Rock and Roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s. It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, boogie woogie, jazz and swing music, and was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid-1960s, has been generally known as rock music.
The phrase "rocking and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but was used by the early twentieth century, both to describe a spiritual fervour and as a sexual analogy. Various gospel, blues and swing recordings used the phrase before it became used more frequently - but still intermittently - in the mid to late 1940s, on recordings and in reviews of what became known as "rhythm and blues" music aimed at a black audience. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the term "rock and roll" to describe it.
Because the development of rock and roll was an evolutionary process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously "the first" rock and roll record. In terms of its wide cultural impact across society in the US and elsewhere, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", recorded in April 1954 but not a commercial success until the following year, is generally recognised as an important milestone, but it was preceded by many recordings from earlier decades in which elements of rock and roll can be clearly discerned.
The alliterative phrase "rocking and rolling" was originally used by mariners at least as early as the 17th century, to describe the combined "rocking" (fore and aft) and "rolling" (side to side) motion of a ship on the ocean. Examples include an 1821 reference, "...prevent her from rocking and rolling... and an 1835 reference to a ship "...rocking and rolling on both beam-ends”. As the term referred to movement forwards, backwards and from side to side.
