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The World's First Rock & Roll Concert

© Barney Quick

He called himself Moondog after a blind New York street musician named Louis Hardin who went by that moniker. He employed all manner of wacky sound effects and pounded on a phone book when a record’s beat got really hot. Soon he was causing trouble around the dinner tables of black homes in northern Ohio.

It must be remembered that rhythm & blues was very marginalized in its early days. To the extent that anyone outside of the patrons of ghetto bars paid any attention to it, it was considered crudely hewn, sexually dangerous and conducive to reinforcing the worst racial stereotypes. The Cleveland Call And Post, the city’s black newspaper, said it reflected and promoted “bum taste” and “low morality.” Middle-class black parents preferred their offspring to listen to polite singers such as Nat Cole, Billy Eckstine and Lena Horne.

Actually, black teenagers as a demographic group had no distinct tastes at the time. Moondog’s show changed all that. He made his young audience feel hip and imparted to them a sense of community based on a feeling of wanton abandon. Once he and his associates had conceived of the Arena show, he promoted it on his radio program as if it were a pivotal event in human history. In addition to Paul Williams, he booked Varetta Dillard, Billy Ward and the Dominoes and quirky guitarist Tiny Grimes and his Rockin’ Highlanders. He and his brother David and the Record Rendezvous staff had seven thousand tickets printed. They sold instantly. Freed et al decided the thing to do at that point was print and sell thousands more, which they did. This is what led to the riot of March 21.

Freed got incredible public-relations mileage out of the situation. His listeners became more loyal than ever. He had developed an air of controversy around himself. Soon afterward, he took Moondog’s Rock And Roll Party to WINS in New York. Louis Hardin sued him for use of the Moondog name in 1954, so he merely dropped it and called his show the Rock And Roll Party. “Rock and roll” was a term that had been around since the 1920s as a blues-lyric allusion to the sex act, and since the late 40s, many jump-blues tunes had used the term “rock” in their titles, including saxophonist Paul Bascomb’s song “Rock And Roll.” By the time Freed shortened his program’s name, it was becoming a catchall phrase to classify the gathering musical storm that would blow the doors off the hinges of the American cultural establishment and change life for nearly every member of society over the next fifty years as a consequence.