All language subtitles for BATICA 44

60 years ago...

FAINTLY: Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom...

..America shook.

Four o'clock rock...

It was explosive.

Go, Johnny, go...

It sounded so different.

Great balls of fire...

It was free, it was wild.

Shake, rattle and roll...

These are some of the last witnesses

to the birth of a music that changed...everything.

HE CHUCKLES

And they still feel it...

Ooh...

..like it was yesterday.

I'll never forget that.

Elvis, such a damn smash hit.

The whole place exploded.

GIRLS SCREAM We had sex appeal.

I'm at the age if I make somebody mad by tellin' the truth, tough.

I'm a roadrunner, honey

And you can't keep up with me...

These are the innovators, the free-thinkers...

Let it all hang out!

..who shocked America.

The vulgar performances of Elvis Presley.

He should not be on television.

The morals are dangerous. That's all I know. And you can't get away

from it, you can't clean it up cos it's dirty to begin with.

They followed their own path

and transformed America.

People were afraid of integration.

Rock'n'roll is obviously nigger music.

Integration is happening in our heads, through our ears.

This is what we been waiting for.

I got to put you down...

We'll continue to charge on.

I'll see you someday

Baby, somewhere hangin' around...

A whole lot of shakin' goin' on.

Today, a remarkable construction project is transforming

the face of the countryside.

The area below will, within the next two years,

be the busy community of 70,000 people

living in a city which was completely planned

before the first house was built.

America of the early '50s,

where 11 out of 13 million new homes were built in a new suburbia.

MAN: Hey, how about a couple of eggs this morning?

OK, dear. Oh, but get a move on or you'll be late.

'It's a great life, eh, Bob?'

Communities built around a family unit, expanding in a baby boom

created by returning World War II GIs.

Life was perfect.

The fathers and mothers in our home town

are just plain, nice-living folks.

The smoking of marijuana

are tempting more and more

teenage youngsters along dangerous paths.

You know, main street folks who say, "Hello, nice morning,"

even when it rains on Mondays.

I'm getting sick and tired of being treated like a kid.

Why be stuck with one expensive car when you can enjoy all the fun

and freedom of two fine Fords?

This is home, sweet home to us.

We feel safe and are very proud of our friendly characters.

When the coloured people came into the neighbourhood,

I would become nauseous.

We are proud of our excellent schools that provide

for the education of our children.

Proud of their part in preparing our youths to face the future.

Atom bombs may some day be dropped on our cities,

and let us prepare for survival.

The air force itself has officially admitted that flying saucers exist.

Space saboteurs seize control of earthmen's minds.

Communism, in reality, is not a political party.

It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life.

But one thing that America could rely on in these times

was the radio...

..programmed with popular music of the day.

Do not forsake me, oh, my darling

On this, our wedding day

Wait alone...

But not of all of America was like this.

Below the Mason-Dixon line,

like a wayward cousin,

lay America's buried past,

where something was happening that would shake up not just the music

but America's way of life... down south.

Way down south.

There are things in New Orleans

that you wouldn't see anywhere in the world.

Just about anything went.

The gay entertainers who would dance with a boa constrictor.

Storyville was where they used to have legalised prostitution.

And that lasted for about 20 years.

There were exotic dancers who could make their cleavage jump up and down

- in different patterns.
- HE LAUGHS

Man, I remember the first place I ever really got loaded on whisky.

I ain't never experienced anything like that in my life.

And I never want to experience it again.

New Orleans music was for dancing, for entertainment. Make people move.

The dancers were going to be doing boom, bam, boom, bop. Boom!

He may see a big fat woman with a big butt,

and she right in tune with the bass drum - boom, boom, boom.

If you ever listen to New Orleans' music, you're going to move.

I'm walkin'

Yes, indeed, I'm talkin'

'Bout you and me, I'm hopin'

That you come back to me

I'm lonely as I can be

I'm waitin' for your company

I'm hopin' that you come back to me...

Well, it has certainly been a long time since I've been here.

This is where it all took place, back here.

All right. Great.

It's a laundromat now but back in the day -

and I mean the most beautiful days, in fact,

the days that began putting us on the map - it was J&M Studio,

Cosimo's Recording Studio, owned by Cosimo Matassa.

And there was Cosimo back there, doing what he does.

The musicians would be back in that area.

Those bricks are probably the same bricks which witnessed

all of that wonderful music.

The whole call of the day was for most things to be done live.

In fact, when it was time to make a fade, at the end of the recording,

the musicians didn't want Cosimo to turn down the knob,

they wanted to just play softer and make a natural fade

cos they figured that that's a technical fade with the knob.

And very importantly, Fats Domino's career started here and it was 1949,

he recorded The Fat Man.

And it clicked on a switch that lasts for decades and decades.

Fats' debut hit is a contender for the very first rock'n'roll record,

and its origins lay in a traditional song

from the wild heart of New Orleans.

It was a drug song.

That lyric was,

"They call, they call me a junker cos I'm loaded all the time."

Dave Bartholomew, the producer, said, "We can't sing about junkies,

"we're going to have to sing about the fat man."

They call They call me the fat man

Cos I weigh two hundred pounds

All the girls, they love me

Cos I know my way around...

