Skips the miles of memorabilia to discover the history of Rock and Roll in Cleveland, Ohio.
To skip the review and just buy tickets for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, step this way…
Memorabilia at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
There are only so many of Jimi Hendrix’s costumes you can see before your eyes start to glaze over. The same applies to David Bowie’s outfits and various guitars wielded by the Rolling Stones. But, if you do enjoy seeing that sort of thing, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, should keep you entranced for hours. There is no shortage of memorabilia to gawp at.
Filling seven floors with album covers, set lists and Jay-Z’s hockey jerseys, however, would be an incredible waste. Mercifully, they’ve not done that.
The DJ who gave “rock and roll” its name
Sat on the Lake Erie waterfront next to the highly impressive home stadium of the Cleveland Browns football team, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is gigantic. The official reason for putting it there is that Cleveland DJ Alan Freed was the first to use the term “rock and roll” to describe the music that angered parents throughout the 1950s. The unofficial reason is that the city stumped up the most money to get it.
The origins of rock and roll
It’s money well spent. The memorabilia comes a distant second to the story when you start ambling through. The origins are traced back to Elvis – they go right back to the traditional drum beats of Africa and Celtic folk music in Europe. As populations from these regions came up against each other in the US, new strands emerged – rhythm and blues, gospel, country and western, bluegrass. The thing they all had in common was that they were the music of the disenfranchised – the African-Americans and the poorer white communities.
The first mention of rock and roll
And when all of these started to come together, Rock and Roll was born. The phrase first appeared on a record in 1922 (Trixie Smith’s My Daddy Rocks Me With One Steady Roll if you must know). It became a code word for sexual intercourse in blues songs.
Headphones connected up to touch screens let you listen to some of the early influencers, such as Woody Guthrie, “the original working class singer-songwriter rambling across the continent with a guitar on his back”. There are also the likes of Robert Johnson, who played the guitar so well that rumours emerged of him selling his soul to the devil at the Mississippi crossroads in return for the ability. I could have happily spent hours listening, getting the education I should have sought long ago.
Johnson melded the country blues of the Mississippi Delta to the city blues that emerged later. And going through the museum, it becomes clear how much music owes to travel. Just as the African and Celtic influences came to America, movements within the US saw specific sounds develop.
Rock and roll in Memphis and Detroit
Memphis is generally regarded as Rock and Roll’s birthplace, with Sam Phillips at Sun Records. He discovered the likes of Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. But why there? Well, in the 1920s, the blues musicians of the Deep South were heading north to find work. Memphis is at the northern end of the Mississippi Delta. The black sharecroppers would use it as their first major stopping off point as they migrated during the Great Depression.
A similar story applies to the next key city, Detroit. The home of Motown was also the home of motors. And motor industry jobs made it a boom town in the 50s and 60s. Poor black Americans came from rural areas to find work. The music came with them, and was shaped into something marketable by Motown’s Berry Gordy.
The British invasion
Travel can even account for the British invasion. The marriage of skiffle and US rock and roll sounds happened in Liverpool for a reason – it’s where many of the ships from the US docked.
Also fascinating is the impact of technology. As rock and roll kicked off, key technological developments aided its spread. The transistor radio – allowing teenagers to listen to the music they wanted in their bedroom or outdoors, arrived in 1954. The 33 1/3 rpm record came in during the late 60s. Until then, pop songs had been limited to three minutes not by convention but by the limitations of what they were played on. Suddenly, it was possible to play longer songs on record – in came psychedelia, and the album as the main format.
Listening booths at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Where the Hall of Fame really excels, however, is in those touch screen listening booths. They’re spread throughout the museum and covering different topics, such as one hit wonders and “the songs that shaped rock and roll”. The most addictive shows which artists influenced others, using the words of the stars themselves, and allowing you to listen for the similarities between songs. The Kinks owe a lot to Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, the Clash to Mott The Hoople and Lee Scratch Perry. Simon and Garfunkel loved the Everly Brothers, while Guns N Roses surprisingly cite Elton John.
It becomes a family tree, and tracing it – seeing the results of each marriage and reading numerous stories I’d never heard before – becomes a joyful timesuck.
Most importantly, when I leave the first thing I want to do is head to a record shop and buy armfuls of records by people I’d never previously given much time. It’s a place to fall in love with music again.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ticket prices
Entrance to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame costs from $35.90. Tickets can be bought online.
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