Who first described who as "rock"?

as a verb in gospel and revivalist hymns it prolly kinda goes back at least to the english civil war cf "jesus rocks me", shakers and quakers (which eg for the brethren of the free spirit and the um balls-out faction of early quakerism wd have had a sexual meaning also...); it's the NOUN i'm interested in, and i spose too the noun as meaning something DISTINCT from rock'n'roll (and not just a snappy way of saying it)

I'm going to answer this in both threads...

I'm using information from Nick Tosches for my answers. He talks about this extensively in his amazing book "Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll," which I don't have with me (and which Ethan Hawke approached me on a subway platform to talk about once when he saw I was reading it. "Amazing book innit?" he asked. "Yes," I said. Then I walked away). I do have his even more amazing book about Jerry Lee Lewis called "Hellfire" with me, which says:

"One could see the beginnings of this revolution by looking at the August 7, 1954, issue of the music trade weekly Billboard. On one page there was an advertisement for the new Bill Haley record, "Shake Rattle and Roll." Here, for the first time, Bill Haley and the Comets were being marketed as "The Nation's 'Rockingist' Rhythm Group." A few pages later, in the "Reviews of New C&W Records," there was a review of a record by a young Southern man released by Trumpet, a small Mississipi label: "Gonna Roll and Rock," by Lucky Joe Almond... Onward from this hot, glistering August, rock 'n' roll endlessly came."

He also states:

"What black men had been doing since the mid-forties was now recast by a handful of young white boys who had spent their youth hearing those black men, falling under the spell of their magic, learning. Now they recast that magic, mixed it with white magic, and gave forth something that had not been heard before. They called it rock 'n' roll, the same phrase that blacks had been using for more than a decade; but they let the white people who bought it think that they had invented the phrase, as they they let them think that they had invented the music. This, too, they had learned from those black men."

So my Billboard 1951 statement is off I think. Most assuredly, however, Alan Freed should not be credited with creating anything, other than the pattern of stealing money from black performers like Chuck Berry through shady publishing deals.

yes i looked in Tosches too: it is a great book (i think his best), but it doesn't really answer the question i asked, or have bearing on what i was getting at in the rolling stones question...

I really wanted to hear Ming and Ling after reading that book. I still do...

So what is it you are getting at Mark?

I think I kind of want others to kick the q around a bit before i work out what I am getting at....

(howevah i haf not yet worked out how!!)

rock as NOUN? I can't get the ol' mental thesaurus around that concept at all. Don't nouns need definite articles? I thought when you asked "are the Stones rock?", you meant it as an ADJECTIVE. Expln pls.

if you don't believe me insert (the noun) "jazz" in its place...

(back now to our regularly scheduled discourse on rock)

I've been bitten!

..."The Pretenders were rock and roll. The Bee Gees weren't. Elvis Costello was rock and roll, and then he wasn't."...

'56-'57: Time-Life (that underground media enterprise) released various pop/soul/r&b/r'n'r compilations named with variations of "rock" and "rockin(g)" without the "roll".

1957 elvis presley's hit single (and hollywood smash movie of the same name) "jailhouse rock" with it's chorus "let's rock"

both very popular references of "rock" in the modern vernacular off the top of my head from 45 years ago.

Depends what rock'n'roll is. To me r'n'r == music with primary driving force being steady (danceable) rhythm. With advent of LP over 45, sequencing of album tracks, 64-67, Rubber Soul++, progressive dancing, Beatles become rock. Or, rather, something that is not rock'n'roll but obviously derived from it.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the original discussion, but it's kinda interesting in its own way.

(and as i am asking it YOU have to do the clarifying please)

1. a. The action of the vb. ROCK1; a movement or swaying to and fro, or a spell of this. 1823 CHALMERS Mem. (1851) III. 4, I dislike the idea of him getting such a rock upon the occasion [of a voyage]. 1876 SMILES Sc. Natur. iv. 61 Giving the cradle a final and heavy rock, he left the house. 1891 KIPLING Light that Failed xv. (1900) 284 Dick adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the [camel's] pace.

b. Phr. rock of eye = rack of (the) eye s.v. RACK n.1 4f. 1890 BARRÈRE & LELAND Dict. Slang II. 183/2 Rock of eye and rule of thumb (tailors), refers to doing anything which requires scientific treatment by guesswork. 1957 N. SQUIRE Theory of Bidding xlii. 216 Honour-tricks will be counted at their normal value as in the Table of Honour-tricks, but with additions found by rock-of-eye.

