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Pop music’s expanding appeal paved the way for rock and roll to emerge in the mid-1950s. Rock both reflected and shaped powerful societal forces (such as blacks’ migration from South to North and the growth of youth culture) that had begun transforming American life. Rock also stirred controversy. Like the word jazz, the phrase rock and roll was a blues slang expression meaning sex—which offended some people with more conservative tastes in music and worried them about what their children were listening to. Finally, rock grew out of a blending of numerous different music styles. For instance, early rock combined the vocal and instrumental traditions of pop with the rhythm-and-blues sounds of Memphis and the country twang of Nashville.

Blues and R&B Set the Stage for Rock

The migration of southern blacks to northern cities in search of better jobs during the first half of the twentieth century had helped disseminate different popular music styles to new places. In particular, blues music traveled north. Blues became the foundation of rock and roll and was influenced by African American spirituals, ballads, and work songs from the rural South.

Influential blues artists included Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Charley Patton. After the introduction of the electric guitar in the 1930s, blues-based urban black music began to be marketed under the name rhythm and blues (R&B). This new music appealed to young listeners fascinated by the explicit (and forbidden) sexual lyrics in songs like “Annie Had a Baby,” “Sexy Ways,” and “Wild Wild Young Men.” Although banned on some stations, R&B continued gaining popularity into the early 1950s. Still, black and white musical forms were segregated, and trade magazines in the 1950s tracked R&B record sales on “race” charts separate from the white “pop” charts.

Young People Flock to Rock

Young people embraced rock and roll, further helping to secure this pop-music genre’s place in American society and eventually around the world. The popularity of rock stemmed in part from the repressive and uneasy atmosphere of the 1950s. To cope with the backdrop and uncertainty of the atomic bomb, the Cold War, and communist witch hunts, young people sought escape from the menacing world created by adults. Rock’s driving beat and danceable quality offered distraction and a cultural form that young people could call their own.

Black and White Come Together through Rock

A blending of white and black cultures, arising from key social and political events, also fueled rock’s popularity. By the early 1950s, President Truman’s 1948 executive order integrating the armed forces was fully in practice, bringing young men from very different ethnic and economic backgrounds together. Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision declared unconstitutional the “separate but equal” laws that had segregated blacks and whites for decades. Mainstream America began to wrestle seriously with the legacy of slavery and the unequal treatment of its African American citizens. As both blacks and whites embraced rock and roll, their shared experience began chipping away at the wall of racial division that had long characterized the nation.