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It’s easy to imagine an electrified audience getting down to do the Twist the moment they heard this tune in 1948. Except that the Twist wouldn’t be invented for another decade. (more…)
Roy Brown may not be a household name but he is another of the under-appreciated innovators of the pre-rock’n’roll era, and a big influence on everyone from Elvis to Little Richard. (more…)
The more I delve into the increasingly wild R&B music being made in the five or six years after World War II, the stranger it seems that most people think rock’n’roll began with Elvis and Bill Haley in the mid-1950s. (more…)
Back before rock’n’roll got given its name, and nuclear war was a clear and present danger, a flamboyant fellow called H-Bomb Ferguson exploded on to the music scene.
Albennie Jones is another of the small handful of women to build the foundations of rock’n’roll with her song Hole In The Wall in 1949.
Let’s talk about rockabilly. And let’s start the conversation with Hardrock Gunter. His debut single Birmingham Bounce is another entry in the pantheon of proto-rock’n’roll.
Fats Domino’s debut single rocks and rolls, and that’s enough to make it another of the building blocks of rock’n’roll. (more…)
Erline Harris, whose career burned brightly and briefly at the end of the 1940s, was a rare female artist in the proto-rock’n’roll era.
Sticks McGhee launched a career of booze-related songs with a profanity-strewn Army chant called Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee back in 1946.
Wes Anderson’s tenth feature film is “a love letter to journalism” told in a typically whimsical anthology of stories for the titular magazine. The director and his all-star cast of regulars and newcomers are on top form in this tour-de-force. (more…)