The rock ‘n’ roll genre is vast and hard to pin down with any specific definition, but many music historians point to the 1951 album Rocket “88” by the Delta Cats (also known as Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm) as the first rock ‘n’ roll album. This record, pressed at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service, achieved a special sound thanks to a mishap on the way to the studio: An amp fell out of the band’s car, and to repair the damage, they stuffed brown paper inside. The resulting distorted buzzing sound in the guitar, along with the driving boogie melody from Ike Turner’s keys, helped build the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll. Sam Phillips’ renamed Sun Records studio continued to record Black rhythm and blues musicians through the early 1950s, but a young Elvis Presley recording at the Memphis, Tennessee, studio further progressed the genre of rock ‘n’ roll.
Like any subculture, the world of rock ‘n’ roll is steeped in slang. The phrase “rock ‘n’ roll” itself is colloquial, traced to early usage in a 1938 song lyric: “It’s true that once upon a time / The op’ra was the thing / But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme / So won’t you satisfy my soul with a rock an’ roll.” Some words that have been around for centuries were adopted for specific uses in the music genre, while other terms came up with the music and have been pulled into our everyday lexicon. Let’s dive deeper into this soul-satisfying genre and learn about the particular lingo and slang born out of rock ‘n’ roll.
“Punk” has been in the English language for centuries, used in mostly derogatory ways to describe various types of people, but in the 1970s, it began to be attributed to a new kind of music. As a genre, punk is fast, aggressive, and unpolished, characterized by a confrontational attitude and chaotic live performances. As a word, “punk” articulates a complete lifestyle associated with the genre — one that is antiestablishment and anti-authority. Music writers fight over who coined the term, but it’s generally attributed to Dave Marsh in a 1971 issue of CREEM Magazine.
In musical recording lingo, “EP” stands for “extended play.” It refers to a 7-inch 45 record that plays for a longer time period, or has more songs on it, than a single (see “A-side/B-side”). Eventually, “EP” came to mean any musical recording that was longer than a single, but shorter than a full-length album.
These terms are a bit archaic, in the sense that vinyl album recording has become more of a novelty than a given. They describe the two sides of a single-playing vinyl record, also known as a 45. “B-side” has come to denote a lesser-known or less-significant song, as the A-side is traditionally the single that plays on the radio. Don’t snooze on the B-side, though — sometimes those tracks are considered the best ones. (The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus,” for example, was the B-side for the 1967 single “Hello Goodbye.”)
A demo is a rudimentary, often-unpolished recording made to display the abilities of a musician or a band, and then be presented to record labels, DJs, and agents. The word is a shortened version of “demonstration,” and this particular usage has been around almost as long as the rock ‘n’ roll genre itself. One of its earliest appearances in print was in a 1962 issue of Billboard: “Denny said he’ll often hear a song one day, make a demo of it the next morning, and it will be recorded by some name artist the same afternoon.”
Traditionally, “to jam” means “to squeeze or pack tightly into a specified space.” Colloquially, though, particularly in circles of musicians, “jam” can be used as a noun or verb to denote a spontaneous burst of playing music. You might meet up with a friend to jam, or to have a jam session. The word emerged in jazz circles around the late 1920s and early ’30s, but it has come to be used by musicians across genres. The jam subgenre of rock ‘n’ roll is characterized by bands such as the Grateful Dead and Phish, who play songs that can meander for upwards of 30 minutes.
In general, “fuzz” refers to any fluffy or frizzy mass of fiber. In rock ‘n’ roll music, it’s a buzzing or distorted sound, especially when deliberately produced as an effect on an electric guitar. The etymology related to music is a bit … fuzzy, but early proponents of distorted guitar playing were blues guitarists — notably Elmore James and Buddy Guy, who were trying to recreate on a guitar the raw vocals of singers such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, among others.
