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Elijah Roth

Dr. Holt

English 12: Senior Seminar

1 May 2024

The Blues and Country: The Creation of Rock

Rock has always been one of the most illustrious genres of music. Its skyrocket into

stardom has often been called the greatest musical revolution of all time, and rightfully so.

Despite rock defining almost half of the 20th century, general audiences are still fairly unfamiliar

with the origins of the genre. The evolutionary path of the creation of rock was filled with

influence from almost every genre around at the time, yet two styles particularly stood out. These

two styles were blues and country music. These two genres, with significant racial roots,

developed and melded together to produce the greatest genre of all time: rock and roll.

This story starts far before any would expect, in the year 1867, shortly after the

abolishment of slavery. This was when the first anthology of slave spirituals was released, called

“Slave Songs of the United States”. This anthology simply documented the culturally essential

hymns that were pervasive throughout African American history for centuries before, but it

allowed for the distribution of these spirituals to the greater public, and more importantly

musicians. Spirituals, which originated from field songs sung by slaves during the brutality of

American slavery, fused with folk which was the other widespread music form at the time. Folk

had major European influences, as it was similar to an American version of Irish ballads, but

when combined with major influence from slave ballads it morphed into the earliest versions of

blues. Folk and classical made up almost all of the music played in America before the
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combination of the two created ragtime, a classically influenced genre with rhythms and swing

that revolutionized the genre into a booming industry and arguably the first Black music to

become popular in the United States. A combination of improvisation in niche areas of ragtime

also created the first semblances of jazz, which brought about the meteoric rise of significant

American artists like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. This new era of

popular uptempo music headed rapidly in the direction of rock, as swing music, often coined as

being the predecessor of rock and roll, began to take off throughout the 30s. Swing was a

subsection of jazz, and its roots in blues were strong and obvious. The “12 bar blues” chord

progression, which usually follows a typical “AAB”(first phrase, first phrase repeated, second

phrase) form, was used almost universally in jazz and swing music.

That was a ton of context explained very sparingly, but it was intentional. That is because

if you combine every single genre mentioned previously, you get the Frankenstein's Monster that

is jump blues, the genre father of rock and roll. Jump blues took blues, gospel, ragtime, jazz, and

swing and created the foundation for rock with new rhythms, 12 bar blues progressions, and

particularly soulful vocals. Jump blues was a hit, and record companies knew this, but they

couldn’t market it to young, White audiences because there was still intense racial anger

prominent in American society. One musical journalist, R. Serge Denisoff, asserts that, “Prior to

the commercial revival, folk (and blues) songs were generally unknown or foreign to the

urbanized public.” This is why record companies often stole and rerecorded jump blues songs

using White singers to create some of the earliest “rock” hits.

Despite its appropriation, the genre of blues had not yet fully solidified. The jump blues quickly

transformed into rhythm and blues (R&B), because of the development of more intense and
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unique rhythmic patterns that were extremely appealing to the small mainstream audiences that

were willing to listen.

While the rapid acceleration of Black blues permeated early rock, country created its own

path that almost parallel it. Even in its infancy, country music was influenced by spirituals and

early blues. Southern White Appalachians combined the European folk music of their ancestors

with the spirituals and blues songs of early America, creating the first hillbilly (country) artists.

This quickly evolved alongside Black music, during the shift to swing, which led to the creation

of Western swing bands with country vocals and instrumentation like fiddles, banjos,

washboards, and washtub basses setting it apart from its swing counterparts. The culmination of

Western swing and jump blues created the genre, “rockabilly,” which was the origin of many of

the most prominent early White rockers. While this may seem like the White musicians were

finally breaking ground in their own right before Black artists evolved music further ahead, this

often was simply White interpretations of Black styles like R&B and Jump Blues, which created

massive amounts of profit once they were White washed. There were very few Black artists that

broke into the mainstream early on in rock, mainly because of this. There are a few wonderful

exceptions, which include Fats Domino, Little Richard, and notably “The Father of Rock and

Roll”, Chuck Berry. However, to make it into the limelight, Chuck Berry and many others had to

alter their style to fit more into the constraints of rockabilly to allow their music to reach

mainstream audiences.

While commercialization is an issue, the roots of every rock-like genre are intertwined

and running deep into the soul of American culture. From the hymns and spirituals of slaves to
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European folk and classical, one would like to believe that there is nothing more american than

the melting pot of experiences and

Despite blues, a primarily Black genre, pushing the limits of music closer and closer to

rock, the less developed rockabilly community became widely accepted as the origins of rock.

The stardom of people like Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Buddy Holly, alienated many Black

audiences from the genres that they had enjoyed for years. One example of this is the South

African market. South Africa has a terrible history of segregation and racism, so it comes to no

surprise that during the 1950s there were zero rock records available from Black artists. Black

radio stations ignored the genre all together and there was a strong sense of hostility towards the

culture as a whole. Chubby Checker changed all of that with his 1960 hit “The Twist”, which

finally gave audiences a chance to feel a sense of belonging in the community of rock. Rock

exploded in South

The genres of Blues and Country came together to create a masterpiece of music in the

early 1950s, but to this day there is still a major imbalance in many Black based genres being

repurposed by White record labels in order to sell it more effectively to the White youth. This

can be seen all the way up until today, where a large majority of pop music has its musical base

intertwined deeply with Black influence, yet most of the artists are White washed, including

Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Dua

Lipa.
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The truth is, evolution and change in music comes from underground. Rock was never an

obscure genre, but it evolved from the abnormal. The mainstream is determined by how record

companies go about catching up to already established musical traditions actively forming from

outside of their grasp. The White washing of jump blues for rockabilly, the commercial

behemoth of Elvis, and