1951 Tennessee Waltz Les Paul & Mary Ford

Rock and roll dominated popular music in the mid-50s and late 50s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; with country and western and Pop. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the big boom electric guitar (developed and popularized by Les Paul). Paul&hit records like "How High the Moon", and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", helped lead to the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing of such complicated exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore. Chuck Berry, who is one of the pioneers of Rock and roll music, refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. A decade earlier, Sister Rosetta Tharpe fused gospel and blues, inventing rock &roll electric guitar by developing sophisticated phrasing and licks that served as the basis for the iconic rock guitar style of the 1950s and beyond. Artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and His Comets, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Big Joe Turner, and Gene...