Fats' rhythm proved innovative and irresistible,

but not just to black audiences in the South.

Now for the big finale. The guy you've all been waiting to hear...

Through the '50s, he'd overcome the musical segregation of the time,

crossing over from the black R&B chart to white audiences

on the national pop chart.

You made me cry

When you said

Goodbye

Ain't that a shame?

My tears fell like rain...

And what was special about his rhythm that got the kids hooked

was a piano triplet that underpinned Fats' biggest hits.

This little simple beat - one, two, three, one, two, three -

on his piano...

A lot of great musicians around New Orleans didn't want to play

behind Fats Domino cos they said his music was so simple.

People kind of made fun of you when you just played

dink-dink-dink-dink-dink, but that's what he did

and it made people dance.

Those simple lines, and he played it all the way through the song.

And so, even in the Deep South, even in the segregated South,

whites started showing up at his shows.

Oh, well

Goodbye

Although

I'll cry

Ain't that a shame?...

Black concerts were coming through Memphis

and we'd go down and watch 'em.

They made us sit upstairs,

you know, it was kinda crazy,

but we didn't care. And when those guys started rockin' on stage,

the kids jumped up in the aisle and started dancing.

And I said, "Uh-oh, something's happening here, big time."

The whites started dancing, mixing with the blacks.

One thing led to another.

Herbert Hardesty, Fats' saxophone player,

says there was a fight every night.

And the reason why is because he was causing that integration.

- MAN:
- Fats, this rock'n'roll music seems to be under

an awful heavy attack from all over the country. There's been riots,

it's been banned in certain parts of this country and abroad.

- You know of any reason for that?
- Well...

as far as I know, music makes people happy. I know it makes me happy.

- You wouldn't blame it on rock'n'roll?
- No indeed.

Maybe you'll excuse me, I'd like to go back to my practice.

I saw some protestors one time right in the midst of that era

saying, "Send all the Negros back to the Congo, except Fats Domino."

Fats wasn't alone in integrating audiences.

Alan Freed, a DJ who popularised the term "rock'n'roll"...

Hi, everybody. How y'all?

This is yours truly, Alan Freed...

..staged a Moondog Ball in Cleveland in 1952 for a mixed-race audience

of 20,000.

It was shut down by police for fears of a riot.

But segregation was just part of a wider narrative in post-war America,

as millions of black Americans

migrated up the Mississippi corridor,

bound for the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest.

People in Mississippi, Louisiana - they worked their way

to get to Memphis.

And they go to St Louis...

East St Louis - wasn't St Louis - East St Louis.

Then he goes to Chicago.

They were trying to get to Detroit, where the Ford plant was,

and Chicago, where the steel mill was.

Sometimes, it'd take you two months to get to Chicago.

And with the people, the music migrated.

This song, from 1951, Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston,

another contender for the first rock'n'roll record,

was written in Clarksdale, recorded in Memphis,

and released in Chicago on Chess Records,

as the Blues moved upstream to the big cities of the Midwest.

When you look at it, you've got Chicago, St Louis,

Memphis, New Orleans

all on a straight dotted line all the way down.

And those are all pretty hip music towns all the way up.

So there's something about being on this big ol' muddy river.

By the early '50s, Chicago was the hub of an Electric Blues scene,

rooted in a booming migrant black community.

Jimmy Reed was a guy that I was in love with

in Chicago playing the Blues.

He's had songs like...

HE PLAYS BLUES MUSIC

Oh, baby

You don't have to go

Whoa, baby

You don't have to go...

But by the mid-'50s, the Electric Blues stars like Jimmy Reed

and Muddy Waters were nudging 30 and 40,

and a younger generation in these cities craved a new sound

that spoke of their experience.

The Blues is always losin' the girl.

My baby done left me...

Doo-wop gave me the idea of fulfilling my dream

by getting the girl.

Blues writers were older people.

They had been in the South,

they had seen things that were very different,

whereas the doo-wop writers were teenagers.

Oh, baby...

Hey, man! What you all doing, standing out here in the cold?

I'm freezing!

Oh, no!

CHEERFUL GREETINGS

Nice seeing you, though.

In 1953, the Spaniels were a teenage street-corner group

from the edge of Chicago, with a first single climbing the charts...

We got street light...

..and a follow-up that would become a classic of the new doo-wop style.

Doot-do-do, doot-do-do

Doot-do-do-do-do

- ALL:
- Good night, sweetheart

Well, it's time to go

Doot-do-do-do-do

- ALL:
- Good night, sweetheart

Well, it's time to go

Do-do do-do

I hate to leave you but I really must say

- ALL:
- Good night, sweetheart

Good night

Doot-do-do, doot-do-do

Doot-do-do-do-do

- ALL:
- Good night, sweetheart...

It is truly the sound of the city.

It is truly the street-corner symphony.

You could stand under a street lamp and just sing.

Do-do do-do...

We could imagine that we would be on stage

and that lamp would actually brighten the whole corner

and people could come and watch you and you could do your stuff.

So we were on stage there.

It's three o'clock

In the morning

Do-do...

Through the music, you could court a girl.

All you had to do was sing a song.

