American rock

American rock is rock music from the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music. The creation of American rock music was highly influenced by the British Invasion of the American pop charts from 1964. From the late 1960s and early 1970s, American rock music was highly influential in the development of a number of fusions, including including blending with folk music to create folk rock, with blues to create blues-rock and with jazz to create jazz-rock fusion, all of which contributed to psychedelic rock. In the 1970s, rock developed a large number of subgenres, such as soft rock, hard rock, heavy metal, glam rock, progressive rock and punk rock. Subgenres that were important in the 1980s included New Wave, hardcore punk, post-punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, important subgenres included grunge, indie rock, and nu metal and in the 2000s genres that emerged into the mainstream included emo and metalcore.

The foundations of American rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music; in addition to country and western. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.
There is much debate as to what should be considered the first rock and roll record. One contender is "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm), recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in Memphis in 1951. It has been argued that "That's All Right (Mama)" (1954), Elvis Presley's first single for Sun Records was the first rock and roll record,but, at the same time, Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll", later covered by Bill Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B charts. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent. Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (1955) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Soon rock and roll was the major force in American record sales and crooners, such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.