Levon Helm: Traditional music from the hill country, black blues from the delta and show tunes from the minstrel troupes all mixed together along the Mississippi around Memphis.
Martin Scorsese: What did they call that kind of music?
Helm: Rock and roll. They call it rock and roll.
From The Last Waltz
There's hot discussion over origins-boogie or rockabilly, "blues had a baby," Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88"-but everybody agrees
rock music is a hybrid, created in post-WWII boom times by the first generation of musicians raised on broad musical culture of radio and
phonograph records. It was a high-octane brew - young girls screamed, city fathers fretted. Keith Richards got busted in Fordyce.
Rock came to Arkansas early with Ronnie Hawkins, Sonny Burgess, and Billy Riley first, the Cate Brothers, Levon Helm, and Black Oak Arkansas later.
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