I think that women like low voices,

almost like a mating call of the bull walrus

or something like that.

- ALL:
- Because I love you so

Doot-do-do, doot-do-do

Do-do do-do

- ALL:
- Good night, sweetheart...
- It was our music.

The lyric spoke for the things that we felt

and we couldn't express ourselves.

And you only heard it all the way at the other end of the dial.

The little black stations, 13-40.

I love that girly so...

- 14-10.
- Hello, hello again

Sh-boom and hopin' we'll meet again

Oh, life could be a dream...

You didn't hear it on the major 9-50s...

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer...

..or 5-60s...

How much is that doggy in the window?

..which were big, powerful radio AM stations,

which are heard around the country, you see.

RADIO STATIC

- Oh, oh...
- Doo-doo-doo...

But while radio was still largely segregated,

there was one technology that wasn't.

I love that girl

Love that girl...

1950 saw the advent of the 45 RPM jukebox,

and it was this invention that helped the growth of doo-wop,

as record labels used the jukeboxes

as testing grounds for new releases.

Jukebox was very, very important

because some of the great record labels said,

"The black radio stations are playing it,

"let's put it into the jukebox and see if kids recognise it."

My love must be a kind of blind love...

Doo-wop was the first pop music

performed by teenagers for teenagers.

I can't see anyone but you...

And there were more teenagers than ever before,

due to increases in the birth-rate around World War II.

Are the stars

Out tonight?...

And from the mid-'50s, America's older population began to feel

overrun by a new adolescent attitude.

And the song is Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

..Call themselves the Teenagers...

- DEEP VOICE:
- Come on, boys, let's sing our song.

- That come out of you?
- Yes, can we sing now?

What's your hurry?

Have to make my money before my voice changes.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Mm-bop, mm-bop, mm-bop Doo-roo-roo

ALL: Ooh wah, ooh wah

Ooh wah, ooh wah

Ooh wah, ooh wah

- BOTH:
- Why do fools fall in love?

Why do birds sing so gay?

And lovers await the break of day

Why do they fall in love?

Now there's a whole strata of young people that have some money

and their own taste.

They will go for things that maybe their parents don't like.

Do you realise what time it is?

Oh, Mother, don't be such an old fuddy-duddy.

Our young people are getting out of hand everywhere.

It changed the type of clothing they wore,

it changed the type of movies they liked,

it changed the way they talked.

Rock'n'roll is cool, Daddy, and you know it!

It's crazy music, man.

Whoo!

- What does that do for you?
- It makes you feel good inside.

The youth could see that they had power

and through the music they were spreading messages.

For me, it was a major shift.

For a newly liberated youth, there was

a new form of entertainment vying for their attention.

Just look at this real big-screen Westinghouse set.

Why, it's big enough so the whole family can watch

your favourite entertainer without anybody having to block the view.

But while TV was on the rise, it was limited to safe, family fodder.

With money and time on their hands,

teenagers look for their own entertainment and own hang-outs.

And there was one location in every town

that would increasingly become theirs.

After 1950, television sales are going through the roof.

Audiences in the cinemas are declining.

And they're declining at an alarming rate.

But teenagers, they don't want to sit at home and watch TV.

The studios absolutely aimed for the teen market.

And they're marketing a kind of cool, which is like rebellion,

but at the same time a kind of emphasis on belonging,

like belonging to your gang.

The great example is Marlon Brando in The Wild One,

where he's kind of an individual

but he's dressed in a way that looks like he belongs to something.

Hey, somebody tell me what that means - B-R-M-C.

- What does it mean?
- Black Rebels Motorcycle Club.

Isn't that cute? Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

What have you got?

THEY LAUGH

Hey, Cathy, aren't they wonderful?

But whereas 1953's The Wild One

featured a cast in their late 20s and a jazz swing soundtrack...

I go, "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?"

He says, "What have you got?" What have you got?!

..1955 saw the release of Blackboard Jungle,

set in an inner-city school

and addressing the problems of teenage delinquents.

- Excuse me, I believe I have an appointment with the principal.
- Name?

- Name?
- Richard Dadier.

My dad's character in the film, Richard Dadier,

was a schoolteacher who was trying to get through to his students.

Bring your paper up here.

'And they were not wanting to be educated.'

There was a lot of elements in the film that were quite shocking.

There was an attempted rape in the library

of one of the teachers by a kid who my father beat down.

You know, you didn't see this in film.

- What happened?
- It's the first day of school, Teacher.

'I believe I'm 16 years of age.

'I said, "Wow, man, this cat, whoever produced this movie,

' "got it down right the way it is in some of the neighbourhood ghettos." '

We had a guy called Mr Mimilich. He was the biology guy.

We'd throw things at him.

Biology, he turned his head, we would throw things at him, spitballs...

I mean, these things actually happened.

'A lot of the bosses at MGM, they were quite concerned

'about the film representing America in not so nice a way.'

The fact that juvenile delinquents, they were being depicted as

the youth of America - this was quite scandalous.

Switchblade knives were very prominent at that time.

This is going to be a showdown now.

The gunfight at the end of the movie.

As Richard Dadier starts to stalk him...

Give me that knife.

..the rest of the classroom is motionless.

