The Birth of Rock & Roll, White and Black Partnerships
The first “true” Rock & Roll song was the byproduct of an integrated partnership in 1951. “Rocket 88,” recorded by Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston at the white-owned Sun Studio in Memphis, is known for its distorted guitar, piercing sax solo, and driving riff. A sound so unheard of before, “Rocket 88” blasted to number one on the Billboard R&B chart from June 9 through to July in 1951 with over one hundred thousand copies sold by the end of August. The first course of Rock & Roll had been served, opening a market for the music.
Turner, who would meet Anna Mae Bullock (Tina Turner) several years later, grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 75 miles from Memphis and experienced racism at an early age. His father was abducted and beaten by a white man and died from the injuries after being turned away from a whites-only hospital. Despite a tragic childhood, Turner learned to play piano at age seven and hosted a radio show on WROX in Clarksdale. Turner played in a little theater with his band the Top Hatters and became acquainted with B.B. King. After forming the Kings of Rhythm, he was introduced to white studio owner Sam Phillips.
“Rocket 88” could have been a jingle for the General Motors car that had been out on the market and younger people dreamed of owning. Now, there was a song that bragged about ownership of the Rocket 88 when others had jalopies. Brenston, who provided the vocals, was the saxophonist for the Kings of Rhythm.
The record’s handling would present problems. When the record was released through Chess Records, Turner was left off the credits altogether and was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats. Turner, just 19-years-old at the time, felt betrayed and angry having wrote the song with his band. Phillips did not back down and promised Turner that he would be credited on the next new record. Various handbills to promote the tune did credit Ike Turner, “The King of the Piano and His Kings of Rhythm” but this move did not set the record straight, so to speak. Turner and his band were paid $20 each for the record and Brenston sold the rights to Phillips for $910. Many disagree that “Rocket 88” is the first ever Rock & Roll song. Brenston himself disparaged its originality: “They had simply borrowed from another jump blues about an automobile, Jimmy Liggins’ ‘Cadillac Boogie.’” Phillips ambitiously claimed “Rocket 88” as the first Rock & Roll song and used the earnings to open Sun Records in 1952.
LISTEN TO “ROCKET 88” BY JACKIE BRENSTON AND HIS DELTA CATS
While Rock & Roll opened many doors, some songs perpetuated Black stereotypes that originated from the plantation days. “Charlie Brown” by the Coasters equated Blacks as jesters or clowns. The Alvin and the Chipmunks hit “Witch Doctor,” performed by Ross Bagdasarian Sr., hit on the Black stereotype that they were superstitious. “Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop” by Little Anthony and the Imperials implied the stereotype that Blacks lacked sexual control. Little Anthony would often disparage the song before performing it on stage. Also, “Little Sweet Sixteen” was written by Chuck Berry who was double that age at the time. “Watermelon Man” followed in 1962 by musician Herbie Hancock. The song’s name suggested that Blacks were addicted to watermelon, a stereotype that had been used by Southern whites to cast newly-freed Black people as simple-minded, unclean, and lazy. After the Civil War, free Black people grew, ate, and sold watermelons—a symbol of their freedom. The racist tropes spread and still exist today.
Rock & Roll music, especially performed by Black artists, was met with backlash and attack-oriented propaganda directed by white supremacist organizations. The Citizen’s Council of Greater New Orleans published a flyer demanding the boycott of “Negro records.” The flyer insisted that “if you don’t want to serve negroes in your place of business, then do not have negro records on your juke box or listen to negro records on the radio. The screaming, idiotic words, and savage music of these records are undermining the morals of our white youth in America.”
In the 1950s, many white artists wanted in on the doo-wop phenomenon, including many Italian-American groups. Ironically, “wop” is often a derogatory term towards Italians. Originating from Black artists on the East Coast, Doo-wop was from the Rhythm and Blues genre and contained wordless onomatopoeia to resemble instruments. "Shang-a-lang" and "Doooo, wop, wop" were popular expressions. Doo-wop climaxed in the early 1960s with hits by Black and white groups. Soul went hand-in-hand with doo-wop, as both incorporated simple base-lines and chord progression from gospel music, R&B, and Jazz to create its unique sound. However, the term “doo-wop” did not appear in print until 1961 just as its popularity was started to wane.
Groups like the 5 Royales from North Carolina combined doo-wop, jump blues, and gospel styles with hits throughout the 1950s with “Baby Don’t Do It” and “Think.” When they traveled to Memphis, they created a profound influence on a white kid named Steve Cropper, who received his first mail order guitar at age 14. 
