Motown, named in honor of hometown Detroit’s nickname “The Motor City”, was incorporated on January 12, 1959 as Tamla Records. Arguably the most significant player in the racial integration of popular music, it was the first record label owned by an African American, Berry Gordy, Jr. Its elite crossover success banished the idea of “race […]

Some bands inspire cultures all their own, giving rise to specific vernaculars, styles, and behavior. In the 60s, there were Beatlemaniacs. Insane Clown Posse, albeit on a smaller scale, has Juggalos. But perhaps no other band in history has inspired a following the way that the Grateful Dead has. The Dead toured consistently from 1965 […]

By the late 50s, “American Bandstand” emerged as a formative teenage TV experience, a nationwide sock hop uniting kids obsessed with a new phenomenon - rock ‘n’ roll. It debuted in 1952 on WFIL in Philadelphia with host Bob Horn. This local incarnation was dubbed simply “Bandstand”. Dick Clark took over hosting duties in 1956, […]

By 1952 Les Paul was not only the most popular guitar player in America, he was also a leading innovator in guitar and electronics design. He had been experimenting with electric guitars since the early 1940’s. He had once mounted a guitar string on a railroad tie to confirm his belief that a solid body […]

Elvis Presley’s first Ed Sullivan appearance on September 9, 1956 was seen by an estimated 55-60 million viewers. During his second appearance on the show, Presley only had to shake his legs to get screams from the audience, which a preoccupied Sullivan did not notice him doing when stood next to the singer. Elvis’s inspired […]

Its first few seconds remain among the most thrilling of any live album.
“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” … a raucous crowd of inmates explode into hoots and hollers followed by the first immortal lines of “Folsom Prison Blues”…
The dawn of 1968 marked a rebirth in the personal and professional life of Johnny Cash. Cash was a […]

Where would rock and roll – or any recorded music – be without the invention of the tinfoil cylinder phonograph in 1877?
Thomas Edison announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it […]

By 1969, Jimi Hendrix was at his peak. His reputation as a live performer in the years since his infamous Monterey Pop appearance was incomparable. He signed on to headline the three day Woodstock music festival – billed above significant contemporaries The Who, Santana, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and the Jefferson Airplane. Pegged as […]

“And in the end / the love you make / is equal to the love you take” – so go the lyrics to the last song on Abbey Road, the final album recorded by the Beatles during their time together. Although Abbey Road was the last record they made together in the summer of […]

Rolling Stone is an American based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics and popular culture and is published biweekly. Founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner (who is still editor and publisher) and music critic Ralph J. Gleason, it embraced and reported on the hippy counterculture during the late 1960s and 1970s. Its […]