[78-L] Jump blues, rock and roll

[Joe Scott]

The wording "jump blues" went back to the '30s to describe uptempo blues (uptempo blues themselves went back way before the '30s). Rock and roll, when it used blues structure and wasn't rockabilly, was a subset of jump blues (and started out as that, before mid-'49). This rock and roll recording, "Baby Please Come Home" by Lloyd Price:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU5L85POpBI

was described by Billboard on 4/29/57 as a "jump blues" with a "heavy beat," which was accurate, and it was rock and roll.

Correspondingly, when Billboard said in 1949 that Albennie Jones' "Hole In The Wall" was a "rocker," they weren't saying it wasn't a jump blues.

Joseph Scott