TORONTO – It was spring, 1951, when Ike Turner’s band, a busted amplifier and legendary producer Sam Phillips kicked up an entirely different kind of racket, launching a new genre that would come to be known as rock ‘n’ roll.
The song was “Rocket 88,” written by Turner and his saxophonist, Jackie Brenston, who handled vocals. The tune’s distorted guitar, discordant sax, frantic pace and winking lyrics combined to create something no one had ever really heard before, and it was a hit at the time — storming up the chart to finally land as the No. 1 bestselling rhythm & blues record in the June 9, 1951 issue of Billboard magazine.
Sixty years later, many historians consider it the first-ever rock ‘n’ roll song and musicians revere the tune, as well as the band’s livewire performance.
And yet, most regular people don’t know that the track even exists.
“If I went to my local grocery store here and stopped 20 people, if I found one who knew about it, I’d be shocked,” said Grammy Award-winning York University music professor Rob Bowman, who’s been lecturing about “Rocket 88” since 1979.
“It’s definitely not as well known as Elvis’s hits or Jerry Lee (Lewis)’s big hits, or ‘Rock Around the Clock.’ This is (before) the massive explosion…. You don’t hear it as a golden oldie. You listen to oldies radio, and you’ll hear ‘Hound Dog,’ you’ll hear ‘Great Balls of Fire,’ you’ll hear ‘Maybellene’ by Chuck Berry, you’ll hear Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ — you won’t hear ‘Rocket 88.'”
Indeed, that sums up the status of this ’50s firecracker: relative obscurity to most, revelation to a select few.
The song was recorded back in March 1951, when Turner was only 19 years old. Phillips was 28 and wouldn’t launch his influential Sun Records imprint — eventual home to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Lewis and Roy Orbison — for another year.(METRO CAANADA)
Related Articles
No user responded in this post
Leave A Reply