Depending on your generation and/or ethnicity, you may associate rock with Memphis, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, or even Seattle.
So, why is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHF) located in Cleveland, a city you may never think about? Because, believe it or not, Cleveland is where rock and roll got started, almost entirely due to the work of one man.
Alan Freed was a Cleveland DJ who played what was then called “race music,” which was music by black artists, which theretofore could only be heard on stations catering to black audiences. Today, we’d probably call what Freed played r&b. This r&b was much closer to the blues and gospel of the time than the slick hip hop of today. What we today would call soul music was still 15 or 20 years off.
For young people bored by show tunes, smooth crooners like Perry Como or Doris Day, and the insipid “champagne music” of Lawrence Welk, the rhythmic music of America’s blacks was like a gift from heaven.
It was in 1951 that Alan Freed coined the term “rock and roll.” He may have picked up the phrase from one or two of the songs he played on the radio, but he is the first who used it as a name for the music we now call “rock.”
To give you an idea of where Freed fits into the timeline, Elvis’s first hit single, Heartbreak Hotel, came along in 1956, a full five years after Freed burst onto the scene and gave the music a name.
Freed, whose DJ name was Moondog, is also credited with hosting the very first rock concert, The Moondog Coronation Ball in 1952, which happened where? Why, in Cleveland, of course. It was a big hit, almost caused a riot, and in making the national news it brought rock music to national attention.
While Cleveland may seem a musical backwater today, it continues to have a flourishing music scene. Maybe not as big as NYC, LA, or even Seattle, but it thrives. Back then, in the early 1950′s, Cleveland was regarded as a breakout city, a city where popular trends began.
From time to time there is talk about moving the RRHF to New York or Los Angeles, bigger cities which may mean more to today’s world of rock, but like the Pro Football Hall of Fame (Canton, OH) and the National Baseball Hall of Fame
and Museum (Cooperstown, NY), which are situated where they are for historical reasons, it makes sense to honor the city where rock began by locating the RRHF there.
