Rocket 88
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"Rocket 88" (originally stylized as Rocket "88") is a song that was first recorded in
Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Situated along the Mississippi River, it had a population of 633,104 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tenne ...
, in March 1951. The recording was credited to " Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats"; while Brenston did provide the vocals, the band was actually
Ike Turner Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, record producer, and talent scout. An early pioneer of 1950s rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and ...
and his
Kings of Rhythm Kings of Rhythm are an American music group formed in the late 1940s in Clarksdale, Mississippi and led by Ike Turner through to his death in 2007. Turner would retain the name of the band throughout his career, although the group has undergone c ...
. The single reached number one on the ''Billboard'' R&B chart. Many music writers acknowledge its importance in the development of
rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...
music, with several considering it to be the first rock and roll record. In 2017, the
Mississippi Blues Trail The Mississippi Blues Trail was created by the Mississippi Blues Commission in 2006 to place interpretive markers at the most notable historical sites related to the birth, growth, and influence of the blues throughout (and in some cases beyond) t ...
dedicated its 200th marker to "Rocket 88" as an influential record. The song was inducted into the
Blues Hall of Fame The Blues Hall of Fame is a music museum operated by the Blues Foundation at 421 S. Main Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Initially, the "Blues Hall of Fame" was not a physical building, but a listing of people who have significantly contributed to b ...
in 1991, the
Grammy Hall of Fame The Grammy Hall of Fame is a hall of fame to honor musical recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance. Inductees are selected annually by a special member committee of eminent and knowledgeable professionals from all branches of ...
in 1998, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), also simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and the ...
in 2018, and the
National Recording Registry The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation ...
in 2024.


Composition and recording

The original version of the
twelve-bar blues The twelve-bar blues (or blues changes) is one of the most prominent chord progressions in popular music. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics, phrase, chord structure, and duration. In its basic form, it is predominantly ba ...
song was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, which reached number one on the
R&B chart The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart ranks the most popular R&B and hip hop songs in the United States and is published weekly by '' Billboard''. Rankings are based on a measure of radio airplay, sales data, and streaming activity. The chart had 100 ...
s. Brenston was
Ike Turner Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, record producer, and talent scout. An early pioneer of 1950s rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and ...
's saxophonist and the Delta Cats were actually Turner's
Kings of Rhythm Kings of Rhythm are an American music group formed in the late 1940s in Clarksdale, Mississippi and led by Ike Turner through to his death in 2007. Turner would retain the name of the band throughout his career, although the group has undergone c ...
back-up band, who rehearsed at the Riverside Hotel in
Clarksdale, Mississippi Clarksdale is a city in and the county seat of Coahoma County, Mississippi, Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States. It is located along the Sunflower River. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, a settler who founded the city in the mid-19t ...
. Brenston sang the lead vocal and is officially listed as the songwriter. Turner led the band and is credited in some sources as the composer. Brenston later said that the song was not particularly original; "they had simply borrowed from another jump blues about an automobile, Jimmy Liggins’ 'Cadillac Boogie. The song was a hymn of praise to the joys of the
Oldsmobile Oldsmobile (formally the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors) was a brand of American automobiles, produced for most of its existence by General Motors. Originally established as "Olds Motor Vehicle Company" by Ransom E. Olds in 1897, it produc ...
Rocket 88 automobile which had recently been introduced, and was based on the 1947 song "Cadillac Boogie" by Jimmy Liggins. Drawing on the template of
jump blues Jump blues is an uptempo style of blues, jazz, and boogie woogie usually played by small groups and featuring horn instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Appreciation of jump blues wa ...
and swing combo music, Turner made the style even rawer, superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, distorted guitar played by Willie Kizart (the first use of such a sound on record), and tenor saxophone solos by 17-year-old Raymond Hill. Willie Sims played drums for the recording. A review of the record in ''Time'' magazine included: The legend of how the sound came about says that Kizart's
amplifier An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power su ...
was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. An attempt was made to hold the cone in place by stuffing the amplifier with wadded newspapers, which unintentionally created a distorted sound; Phillips liked the sound and used it. Peter Guralnick, in his biography of Sam Phillips, has the amplifier being dropped from the car's trunk when the band got a flat tire and was digging out the spare. Phillips offered this reminiscence about the amp in an interview with ''Rolling Stone'': "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". Afterwards, Phillips had no complaints about the unusual effect the "fix" had created. "The more unconventional it sounded, the more interested I would become in it." The song was recorded in the Memphis studio of producer
Sam Phillips Samuel Cornelius Phillips (January 5, 1923 – July 30, 2003) was an American disc jockey, songwriter and record producer. He was the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where he produced recordings by Elvis Presley, R ...
in March 1951, and licensed to
Chess Records Chess Records was an American record company established in 1950 in Chicago, specializing in blues and rhythm and blues. It was the successor to Aristocrat Records, founded in 1947. It expanded into soul music, gospel music, early rock an ...
for release. The record was supposed to be credited to Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm featuring Jackie Brenston, but Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats was printed instead. Turner blamed Phillips for this error since he was the one who licensed it to Chess. Turner and the band were only paid $20 each (US$ in dollars) for the record, with the exception of Brenston who sold the rights to Phillips for $910. Whether this was the first record of the rock'n'roll genre is debated. A 2014 article in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' stated that "Rocket 88's reputation may have more to do with Sam Phillips's vociferous later claims he had discovered rock'n'roll". Time quotes ''The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll'' and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as confirming that "Rocket 88 may well have been the first rock 'n' roll record". In a later interview, however, Ike Turner offered this comment: "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".


