Rock and roll, also called rock ’n’ roll or rock & roll, style of popular music that originated in the United States in the mid-1950s and that evolved by the mid-1960s into the more encompassing international style known as rock music, though the latter also continued to be known as rock and roll.
Rock and roll has been described as a merger of country music and rhythm and blues, but, if it were that simple, it would have existed long before it burst into the national consciousness. The seeds of the music had been in place for decades, but they flowered in the mid-1950s when nourished by a volatile mix of black culture and white spending power.
Black vocal groups such as the Dominoes and the Spaniels began combining gospel-style harmonies and call-and-response singing with earthy subject matter and more aggressive rhythm-and-blues rhythms. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
Explore the Rock Music Timeline (RockMusicTimeline.com)
Fifty Years of Pop (The Guardian)
The Fifties: A Decade of Music that Changed the World (Rolling Stone Magazine)
500 Hundred Greatest Songs of All Time (Rolling Stone Magazine)
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
Patti Smith Performs "Gloria" (1976)