2. orig. U.S. a. Musical rhythm characterized by a strong beat. 1946 MEZZROW & WOLFE Really Blues vii. 90 The Cotton Pickers..came on with a steady rock that was really groovy. 1952 H. SINCLAIR Music out of Dixie vi. 245 He played eight bars of a new introduction he had thought up and..[said] ‘I want that steady rock.’ 1952 R. A. WATERMAN in S. Tax Acculturation in Americas 217 Musical terms like ‘rock’ and ‘swing’ express ideas of rhythm foreign to European folk tradition, and stem from African concepts. 1970 P. OLIVER Savannah Syncopators 36 Jazz developed a different kind of rhythmic feeling with a lifting movement between adjacent beats which the jazz musician identifies as ‘rock’ or ‘swing’.

b. = ROCK AND ROLL. Now freq. used to encompass most modern popular music with a rocking or swinging beat. Also the last element in Combs., as acid rock, folk rock, etc.; see hard rock (c) s.v. HARD a. 23a, PUNK ROCK, raga rock s.v. RAGA 2. 1957 Beat Sept. 7/1 ‘It's the answer to Rock,’ said one and all... But a new sound package of diluted Rock, Hill-Billy tunes and ersatz Blues assails our ears. 1959 Daily Mail 17 Feb. 4/4 Yellow Dog Blues played in basic style by Joe Darensbourg's band..unexpectedly popped up among the rock. 1960 M. SPARK Ballad of Peckham Rye (1964) iv. 58 Findlater's rooms were not given to rowdy rock but concentrated instead upon a more cultivated jive, cha-cha, and variants. 1963 J. T. STORY Something for Nothing v. 166 ‘It's only folk singing,’ Albert told him. ‘Well, it makes a change from all this old rock,’ said Sid. 1965 Time 17 Sept. 102/2 Folk rock owes its origins to Bob Dylan, 24, folk music's most celebrated contemporary composer. 1968 National Observer (U.S.) 3 Nov. 24 It has been clear for some time that ‘rock’ is getting longer, more sophisticated, more ambitious, restless with chordal limitations and the three-minute format. 1969 Britannica Bk. of Year (U.S.) 799/1 Acid rock, rock 'n' roll songs whose titles or lyrics make cryptic reference to drugs. 1969 Rolling Stone 28 June 38/4 (Advt.), Two guitarists needed immediately... Booked for TV show in a few mos. Have material, underground & acidrock. 1972 Saturday Night (Toronto) Sept. 42/2 Like light shows, psychedelic posters and acid rock, it seems to have emerged first in California. 1976 New Statesman 17 Dec. 884/1 The whole of rock..had grown away from its roots, absorbing the influences of poetry, folk and protest music, and in the Sixties becoming central to the internal communications of a whole generation.

