Cleveland of Alan Freed − the Cleveland disc jockey credited with first using and popularizing the term "rock and roll" to describe the music genre. News/talk station WHK was one of the first radio stations to broadcast in the United States and the first in Ohio; its former sister station, rock station WMMS, dominated Cleveland radio in the 1970s and 1980s and was at that time one of the highest rated radio stations in the country. In 1972, WMMS program director Billy Bass coined the phrase "The Rock and Roll Capital of the World" to describe Cleveland. In 1987, "Playboy" named
Origins of rock and roll well established in blues music but were new to the radio airwaves. After the success of "Good Rocking Tonight", many other R&B artists used similar titles through the late 1940s. At least two different songs with the title "Rock and Roll" were recorded in the late 1940s: by Paul Bascomb in 1947 and Wild Bill Moore in 1948. In May 1948, Savoy Records advertised "Robbie-Dobey Boogie" by Brownie McGhee with the tagline "It jumps, it's made, it rocks, it rolls." Another record where the phrase was repeated throughout the song was "Rock and Roll Blues", recorded in 1949 by Erline