Origins of rock and roll "Rock and Roll" Harris. These songs were generally classed as "race music" or, from the late 1940s, "rhythm and blues", and were barely known by mainstream white audiences. However, in 1951, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed began broadcasting rhythm, blues, and country music for a multi-racial audience. Freed, familiar with the music of earlier decades, used the phrase rock and roll to describe the music he aired over station WJW (850 AM); its use also is credited to Freed's sponsor, record store owner Leo Mintz, who encouraged Freed to play the music on the radio. Originally Freed used the name
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