Rock’s chaotic roots
The birth of rock ’n’ roll didn’t occur as you’ve been told. It wasn’t a big-bang event with Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry or a conspiracy by Murray the K or Alan Freed. Rather, it was born over decades as segregated neighbors passed one another on the street, as music seeped from windows into alien ears, as communities integrated, one borrowed melody and rhythm at a time.
The evidence is gathered in “The Birth of Rock and Roll,” a new book of found photos from Jim Linderman’s collection. Filled with images of longgone souls lost in revelry, moving to music or posing with instruments, it offers snapshots on culture clash in the decades before the ’50s rock explosion.
Linderman, described in the book as a “collector and Americana yay-sayer” and an “archivist of the obscure,” is the brains behind the blogs Dull Tool Dim Bulb, Vintage Sleaze and Old Time Religion. He’s got a keen eye for themes, as evidenced by his books, including “Take Me to the Water,” a selection of old baptism photos and similarly themed gospel songs.
Like “Take Me to the Water,” “The Birth of Rock and Roll” was issued by Dust-to-Digital, the Grammy-winning record label and publisher responsible for essential archival compendiums as the gospel set “Goodbye, Babylon.”
The new work doesn’t come with companion music, but it doesn’t need it. Rather, Linderman guides the reader through a silent meditation on sounds that long ago ceased to exist, their only remaining echo courtesy of a chance encounter with the yay-sayer.
The images try to capture the chaos. An innocent tableau of two groups, one white and posing in front of a frozen custard stand, the other black and on the next-door porch playing music, lays out the porous nature of segregation. A couple pose on a sofa, a stack of 45s on the woman’s lap. A piercing shot captures white men performing minstrel music in blackface, laying out a stark truth about appropriation and racism.
“Several forces combined in one century to create Rock and Roll,” Linderman writes in the introduction. “Loosely in order of importance? Racism and subsequent integration, gospel, blues (racism again ... I am afraid), hillbillies, minstrels in blackface, cheap Silvertone guitars from Sears, the Hawaiian music craze, burlesque, booze, weed, vaudeville, the circus, some showtime razzle-dazzle and the spoiled generation following World War Two.”
All that drama packs the book. “The real story is always found beneath the surface,” Linderman says in an epilogue conversation with writer Joe Bonomo. “It seems fewer and fewer take the time to look for the real story these days. Product need only be surface deep to sell. Amateur photographers may not have been rebels, as so many of the early musicians were, but they were documenting a life and time without pretense or an agenda.”