c. attrib. and Comb., as rock album, artist, band, beat, club, critic, criticism, culture, fan, festival, group, guitarist, history, idiom, lyric, movement, movie, music, musical, musician, number, opera, press, record, show, singer, singing, song, star, thing; also rock-dominated, -tinged adjs. 1979 Yale Alumni Mag. Apr. 30/3 Many sociable Soviets turned out to be dealers on the thriving Soviet black market..interested primarily in acquiring American blue jeans.., *rock albums, dollars, or chewing gum.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1973 Black World Nov. 45/2 Many *rock and soul *artists have retained their interest in..gospel music.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1968 Listener 13 June 774/1 There was a *rock band that whooped it up all the louder, to drown the inevitable news. 1978 G. VIDAL Kalki vi. 154 A rock band deafened us.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1969 Listener 20 Feb. 251/1 They..claim to have brought ‘the *rock beat, the now sound, to the American Musical Theatre’. 1972 Jazz & Blues Sept. 4/2 A slashing rock beat.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1965 M. MORSE Unattached v. 177 A ‘*rock’ club was started for younger teenagers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 Rolling Stone 13 Jan. 8/3 If *rock critics recognize and understand this as a problem, why don't they do something about it?
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 14 Apr. 40/4 Mark Miller's ‘review’..of recent *rock criticism seriously distorts its subject.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1967 Economist 8 Apr. 144/1 This is politics fashioned for the young: ‘the *rock culture’, it is being called.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 Rolling Stone 24 Mar., His full-blown, upper-register style is ingeniously contrasted with Walden's simple, melodic, *rock-dominated charts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1961 Times 12 Aug. 7/6 More intelligent than the majority of ‘*rock’ fans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1968 Rolling Stone 12 Oct. 1/3 ‘The best freaking scene ever,’ said one musician. The Sky River *Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Show was not dampened by the rain that fell over Labor Day weekend. 1971 M. SMITH Gypsy in Amber xix. 144 I've never seen a rock festival.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1967 Listener 14 Sept. 350/2 *Rock groups..concentrated on achieving the authentic and personal expression. 1977 It May 10/1 Perhaps there are also rock groups who would be prepared to perform at benefit concerts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 Gay News 24 Mar. 28/2 His cohorts perform well too especially Ray Russell, even if he is inclined to go in for circular solos, just like a *rock guitarist.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1976 New Statesman 17 Dec. 884/2 It is this concern with *rock history which distinguishes them from others who have called for a return to the basic virtues of good ole rock-'n'roll.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1976 Gramophone Dec. 952/2 The Amazing Rhythm Aces, a band from Tennessee..successfully combine country, rockabilly, swing and nostalgia into the *rock idiom.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1976 Listener 18 Nov. 645/2 Most *rock lyrics are straight melodramas.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1975 Ibid. 18 Sept. 370/2 The *rock movement saw our present crisis coming and died of shock.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1971 It 4-18 Nov. 19/1 The financial success of cheap *rock movies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1967 Listener 23 Nov. 681/3 Is there an analogy between films and *rock music? 1978 Hi-Fi News Sept. 7 Popular and rock music benefit from this performance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1969 L. ROXON Rock Encycl. 420 By the end of 1968, in spite of all the talk about rock and the new music, the big *rock musical had still to be done. 1977 F. WELDON in Winter's Tales 23 192 Brian offers..Hugo a part in a new rock musical going on in the West End.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1968 Listener 4 July 18/1 *Rock musicians can now sing anything that can be said by traditional forms of creative expression, and more besides. 1969 L. ROXON Rock Encycl. 42 There is not a rock musician working today who has not consciously or unconsciously borrowed from his [sc. Chuck Berry's] sound.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1957 Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 5 Oct. 6 You feel it in a beatin jazzreal cool jazz or a good gutty *rock number.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1969 Newsweek 9 June 95 It was almost inevitable that the British group The Who should write the first *rock opera. 1979 Newsday 31 Dec. 26 Francis Coppola's dazzlingly beautiful, nightmarish Vietnam combat adventure, staged like a psychedelic rock opera, is a provocative drama flawed by a murky ending.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 Zigzag Aug. 6/2 He's one of the only *rock press geezers worth reading. 1977 Chainsaw Sept./Oct. 7/1 The national weekly rock press do have articles on new-wave groups.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1971 B. MALAMUD Tenants 45 They danced to some *rock records Willie had brought along in a paper bag.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1960 New Left Rev. May-June 33/1 He met Mr. Parnes at a Liverpool *rock show.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1959 Punch 10 June 788/2 Richard, like most *rock singers, dances from the knees in a style borrowed from African warriors. 1973 J. JONES Touch of Danger xxvii. 164, I met this boy and dropped out with him. He wanted to be a rock singer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 Rolling Stone 30 June 25/1 One good reason Elliman wants to remain with Clapton is that his band serves as a fine outlet for her *rock singing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1960 Times 26 Feb. 16/4 This song conforms to the pattern of the teenagers' acceptance to-day. It is a *rock song with a rock gimmick.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1976 New Yorker 17 May 125/2 A *rock star with a limp feather boa draped around her shoulders. 1978 G. VIDAL Kalki vi. 153 Deafening was what H.V.W. would call the din from the rock stars' dressing rooms where electric guitars whined.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1959 C. MACINNES Absolute Beginners 56 The days when the *Rock thing first broke.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
1977 Rolling Stone 7 Apr. 26/2 His first solo album, Solid, a fine mixture of love ballads with jazz- and *rock-tinged soul, has been selling short of hit status.

It looks like we may be getting close to finding a winner. This is the earliest mention I could find in that hefty chunk of OED. Now if we can just figure out who the Beat was calling "diluted rock" we'll have one complete answer.

That's better.

