Chuck Norris didn’t do karate but he earned his chops playing session guitar in California in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He also cut a handful of solo singles like this. (more…)

The Beatles made their first entry into the pop chart in January 1963, reaching the lofty heights of No.16 with Love Me Do. (more…)

Saxman Big John Greer is another of those seminal figures turning jump blues into rock’n’roll in the postwar era. (more…)

Here’s a song by one of rockabilly’s revered elder statesmen that just makes you want to get up and dance, whatever music you like.
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The Rolling Stones, recorded live at the BBC in 1965, just as they were transitioning from a band playing blues and R&B covers. (more…)

I didn’t discover Elvis until his Vegas period in the early 1970s, belting out big ballads with overblown arrangements while I waited impatiently for new singles by T. Rex, Slade and The Sweet. (more…)

This is my favourite Elvis song of all time. It’s one of the first he recorded at Sun Studios and it came out on the B-side of his second single Good Rocking Tonight in 1954.
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Here’s my final contender for the earliest rock’n’roll song. And I think it’s the winner. (more…)

Sam Phillips is arguably the single most important name in the history of rock’n’roll music. In 1950 he opened a recording studio in Memphis and his label, Sun Studio, went on to make much of the earliest – and still the greatest – rock’n’roll music ever recorded. (more…)

I’m sure everyone has heard Hound Dog by Elvis. I’m equally sure most have never heard the original, recorded by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton four years earlier in 1952.
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