Paul Bascomb - Rock & Roll (1947)

Edit: the full song is available here: I choose to keep this song here so that hopefully more people will find out about this revolution in music history from this forgotten genius. This is the very first true Rock & Roll song. By this time Rock & Roll had already developed itself quite a bit, since artists had already started playing Rhythm & Blues with influences from Boogie-Woogie and black gospel music, the three genres that set the foundation for Rock & Roll. However, full Rock & Roll bands didn’t start appearing until 1950 and 1951 with bands like The Treniers and later on Fats Domino. And songs that rocked this hard where very rare until 1949 and 1950. In short this song was way ahead of it’s time, even though the foundation for the genre had already been set, and Paul Bascomb was far from alone in taking Rhythm & Blues in this new direction. Unfortunately I only have the last minute of this song, I have been unable to find the full song. This artist is very obscure and largely forgotten by history, which is very sad considering his importance. Unfortunately he was not able to find success in the mid 50’s when Rock & Roll went mainstream, mainly because he was too old, which made him unattractive to the white teenage audience. I got the sample from this fantastic website, you can read more about the true roots of Rock & Roll and its early development here: