Gaw, you guys are truly experts in the use of google! Don't **** me off.
Listen, I've heard most all the contenders for the throne of 'first rock 'n roll' song and NOTHING beats the unmistakable feel of 'Rocket 88', recorded by Ike in 1951.
roundshort, Before you callously dismiss one of the legends of modern music in favor of some dark moments shamelessly exploited to sell some terrible records in the 80's, I would recommend some listening to his music.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tlojf2
"Rocket 88" was first recorded at Sam Phillips' recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on 3 or 5 March (accounts differ) 1951. It is claimed by some, including Phillips to be the "first rock and roll song".
The original version of the 12-bar blues song was credited to "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats," but that band did not actually exist. The song was put together by Ike Turner and his band in rehearsals at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and recorded by Turner's Kings of Rhythm. Jackie Brenston (1930-1979) was a saxophonist with Turner who also sang the vocal on "Rocket 88," a hymn of praise to the joys of the Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" automobile, which had just been introduced in 1949. Although Brenston was given author credit rather than Turner, it is now agreed that Brenston's contribution was overstated for financial reasons.
Working from the raw material of jump blues and swing combo music, Turner made it even rawer, starting with a strongly stated back beat by drummer Willie Sims, and superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, and tenor saxophone solos by 17 year old Raymond Hill (later to be the father of Tina Turner's first child, before she married Ike). The song also features one of the first examples of distortion, or fuzz guitar, ever recorded, played by the band's guitarist Willie Kizart.
The legend of how the sound came about says that Kizart's amplifier was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee, but Phillips liked the sound and used it. Robert Palmer has written that the amplifier "had fallen from the top of the car", and attributes this information to Sam Phillips. However, in a recorded interview at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington, Ike Turner stated that the amplifier was in the trunk of the car and that rain may have caused the damage; he is certain that it did not fall from the roof of the car.
It was the second-biggest rhythm and blues single of 1951, reaching # 1 in June for five weeks and much more influential than some other "first" claimants. Ike Turner's piano intro to the song was later used note-for-note by Little Richard in "Good Golly Miss Molly."
