![]() ![]() Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard, has called himself “the architect of rock’n’roll,” and he was also savvy enough to know when he needed to compromise. As John Lennon put it: “If you tried to give rock’n’roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.” The rise of 45s went hand in hand with the rise of rock music.ĭespite the surge of teenage buying power, sometimes performers had to adapt their music to the market and to prevailing moral attitudes. There were folk, blues and even classical music 45s (classical was produced on red vinyl), but Chuck Berrywas always going to rule over Beethoven when it came to mass consumer appeal. If a song was about dancing, fun, cars and love, it hit the spot. The teenagers wouldn’t have known – or cared – whether a song aimed at their age group was written by a middle-aged man (as with “Rock Around The Clock”) or based on an old traditional (as with Chuck Berry“s “Maybellene”). Music became the most popular form of entertainment and shaped teenage lifestyles. The golden age of 45s came at a time when teenagers, in a less constricted post-war world, found in record-buying something to bond over and identify with. It was the first single by a rock’n’roll band to top the charts, and was No.1 for eight weeks. The success of the Oscar-nominated movie sparked a buying frenzy and a million copies were bought in March 1955 alone. Ford mentioned Haley’s song to director Richard Brooks and he picked it to play over the opening credits. The boy, Peter Ford, was the son of actor Glenn Ford, who had signed up to star alongside a young Sidney Poitier in a teenage-delinquency film called The Blackboard Jungle, set in an inner-city school. The apocalyptic single, released in May 1954, sold 75,000 copies and would have remained a musical footnote had it not been for a 10-year-old boy in Los Angeles who was captivated by the B-side. Haley and his Comets had recorded the song only as a late B-side addition to a quirky single called “Thirteen Women And Only One Man in Town,” a track about a nuclear blast that leaves only 14 people alive. It was also good fortune, albeit allied to a less experienced ear, that helped Bill Haley’s song “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” become a runaway success that same year. It was certainly not the last time a radio station would play a major part in creating a hit single. A disc was sent to a Memphis DJ, who played it repeatedly, and the public was quickly shaken up. Phillips recorded their version immediately. ![]() Their musical enthusiasm might have gone unrewarded had not producer Sam Phillips been paying attention. In 1954, Presley was taking a break during a recording session at Sun Studios when he began larking around and improvising an uptempo version of blues singer Arthur Crudup’s 1946 song “That’s All Right.” Bill Black came in on bass and Scotty Moore played some guitar licks to join in the fun. Sometimes luck played its part in creating monster hits, especially when an ear attuned for quality and popularity was involved. Within five years, more than 200 million 45s had been sold and the boom made global superstars of people such as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, etching their songs into the public consciousness. The seven-inch 45 was a nifty replacement for the heavy shellac-based 78 record, and a competitor to the 33 long-playing album (45 comes from 78 minus 33) and it unleashed a music revolution. ![]() It was soon clear that the public, especially the young, were willing to buy singles by the millions. When the first 45rpm record – a green vinyl of Eddy Arnold’s “Texarkana Baby” – went on sale on March 31, 1949, from RCA Victor records, it had rival record companies scrambling to produce their own.
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