How blacks invented rock and roll: R&B stars created foundations of multibillion-dollar music industry

Ebony, Jan, 1997 by Kevin Chappell

* When we were playing clubs, I'd say over half of what we did was blues," says Jim Morrison of The Doors.

* "I heard rhythm and blues, and it was all over," says Pete Townsend of The Who. "The first record was "Green Onions' by [the Black group] Booker T. and the MG's. It was their guitarist, Steve Cropper, who really turned me on to aggressive guitar playing."

* When I took up guitar, I wanted to play like Chuck Berry more than anything in the world," says the late Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead.

* The Rolling Stones were influenced so much by Muddy Waters that they named their band after his song "Rolling Stones."

* George Clinton influenced me so deeply that it is a part of me, like my kidney or my liver," says Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. "Those guys are musical innovators, and guys like me ride their coattails."

* Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun" is "my favorite solo ever," says Mike McCready of Pearl Jam. "I try to copy whatever I can but make up my own thing. I love listening to Hendrix. I know there's no way I'd ever approach that level of guitar playing. It's amazing."

If all this "doesn't prove Black artists created rock `n' roll, I don't know what does," says Nelson George, author of The Death of Rhythm & Blues and a longtime music critic. "White artists have always admitted it. I mean how could they not when it is so obvious?"

Little Richard agrees, but adds that it's time for White artists to pay more than respect to the Black creators of rock `n' roll. "Where's my money?" the 64-year-old legend says. "In the '50s, they would go to a place and headline, singing our songs when they knew we should have been there making the money. Now the Robing Stones are making $4 million for each concert. It's time to put up or shut up."

So far, no reparations have been offered to legendary Black rock artists like Little Richard. During a 1972 visit to Johnson Publishing Co., Beatle John Lennon told Jet magazine that he wished his three musical idols - Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard - had done better financially. "It hurt my heart that they were not as big as they were in the 1950s," he said. "Berry is the greatest influence on earth. So is Bo Diddley, and so is Little Richard. There is not one Mute group on earth that hasn't got their music in them. And that's all I ever listened to. The only White person I ever listened to was Presley on his early music, and he was doing Black music."

Not much can be done now, George say, adding rock `n' roll wasn't the first time Whites capitalized by copying Black artists. Jazz and rap music are two recent examples. Even in the late 1930s, "boogie fever" was started by Blacks in juke joints in the North. Kansas City bluesman Joe Turner and pianist Pete Johnson helped to create the style of music that would sweep the nation until the early 1950s. After the two rocked Carnegie Hall in 1938 and ushered in boogie to mainstream White audiences, White artists followed with such songs as the "Hillbilly Boogie" by the Delmore Brothers and "Shotgun Boogie" by Tennessee Ernie Ford.