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60 free 50s, 60s and 70s Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
One quiz, three decades. This 50s, 60s and 70s music trivia set gives equal weight to each era: the birth of rock and roll at Sun Records, the Day the Music Died and the first Hot 100; the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Motown, Dylan going electric and Woodstock; then the 1970s of Bowie, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, the Bee Gees, the Sex Pistols and the night Chicago blew up its disco records. It is built for the classic mixed-age trivia night, where the person who remembers buying Rumours on vinyl sits next to the one who knows it from a playlist. Questions run from easy chart facts to genuinely hard ones about producers, labels and studio stories, and none of them ask you to finish a lyric. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article for the artist, album or event, and each question carries the citation. If you want to go deeper on a single decade, BrainPickle also has separate 50s music, 60s music and 70s music quizzes.
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Q 01'Rock Around the Clock' took off in 1955 after it played over the opening credits of which film?
Blackboard Jungle
Bill Haley & His Comets had recorded it in 1954; on July 9, 1955 it became the first rock and roll record to top Billboard's pop chart.
Q 02Who founded Sun Records in Memphis in 1952?
Sam Phillips
His one-room studio at 706 Union Avenue recorded Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who jammed together there as the 'Million Dollar Quartet' in December 1956.
Q 03Elvis Presley's first RCA Victor single, released in January 1956, was which song?
Heartbreak Hotel
It took twelve weeks to reach number one, his first pop chart-topper.
Q 04Chuck Berry's first hit, 'Maybellene' (1955), was his adaptation of which country song?
Ida Red
It sold over a million copies and topped the R&B chart; 'Johnny B. Goode' later became the only rock and roll song on the Voyager Golden Record.
Q 05Which 'safer' white singer's cover of Little Richard's 'Tutti Frutti' charted higher than the original?
Pat Boone
Richard walked away from rock in 1957, mid-tour in Australia, to enter the ministry.
Q 06Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a February 1959 plane crash near which Iowa town?
Clear Lake
Holly chartered the plane to escape the freezing tour bus; the Surf Ballroom, where they played their last show, still holds an annual memorial concert.
Q 07Which future country star gave up his seat on Buddy Holly's fatal flight to the flu-stricken Big Bopper?
Waylon Jennings
Guitarist Tommy Allsup lost his seat to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss.
Q 08Ritchie Valens's biggest hit, 'La Bamba', was adapted from what?
A Mexican folk song
It became a pop hit sung entirely in Spanish; Valens, born Richard Valenzuela in Pacoima, was 17 when he died.
Q 09Jerry Lee Lewis's career collapsed in 1958 when a British reporter discovered he had married whom?
His 13-year-old cousin
The story broke at Heathrow at the start of a UK tour, and radio stations that had already boycotted 'Great Balls of Fire' piled on.
Q 10Fats Domino's 1956 hit 'Blueberry Hill' was a revival of a song from which year?
1940
Glenn Miller, Gene Autry and Louis Armstrong had all recorded it before Domino's rolling New Orleans piano made it his.
Q 11What was the first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 when the chart launched in August 1958?
Poor Little Fool by Ricky Nelson
Nelson was the teen idol from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, so the sitcom effectively launched the Hot 100.
Q 12Sam Cooke's 1957 chart-topper 'You Send Me' had which George Gershwin standard as its B-side?
Summertime
Cooke had come from gospel as lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, and the pop crossover made him a star.
Q 13In 1955 Johnny Cash became the first artist on which label to release a long-playing album?
Sun
Q 21Woodstock in August 1969 was held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in which New York town?
Bethel
The site is 60 miles from Woodstock itself; Yasgur refused to host a 1970 sequel, saying he was going back to running a dairy farm.
Q 22Who closed Woodstock, taking the stage at 8:30 on Monday morning after rain delays?
Jimi Hendrix
His feedback-drenched 'Star-Spangled Banner' was later named the greatest performance of all time by Guitar World's editors.
Q 23Brian Wilson made Pet Sounds (1966) as a direct response to which Beatles album?
Rubber Soul
He told his wife he would make 'the greatest rock album ever made'; the Beatles in turn answered with Sgt. Pepper.
His first Sun recordings that year were 'Hey, Porter' and 'Cry! Cry! Cry!'; his all-black stage wardrobe earned him the 'Man in Black' nickname.
Q 14Elvis was drafted into the US Army in March 1958 and reported to which base?
Fort Chaffee, Arkansas
He had bought Graceland a year earlier, and donated his Army pay to charity while serving.
Q 15Don Everly of the Everly Brothers was born in Brownie, a coal town in which state?
Kentucky
His rhythm-guitar intro to 'Wake Up Little Susie' earned him the Musicians Hall of Fame's first Iconic Riff Award in 2019.
Q 16Elvis's first Sun single paired 'That's All Right' with which bluegrass tune on the B-side?
Blue Moon of Kentucky
Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played 'That's All Right' on air three days after it was cut, and the phones lit up.
Q 17About how many Americans watched the Beatles' first live US TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964?
73 million
That was roughly 34 percent of the US population; the group played a second Sullivan show from Florida a week later.
Q 18Berry Gordy borrowed how much from a family savings fund to start what became Motown?
$800
The label began as Tamla Records in January 1959 and its Detroit studio, Hitsville U.S.A., ran 22 hours a day.
Q 19How many US number one singles did the Supremes score, a record for an American vocal group?
12
Most were written and produced by Holland–Dozier–Holland, starting with 'Where Did Our Love Go' in 1964.
Q 20Where did Bob Dylan play his first concert with electric instruments in July 1965, outraging the purists?
Newport Folk Festival
He was backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; the 'Judas!' heckle came later, on the 1966 UK tour in Manchester.
Q 24Brian Jones named the Rolling Stones on the spot after spotting an LP by which bluesman?
Muddy Waters
One of the tracks on the record lying on the floor was 'Rollin' Stone'.
Q 25Aretha Franklin's 1967 signature hit 'Respect' was originally written and recorded by whom?
Otis Redding
Franklin recorded her version on Valentine's Day 1967; her sister Carolyn is credited with the idea of spelling the title out.
Q 26Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the first rock LP to win which Grammy?
Album of the Year
It won four Grammys in 1968 in all, including one for Peter Blake and Jann Haworth's celebrity-collage cover.
Q 27The Byrds' first hit, 'Mr. Tambourine Man' (1965), was a cover of a then-unreleased song by whom?
Bob Dylan
Their manager got hold of an acetate in 1964, and the jangling Rickenbacker 12-string treatment invented folk rock.
Q 28Under what name did teenagers Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel first record in the late 1950s?
Tom & Jerry
A decade later their songs carried Mike Nichols's The Graduate and 'Mrs. Robinson' went to number one.
Q 29The Doors took their name from a book by which writer?
Aldous Huxley
The Doors of Perception itself borrowed a line from William Blake; the band's 'Light My Fire' was Elektra's first Hot 100 number one.
Q 30Ed Sullivan cancelled six further Doors bookings after Jim Morrison did what on air in 1967?
Sang the word 'higher' as written
The band had agreed to change the 'Light My Fire' lyric for broadcast, then didn't.