49 Fun Facts About Hard Rock and Roll

Rocket 88 (1951) was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but whose band actually played on it?

Brenston was Turner's saxophonist; the record went to number one on the R&B chart and helped fund Sun Records.

Legend says Willie Kizart's damaged amp on Rocket 88 was repaired with what, creating its fuzz tone?

After the amp fell off the car on Highway 61, Sam Phillips stuffed the torn speaker cone with wadded newspaper and kept the resulting distortion on the record.

Sam Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Service at what address in January 1950?

Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue in January 1950; Sun Records launched from the same storefront in 1952, funded partly by Rocket 88.

Who bought the Sun label from Sam Phillips in 1969?

Shelby Singleton, a former Mercury Records producer, bought Sun from Sam Phillips in 1969 and reissued the catalogue through his Sun International company.

Elvis's That's All Right, cut at Sun in 1954, was a 1946 blues number by which artist?

Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup recorded That's All Right in 1946; Elvis's Sun version was aired by Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips on Red, Hot and Blue days after the July 1954 session.

Elvis made his first television appearance on a KSLA-TV broadcast of which radio show, the Opry's rival?

The Hayride booked him for a year of Saturday nights and its drummer D. J. Fontana turned the trio into a quartet.

What newspaper story inspired Heartbreak Hotel's writers Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden?

Durden showed Axton a newspaper story about a lonely man's suicide whose note read 'I walk a lonely street'; Elvis cut it on 10 January 1956 and it became his first million-seller.

Elvis first heard Hound Dog performed by which Las Vegas lounge act, whose version he copied?

Elvis saw Freddie Bell and the Bellboys play their comic arrangement in Las Vegas in April 1956; the song had been a 1953 hit for Big Mama Thornton, written by Leiber and Stoller.

Elvis paid how much for Graceland in March 1957?

Elvis paid $102,500 for Graceland in March 1957 after sending his parents to find a farmhouse-style property with a $100,000 budget.

Chuck Berry's Maybellene was his adaptation of which country song?

Berry reworked the old fiddle tune Ida Red, a Bob Wills hit, into Maybellene; Leonard Chess preferred it to his blues material and Willie Dixon played bass on the session.

What was Chuck Berry's only number-one single?

My Ding-a-Ling, a live novelty recording from 1972, topped the Billboard Hot 100; Maybellene had reached number one only on the R&B chart seventeen years earlier.

Which songwriter was hired to clean up the lyrics of Little Richard's Tutti Frutti?

Bumps Blackwell brought in local writer Dorothy LaBostrie to replace the obscene lyrics at the September 1955 New Orleans session; Pat Boone's sanitised cover then charted higher on the pop chart than Richard's own.

Little Richard's breakthrough came at which Los Angeles label, run by Art Rupe?

Lloyd Price suggested he send a demo to Specialty Records in February 1955; Art Rupe bought out his Peacock contract and sent him to record in New Orleans with Bumps Blackwell.

Buddy Holly's real surname was Holley. What changed it?

He signed with Decca in February 1956 and simply kept the error.

Why did Buddy Holly's band record That'll Be the Day under the name the Crickets?

Holly's 1956 Decca deal barred re-recording its songs for five years, so to get around Decca's contract limitations the Clovis remake went out on Brunswick as the Crickets and topped the US and UK charts in 1957.

Which Nashville producer, famous for Patsy Cline, produced Buddy Holly's unhappy early Decca sessions?

Owen Bradley ran Holly's 1956 Decca sessions in Nashville, which yielded no hits; wanting more control, Holly drove to Norman Petty's studio in Clovis and cut the demos that made his name.

Which bassist in Buddy Holly's Winter Dance Party band gave up his plane seat to the Big Bopper?

Waylon Jennings, playing bass on the tour, gave his seat to the flu-stricken Big Bopper; Tommy Allsup lost his to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss, and drummer Carl Bunch was in hospital with frostbite.

What type of aircraft crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, on 3 February 1959?

The chartered Beechcraft Bonanza crashed minutes after take-off from Mason City in snow; pilot Roger Peterson was flying the group toward Fargo for a show in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Bill Haley's band was renamed the Comets over Labor Day weekend 1952. What had they been called?

As the Saddlemen they had already covered Rocket 88 in June 1951, and Crazy Man, Crazy charted in 1953.

Bo Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates in which Mississippi town?

Born in McComb, Mississippi, in 1928, he was adopted by his mother's cousin and raised on Chicago's South Side as Ellas McDaniel, later famous for his rectangular guitars.

Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball, called the first rock and roll concert, was shut down in 1952 at which venue?

The Cleveland Arena on 21 March 1952 held about 10,000, but roughly twice that many turned up with duplicate and counterfeit tickets, and police stopped the show after the opening act.

Freed quit WINS in May 1958 after a Boston riot at a show headlined by whom?

Jerry Lee Lewis headlined Freed's Big Beat show at the Boston Arena on 3 May 1958; after the violence Freed was charged with inciting a riot and resigned from WINS.

Which DJ told the Congressional payola hearings he had taken $22,000 to play a record?

Phil Lind of Chicago's WAIT admitted taking $22,000 to play one record; Dick Clark testified too and survived, partly because he had divested his music-industry holdings.

How long did the FBI investigate the Kingsmen's Louie Louie for obscenity before giving up?

The Bureau spent 31 months from 1964 analysing the record before ruling it unintelligible at any speed; it missed drummer Lynn Easton yelling an expletive at 0:54 after fumbling a fill.

Louie Louie was written and first recorded in 1956 by which R&B musician?

