This video this is almost certainly footage from March/April 1935, shot in Wilton, CT.,  probably at the home of friends of the Lomaxes. John and Alan Lomax were anthropologists and music historians who collected songs to preserve in the Library of Congress.

The specific origins of “Irene” are unclear. Lead Belly was singing a version of the song as early as 1908, which he claimed to have learned from his uncles Terell and Bob.

“Irene” has pretty accurately been reported to have been written in about 1888 by a man from Dayton, Ohio named Gussie L. Davis. It was picked up by the minstrel shows who traveled the country. It was probably sung in Shreveport where Lead Belly’s uncle, who was a musical man himself, brought it home.

Changing old songs into new ones was something Lead Belly may have picked up during the many years he spent in prison. Over the course of nearly 25 years, he served four different sentences: two for assault, one for attempted homicide and one for murder. This gave him lots of time to listen to, and learn, the music of older inmates.

While made widely known by Lead Belly, this song was also a major hit for a group called The Weavers, featuring a young Pete Seeger. Seeger says Lead Belly must have made a few changes to the original tune.

He changed everything he ever sung. I’ve seen in a book the words with a completely different tune printed way back in the 19th century, but not the exact same words, just the chorus and maybe the first verse. He added verses, and he completely changed the tune.

This single first reached the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart on June 30, 1950 and lasted 25 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1 for 13 weeks. Although generally faithful, the Weavers chose to omit some of Lead Belly’s more controversial lyrics, leading Time magazine to label it a “dehydrated” and “prettied up” version of the original.  Due to the recording’s popularity, however, The Weavers’ lyrics are the ones generally used today. Billboard ranked this version as the No. 1 song of 1950.

Often cited as a major influence on the history of Folk, Country, and even the Blues, the song has been covered by other artists such as Mississippi John Hurt, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Ry Cooder, Ernest Tubb and Red Foley, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Dr. John, and Tom Waits, and many others. Here’s a version by Eric Clapton:

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The origin and meaning of this song are controversial and have been researched by many. I won’t attempt to repeat all the discussions here, but a good article to start with may be this one. Theories from a centuries old folk song about a bottle of whiskey, a gun, a work song, a marching cadence, an actual woman, a prison transport wagon, or a whip used by prison guards have been offered.

Let’s start with the earliest known recording of the song:

The song was first recorded in the field by US musicologists John and Alan Lomax in December 1933, performed a cappella by the convict James “Iron Head” Baker, with R.D. Allen and Will Crosby singing back up, at Central State Farm, Sugar Land, Texas (a State prison farm). Baker was 63 years old at the time of the recording.

Alan Lomax travelled with his father, John A. Lomax on field recording trips during the 30s, collecting folk songs and tunes from various states in the USA. They collected songs for the Library of Congress Archive. Until that time, John Lomax had been an administrator at a college, and had collected cowboy songs, as a hobby. As a result of the Depression and economic crash of the 30s, John Lomax became jobless, and started collecting folk songs and related material on a full-time basis. In 1934, John Lomax became honorary consultant and head of the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song. By the time Alan was 23 years old he was assistant director of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library. After special service in World War II, Alan became the Director of Folk Music for Decca Records. A notated version was published in 1934 in the Lomaxes book “American Ballads and Folk Songs”. It was recorded commercially in New York in April 1939 for the Musicraft Records label by Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter. Musicraft issued the recording in 1939 as part of a 78rpm five-disc album entitled “Negro Sinful Songs sung by Lead Belly”.

While Lead Belly’s 1939 recording was also performed a cappella (with hand claps in place of hammer blows), most subsequent versions added guitar accompaniment. These include folk-style recordings in 1964 by Odetta (as a medley with “Looky Yonder”, with staccato guitar strums in place of hand claps), and Alan Lomax himself.

Odetta Holmes was an important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. I was unable to locate her recording of this song.

The only recording by Alan Lomax of himself covering this song I could locate is here, unless you have a Spotify account.

