Payola it promoted cultural diversity and disc jockeys were less inclined to indulge their own personal and racial biases. Alan Freed, a disc jockey and early supporter of rock and roll (and also widely credited for actually coining the term), had his career and reputation greatly harmed by a payola scandal. Dick Clark's early career was nearly derailed by a payola scandal, but he avoided trouble by selling his stake in a record company and cooperating with authorities. Attempts were made to link all payola with rock and roll music. In 1976, inner-city urban soul DJ Frankie Crocker was indicted in
Rock and roll backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply "rock music" or "rock". The term "rock and roll" now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage. The "American Heritage Dictionary" and the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. "Encyclopædia Britannica", on the other hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later developed "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music". The phrase "rocking and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, but was used by the early twentieth century, both to