie-woogie in Jerry Lee Lewis.

You can hear gospel in Little Richard and Elvis.

You can hear country in Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly.

You can hear electric blues in Chuck Berry and countless others.

You can hear all of them in rock and roll.

And once rock and roll arrived, it became a new starting point for the next generation.

104. The Music That Changed Everything

Rock and roll didn’t simply change music.

It changed youth culture.

It changed fashion.

It changed dancing.

It changed radio.

It changed the recording industry.

It changed the economics of popular music.

It changed the relationship between parents and children.

It changed the idea of what a celebrity could be.

And it changed the electric guitar from one instrument among many into one of the central symbols of modern popular culture.

That is an enormous legacy.

And it all traces back, at least in part, to musicians experimenting with rhythm decades earlier.

105. The Final Connection

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the relationship between 1920s jazz and 1950s rock and roll is to stop thinking about genres as sealed boxes.

Music doesn’t work that way.

A musician hears something.

They borrow it.

They change it.

Someone else hears that version.

They change it again.

A new city adds another influence.

A new technology changes the sound.

A new audience changes the subject matter.

A new record label changes the market.

Eventually, what began as one thing becomes something else.

That is exactly what happened with jazz and rock and roll.

Jazz didn’t turn into rock and roll overnight.

Jazz helped create a musical environment in which rock and roll could eventually exist.

The rhythm was developed.

The improvisational spirit was developed.

The small-band concept was developed.

The importance of personality was developed.

The dance culture was developed.

The recording industry evolved.

The electric instruments arrived.

Blues, gospel and country added their own ingredients.

And then, in the 1950s, everything collided.

106. The Sound of a New Generation

When Chuck Berry’s guitar rang out, when Little Richard attacked the piano, when Fats Domino rolled through a New Orleans groove, when Bill Haley drove his band through a rhythm, when Jerry Lee Lewis pounded the keys and when Elvis stepped onto a stage, they weren’t simply performing a new kind of music.

They were announcing that American popular culture had changed.

The music had become faster.

Louder.

More physical.

More rebellious.

More personal.

And more connected to teenagers than anything that had come before it.

But underneath all that newness were the rhythms of the previous generation.

The jazz musicians of the 1920s had already shown America how powerful rhythm could be.

The swing musicians had turned that rhythm into a national dance craze.

The blues musicians had given it emotional depth.

The gospel singers had given it spiritual intensity.

The country musicians had given it twang and storytelling.

The R&B musicians had put all of it together.

Rock and roll simply kicked open the door.

107. The Long Road to Rock and Roll

That is why the history of rock and roll is much longer than the 1950s.

It starts with African American musical traditions.

It passes through ragtime.

It develops through blues.

It explodes through jazz.

It swings through the big-band era.

It accelerates through boogie-woogie.

It gets louder through jump blues.

It becomes electric through urban blues.

It becomes emotional through gospel.

It becomes hybridized through country.

It gets recorded by independent labels.

It gets broadcast by radio DJs.

It gets played on jukeboxes.

It gets adopted by teenagers.

And finally it becomes rock and roll.

The 1950s were simply the moment when the rest of America realized what had been happening.

108. The Legacy of the Jazz Age

The most remarkable part is that jazz didn’t disappear when rock and roll arrived.

It continued.

Jazz musicians moved into bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, free jazz and fusion.

Rock musicians absorbed jazz ideas.

Soul musicians absorbed jazz.

Funk absorbed jazz.

Hip-hop sampled jazz.

Modern popular music continues to use ideas developed by jazz musicians a century ago.

That is the real measure of influence.

You don’t have to sound like jazz to be influenced by jazz.

You simply have to inherit one of its ideas.

109. The Line Never Ends

The line from 1920s jazz to 1950s rock and roll eventually becomes a line from rock to everything that followed.

The Beatles listened to Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

The Rolling Stones listened to American blues.

Led Zeppelin listened to blues and R&B.

Jimi Hendrix absorbed blues, soul and jazz.

Prince absorbed funk, rock, soul and jazz.

Hip-hop producers sampled jazz.

Modern rock musicians continue borrowing from all of these traditions.

The family tree keeps expanding.

And somewhere near the beginning of that tree is a jazz musician in a New Orleans club, Chicago ballroom or New York recording studio experimenting with rhythm.