'Presley by all accounts was quick to acknowledge his debt to African-American performers,' Noah Berlatsky wrote for the Atlantic. I loved Elvis, but it's a lie to say he invented anything.'īut that doesn't mean Elvis meant to steal the spotlight from black rock musicians. So how can they say who started rock and roll in 1954? The fact is that Fats Domino sold more records than Elvis between 19. 'I knew Elvis,' he told the New York Sun in 2004.'This is media history, not real history. We don't think about the black woman behind the young white man.'Īnother originator of rock 'n' roll, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Lloyd Price, has said that Elvis is not responsible for the creation of the genre. It's not an image that I think we're used to thinking of in rock and roll history. 'When you see Elvis Presley singing songs early in his career, I think you imagine, he is channeling Rosetta Tharpe. 'She had a major impact on artists like Elvis Presley,' Gayle Wald - professor of English at George Washington University and author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe - told a film crew, according to Fusion. While many names can be attributed to shapingof the genre, only one person can lay claim to the creation of that classic rock 'n' roll sound: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a self-taught guitarist who successfully crossed over from gospel music to rock 'n' roll. 'If you look back at the most influential musicians of the 20th century, she's probably in the top 10,' Bob Merz, a Pennsylvania-based writer and publisher who once organized a benefit concert to pay for a memorial for Tharpe, told NPR.īrittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, the rock band that won multiple awards at the 58th Grammys, paid tribute to her predecessor with an outfit that reminded many of the late Tharpe. White kids started paying more attention to this music, white girls were going over to this music, they needed somebody to come in there - like Elvis.' 'There wasn't nobody playing it at the time but black people - myself, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry. 'It started out as rhythm and blues,' Little Richard told Time in 2001.

Rock 'n' roll was influenced by a Deep South black music genre called the blues.

Black legend singers