Newsletter
Go Off-Road with DoubleStrike365! Extreme Fun Awaits!








 


 
king and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but by the early 20th century was used both to describe the spiritual fervor of black church rituals and as a sexual analogy. A retired Welsh seaman named William Fender can be heard singing the phrase "rock and roll" when describing a sexual encounter in his performance of the traditional song "The Baffled Knight" to the folklorist James Madison Carpenter in the early 1930s, which he would have learned at sea in the 1800s; the recording can be heard on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website. Various gospel, blues and swing recordings used the phrase before it became widely popular. "Bosom of Abraham", an African-American spiritual that was documented no later than 1867 (just after the Civil War), uses the phrase "rock my soul" frequently in a religious sense; this song was later recorded by musicians from various genres, including various gospel musicians and groups (including The Jordanaires), Louis Armstrong (jazz/swing), Lonnie Donegan (skiffle), and Elvis Presley (rock and roll/pop/country). Blues singer Trixie Smith recorded "My Rocks Me with One Steady Roll" in 1922. It was used in 1940s recordings and reviews of what became known as "rhythm and blues" music aimed at a black audience. Huey "Piano" Smith credits Cha Cha Hogan, a jump-blues shouter and comic in New Orleans, with popularizing the term in his 1950 song "My Walking B