The search for the origins of rock ’n’ roll leads into the thickets of American history including tangles of race relations, population movements, class politics and regionalisms. This much is clear: rock ’n’ roll developed from the mixing of African Americans and white rural folk musics in American cities after the Second World War.

Who deserves credit—and blame—remains disputed. The single indisputable fact about the roots of rock ’n’ roll is the influence of African American musical forms, from Africa through Southern churches to the blues to electrified rhythm and blues. Throw in the crosspollination of white folk and country musics, and jazz, especially its swing and jump-blues variations.

Dating the origins of rock ’n’ roll is no less difficult. Were Charlie Christian and TBone Walker playing rock ’n’ roll guitar in 1940? Was “Rocket ’88” (1951) the first rock ’n’ roll record? Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” (1947)? Listen to 1940s recordings by Lionel Hampton or Hank Williams and you will hear at least hints of rock ’n’ roll, if not the real deal.

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that from the start (whenever that was) rock ’n’ roll already varied, especially by region, although with wartime and postwar mass migration and mass media, no region remained self-contained for long. This crossfertilization, in fact, defined rock ’n’ roll. While Elvis Presley revered the bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Howlin’ Wolf listened to country yodeler Jimmie Rodgers.

Rather than focusing on rock ’n’ roll solely as a musical form, it is more productive to see it as a social phenomenon created when white teenagers in cities and expanding suburbs began to listen to black music in large numbers. The signal moment for this development came when disc jockey Alan Freed titled his Cleveland radio show the Moondog Rock ’n’ Roll House Party (1952). Thereafter, racially mixed bands and audiences gathered—not without controversy—in northern cities for gala performances.

Rock ’n’ roll, more than any other single cultural phenomenon, defined the new $10 billion a year teen market amid postwar affluence.

Rock ’n’ roll is also a business. Most early rock ’n’ roll was recorded and distributed by small independent labels like Sun in Memphis and Chess in Chicago. Soon major record labels, seeing the profits to be made, began to buy up artists’ contracts. Most famously in 1956, RCA paid a then-staggering $35,000 to bring Elvis Presley into their fold. Thereafter, Elvis was the King of rock ’n’ roll; his controversial performance on The Ed Sullivan Show (where cameras only recorded his movement above the waist) signaled, as the song goes, “Rock ’n’ roll is here to stay” Within the business, racial exploitation and segregation abounded. Alan Freed’s name appeared on the songwriting credits for Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline,” assuring radio play and Freed’s share in the profits. Even more egregious were the lame, tame versions recorded by white “artists,” most notoriously Pat Boone’s insipid cover of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” The arrival of England’s Beatles on American shores in 1964 rescued rock ’n’ roll from the oblivion into which white crooners and corporate executives had been steering it. Paying explicit homage to rock’s African American pioneers, the Beatles placed rock ’n’ roll back on the American creative and social landscapes. Woodstock (1969) signaled that rock ’n’ roll was central to a generation, an entertainment industry and, indeed, American life. Since then the fusion of musical forms which created rock ’n’ roll has proceeded apace, as every possible transmogrification creative artists could come up with has continued constantly to revitalize rock ’n’ roll, often when it seems most stagnant, and even when the purpose of rock ’n’ roll seems increasingly to be no more than selling beer and cars.