And you hear that clock... tick-tock, tick-tock.

"Come on, boy. Come on."

End of the line, boy.

'The knife drops. Belazi picks up the knife.'

- Belazi!
- Shut up!

And that's when my character, Santini, decides to take over.

And he goes and grabs the American flag and he runs across the room

and rams the eagle into Belazi's chest and he drops the knife.

Unlike the bikers in The Wild One,

these teenagers showed their generational difference

with a hatred of jazz,

smashing a teacher's collection of rare swing records.

This is Cherokee. Anybody want to hear this record, huh?

STUDENTS GRUMBLE

Towards the end of production, the film's director, Richard Brooks,

realised he needed one final element for his movie -

a theme song that would speak to this generation of restless teens.

And it couldn't be swing.

Richard Brooks would come to our house,

often at the end of the day on his way home, cos he lived up the street.

And he was looking for a tune.

I had a very big record collection for a young nine-year-old kid

and I played a number of records for him in my collection

cos Dad said I had all these unusual records.

Glenn Ford's son was a Haley fan.

You know, as a young kid.

There were thirteen women and only one man in town...

I had purchased this song called

Thirteen Women And One Man In Town,

which was supposed to be the A side on Decca.

And I didn't like it and, like most kids did in those days,

I turned the thing over and I really liked that one.

The producer says, "That's a terrific song."

It was by chance.

I went to the premiere at the Encino Theatre,

a few days before my tenth birthday.

This song comes on - "One, two, three o'clock..."

One, two, three o'clock Four o'clock rock

Five, six, seven o'clock...

It was just thrilling. I mean, it was absolutely thrilling.

We're gonna rock around the clock tonight

Put your glad rags on...

The whole place exploded.

The kids, when they heard that song,

started jumping up and dancing in the aisles.

And that never happened before.

The kids got up and started doing the jitterbug up and down the aisle.

Here it was, coming out loud,

those big speakers in the movie theatre, it sounded good.

A lot better than jukeboxes, cos the only way you heard it was 45 records.

It was explosive. It just blew you right out of the...

Obviously, it blew the kids out of their seat

cos they were dancing in the aisle.

Some theatres had to close down in the Midwest.

They couldn't show the film because the kids were so taken with it.

Many municipalities banned the movie altogether,

or muted the music in that first scene.

It sounded so different from anything else that was being played.

Clearer. More crisp.

Most of the records of that nature, before, were not recorded very well.

When the chimes ring five, six and seven

We'll be right

In seventh heaven...

They concentrated on the rhythm section.

Ba-bow! This big echoey snare.

We're gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight...

Each instrument had been miked, which hadn't been done before.

So it was the sound of it that kids identified with.

I certainly did at 15.

We're gonna rock, rock, rock till broad daylight...

That became the number one hit

in the United States for eight weeks, which was never even heard of.

Rock Around The Clock was the first rock'n'roll song to top

the national pop charts in America,

with the lyrics and title perfectly selling the idea

of a new, wild dance music.

But while Bill Haley might have hit on the perfect message,

the ex-hillbilly singer was a reluctant messenger...

..becoming increasingly nervous at rock'n'roll's association

with juvenile delinquents.

I think he would have preferred to have been a country star.

I think, really, in his heart.

That's what he really grew up with. He loved country music.

He even tried another couple of recordings. They were OK.

He didn't dress like a rock'n'roller.

He was kind of chunky. He didn't look like a rock'n'roller

and he went on to other and lesser things

in a career that kind of petered out.

He was in his 30s.

Doesn't seem too old to me now

but by rock'n'roll standards, trust no-one over 23.

But what also made Bill an outsider was the fact

he was based out of Chester, Pennsylvania,

at a time when the Mississippi Delta,

and in particular a segregated Memphis,

was where it was all happening.

60 years ago, there's a fine line between where black people could go

and if you went one block left or right of here,

there was no black people, other than people working.

There wasn't no party.

Party was right here, this is where the black people were.

The thrill has gone

The thrill has gone away...

We're going to stop by BBs.

The thrill has gone, baby...

Hey, baby. How you doin'?

The thrill has gone away...

When I was working here this was all 99% black clubs.

These buildings wasn't here.

It was what they called honky-tonks.

Juke joints.

Some in the back room was gamblin', shootin' dice and whatever.

It was like the Las Vegas for the black peoples.

This was the Chitlin' Circuit

where all the black entertainers, all along here with myself,

Rufus Thomas, BB King...

was playin' on this street.

This was Chitlin' Circuit.

There's no more Chitlin' Circuit now, it's uptown.

While segregation ruled back then,

one man took steps to change attitudes to a wealth of black music

in the South - Sam Phillips.

Hailing from a poor cotton-farming background in Alabama,

he quit his job as a local radio announcer to set up a unique

recording studio in Memphis.

One thing that I always admired about Sam was that he had

a fantastic job, a job that anybody dreamed to have.

And he quit it to record primarily black musicians during a time period

where you couldn't even use the same bathroom.

Sam grew up working in cotton fields.

He never really looked at the colour of someone's skin.

He just felt a connection with them and he felt a rhythm with them.

He shared with me that he noticed the difference in the rhythm

when they were picking cotton in the fields together.