Disk jockey Alan Freed is widely credited with coining the term "rock and roll" to describe the uptempo black R&B records he played as early as 1951 on Cleveland radio station WJW. Freed called himself "the Moondog" and billed his show as the "Moondog Rock ‘n' Roll Party." A tireless and enthusiastic advocate of the music he played, Freed kept time to his favorite records by beating his hands on a phone book. He called it rock and roll because "it seemed to suggested the rolling, surging beat of the music." The Freed-sponsored 1952 Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland is believed to be the nation's first rock and roll concert. After conquering Cleveland, he took his show to WINS New York. There, he further spread the gospel of rock and roll via TV, movies and the celebrated all-star shows he promoted at Brooklyn's Paramount Theater. Those stage shows remain the essential rock and roll revues of the era.

blush

Griel Marcus:

I think it was Robert Christgau who called "Blue Suede Shoes" a protest song. In 1992 I could still hear the Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks with Me" as part of the same culture, deriving from the same sense of value. In the 1950s and 1960s it made sense to consider all popular music that derived from and sought to extend and deepen that value as "rock & roll"--doo wop no less than rockabilly, Chicago soul no less than Motown, later Philly soul no less than LA country rock or the San Francisco sound, the Rolling Stones and reggae speaking the same language. I recall a conversation with Richard Meltzer one night, it might have been about "The T.A.M.I. Show," but he said, with great vehemence, as if a huge amount was at stake, something like, "The point is, it was ALL ROCK." Rock & roll contained multitudes, could absorb and transform anything without it itself losing its value, its purpose. And Simon Frith, from the Encylopedia Brittanica, no less:

What is rock?

The difficulty of definition

Dictionary definitions of rock are problematic, not least because the term has different resonance in its British and American usages (the latter is broader in compass). There is basic agreement that rock “is a form of music with a strong beat,” but it is difficult to be much more explicit. The Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, based on a vast database of British usage, suggests that “rock is a kind of music with simple tunes and a very strong beat that is played and sung, usually loudly, by a small group of people with electric guitars and drums,” but there are so many exceptions to this description that it is practically useless.

Legislators seeking to define rock for regulatory purposes have not done much better. The Canadian government defined “rock and rock-oriented music” as “characterized by a strong beat, the use of blues forms and the presence of rock instruments such as electric guitar, electric bass, electric organ or electric piano.” This assumes that rock can be marked off from other sorts of music formally, according to its sounds. In practice, though, the distinctions that matter for rock fans and musicians have been ideological. Rock was developed as a term to distinguish certain music-making and listening practices from those associated with pop; what was at issue was less a sound than an attitude. In 1990 British legislators defined pop music as “all kinds of music characterized by a strong rhythmic element and a reliance on electronic amplification for their performance.” This led to strong objections from the music industry that such a definition failed to appreciate the clear sociological difference between pop (“instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers”) and rock (“album- based music for adults”). In pursuit of definitional clarity, the lawmakers misunderstood what made rock music matter.

Crucial rock musicians

For lexicographers and legislators alike, the purpose of definition is to grasp a meaning, to hold it in place, so that people can use a word correctly—for example, to assign a track to its proper radio outlet (rock, pop, country, jazz). The trouble is that the term rock describes an evolving musical practice informed by a variety of nonmusical arguments (about creativity, sincerity, commerce, and popularity). It makes more sense, then, to approach the definition of rock historically, with examples. The following musicians were crucial to rock's history. What do they have in common?

(He goes on to list Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, Bob Marley, Madonna and Public Enemy.)

What does this version of rock's history—from Presley to Public Enemy—reveal? First, that rock is so broad a musical category that in practice people organize their tastes around more focused genre labels: the young Presley was a rockabilly, the Beatles a pop group, Dylan a folkie, Madonna a disco diva, Marley and the Wailers a reggae act, and Public Enemy rappers. Even Hendrix, the most straightforward rock star on this list, also has a place in the histories of rhythm and blues and jazz. In short, while all these musicians played a significant part in the development of rock, they did so by using different musical instruments and textures, different melodic and rhythmic principles, different approaches to song words and performing conventions.

All right, ignoring d. caveat, here are my authoritative and non- authoritative comments ("authoritative" means "that's what we did in my elementary school and high school"; "non-authoritative" means "I think I remember reading something to this effect somewhere"):

"Rock 'n' roll" (I know this wasn't the question, but enough people have brought it up): used as far back as the 1920s in blues/jazz lyrics to mean sex and dancing, possibly already used to refer to music ("rockin and rollin music"), though not as a genre term per se. By the late '40s the earlier usages were still in effect, but there was a sense of something different (wilder? more empowered, demanding?) going on in r&b/race music, and some of the participants - black - were using "rock 'n' roll" to indicate this difference (though still not using it as a genre term). So when Freed made it a the name of a genre, he was employing a term already in frequent use. (By the way, to talk about rock 'n' roll "deriving" from blues and r&b is misleading. R&b, blues, gospel, country, pop, polka, what have you, were already undergoing constant hybridization; rock 'n' roll ratcheted-up up the rockingness but also greatly increased the "pop" (that is, European-derived) content, the black performers every bit as much as the white, and if you question this, think of the hundred thousand or so [I don't this is an exaggeration] doo-wop songs that used the chords to either "Blue Moon" or "Heart and Soul.") [non-authoritative]

