Jackie Brenston / Ike Turner handbill, April 1951.
The pivotal rhythm & blues hit "Rocket 88" was recorded and released in March of 1951--75 years ago*. Many music writers and historians consider it to have been the first rock 'n' roll record, though whether it was or not is entirely subjective. The form had been gestating for several years, perhaps decades, and there's really no way to pinpoint a "first." With forerunners dating back at least to the mid-1940s--Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Strange Things Happening Every Day" (1944), Louis Jordan's "Caldonia" (1945), Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right" (1946), Roy Brown's "Good Rockin' Tonight" (1947) and Wynonie Harris' more upbeat cover of same (1948), Jimmy Preston's "Rock the Joint" (1949), Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" (recorded in 1949 and released in 1950), and a few others--the field is wide open for potentially legitimate claims to the title of The First Rock 'n' Roll Record.
*According to writer and critic Peter Guralnick, the disputed recording date was March 7 and the record was released three weeks later.
Oldsmobile "Rocket" 88 print ad, circa 1951.
Named after a then-popular model of Oldsmobile that's now widely regarded as the first American "muscle car," "Rocket 88," performed by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats (actually Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm--more on that later), is basically a revved-up rhythm & blues / jump blues number on high octane. The lyrics are sexually suggestive, a practice that would become fairly common in the just-over-the-horizon rock 'n' roll genre, but it was nothing new to the world of popular music (e.g., Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart et al.), let alone the blues tradition of creative euphemisms. The record was certainly an early influence on rock 'n' roll. And when listened to chronologically alongside other early 1950s #1 songs on Billboard's R&B chart, it stands out sonically and viscerally. The effect can almost be compared to the way the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" sounds in the context of its early '60s Billboard Hot 100 #1 predecessors. It was definitely a game changer. At 75, it still motors along with a fresh, rambunctious, furious energy.
Here's what the song's co-writer, Ike Turner, had to say about it in a later interview:
"I don't think that 'Rocket 88' is rock 'n' roll. I think that 'Rocket 88' is R&B, but I think 'Rocket 88' is the cause of rock 'n' roll existing . . . [producer] Sam Phillips got [radio DJ] Dewey Phillips to play 'Rocket 88' on his program--and this is like the first black record to be played on a white radio station--and, man, all the white kids broke out to the record shops to buy it. So that's when Sam Phillips got the idea, 'Well, man, if I get me a white boy to sound like a black boy, then I got me a gold mine,' which is the truth. So, that's when he got Elvis and he got Jerry Lee Lewis and a bunch of other guys and so they named it rock 'n' roll rather than R&B and so this is the reason I think rock 'n' roll exists--not that 'Rocket 88' was the first one, but that was what caused the first one."
However you categorize it, this was a historically significant, highly influential record. Little Richard borrowed from it for his 1958 hit "Good Golly, Miss Molly," for one, while the distorted guitar sound anticipated the fuzzbox, which became popular when the recording was rediscovered in the 1960s (think the Beatles' "Think for Yourself"). Nick Tosches wrote that, though "Rocket 88" could not be described as the first rock 'n' roll record "any more than there is any first modern novel--the fact remains that the record in question was possessed of a sound and a fury the shear, utter newness of which set it apart from what had come before."
The label credit denotes that "Rocket 88" was performed by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, but in reality, while Brenston sang the vocal and played tenor saxophone, the band was Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, with Ike on piano and the famous distorted guitar played by Willie Kizart*. The tenor sax solos were performed by 17-year-old Raymond Hill. Willie "Bad Boy" Sims was behind the drum kit. Brenston and Turner co-wrote the song, the melody of which, Brenston said, was based on that of "Cadillac Boogie" by Jimmy Liggins (1947). Varying accounts have the song being rehearsed at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi, written on the way from Mississippi to the recording session in Memphis (Memphis Recording Studio), or crafted while in the studio. Sam Phillips, who soon after founded the famous Sun Records with royalties earned from "Rocket 88" (Brenston sold his half of the rights to him), was the producer; he licensed the song, along with the B-side, "Come Back Where You Belong," to the recently established Chess Records in Chicago for commercial release. Turner blamed Phillips for botching the label credits in the process of delivering the master recording to Chess.
*As the story goes, the guitar amplifier was damaged when the band was changing a flat tire on Highway 61 en route from Mississippi to Memphis to record the song. After arriving at the studio, wadded newspapers were stuffed inside the amp's housing in an effort to keep the broken woofer cone in place. The unintentional result was a distorted guitar sound, which Phillips liked and thus left on the recording.
Following the Success of "Rocket 88"--it spent three weeks atop the Billboard R&B chart, plus two at the top of their Most Played Juke Box R&B Records chart--there was a clash of egos between Turner and Brenston, resulting in Brenston leaving the band to join Lowell Fulson's group. He returned to the Kings of Rhythm a couple of years later, with Turner allegedly barring him from singing "Rocket 88." By the 1970s, he had left the music business. Ike became a session musician (backing other artists with his Kings of Rhythm on records), a production assistant for Sam Phillips at Sun Studio, and a freelance talent scout, discovering, among others, Howlin' Wolf, Little Junior Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Little Milton. In 1956, he met aspiring singer Ann Bullock, who by the early 1960s was the lead singer and star of his band, under the stage name Tina. Ike and Tina were married in 1962 and proceeded to write another chapter in R&B / rock 'n' roll history.
The 1954 Essex reissue of Bill Haley's version of "Rocket 88," originally released on Holiday Records in 1951.
An original Chess pressing of "Rocket 88" on 7-inch 45 or 10-inch 78 is something of a holy grail among record collectors. Bill Haley & His Comets (then called Bill Haley & the Saddlemen) covered the song, country swing / rockabilly style, in June of 1951 on Holiday--that record is also much-sought-after by collectors.
© Jon Oye, 2026
Records and print ad are from my collection.
Brenston/Turner "Rocket 88" handbill photo source.
Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm photo source.