That's something that most people wouldn't notice.

Love my baby

Keeps her business to herself...

It was 1950 and my dad opened Memphis Recording Service here

and he would let black people come in for free.

He would tell them, "Play for me. Forget that I'm a white man.

"Play for me. Give me what you would do if you were on your front porch."

For four years Sam worked tirelessly...

..driving the back roads of the South,

distributing records on his own label,

all the time chasing a hit sound.

But back in his office at Sun Studios,

he'd often talk about finding the unthinkable -

a white singer with a black voice.

Unbeknownst to Sam,

he'd already recorded him.

Let's get together and...

When we think of Elvis, we think of the stud, the guy in

the leather pants and he's confident and arrogant and rules the world.

But at that time, Elvis didn't have his jet-black hair,

he had light brown hair, acne.

He wore a lot of pink and scarves

and just really was alien almost to most people.

But it wouldn't be the same

Without you...

By the summer of '54, Elvis had cut three demo acetates at Sun,

showing potential but yet to release a record.

Would just make me blue...

In July, Elvis came back to try his luck with another ballad of the day.

But, again, failed to impress Sam.

There's no air conditioning in there.

We're talking about July, so it's steaming hot.

And tube equipment gets pretty hot.

So it's getting kind of aggravated and people are getting tired

and he said he kind of called it for a while.

And that's when Scotty said Elvis, in a bunch of nervous energy,

picked up acoustic - and he didn't say he played it,

he says every time he was beatin' on it -

and he just kind of started doing That's All Right Mamma

by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.

Well now, that's all right now, Mama

That's all right for you...

That night it was Bill Black here - in fact, there's a little hole

in the floor where his spiker came out of his upright bass.

Bill Black jumped up, not very seriously playing along,

he was hootin' and hollerin' and slappin' the bass real silly.

This X on the floor here's where Scotty Moore stood.

Of course, Elvis was right here.

Well, that's all right now, Mamma

That's all right for you

That's all right now, Mamma

Just anyway you do

That's all right

That's all right...

Sam ran out there in front of that little door right there

and just said, "What's going on here?

"Keep doing it!" And he moved some mics and started the tape rolling.

Well, Mamma she done told me

Papa done told me too

Son, that gal you foolin' with

She ain't no good for you

But that's all right...

I think what happened was they felt they weren't recording

and they finally loosened up and that's how it all really came out

because, you know, my dad told me a lot of times,

"Don't pay any attention to that microphone.

"It'll scare you to death."

Sam originally cut direct to disc and then he went to tape, but everything

ended on disc, so he had... I've got the same model right over here.

And so that night Sam made an acetate of it, which is a one-sided record,

and took it straight to Dewey Phillips.

Two days later he played it on the air.

Everyone went crazy that night in Memphis.

I think he played it 14 times in a row, they said.

'Man, I got her one, I got Elvis's autograph.

'I'm sayin', man, she's runnin' down Main Street...'

You could not keep from turning the radio volume up.

Right now I'm going to play the next record. Just flat drive you crazy.

I'm leavin' town now, baby

I'm leaving town for sure...

You're either in your car...

We drive up and down Main Street, "dragging Main", as they called it,

and looking for the pretty girls and what have you,

and when That's All Right Mamma would come on the radio, we'd turn

the volume up and you could hear it in just about every car that

you would pass.

I got dee, dee...

People heard the voice

and they couldn't quite figure out, was this voice black or white?

And that song...that, like, wasn't a white person's song.

He did a Blues song with a hint of Bluegrass.

"He must be black."

'We got one of the hottest cotton-pickin' shows

'in the country - whoa, you're messin' up, partner...'

What confused things further was local DJ Dewey Phillips'

pioneering style of programming.

'In Memphis, Tennessee, and it's Friday night,

'tomorrow's payday and bathday, that's a good deal...'

Dewey Phillips would play three black songs and two white guys.

'Oh, yes, sir, that's octopus -

'I mean, Opus Number 1 by the late, great Tommy Dorsey...'

He would play Tommy Dorsey and follow that with Hank Williams.

I got a feeling called the Blues...

He would play Hank Williams, he would play Howlin' Wolf.

Yeah, they called me the rocker

I can rock you all night long...

So Elvis is at a movie theatre seeing a movie

and they call Gladys and Vernon.

Dewey said, "You gotta get your son, we gotta put him on the air

"and do an interview." So they rip him out of the movie theatre,

drive him down. He's terrified.

And one of the first things he does on the programme is says,

"What high school do you go to?"

Because people in Memphis will know by what high school you go to

whether you're black or white.

And, shocking to people's ears,

this white guy was playing a black style of music.

And the phones lit up like mad.

I mean, he was really capturing a zeitgeist of the moment.

Oh, give me land

Lots of land

Under starry skies above

Don't fence me in...

Back in those days, the white singers had no movement on stage.

They would just come out and sing their ballads

cos there weren't any rock'n'roll.

The word was spreading pretty fast about this Presley kid.

He was something else, "You gotta see this guy."

Well, that's because you think you're so pretty

And just because your mamma thinks you're hot...

I MC'd his first show in Memphis.

You think you've got something...

