Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Larry Birnbaum (review)

There is no facet of rock music—musical, cultural, or linguistic—that is too small for contemplation by Larry Birnbaum in his impressive, if not exhaustive, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ‘n’ Roll. He sets out to prove the actual roots of rock occurred not in the commonly propagated postwar rhythm and blues era, or even the Delta blues tradition, but rather originated in an amalgamation of “Jazz, hokum, boogie-woogie, mambo, calypso … everything from Mexican folk music to grand opera” (p. 380), as well as minstrelsy and western swing. As such, his argument further rallies against the notion that Elvis Presley was the first white musician to adopt African American musical practices authentically, instead contending that the assimilation “by whites is virtually the story of American popular music, from the eighteenth century onward” (p. 23). By wandering through the history of American popular music (and European, to a much smaller degree), he traces back farther into prewar music history than most rock surveys, gathering a wider array of the elements informing rock’s evolution, while concurrently examining the biographical history of artists and their key songs—no matter how obscure. The result is a thorough study of the details and underreported stories that coalesced to make rock what it is even today, presented topically, with only fleeting attention to chronology.

Birnbaum, perhaps best known as a longtime Down Beat contributor, delivers his argument in the introduction, where he discards notions that rock was a “bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop that preceded it and the white appropriation of music that had previously been played only by and for blacks” (p. vii). He further asserts the “first wave of rock ‘n’ roll had all but ended by the time young whites discovered the music and claimed it as their own” (p. ix). He offers the story of Little Richard’s classic hit “Keep a Knockin’” (1957) to illustrate his thesis, conjointly previewing his methodology. Here he sprints backwards through rock’s entire evolution, contemplating seven versions of the song, arriving at its earliest incarnation just after 1900.

Chapters are cleverly named for a song embodying the idiom or musical element under consideration. The first, “That’s All Right,” begins in 1953 with Presley’s career, and Sun Records’s attempt to offer the “Negro sound” with a white performer. This exemplifies an early rock artist finding inspiration outside of postwar R&B, claiming Presley’s ambition was more likely to be a “country-pop crooner” with “a penchant for the syrupy and maudlin” (p. 2). Indeed, he asserts Presley was actually guided towards rock by Sam Phillips (Sun Records’s owner), although Birnbaum believes rock “would probably have run a similar course without [Presley]” (p. 28). The chapter proceeds with Bill Haley, who Birnbaum believes was the originator in 1952 of the first true white rock sound with “Sundown Boogie.” He follows by dispelling the myth that “rocking” is a sexual euphemism, instead tracking the term to the 1920s as a reference to dancing. While setting readers straight, Birnbaum also disputes the notion that rock’s ascension in the 1950s signified any sort of teen revolution.

Abruptly, Birnbaum jumps to England for the second chapter, “The Train Kept A-Rollin’,” and The Yardbirds’s connection to the blues through this song. Many versions, and the history of the attendant artists, are evaluated, and gradually Birnbaum traces the song to its 1940s origins as “Cow Cow Boogie.” He spends considerable time evaluating guitar-driven blues rockers, including “Johnnie B. Goode,” but tying them back to “Cow Cow Boogie,” which Birnbaum declares the “conceptual core” for “everything that follows,” demonstrating “the absorption of black blues and boogie-woogie, with a country-western tinge, into the white popular mainstream” (p. 57). He returns to this song in nearly...