Music history of the United States in the 1950s blues and gospel music; with country and western and Pop. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music, though the terms "rocking" and "rolling" were being used in boogie-woogie and religious music for decades before that. The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar (developed and popularized by Les Paul). Paul's hit records like "How High the Moon," and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise," helped lead to the development of
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