[78-L] Rock & Roll rising

[Joe Scott]

P.P.S.
Regarding "much harder to pinpoint," imo whether the song's lyrics include "rock" and there's a lot of backbeat by percussion are both easy to pinpoint. That's stuff like "Rock And Roll" by Bill Moore in 1948, "Hole In The Wall," "Rock The Joint," and countless others (none of them from e.g. 1945). And then if it sounds influenced by and similar to those songs but it's e.g. an instrumental, it could be an "instrumental rocker," as Billboard described McNeely's "Cherry Smash" on 10/8/49. Once the fad sounds exists as a continuous tradition, Doc Pomus (I'm forgetting the song title right now) or Carl Davis's "She Sure Likes To Run," both in 1949, or "Johnny B Goode" can be considered by us rock and roll in style whether they happen to mention the words "rock" or "roll" or not. I don't see any point in grandfathering presence of backbeat as having to do with "rock and roll" back to the tiny proportion of c. 1945 recordings that have backbeat through most of the tune but no lyrics about rocking and rolling by e.g. Buddy Johnson and Lionel Hampton (even though I think Hampton's use of backbeat may well have helped influence Wynonie to use it).
Joseph Scott