Origins of Rock and Roll - Day 1

Join presenter Tom Dell for an exploration of Rock and Roll’s roots in Gospel, Country, Jazz, Blues, and Rhythm and Blues. Focusing on the early 20th Century to 1959, the class will explore how artists such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, and others crafted the twelve-bar blues, which became the staple of Rock and Roll. The genre came on full blast in the 1950s in songs by Roy Brown, Big Joe Turner, Ike Turner, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and others. Through the use of audio and visual clips, attendees will see and hear how tunes from the early 1900s morphed into the sounds of Janis Joplin, Chuck Willis, and Bill Haley and the Comets, as well as how the Mississippi Delta Blues and the Chicago Blues laid the platform from which Rockabilly and Rock and Roll came. While this is a two-part series, attendance is not required at both sessions to join in the fun!