Chart performance

"Rocket 88" was the third-biggest
rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predomina ...
single in
jukebox A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that plays a user-selected song from a self-contained media library. Traditional jukeboxes contain records, compact discs, or digital files, and allow user ...
plays of 1951, according to ''
Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
'' magazine, and ninth in record sales. The single reached the top of the Best Selling R&B Records chart on June 9, 1951, and stayed there for three weeks. It also spent two weeks at the top of the Most Played Juke Box R&B Records chart; spending a total of five weeks at number-one on the R&B charts.


Influence

Ike Turner's piano intro on "Rocket 88" influenced
Little Richard Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), known professionally as Little Richard, was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as the "Ar ...
who later used it for his 1958 hit song " Good Golly, Miss Molly." Sam Philips, the founder of
Sun Records Sun Records is an American independent record label founded by producer Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee on February 1, 1952. Sun was the first label to record Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Jo ...
and Sun Studio, and many writers have suggested that "Rocket 88" has strong claims to be called the first rock'n'roll record. Others take a more nuanced view. Charlie Gillett, writing in 1970 in ''The Sound of the City'', said that it was "one of several records that people in the music business cite as 'the first rock'n'roll record. It has been suggested by Larry Birnbaum that the idea that "Rocket 88" could be called "the first rock'n'roll record" first arose in the late 1960s; he argued that: "One of the reasons is surely that Kizart's broken amp anticipated the sound of the fuzzbox, which was in its heyday when 'Rocket 88' was rediscovered." Music historian Robert Palmer, writing in ''The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll'' in 1980, described it as an important and influential record. He noted that Hill's saxophone playing was "wilder and rougher" than on many
jump blues Jump blues is an uptempo style of blues, jazz, and boogie woogie usually played by small groups and featuring horn instruments. It was popular in the 1940s and was a precursor of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Appreciation of jump blues wa ...
records, and also emphasized the record's "fuzzed-out, overamplified electric guitar". Writing in his 1984 book ''Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll'',
Nick Tosches Nicholas P. Tosches (; October 23, 1949 – October 20, 2019) was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, ''Hellfire (Nick Tosches book), Hellfire'', was praised by ''Rolling Stone'' magazi ...
, though rejecting the idea that it could be described as the first rock'n'roll record "any more than there is any first modern novelthe fact remains that the record in question was possessed of a sound and a fury the sheer, utter newness of which set it apart from what had come before." Echoing this view, Bill Dahl at
AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
wrote: Rock art historian Paul Grushkin wrote: Michael Campbell wrote, in ''Popular Music in America: And the Beat Goes On'': Ike Turner himself said, in an interview with Holger Petersen: The song was covered by several artists over the years, the first being
Bill Haley & His Comets Bill Haley & His Comets were an American rock and roll band formed in 1947 and continuing until Haley's death in 1981. The band was also known as Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley's Comets. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group record ...
in July 1951. No matter which version deserves the accolade, "Rocket 88" is seen as a prototype rock and roll song in musical style and lineup, as well as its lyrical theme, in which an automobile serves as a metaphor for sexual prowess.


Album appearances

The song appears on the 1959 compilation album ''Oldies in Hi Fi'' (Chess LP 1439), on the 1983 Charly Records compilation ''Red Hot and Blue'' (a tribute to 1950s Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips), and on the 1987 compilation ''The Best of Chess Rock 'N' Roll'' (Chess CH2-6024).


References


Bibliography

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External links


Rocket "88" - Lyon
on
Mississippi Blues Trail The Mississippi Blues Trail was created by the Mississippi Blues Commission in 2006 to place interpretive markers at the most notable historical sites related to the birth, growth, and influence of the blues throughout (and in some cases beyond) t ...
{{Authority control 1951 singles 1951 songs Songs written by Ike Turner Jackie Brenston songs Bill Haley songs Blues songs Chess Records singles Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients Song recordings produced by Sam Phillips Songs about cars Mississippi Blues Trail United States National Recording Registry recordings