Richard Berry wrote it in 1955 after hearing René Touzet's band play El Loco Cha Cha and recorded it with the Pharaohs in 1956; the Kingsmen's 1963 version made it a garage-rock anthem.

Chubby Checker's The Twist set what record?

It hit the top in September 1960 and again in January 1962 when high society belatedly caught the craze.

Ricky Nelson's 'Poor Little Fool' was the first number one on which new listing in 1958?

Poor Little Fool topped the very first Billboard Hot 100, dated 4 August 1958; Nelson went on to place more than fifty songs on the chart through 1973.

Cliff Richard's 1958 single often called Britain's first authentic rock and roll record was what?

Move It, written by Ian Samwell and released in August 1958, reached number two in the UK; Richard, born Harry Webb in Lucknow, India, then ruled British pop with the Shadows until the Beatles.

John Lennon's pre-Beatles skiffle group took its name from what?

Quarry Bank High School's song ran "Quarry men old before our birth"; Lennon formed the group in November 1956 at sixteen.

Stuart Sutcliffe bought the bass guitar that got him into the Beatles with money from what?

Sutcliffe raised the money by selling a painting: John Moores bought his canvas from the 1959 John Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery for £65, and Lennon talked him into a Höfner bass.

Which Hamburg club owner gave the Beatles their first residency there in 1960?

Bruno Koschmider booked them into his Indra club in August 1960 and then the Kaiserkeller; he later fired them for playing Peter Eckhorn's Top Ten Club and reported the underage George Harrison.

The Cavern Club opened on 16 January 1957 catering to which kind of music?

Alan Sytner modelled it on Paris's Le Caveau de la Huchette; the first act was the Merseysippi Jazz Band.

Which Rolling Stones keyboardist was dropped from the official line-up but stayed as road manager until 1985?

Ian Stewart answered Brian Jones's 1962 ad and was dropped from the line-up by manager Andrew Loog Oldham in 1963 for not fitting the image, but played piano and drove the van until his death in 1985.

The Rolling Stones' instrumental 2120 South Michigan Avenue is named after the address of which studio?

The Stones recorded it at Chess Records' Chicago studio in June 1964 on their first US tour; the building at 2120 South Michigan Avenue became a Chicago Landmark in 1990.

Which act was the first to sign for Woodstock, agreeing in April 1969 to play for $10,000?

Creedence Clearwater Revival signed in April 1969 for $10,000, and their name persuaded bigger acts to follow; they went on after the Grateful Dead around midnight on the Saturday.

At what time did Jimi Hendrix finally take the stage to close Woodstock?

Rain delays pushed Hendrix's set to about 8:30 on Monday morning, 18 August 1969; most of the crowd had gone home and missed his Star-Spangled Banner.

Who was the only performer paid a fee ($3,000) at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival?

Ravi Shankar received $3,000 for his Sunday afternoon set, the only fee paid; Paul McCartney, on the board of governors, insisted the festival would be incomplete without Jimi Hendrix.

Which band organised the Altamont Free Concert but never got to play?

The Grateful Dead's camp helped plan the 6 December 1969 show and suggested the Hells Angels as security, but the band declined to go on after the afternoon beatings; Meredith Hunter was killed during the Stones' set.

Which bassist of the Animals became Jimi Hendrix's manager and brought him to England in 1966?

Chas Chandler saw Hendrix at Café Wha? in Greenwich Village in 1966 and flew him to London in September; within months the Experience had three UK top-ten hits: Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary.

Who wrote 'Me and Bobby McGee', Janis Joplin's posthumous 1971 number one?

Kris Kristofferson wrote it with Fred Foster; Roger Miller charted it first in 1969, and Joplin's version from Pearl reached number one in March 1971, five months after her death.

The Doors took their name from a book by which writer?

Aldous Huxley's 1954 essay The Doors of Perception supplied the name; its title in turn borrows a line from William Blake, and the band formed in Los Angeles in 1965.

Besides Leo Fender, which three men are credited with designing the Stratocaster between 1952 and 1954?

Bill Carson, George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares worked with Leo Fender on the contoured, double-cutaway design, which went on sale in 1954.

What did the original 1952 Gibson Les Paul come with?

The 1952 Goldtop had a gold finish and two P-90 single-coil pickups with a trapeze tailpiece; humbuckers arrived in 1957 and the sunburst finish in 1958.

Les Paul's home-made solid-body prototype, which inspired the Gibson Les Paul, was nicknamed what?

The Log was a 4x4 pine post fitted with a neck and pickups, flanked by halves of an Epiphone body so it looked like a guitar; Paul built it around 1940 and Gibson turned him down.

Which blues singer recorded 'My Man Rocks Me with One Steady Roll' in 1922?

Trixie Smith cut My Man Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll) for Black Swan Records in 1922, one of the earliest records to pair 'rock' and 'roll' in a title.

Where did the Killer, later of Sun Records fame, make his very first recordings?

Jerry Lee Lewis cut his first demos at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans before reaching Sun in 1956, where Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On made him famous the following year.

Ritchie Valens's real surname was what?

Born Richard Steven Valenzuela in Pacoima, California, he was 17 when he died and had turned the Mexican folk song La Bamba into a rock and roll hit.

Eddie Cochran died in April 1960 after a taxi crash in which English town?

The taxi hit a lamp post on Rowden Hill in Chippenham, Wiltshire, as Cochran, Gene Vincent and Sharon Sheeley headed for Heathrow after a Bristol Hippodrome show; he died in Bath the next day.

Who established the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983?

Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun set up the foundation in 1983; it began inducting artists in January 1986, chose Cleveland that May, and the I. M. Pei museum opened there in 1995.