Word: rolled
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...object of all this attention is a musical style known as "rock 'n' roll," which has captivated U.S. adolescents as swing captivated prewar teen-agers and ragtime vibrated those of the '20s. It does for music what a motorcycle club at full throttle does for a quiet Sunday afternoon...
Rock 'n' roll is based on Negro blues, but in a self-conscious style which underlines the primitive qualities of the blues with malice, aforethought. Characteristics: an unrelenting, socking syncopation that sounds like a bull whip; a choleric saxophone honking mating-call sounds; an electric guitar turned up so loud that its sound shatters and splits; a vocal group that shudders and exercises violently to the beat while roughly chanting either a near-nonsense phrase or a moronic lyric in hillbilly idiom...
Obsessive Beat. The fad began to flame a couple of years ago, when pop music was so languid and soupy that kids could no longer dance to it-and jazz headed farther out. Rock 'n' roll got its name, as it got some of its lyrics, from Negro popular music, which used "rock" and "roll" as sexy euphemisms. It caught on with the small record companies, e.g., Dot, King, Sun, that flourish in the Southern, Central and Western states, and soon it grew too big for the majors to ignore. Strangely enough, a group of nonmusicians became...
Suggestive as Swing. There is no denying that rock 'n' roll evokes a physical response from even its most reluctant listeners, for that giant pulse matches the rhythmical operations of the human body, and the performers are all too willing to specify it. Said an Oakland, Calif, policeman, after watching Elvis ("The Pelvis") Presley (TIME, May 14) last week: "If he did that in the street, we'd arrest him." On the other hand, the fans' dances are far from intimate-the wiggling 12-and 13-year-olds (and up) barely touch hands and appear oblivious...
Does rock-'n'-roll music itself encourage any form of juvenile delinquency? Illinois' Cook County Sheriff Joseph D. Lohman, who was a professional sociologist and criminologist before becoming sheriff, says: "I don't think there's any correlation between juvenile delinquency and rock 'n' roll, but rock 'n' roll is a symptom of a condition that can produce delinquency." Even Boston's fired-up anti-r. & r. campaigners concede that "it is a fad that has been adopted by the hoodium element, and that's where the trouble starts...