By Kirk Wilson, President

Not related to education but interesting, Rock & Roll music has had a long, winding and story filled history. From it’s early beginnings to the many genres it has spawned, rock and roll has come a long way.There have been a lot of arguments as to where the original term rock and roll was first used. The term rock and roll was actually a euphemism. This  term was in use as early as the 1900′s. We have a record done in 1922 by Trixie Smith entitled My Man Rocks Me With One Steady Roll. The first mention of Rock and Roll as a musical style was in 1951 by disc jockey Alan Freed.

Rock & Roll became a real force by the mid-50s when Elvis Presley began to play a version of music that became known as Rockabilly which combined rock and roll music with his country and western background. Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins were two other musicians who performed rockabilly while other performers like Fats Domino and Little Richard played a different type of rock and roll music that was highly influenced by  rhythm and blues. Even Johnny Cash was a rockabilly performer with his song Folsom Prison Blues back in 1956. But no matter how it started, rock and roll was a style of music here to stay. There was a bit of a lull in rock and roll music into the early 60s but British bands were covering many American rock and roll music hits along with all of the rhythm and blues records they could get their hands on and before long the Beatles and the British invasion swamped America bringing with it a resurgence of rock and roll music.

Rock & roll music has had an amazing impact throughout the world. Everything from hairstyles, clothing styles and fashion, attitudes and lifestyles, patterns of speech and language have all been influenced in some way or the other by the varied iterations of rock and roll music.