Origins of rock and roll that inspired Alan Freed to coin the phrase "rock and roll" to refer to the music he played. Freed first started playing the music in 1951, and by 1953 the phrase "rock and roll" was becoming used much more widely to market the music beyond its initial black audience. The practitioners of the music were young black artists, appealing to the post-war community's need for excitement, dancing and increasing social freedoms, but the music also became very attractive to white teenagers. As well as "rocking" rhythm and blues songs, such as the massively successful and influential "Rocket 88" recorded by
The History of Rock and Roll Rolling Stone magazine not only released a book with this phrase ("The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll"), but also had an early-1980s weekly radio series with some similarities to the classic 1978 special ("Rolling Stone's Continuous History of Rock & Roll"). The award-winning 1978 version of the show opened with a quick reverse "Time Sweep", featuring clips from selected songs from the 1970s backwards to the 1950s. It covered the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and closed with a "A Top Ten of Rock & Roll" followed by the "Ending Time Sweep": The "time sweep" is a 53-minute