He was on the back of a flatbed truck, opening up a shopping centre

in East Memphis, and they'd hired me to be the disc jockey.

When I introduced him and he got on stage, he started moving around.

Hottest thing in town

Well, just because you think you got something...

When he came off, the kids said, "More, more!"

And Elvis asked Sam Phillips, "Mr Phillips, why are they screaming?

"Am I doing something wrong?"

He said, "No, man, just keep on doing it, shaking your body,

"shake your leg, man. Shake anything. They like it, they like it."

- I liked him.
- SHE CHUCKLES

He was sexy. He was charming.

But his moves, I think that's probably what made him

to begin with.

Scotty Moore says that Elvis was shaking his legs,

his pants were loose, and people could see his privates

jiggling inside.

And that's why the girls were screaming.

Elvis broke big.

But only in the South...

You saw me standing alone...

..making it as far as the Louisiana Hayride by '55.

The King was but a local prince.

Without a love of my own...

And there would be another pretender to the crown.

Can I say something?

Let it all hang out

with the beautiful Little Richard from down in Macon, Georgia.

I am the king of rock'n'roll. Ow, ow, ow! My, my, my, my,

I just had to do that. Now I feel so much better I got it out.

In the early '50s,

Little Richard cut his teeth on the Chitlin' Circuit,

first as a female impersonator

and then as a singer with his hot band, The Upsetters.

In '55 he sent a demo to producer "Bumps" Blackwell,

who thought he could be the next Ray Charles...

..and invited him to New Orleans' J&M Studios.

Every hour in the day...

After a frustrating morning session trying out slow ballads,

they took a break...

Every hour...

..and headed to a nearby supper club.

Every hour in the day...

This is the legendary Dew Drop Inn.

The desired location for the duration.

This is where many a tear has to fall.

HE LAUGHS

This is where the legends were made.

The stage would have been right about here.

Little Richard walks in and got up to the piano,

which about a'been right about here,

and he started singing one of his popular songs that he did

on his road show with The Upsetters.

The lyrics were kind of suggestive and kind of risque.

A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom

Tutti frutti, good bootie

Tutti frutti, good bootie

Tutti frutti, good bootie

A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom.

And Bumps Blackwell heard the song and he said,

"Man, this is what we've been waiting for!"

Little Richard and Tutti Frutti!

But the real original lyrics to Tutti Frutti

is "Tutti Frutti, good bootie.

"If it's tight, it's all right.

"And if it's greasy, it make it easy."

- Ooh!
- HE LAUGHS

A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom

Tutti frutti, all rutti,

Tutti frutti, all rutti...

When they got back in the studio,

Dorothy LaBostrie, another great songwriter, was in the studio

and she suggested they use some hipster jargon

that was really popular during the '50s and that was "All rutti."

All right - all rutti.

So she said, "Well, that rhymes with tutti frutti."

"So it's tutti frutti, all rutti. Wop bop a loo bop..."

..A lop bam boom

Got a girl named Daisy

She almost drives me crazy

Got a girl named Daisy...

The beauty of his delivery...

it was free, it was wild.

Knows how to love me, yes indeed

Boy, you don't know...

It was not Patti Page. It was not Perry Como.

You got a taste of black vernacular.

Tutti frutti, all rutti...

You realised this is a whole other language. And it was exciting.

Wop bop a loo bop

Ow...

This what you call doing your own thing time.

- Do you always dress like that?
- Every day. I go to the grocery store

like this and people turn around. When I walked through the airport

here in London today a man dropped his cup of coffee.

In '56, Richard notched up multiple hits as young America was entranced

by his extravagant performance and extraordinary appearance.

He brought it out. He was the guy.

Liberace didn't know nothing till you saw Little Richard.

Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John

He claims he has the music but he has a lot of fun

Oh, baby...

He looked so different with all that hair and everything like that,

hair on his head and the pancake make-up.

He had SOME make-up. About that thick.

Well, long tall Sally, she's built for speed, she got

Everything that Uncle John need

Oh, baby...

..supposed to wear make-up. Just like, "I put sugar in your coffee,"

you're supposed to add a little touch to it.

- I must remember that.
- Yes, God.

I met Little Richard. We were in East Point, Georgia,

and he come on the stage, said,

"Ladies and gentlemen, the prettiest two guys in the world..."

He said, "Me and Bobby Rush."

- HE LAUGHS
- I'll never forget that.

I wish he'd just said handsome.

- HE LAUGHS
- Oh, man!

Go, man, go

I got a girl that I love so, I'm ready...

But Little Richard kept them guessing,

with a string of songs from The Girl Can't Help It

to Ready Teddy, celebrating the women in his life.

Going to the corner Pick up my sweetie pie

She's my rock'n'roll baby She's the apple of my eye, I'm ready

# Ready, ready, Ted, I'm ready

I'm ready, ready, Ted, I'm ready

Ready, ready, Ted, I'm ready Ready, ready to rock and roll

All the flattop cats and dungaree dolls

Are headed for the gym to the sock hop ball

The joint's really jumpin' The cats are goin' wild

The music really sends me, I dig that crazy style, I'm ready...

I was a disc jockey and I was playing his music.

Tutti Frutti, all the big hits he had.

