For over 65 years now music historians have acknowledged the importance of Rocket 88 in the development of Rock N Roll. Several, in fact, consider it to be the very first Rock N Roll record ever. Here’s why.
Rocket 88 was produced in March 1951 by Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. Originally credited to “Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats”, the band performing the song was actually Ike Turner and his Kings Of Rhythm with sax player Jackie Brenston singing lead.
At the suggestion of the then 25 year old blues guitarist B.B. King, Sam Phillips invited the Kings of Rhythm down to Memphis to record at Sun, necessitating the group to come up with an original song at very short notice for the session.
Kings Of Rhythm tenor sax player Jackie Brenston is credited with writing the song, having suggested they write a song about the new Rocket 88 Oldsmobile. Turner claims to have worked out the arrangement and the piano introduction while the band collaborated on the rest.
Drawing heavily from jump blues and swing, Turner took an unusually raw approach to Brenston’s high energy vocals, his own piano work, 17-year-old Raymond Hill’s tenor sax solos and for the first time ever; guitar distortion.
The origin story of Rock N Roll guitar distortion has 19 year old Kings Of Rhythm lead guitarist Willie Kizart damaging his amplifier on Highway 61 as the band drove from Mississippi to their upcoming recording session at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in Memphis. Legend has it the amp accidentally fell from the trunk as the band dug around for a spare after getting a flat tire.
Studio owner Sam Phillips recounted the event for Rolling Stone magazine 35 years later:
“The bass amplifier fell off the car. And when we got in the studio, the woofer had burst; the cone had burst. So I stuck the newspaper and some sack paper in it, and that’s where we got that sound. The more unconventional it sounded, the more interested I would become in it.” – Sam Phillips
Following the release of the single, record producer Sam Phillips heard no criticism concerning the new unusual guitar sound his quickie amp repair facilitated.
As for Rocket 88 being the very first Rock N Roll record, acclaimed author and BBC broadcaster Paul Gambaccini said:
“Rocket 88 is one of the two records that can claim to be the first rock ‘n’ roll record, the other being The Fat Man by Fats Domino from 1949. But Rocket 88 does have a couple of elements which The Fat Man did not. The wailing saxophone and that distorted electric guitar. It was an indisputable claim to fame for Ike Turner” – Paul Gambaccini
Later in life Jackie Brenston would say Rocket 88 was not a particularly original song saying, “they had simply borrowed from another jump blues about an automobile, Jimmy Liggins’ Cadillac Boogie from 1948”.
At the time, Brenston sold the rights to the song to Sam Phillips who licensed it to Chess Records in Chicago, which released “Rocket 88” as by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats instead of Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm featuring Jackie Brenston on vocals. Turner, who went on to employed by Sam Phillips at Sun as a freelance talent scout, session musician, production assistant and record producer, blamed Phillips for the error. Phillips used the income generated by the success of the record to start Sun Records the following year.
Rocket 88 went on to sell over half a million copies, reaching number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1951.
According to Billboard Magazine, it was the third-biggest R&B single in jukebox plays for 1951 and ninth in record sales. It topped the Best Selling R&B Records chart at Number 1 on June 9, 1951, staying there for three weeks. Rocket 88 also spent two weeks at Number 1 on the Most Played Juke Box R&B Records chart; spending a total of five weeks at number one on the R&B records charts.
Rock N Roll pioneer Little Richard credited Rocket 88 for charting his course in music saying in 1999:
“When I was a little boy, that song fascinated me in a big way. I never heard a piano sound like that. I never played the piano then. Soon, I was trying. if you listen to ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly,’ you hear the same introduction as the one to ‘Rocket 88,’ the exact same, ain’t nothing been changed.” – Little Richard
Rocket 88 was inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame in 1991, the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1998, and the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2018. In 2017, the Mississippi Blues Trail dedicated its 200th marker to “Rocket 88” as an influential record.
Many years later, Ike Turner let his feelings be known concerning Rocket 88 in a candid interview with Canadian broadcaster turned author Holger Petersen:
“I don’t think that “Rocket 88” is rock’n’roll. I think that “Rocket 88” is R&B, but I think “Rocket 88” is the cause of rock and roll existing. Sam Phillips got Dewey Phillips to play “Rocket 88” on his program, and this is like the first black record to be played on a white radio station, and man, all the white kids broke out to the record shops to buy it. So that’s when Sam Phillips got the idea, “Well, man, if I get me a white boy to sound like a black boy, then I got me a gold mine”, which is the truth. So, that’s when he got Elvis and he got Jerry Lee Lewis and a bunch of other guys and so they named it rock and roll rather than R&B and so this is the reason I think rock and roll exists, not that “Rocket 88″ was the first one, but that was what caused the first one”. – Ike Turner
Legends were born. Fortunes were made. And so closes another chapter in the ongoing history of Rock N Roll…