“Lowman Pauling was just phenomenal,” Cropper said of the Five Royales guitarist and songwriter. “I had already been listening to the records and [the 5 Royales] came to Memphis and did a performance out at the Beverly Ballroom. I couldn’t believe this guy. He played between the legs and behind the head. He just danced with the guitar all over the place. He was real influential.”22 Cropper would later join Stax Records as the original lead white guitarist of the integrated group Booker T. & the MG’s and later one of Rolling Stone magazine’s greatest guitarists of all time.
Even though segregation kept many Black and white musicians from performing together, Memphis had many venues that allowed white audiences to hear Black artists perform.
“There seemed to be no age limit in West Memphis in those days,” said Duck Dunn, who also joined Stax with Cropper as a white bassist playing in an integrated band. “Steve and I looked really young. Even when we were 15, we looked 12 and they didn’t care! I guess they were paying off the law. We never asked any questions.” 
Cropper adds, “All you had to do was pay your two bucks at the door and go in. A lot of people would go in there and dance. We’d just go over there and listen to the music.”
On Beale Street in Memphis, Club Handy was one place that allowed Cropper and Dunn to listen from the doorway and see the stage by a strategically placed mirror.
Talent was the name of the game and group leaders began to overlook race when they recruited members to harmonize together, especially in the North. With diversity of group members came diversity of sound. The Del-Vikings, known for "Come Go With Me" and the Crests, with their coming-of-age number "Sixteen Candles,” were two interracially mixed groups in the 1950s.
The Crests, a diverse doo-wop group formed in 1956, were discovered performing in the New York City subway by the wife of orchestra leader Al Browne. The group consisted of two African-American males, one African-American female, a Puerto Rican male, and an Italian-American male. Female member Patricia Van Dross was the older sister of future music star Luther Vandross. Their best known hit, “Sixteen Candles,” rose to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. The song went number four on the US R&B charts for 21 weeks that same year.
The Del-Vikings were formed in 1955 when five Black airmen based in Pittsburgh harmonized together. They knew their group could go further but their future as a group seemed uncertain as they were constantly disrupted with postings. When they were transferred to Germany, David Lerchey became the first of two white members to join.
The origins of their name are still a mystery but many suggest that it was inspired by Viking Press, publisher of the books they liked to read. Additional theories suggest the name may have originated after one of the members read a book about Norsemen or from member Clarence Quick who knew of a basketball team in Brooklyn, New York, called the Vikings.
LISTEN TO “COME GO WITH ME” BY THE DEL-VIKINGS
If they had been inspired to choose their name based on Vikings, their demeanor and grooming were quite the opposite. In fact, Fee Bee Records, then Dot, and later Mercury, all published album covers featuring all Black and white Del-Vikings. In 1957, despite being handsome military lads in coordinating attire, this was a rarity for an integrated group to exist, let alone be featured so prominently together. The combination of their military service, camaraderie, and singing talent crafted a safe and patriotic image in the marketplace.
The liner notes for “They Sing… They Swing” released in 1957 even notes that “these five young fellows sing just for fun, sing just because they enjoy being together.”
Even into 1961, multi-racial groups encountered problems while touring in the South. The Marcels, a Pittsburgh-based group, hit it big with their rendition of “Blue Moon” that year. Not only did it knock Elvis off the top of the Billboard chart, over a million copies were sold. The Marcels, named after the popular hair style, the marcel wave, began to tour around the United States. They quickly learned that below the Mason-Dixon Line, the group could not always play together and the two white members, Richard Knauss and Gene Bricker, called it quits. The group’s dynamic changed significantly and the success that they had with “Blue Moon” would never be recreated. Member Ron Mundy also left that year.
“It got to be hard,” said Janet Mundy, his wife. “He called me and said, ‘I’m going home and getting a job.’”
Much of society disapproved white and Black musicians harmonizing together, yet many were oblivious that their favorite tune was even being delivered by a Black musician or an integrated group. Black artists who achieved commercial success in the 1950s did so quietly and carefully and kept their ethnicity discreet or sang in a style of white singers when in the spotlight. However, they were not going unnoticed. White artists dominated the hit list by emulating the soul and beat of Rhythm and Blues — known as "Black music" or “race music.” Plenty of white Southern grandmothers who happened to stumble across the precise moment Elvis Presley gyrated to "Hound Dog" on the Ed Sullivan Show probably could not jump up to turn off the television set fast enough. The most cutting-edge appliance in her home, television with its network programming in 1948, was a conduit of strange and new things like "race music" being performed by white artists. At worst, many white households saw Black music as part of an agenda to mongrelize America, especially its youth. Meanwhile, her grandchildren were asking and saving up for records that featured white artists proudly on the covers.