"Rock" - no doubt used in the '50s as short word for "rock 'n' roll," but just as a synonym, not to differentiate itself from rock 'n' roll. Also used as a noun standing for someone who belonged to the social category that later evolved into hoods, greasers, grits, burnouts, etc. (the rocks were the low-income rivals to the preps and socs). [authoritative: there were rocks in Robert Christgau's junior high school; when Christgau was 14 a rock slammed a basketball into Christgau's arm and broke it.]

I'd bet that in the late '50s "rock 'n' roll" evolved contrary usages; e.g., (1) the general term for ALL white teen pop, (2) a term for the rockingest rock 'n' roll with a substantial white audience (this use to differentiate it from the softer white pop and the stuff that a lot of girls listened to), (3) a term like the former but that also covered the rockinger r&b (but not doo-wop) [r&b listened to by white teens and blacks of all ages], (4) a term that covered most of r&b and doo-wop and some teen rock 'n' roll. [non- authoritative]

"Rock" as a genre name breaking off from rock 'n' roll and pop. The Columbia Encyclopedia got this right: 1964, basically along with the British Invasion. By 1965 "rock 'n' roll" meant oldies from the ancient era of the 1950s and early 1960s. Elvis Presley had almost no cultural presence among teenagers in the mid and late '60s. I mean, far less than he has now among teenagers. The only people who used "rock 'n' roll" as a term for contemporary music were teachers trying to sound hip (whom we snickered at) and clueless adults. And '65-'67 "rock" meant the whole onslaught of teen music, whether it was quasi-show music like Nancy Sinatra, James Bond themes, garage rock, doo-wop updates like the Happenings, and of course Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Yardbirds. [authoritative]

"Rock" 1968: the word split off from its previous usage, became the music of the "counterculture," progressive rock; the product switched from singles to albums; Disraeli Gears was the best-selling album. (Top-seller of '67 had been the Dr. Zhivago soundtrack.) A lot of teen music that formerly would have been called rock was now seen as too commercial, too pop, too bubblegum (Neil Diamond, Union Gap, Young Rascals, Lemon Pipers) and in retrospective the earlier garage rock (not a term in use then, by the way) was also seen as too pop and compromised to have ever been real rock (goodbye Troggs, Tremeloes, Electric Prunes, et al.; mid '60s Dylan got late '60s prog radio airplay, but pre '67 Beatles didn't, nor much pre '67 Stones; only their later more "progressive" less pop-seeming stuff). [authoritative, but I don't know whether Top 40 fans still used "rock" to refer to their favorite music]

"Rock 'n' roll" 1969: Not everyone went along with the progressive rock ideology; lots of rock critics didn't; they championed soul or jazz at the expense of "rock," or championed top 40, and favorably recalled early '60s craftsmanship. They were outvoted by the rock fans, and there was an split between rock critics and their constituency, a split that still remains. (Records by old groups like the Ronettes were unavailiable in the U.S. and weren't brought back until the mid '70s.) Peter Laughner in Cleveland was talking about a counter-counterculture. And the word "rock 'n' roll" returned: Creem called itself "America's Only Rock 'N' Roll Magazine." But "rock 'n' roll" didn't mean the 1950s in particular, but pretty much anything from retrograde to experimental that managed to fall outside of "progressive rock." (And even lots of that was included, if you count Stones and Who as progressives.) "Rock 'n' roll" was the code word for the music that evolved into heavy metal, glitter, glam, and punk. (By coincidence, "punk rock" and "heavy metal" were each used as musical descriptions for the first time in the March '71 issue of Creem, the first by Dave Marsh in a review of a ? & the Mysterians reunion gig, the other by Mike Saunders.) These terms were more loosely floating adjectives than genre titles; the Dolls and Mott the Hoople, for instance, were called all four. [authoritative, but simplified and I'm sure not universal; I assume that in Britain, where glam actually hit big, the wordplay was different; but note that the "punk rock movement" was first imagined by critics more than fans or musicians]

kinda wanted this to be a who thread

a what thread?

what's on second

where is the thread?