And I didn't know he was gay.

Oh, he was. Yeah, he is.

He's gay as you can be.

You know?

He invited me but I said no, thank you.

I said no, no, that's not for me.

That was quite a time back there at the Paramount Theatre.

All of us were working together and things were going on, man.

We were all kids.

Directly

Directly from my heart to you...

Just as Fats Domino's innocent charm had won over a young, white audience

in an era of segregation,

Richard, from the early days, traded on his flamboyant personality

to overcome the colour bar in the South.

We would play white clubs and we had to dress like a bunch of gay guys

so we wasn't a threat.

The white promoters didn't want us to mess with the white girls down South.

That's the strategy he used

to introduce rock'n'roll to the Southern States.

We're walkin' on stage switchin', you know, walkin' across the stage

and a lot of people would say, "Here comes Richard and his sissies."

HE LAUGHS Very smart.

He knew how to get the audience to love him and stuff like that.

If she walks by

The men folks get engrossed

She can't help it The girl can't help it...

But Little Richard also stood out and caught the ear of young America

by building his hits on a rhythm that deviated from the standard

R&B swing beat that was the foundation of rock'n'roll.

The girl can't help it...

Little Richard's beats are...

I would even say radically different

from, like, Bill Haley and The Comets,

which is a very swing beat.

It's "Rock around the clock tonight,"

that just, you know, the emphasis is on the two and the four -

one, two, three, FOUR - like that.

Whereas Lucille is... HE MIMICS FASTER BEAT

..and it hits on the one and the three.

It's just something you feel.

It feels...exciting.

Lucille

You won't do your sister's will

Lucille

You won't do your sister's will...

I remember one day, Richy was lookin' at me

and this guy got something in his mind.

He said,

"We goin' to the train station in Macon, Georgia, on Fifth Street.

"We're going to follow this train

"as it move along and we's going to listen to the sound of the train."

I say, "OK."

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

And the train picked up speed, so it went choo-choo-choo-choo,

choo-choo-choo-choo.

He say, "Joe?" I say, "What?"

He say, "What kind of notes are those?"

I say, "Richard, those are eighth notes."

He says, "When we have rehearsal tomorrow at my house,

"I want you to play that beat behind me

"and I'm going to be playing the same thing on piano."

I say, "OK."

MUSIC SPEED MIMICS TRAIN

Sound like a damn earthquake.

HE CHUCKLES

Lucille

Please come back like you belong...

And of course the way they used to record, with one or two microphones

up in the air, it just sounds like all one thing.

And that just has a way of getting at ya.

It sort of marks out the way that teenagers felt at the time.

"What are you rebelling against?" "I don't know. Whaddaya got?"

But we're going to do it and we're going to do it now.

While trains inspired Little Richard,

America in the '50s was a nation

expanding its love affair with the car,

the auto industry gaining power through government closure

of public transport and a massive plan to extend America's highways.

NARRATOR: This is the American dream -

a freedom on wheels.

An automotive age, travelling on time-saving superhighways.

Baby, baby Don't you need some...

Cars were like a major part of the culture - drag racing

and teenagers going out in their own cars.

This wasn't happening before.

'Plenty of speed here...'

The design of cars changed as well,

with more powerful engines like the mass-produced V8 Ford,

and styling taking on chrome plating,

two-tone colours and rocket-age streamlining and fins.

Sam Phillips recorded a record by Jackie Brenston called Rocket 88.

V8 motor in this modern design

Black convertible top and the girls don't mind

Sportin' with me...

Rocket 88 was a model

of Oldsmobile car.

It was the first American car that had two-tone colours.

Blue - I remember a powder blue and a navy blue

and that in the ghetto was hot stuff, like new Nikes would be today.

The whole idea of a love song to the car - I'm going to pick you up

for a date, we're going to be free to be ourselves,

go wherever we want to go, do what we want to do,

and no-one has to know.

Step in my Rocket and don't be late, baby

We're pullin' out about half past eight

Goin' round the corner...

The next car record to ride high in the charts

came from an unlikely source -

a 28-year-old ex-hairdresser with an ear for Blues and Country...

going by the name of Chuck Berry...

..who, in the summer of '55, motivated up the migrant corridor

from St Louis to Chicago and Chess Records...

In the wee wee hours...

..with a Blues song called Wee Wee Hours.

That's when I think of you...

But what caught the ear of label head Leonard Chess

was not Chuck's Blues but the other song on his demo...

Light in the parlour Fire in the grate...

..an adaptation of Bob Wills' western swing song, Ida Red.

Ida Red, I had a red

I'm a fool about Ida Red...

My family was always lookin' for what was new and cutting-edge.

My father's nickname was the Foot Stomper - his foot started going...

HE TAPS HIS FOOT

At Chess Records, Chuck's song went through a rewrite,

starting with its title.

Lamp on the table, a picture on the wall

There's a pretty sofa and that's not all...

As I was motivatin' over the hill

I saw Maybellene in a Coup de Ville

A Cadillac a-rollin' on open road

Nothin'll outrun my V8 Ford...

The story goes that, in the studio, there was

a Maybelline cosmetic package.

They came up with the name Maybelline and they recorded it.

