No one can really say when rock’n’roll was invented. You could say March 1951, with the release of Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. Or maybe July 1954, when Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black stopped messing around between takes at Sun Studios and started hammering through That’s All Right, which became the future King’s first single.
But the year rock’n’roll really became rock’n’roll was 70 years ago, in 1955: the year Little Richard burst on to the world with Tutti Frutti; the year of the first riot at an Elvis show; the year of Blue Suede Shoes and Maybellene; the year of Bo Diddley singing his own praises. In the US, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & His Comets was the biggest record that year. In the UK, its presence on the soundtrack of the teensploitation movie The Blackboard Jungle reportedly sent teddy boys into rampages of cinema-smashing.