In 1968 Manfred Mann released a version of the song, arranged for a band, with the title and lyrics changed to “Big Betty”, on their LP “Mighty Garvey!”. It is definitely “updated” for the RocknRoll audience of the time.

“Black Betty”, in one version or another, has been covered by many artists over the years. From Sir Tom Jones (yes, the one that sang “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat”) to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Spiderbait, Meatloaf, Melvins, ZZ Top, and Ministry. Of course one of the most known recent versions was made popular by Ram Jam in 1977.

To go down the rabbit hole a little deeper, Bill Bartlett (guitarist for Ram Jam)  was originally in the group Lemon Pipers who had the one hit wonder “Green Tambourine”.

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The simple answer? There was no “first”.

Musical styles have always been an evolution, a progression. The various styles and genres have always been layers built on previous expressions and added to, subtracted from, and slightly modified from other’s visions. There have been noticeable instances that ushered in a new, more distinct direction. Some of that evolution could be: “Blues” for raw emotion and the dominant guitar, “Gospel for uplift and abandon, and “Jump/Swing” for rhythm and rebellion.

Let’s start with the term “Rock and Roll” and then look at some contenders for the title of First Rock and Roll Record:

As for the origins of the term “rock ‘n’ roll”: according to the State of Ohio, which erected a plaque in commemoration, it was popularized by the DJ Alan Freed, who, from 1951, played the music on his “Moondog House Rock ‘n’ Roll Party” radio show. But the term has history going back long before Freed’s days. In 1933 the Boswell Sisters performed, on film, a song called “Rock and Roll”; in a stylized maritime setting, the three singers sit aboard a mocked-up boat that is rocking and rolling — though this is just one big visual euphemism: the term’s origins are sexual.

In 1922, for instance, blues singer Trixie Smith sang, simmeringly, “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)”.

But “rock ‘n’ roll” had connotations that were sacred, too. In a 1910 recording, the black vocal harmony group the Male Quartette sing about “rocking and rolling/in the arms of Moses”.

The 1951 hit Rocket 88 from Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats is considered by many to be the first rock ’n’ roll record. Brenston was a saxophonist, the Delta Cats a R&B band led by Ike Turner; together they created an explosive song that is considered by many historians of popular music to be the first rock ‘n’ roll record. Among the factors that have led to the singling out of “Rocket 88” is the fuzzy guitar sound, achieved thanks to a damaged loudspeaker (pop history is littered with damaged speakers: see The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”).

But was “Rocket 88” actually the first rock ‘n’ roll record? It’s tempting to reduce musical history to a series of key “moments” but in truth it is a process, and “Rocket 88” was only the latest in a series of recordings that took the structure of the 12-bar blues and, both figuratively and literally, electrified it.

Even if “Rocket 88” wasn’t the first rock ‘n’ roll record, it marks a turning point: it’s about a car, the coveted Oldsmobile Rocket 88. Boogie-woogie is the sound of a train running along the tracks, a connection made explicit in Louis Jordan’s 1946 hit “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie”

(“Take me right back to the track, Jack”) but, by the 1950s, black Americans were moving north, earning better money and buying cars. “Rocket 88” is a song about mobility, with the car also serving as a metaphor for sexual prowess.

That song’s immediate antecedents were the “jump blues” or “jump‘n’jive” songs of players such as Chris Powell and Louis Jordan.

Check out Jordan’s “Caldonia”:

from 1945 (and don’t get distracted by the subplot involving Jordan being attacked by his wife with a knife). The roots of rock ‘n’ roll are clearly audible: the bassline, the beat, the energy. The bassline in all these songs, played on an upright bass, is a direct descendant of the left-hand in boogie-woogie piano, the blues-based form that became a craze in the 1930s and 1940s, popularised by players such as Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. This music emerged from the logging camps of Texas and Louisiana and has been dated back as far as the 1870s; these camps would have had a shed, a supply of drink and a piano. There were even pianos aboard the trains carrying workers from one camp to the next.

