7 - The turn to noise: rock guitar from the 1950s to the 1970s

Summary

Accidents will happen

Did rock and roll guitar emerge by accident? Certainly the creation of rock and roll itself was a complex phenomenon indicative of the shifting tides of race, class, and popular music in the mid-twentieth century United States. And yet, amidst the broader historical currents that one might consider in any rock and roll chronicle, there also exist the odd details and apparent accidents that can be seen to have made all the difference in the world. Take, for instance, the 1951 recording of “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner and his Rhythm Kings. Said by many historians to have been the first bona fide rock and roll recording, “Rocket 88” achieved much of its distinctive sound from an accident that happened on the way to the Memphis recording studio run by Sam Phillips. Guitarist Willie Kizart's amplifier fell from the roof of the band's car, leaving the amp with a burst speaker cone. Lacking the time and the resources to fix it, Phillips and the band began experimenting, and after a while found that the fuzzy tone produced by the broken speaker sounded good, giving Kizart's electric guitar a heavier sound that was almost more like a saxophone than a guitar, but was also thoroughly electric. With this unique electric guitar sound holding down the bottom end of the song, “Rocket 88” took shape as a song with as much drive as the car about which Jackie Brenston sang, and laid some of the groundwork for the reconstruction of rhythm and blues that would subsequently become known as rock and roll.