Rock N Roll History

Classic Rock

By Keith Costley

Rock n Roll is a significant part of American History. A genre of popular music derived in the early forties and fifties by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, Elvis Presley, Little Richards, Chuck Berry, and band leaders like Percy Faith and Mitch Miller. A Cleveland, Ohio radio Disc Jockey by the name of Alan Freed would spin up the tempo in rhythm & blues, electric blues, boogie, jazz, gospel, R&B vocal groups, and country hits and aimed his show towards white and black teenagers. Alan would eventually coin this cross cultural music Rock and Roll (Mellor, 2010-2014).

In the early sixties television became a major impact on rock music with the younger audience, from TV shows like American

Rock was often related with sex, drugs, suicide, and violence, bringing kids and teenagers to have bad influences. Rock split two ways in the seventies and eighties, producing what is known as Soft rock and Hard rock. Bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Lynyrd Skynyrd is widely known as being a soft rock appealed to the more educated and clean cut teenager while bands like Motley Crue, Alice Cooper, and Kiss known as hard rock and roll appealed to the so called dead head weed smoking angry teenager who has authority issues. Rock n’ roll has had both positive and negative impacts on the country and to many lives of Americans. It had greatly influenced daily life, fashion, attitudes and language. That led teenagers to accept rock as fashion, dressing in a disgraceful punk style featuring disarrayed hair, smoking cigarettes and wearing torn jeans. At the time adults opposed and condemned rock n’ roll, they saw it as a threat to society in their

It played a huge role within our rebellious ages: the teens. It is one of the most popular forms of music still today. It is also an evolution from previous music history and it evolved into other various forms of music. Classic Rock as it is known today was a great part of the mid 1960’s thru 1980’s is much different than rock music of today. Guitar riffs played an important role in songs as exemplified by “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zepplin and “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple. In Liverpool, England, four young men changed the face of music forever when they formed The Beatles. Beatle mania gripped the world for a good portion of the sixties. The Rolling Stones and The Animals were other great bands of that