DESCRIPTION:
"Rocket 88" is a rhythm and blues song that was first recorded at Sam Phillips' recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on 3 March or 5 March 1951 (accounts differ). It has been claimed by Phillips and some music critics to be the "first rock and roll song"

The original version of the twelve-bar blues song was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who took the song to number one on the R&B charts.[2] The band did not actually exist and the song was put together by Ike Turner and his band in rehearsals at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and recorded by Turner's Kings of Rhythm. Brenston, who was a saxophonist with Turner, also sang the vocal on "Rocket 88", a hymn of praise to the joys of the Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" automobile, which had recently been introduced.[3] The song was based on the 1947 song "Cadillac Boogie" by Jimmy Liggins.[4] It was also preceded and influenced by Pete Johnson's "Rocket 88 Boogie" Parts 1 and 2, an instrumental, originally recorded for the Los Angeles-based Swing Time Records label in 1949.[citation needed]

Drawing on the template of jump blues and swing combo music, Turner made the style even rawer, superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, and tenor saxophone solos by 17-year-old Raymond Hill (later to be the father of Tina Turner's first child, before she married Ike).[5] Willie Sims played drums for the recording.[6] The song also features one of the first examples of distortion, or fuzz guitar, ever recorded, played by the band's guitarist Willie Kizart.[7] The legend of how the sound came about says that Kizart's amplifier was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. An attempt was made to hold the cone in place by stuffing the amplifier with wadded newspapers, which unintentionally created a distorted sound; Phillips liked the sound and used it. Robert Palmer has written that the amplifier "had fallen from the top of the car", and attributes this information to Sam Phillips.[8][9] However, in a recorded interview at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington, Ike Turner stated that the amplifier was in the trunk of the car and that rain may have caused the damage; he is certain that it did not fall from the roof of the car. Link Wray had a similar story.[citation needed]



Determining the first actual rock & roll record is a truly impossible task. But you can't go too far wrong citing Jackie Brenston's 1951 Chess waxing of "Rocket 88," a seminal piece of rock's fascinating history with all the prerequisite elements firmly in place: practically indecipherable lyrics about cars, booze, and women; Raymond Hill's booting tenor sax, and a churning, beat-heavy rhythmic bottom.


^ Bill Jahl, Biography of Jackie Brenston, Allmusic,com
^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 78.
^ Collis, John (2003). Ike Turner- King of Rhythm. London: The Do Not Press. pp. 70--76. ISBN 978-1904316244.
^ Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner, Delta Rhythm Kings, NL: Rockabilly.
^ Raymond Hill, Rockabilly Europe.
^ http://www.rockabilly.nl/artists/brenstonturner.htm Rock a Billy Hall of Fame - Jackie Brenston & Ike Turner, Delta Rhythm Kings retrieved 12.2011
^ Shepard, John (2003). Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Performance and Production. Vol. II. Continuum International. p. 286.
^ Palmer, Robert, Deep Blues, p. 222, ISBN 0 14 00.6223 8.
^ Rock & Roll: An Unruly History, p. 201, ISBN 0-517-70050-6.
^ Christian, Margena A. (January 14, 2008). "Ike Turner Memorial". Jet. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
^ Grushkin, Paul (2006), Rockin' Down the Highway: The Cars and People That Made Rock Roll, MBI Publishing, pp. 26--7.
^ Jahl, William 'Bill', Biography of Jackie Brenston, All Music.
^ Chris Gardner's Bill Haley Gallery Presented by Bill Haley Central 1952 and quoting Bass Player magazine. 2000. http://thegardnerfamily.org/haley/gallery/1952.html retrieved 12.2011
^ Jim Dawson and Steve Propes, What Was the First Rock 'n' Roll Record? (Faber & Faber, 1992), ISBN 0-571-12939-0