Sunday, January 1, 2012
Why is it called "Rock and Roll" and not "Stone and Roll"?
The word "rock" had a long history in many languages as a metaphor for "to shake up, to disturb or to incite". "Rocking" was a term used by black gospel singers in the American South to mean something akin to spiritual rapture. In 1916, the term "rocking and rolling" was used with a religious connotation, on the phonograph record "The Camp Meeting Jubilee" by an unnamed male "quartette". In 1937, Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald recorded "Rock It for Me", which included the lyric, "It's true that once upon a time The opera was the thing, But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme, So won't you satisfy my soul with the rock and roll". The verb "roll" was a medieval metaphor which meant "having sex". Writers for hundreds of years have used the phrases "They had a roll in the hay" or "I rolled her in the clover". The phrase "rocking and rolling" was secular black slang for dancing or sex by the early twentieth century, appearing on record for the first time in 1922 on Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me With One Steady Roll", and as a double entendre, ostensibly referring to dancing, but with the subtextual meaning of sex, as in Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight" (1948).|||The words "rock" and "roll", which were black slang for sexual intercourse, appear on record for the first time, Trixie Smith's "My Baby Rocks Me With One Steady Roll".|||Cos to "stone someone" involves various manslaughter charges. Not fun for most people.|||That explains my dizziness....lols~
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