Black artists’ photos were generally kept off the album artwork to not offend or decrease the chances of purchase or airplay, one less barrier to make it onto the Pop charts—which garnered both Black and white audiences. For budding artists like James Brown, keeping their photos off album covers and artwork was common in the 1950s. In 1958, Brown’s album Please Please Please featured a tight photograph of white woman’s legs and torso climbing up concrete stairs with a suited white man facing before her. A bizarre choice for album art, the storytelling in the photograph had nothing to do with Black culture but gave the impression to white consumers that this LP was white enough to buy.
Two following albums by Brown also did not feature his photo. Try Me! in 1959 had a figurine illustration of a what appeared to be a Black femme fatale holding a pistol. The illustration was pop art-like and played off the album’s name—go ahead and ‘try her’ and see your fate. Think! in 1960 featured a naked white baby with head propped on its knuckles in an expressionless, deep thinking state imitating Auguste Rodin’s famous “The Thinker” sculpture. While Think! was the title and the name of a song on the LP, a white baby in a thinking pose had absolutely nothing to do with Brown or what the album represented. Once again, the abstract notion was at least white, therefore, safe.
Brown wanted his face on his record covers and resented Syd Nathan of King Records because of it. Nathan was a white man with a receding hairline and eyes hiding behind circular specs appeared as a gentle rotund man in pictures. Known as “Little Caesar,” he was ruthless and eruptive, ran his label like a dictator, and conducted business by screaming and bullying his artists and staff.
“That’s the worst piece of crap I’ve heard in my life,” he reportedly said of Brown’s “Please Please Please” recording. “It’s someone stuttering on a record only saying one word…” Despite Nathan’s judgment, the record was a success in 1956.
Brown and Nathan exchanged lawsuits and feuded while recording for King Records. Nathan refused to cover the $5,000 recording fee to record Brown’s Live at the Apollo album in 1962 until inquiries mounted from broadcasters pressured Nathan to release it in May 1963. The album would become Brown’s most successful rising to number two on the U.S. album chart. The release gave an opportunity for Nathan to remark underhandedly to Brown that his most successful album did not have—and didn’t need—a picture of him on the cover. Live at the Apollo earned qualification to be a platinum record, yet Nathan refused to pay the annual fee to the professional certifying organization.
With album covers were a contentious subject, Brown retaliated with an idea for a cover designed to send Nathan over the edge. The cover concept featured a group of seductive white women looking desperately at Brown wanting to make love. The photo was shot, the cover was prototyped, and off it went to Nathan in Miami.
“How on Earth am I going to sell this to redneck distributors in the South?” he barked upon looking at the proposed cover.28 After much stress on Nathan’s part, they eventually dropped the concept and went with something less edgy.
Personality and pettiness aside, Nathan knew how to innovate with his white and Black artists early on when he started King Records in 1943 by getting them to record outside their genres. Black artists recording country songs and his white performers recording R&B was not done to advance integration but to maximize revenue.
“We saw a need. Why should we go into all those towns and only sell to the hillbilly accounts? Why can’t we sell a few more while we’re there? So we got into the race business.”
- Syd Nathan, King Records
“We saw a need,” Nathan said. “Why should we go into all those towns and only sell to the hillbilly accounts? Why can’t we sell a few more while we’re there? So we got into the race business.”
One of the first racially-integrated companies in the record business, King Records took the production process in-house: recording, pressing and distributing a record within a week. Nathan often used the pseudonym “Lois Mann” to obtain a share of the songwriting royalties. Even though it was a common practice at the time, by the mid-sixties the payola scandals would doom his career until his death in 1968.
Many white music executives considered Rock & Roll a metaphor for integration. In fact, to the white southern grandmother’s chagrin, Elvis was singing a Black tune. Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton recorded “Hound Dog” four years earlier in 1952, “Hound Dog” was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two white men who took to R&B early on. Author and cultural critic Greil Marcus still considers this a Black tune and “probably a rewrite of an old piece of juke joint fury.”
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton originally recorded “Hound Dog” in 1952. Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
For Ray Charles, having white artists adopt his sound was flattering. “It was one of those American things,” Charles remarked. “I believe in mixed musical marriages, and there’s no way to copyright a feeling or a rhythm or a style of singing. Besides, it meant that White America was getting hipper.”
Studio owners and record executives were encouraged by the youth of America supporting the new sound. Parents were another story. “Without the cooperation of total resentment on the part of the parents, Rock & Roll would have had a rougher time makin’ it,”32 Sam Phillips would later remark.
Nevertheless, R&B hits climbed to the top of the pop charts with crossover. The collision of white and Black youth happened as they waited in lines for concerts, reached for the same 45 in the record store, tuned in to the same radio stations and same television programming featuring their favorite artists.