Maybellene

Why can't you be true?

Oh, Maybellene

Why can't you be true?

You've started back doin' the things you used to do...

Chuck Berry is the Shakespeare of rock'n'roll.

The Cadillac pulled up ahead of the Ford

The Ford got hot and wouldn't do no more...

Maybellene is about him chasing a beautiful woman who's in a Cadillac

and he's trying to catch up with her.

Rainwater blowin' all under my hood

I knew that was doin' my motor good

Maybellene

Why can't you be true...

He was talkin' about the wind was comin' in, the rain was comin' down,

but all that could be good for his motor. He was sayin', keep it cool,

cos he's driving so fast, you know?

Then he happened to look out his window and she was right there, too.

The motor cooled down, the heat went down

That's when I heard that highway sound...

What a story. What a man.

110 a half a mile ahead

The Cadillac lookin' like it's sittin' still

And I caught Maybellene at the top of the hill...

There's a kind of ambiguity there because you don't know

if she's a white girl or a black girl.

Also, there's a class dimension.

He's driving a V8 Ford and she's driving a Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

That's a rich person's car!

You know, that's dangerous. In 1955, that's really dangerous.

Chuck Berry, I think, is the best rock'n'roll songwriter.

I don't think there was anybody like him before.

He came up with a different word for every note.

There was a word...for each note.

Which was not like Blues records. Chuck Berry doesn't repeat.

It's like,

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

Way back up in the woods among the evergreens

There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood

Where lived a country boy name of Johnny B Goode

Who never ever learned to read or write so well

But he could play the guitar just like a-ringing a bell.

I mean, that's a whole story right there. And then,

Go, go, go, Johnny, go.

So that's when he comes into the chorus but every note is a word.

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

Way back up in the woods among the evergreens

There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood

Where lived a country boy named Johnny B Goode

Who never ever learned to read or write so well

But he could play a guitar just like a-ringing a bell

Go, go

Go, Johnny, go

Go, Johnny, go...

Before Chuck Berry, most everybody strummed their guitars

in a delicate manner.

And all of a sudden, here comes Chuck Berry and he's kicking butt.

He's not strummin' - he's hittin' that baby.

Go, go...

You didn't have to play just one role as just being a music maker,

it was a personality that he would play with.

SOFT GUITAR DROWNS OUT SONG

But Chuck was no spring chicken.

He'd been round the block

and cut an almost avuncular figure in this white teenage world.

I was very young, I was 13 when Chuck Berry came to Chess.

In my eyes he was extraordinarily eccentric.

One day my dad said,

"Take Chuck across the street, buy him some lunch."

We sat down in the booth and he ordered strawberry shortcake

as a starter.

And the main course AFTER, you know? He was just a very unique individual.

He had robbed a gas station,

he had done jail time when he was a teenager.

He knew the hard knocks of it.

But as I grew older, I was fascinated how he knew what was happening

with white teenagers riding around in an automobile.

Black teenagers weren't driving cars in 1955.

It was before civil rights.

That's the thing about Chuck, he was very highly motivated to make it.

Somehow, he was able to tap into what white teenagers were doing,

their lifestyle, how much different they're living than the black kids.

"That's the market. That's what I want to get into."

Chuck was able to see the teenager experience

and sing a song directly to your experience.

Ladies and gentlemen, Chuck Berry! AUDIENCE SCREAMS AND CHEERS

Sweet little 16

She's got the grown-up blues

Tight dresses and lipstick

She's sportin' high-heel shoes

Oh, but tomorrow morning

She'll have to change her trend

And be sweet 16

And back in class again...

Chuck's songs were the first to explore the teen experience,

catching the moment a young America walked a line

between parental control and dolled-up, libidinous,

four-on-the-floor freedom on a highway to who knows where?

Despite being hatched in a divided country,

the music, through stealth and accident,

had stolen the soul of young America.

Cos they'll be rockin' on bandstands

In Philadelphia, PA...

Just as the song describes, rock'n'roll would spread like

a gathering storm from the South to every corner of the US...

All over St Louis

Way down in New Orleans...

..providing the newborn teenager

with their own fashions and language...

It excites me, man, excites me. You've got to dig that music.

..and their own culture and identity,

and through rhythm and poetry

held the promise of a very different America.

But that isn't how the story ends.

"Man, here we go. We're going to ruin America with this junk."

Wake up, little Susie...

The wonderful young Everly Brothers.

Once the music hits it's like smokin' weed.

Changes things.

I think Pat Boone is old enough to be their grandfather.

HE LAUGHS

He didn't have the soul.

A wop bop a loobop, a lop what?

Jerry Lee Lewis!

He's interesting. You might ring his neck sometimes.

And don't ever say that to me again.

Elvis Presley!

'This vulgar, animalistic nigger...'

'Presley records.'

Electricity beyond comprehension.

He should not be on television.

Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

That'll be the day.

The parents called it the Devil's music.

The rock'n'roll records must go.

Wake up, little Susie

Well, what are we gonna tell your mama?

What are we gonna tell your pa?

What are we gonna tell our friends

When they say

Ooh la la?

Wake up, Little Susie

Wake up, Little Susie

Wake up, Little Susie...