Afro-Cuban music was the conduit by which African American music was “re-Africanized,” through the adoption of two-celled figures like clave and Afro-Cuban instruments like the conga drum, bongos, maracas and claves. According to John Storm Roberts, R&B became the vehicle for the return of Cuban elements into mass popular music. Ahmet Etregun, producer for Atlantic Records, is reported to have said that “Afro-Cuban rhythms added color and excitement to the basic drive of R&B.” As Ned Sublette points out though: “By the 1960’s, with Cuba the object of a United States embargo that still remains in effect today, the island nation had been forgotten as a source of music. By the time people began to talk about rock and roll as having a history, Cuban music had vanished from North American consciousness.”
Early to mid-1950’s
Ray Charles in 1971. Photo: Heinrich Klaffs.
Johnny Otis, who had signed with the Newark, New Jersey-based Savoy Records, produced many R&B hits in 1951, including: “Double Crossing Blues”, “Mistrustin’ Blues” and “Cupid’s Boogie”, all of which hit number one that year. Otis scored ten top ten hits that year. Other hits include: “Gee Baby”, “Mambo Boogie” and “All Nite Long”. The Clovers, a vocal trio who sang a distinctive sounding combination of blues and gospel, had the #5 hit of the year with “Don’t You Know I Love You” on Atlantic Records. Also in July 1951, Cleveland, Ohio DJ Alan Freed started a late-night radio show called “The Moondog Rock Roll House Party” on WJW-AM (850). Freed’s show was sponsored by Fred Mintz, whose R&B record store had a primarily African American clientele. Freed began referring to the rhythm and blues music he played as “rock and roll”.
In 1951, Little Richard Penniman began recording for RCA Records in the jump blues style of late 1940s stars Roy Brown and Billy Wright. However, it wasn’t until he prepared a demo in 1954, that caught the attention of Specialty Records, that the world would start to hear his new, uptempo, funky rhythm and blues that would catapult him to fame in 1955 and help define the sound of rock ‘n’ roll. A rapid succession of rhythm and blues hits followed, beginning with “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally”, which would influence performers such as James Brown, Elvis Presley, and Otis Redding.
Ruth Brown on the Atlantic label, placed hits in the top 5 every year from 1951 through 1954: “Teardrops from My Eyes”, “Five, Ten, Fifteen Hours”, “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” and “What a Dream”. Faye Adams’s “Shake a Hand” made it to #2 in 1952. In 1953, the R&B record-buying public made Willie Mae Thornton’s original recording of Leiber and Stoller’s “Hound Dog” the #3 hit that year. Ruth Brown was very prominent among female R&B stars. Ruth Brown’s popularity most likely derived because of “her deeply rooted vocal delivery in African American tradition” That same year The Orioles, a doo-wop group, had the #4 hit of the year with “Crying in the Chapel”.
Fats Domino made the top 30 of the pop charts in 1952 and 1953, then the top 10 with “Ain’t That a Shame”. Ray Charles came to national prominence in 1955 with “I Got a Woman”. Big Bill Broonzy said of Charles’ music: “He’s mixing the blues with the spirituals… I know that’s wrong.”
In 1954 The Chords’ “Sh-Boom” became the first hit to cross over from the R&B chart to hit the top 10 early in the year. Late in the year, and into 1955, “Hearts of Stone” by The Charms made the top 20.
At Chess Records in the spring of 1955, Bo Diddley’s debut record “Bo Diddley”/”I’m A Man” climbed to #2 on the R&B charts and popularized Bo Diddley’s own original rhythm and blues clave-based vamp that would become a mainstay in rock and roll.
At the urging of Leonard Chess at Chess Records, Chuck Berry had reworked a country fiddle tune with a long history, entitled “Ida Red”. The resulting “Maybellene” was not only a #3 hit on the R&B charts in 1955, but also reached into the top 30 on the pop charts. Alan Freed, who had moved to the much larger market of New York City in 1954, helped the record become popular with white teenagers. Freed had been given part of the writers’ credit by Chess in return for his promotional activities; a common practice at the time.
Late 1950’s
Della Reese
In 1956, an R&B “Top Stars of ’56” tour took place, with headliners Al Hibbler, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and Carl Perkins, whose “Blue Suede Shoes” was very popular with R&B music buyers. Some of the performers completing the bill were Chuck Berry, Cathy Carr, Shirley & Lee, Della Reese, the Cleftones, and the Spaniels with Illinois Jacquet’s Big Rockin’ Rhythm Band. Cities visited by the tour included Columbia, SC, Annapolis, MD, Pittsburgh, PA, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, NY, into Canada, and through the mid Western US ending in Texas. In Columbia the concert ended with a near riot as Perkins began his first song as the closing act. Perkins is quoted as saying, “It was dangerous. Lot of kids got hurt. There was a lot of rioting going on, just crazy, man! The music drove ‘em insane.” In Annapolis 70,000 to 50,000 people tried to attend a sold out performance with 8,000 seats. Roads were clogged for seven hours. Film makers took advantage of the popularity of “rhythm and blues” musicians as “rock n roll” musicians beginning in 1956. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Big Joe Turner, The Treniers, The Platters, The Flamingos, all made it onto the big screen.
