Rock music roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country and western. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed "race music") for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll
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