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
The History of Rock and Roll collage of number one hits from the Rock & Roll era, through, ironically (as it is not a rock record), Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" (which just happened to be topping the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart at the time). The History of Rock and Roll The History of Rock & Roll is a US radio documentary on rock and roll music, originally syndicated in 1969. One of the lengthiest documentaries of any medium (48 hours in the 1969 version, 52 hours each for the 1978 and 1981 versions), "The History of Rock & Roll" is a definitive