On March 3-5, 1951 American musician, bandleader, talent scout, and record producer
Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm, recorded the
rhythm and blues song,
Rocket 88 in
Memphis, Tennessee. This " hymn of praise" for the first American muscle car, the
Oldsmobile Rocket 88, which had been introduced in 1949, has been called "
the first rock and roll song."
"The original version of the
twelve-bar blues song was credited to
Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, which hit number one on the
R&B charts. Brenston was
Ike Turner's saxophonist and the Delta Cats were actually Turner's
Kings of Rhythm back-up band, who rehearsed at the Riverside Hotel in
Clarksdale, Mississippi. Brenston sang the lead vocal and is listed as the songwriter, although Turner was the actual author of the song.
[7] Raymond Hill played the tenor sax and Willie Sims was the drummer.
[8]
"Drawing on the template of
jump blues and
swing combo music, Turner made the style even rawer, superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, and tenor saxophone solos by 17-year-old
Raymond Hill. Willie Sims played drums for the recording. The song also features one of the first examples of
distortion, or
fuzz guitar recorded, played by the band's guitarist
Willie Kizart."(Wikipedia article on Rocket 88, accessed 9-2020).
However:
"Rock 'n' roll was an evolutionary process – we just looked around and it was here. . . . To name any one record as the first would make any of us look a fool."
—Billy Vera, Foreword to "What Was the First Rock'n'Roll Record", Jim Dawson and Steve Propes, 1992" (Wikipedia article on First rock and roll recording, accessed 06-01-2009).