“That’s All Right, Mama” – Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (1946)

In 1940, Arthur Crudup was reportedly living in a packing crate near an L train station in Chicago, playing songs on the street for tips. Things got better for him as the decade went on, and he landed a recording contract that led to a career as a well-known blues singer and songwriter. In 1946, Crudup recorded his song “That’s All Right, Mama.”

Though it wasn’t a hit at the time, it stands as a convincing front-runner for rock ‘n’ roll’s ground zero. With a tight combo of guitar, upright bass and drums bashing out accompaniment behind Crudup’s raw, powerful voice, it sounds a decade ahead of its time. There’s even a wild guitar solo, prefaced by Crudup shouting, “Yeah, man.” Very rock ‘n’ roll. And the last thirty seconds of the record pick up steam with the kind of unhinged energy that would become an essential element of all great rock records. Soon, Crudup was being called “the Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” As shown in the video, Elvis Presley played rhythm guitar on this and eight years later Elvis Presley did a cover record of it for his first single.

“Rock the Joint” – Jimmy Preston & His Prestonians

“Rock the Joint”, also known as “We’re Gonna Rock This Joint Tonight”, was recorded by various proto-rock and roll singers, notably Jimmy Preston and Bill Haley. Preston’s version has been cited as a contender for being “the first rock and roll record”, and Haley’s is widely considered the first rockabilly record. The song’s authorship is credited to Harry Crafton, Wendell “Don” Keane, and Harry “Doc” Bagby.

This song was recorded in 1947 by R & B artist Roy Brown titled “Good Rocking Tonight”.

Brown had originally offered the tune to raspy-voiced singer Wynonie “Mr. Blues” Harris, but Harris turned it down. After Brown had a hit with it, Harris reconsidered, cutting a version that upped the ante. Bouncing boogie woogie piano, honking tenor sax, drums and handclaps accenting the backbeat, and Harris shouting “Hoy, hoy, hoy!” – it all adds up to a raucous glimpse into the future. Again, a young Elvis Presley was listening. In 1954, Elvis released his version of the song. He was also watching Harris’s stage moves included pelvic jabs, lip curl and evangelical wavings of his arms and hands. All would become part of Elvis’s stage persona.

Louis Jordan – Saturday Night Fish Fry (1949)

This huge hit from 1949 (it was one of the first “race” records to cross over to the national charts, although the very popular Jordan had already had earlier crossover hits) combined a lively jump rhythm, call-and response chorus and double-string electric guitar riffs that

Chuck Berry would later admit “To my recollection, Louis Jordan was the first one that I hear play rock and roll.” “Saturday Night Fish Fry” was first recorded by Eddie Williams and His Brown Buddies, which featured the talk-singing vocals of the tune’s composer, New Orleans born Ellis Walsh. The act had recently had a number 2 R&B hit with the song “Broken Hearted”, and “Saturday Night Fish Fry” was intended to be the band’s followup.

However, the acetate for the Williams band version found its way to Louis Jordan’s agent and as Williams later recalled, “They got theirs out there first.” However, Jordan also reconfigured the song, taking a refrain that had been intermittent in Wiliam’s version—”And it was rockin’, it was rocking, you never seen such scuffling and shuffling ’til the break of dawn”—and refocusing it as the recording’s hook, singing it twice after every other verse. The Jordan band also dropped the shuffling rhythm of the Eddie Williams original, accelerating the pace into a raucous, rowdy jump boogie-woogie arrangement.

As I said there is no “first” Rock and Roll record, but these are certainly worth noting as participants in what was to become labeled as such. This subject has and is to be discussed for quite a while and the best that can be done is to look at history and enjoy the recordings and artists that ushered in a significant era of expression in music. I invite and look forward to everyone to add to the discussion.

Aside from it’s birth, now that is undoubtedly here I think Neil Young put it well – “Rock and Roll will never die”. And that is a prime reason for this site.

Thanks to knkx.org, Mentalfloss.com, and others for their contributions.

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