The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way, influenced the music industry through the genre of rock music. The museum is part of the city's redeveloped North Coast Harbor.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a complex located in Cleveland, Ohio devoted to performers, creators, promoters, and others associated with the growth and popularity of rock and roll music.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was created April 20, 1983. However, it had no home. The search committee considered several cities, including Memphis (home of Sun Studios and Stax Records), Detroit (home of Motown Records), Cincinnati (home of King Records), New York City, and Cleveland. Cleveland lobbied hard to be chosen, citing that Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed is widely credited with promoting the new genre (and the term) of "rock and roll", and that Cleveland was the location of the first rock and roll concert. Civic leaders in Cleveland pledged $65 million in public money to fund the construction. A petition drive was signed by 600,000 fans favoring Cleveland over Memphis, and a USA Today poll which Cleveland won by 100,000 votes. The hall of fame board voted to build the museum in Cleveland.

A hall of fame, wall of fame, walk of fame, walk of stars or avenue of stars is a type of attraction established for any field of endeavor to honor individuals of noteworthy achievement in that field. The meaning of "Fame" has changed over the years, originally meaning "renown" as opposed to today's more common meaning of "celebrity".

In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actual halls or museums which enshrine the honorees with sculptures, plaques, and displays of memorabilia. Sometimes, the honorees' plaques may instead be posted on a wall (a '"wall of fame") or inscribed on a sidewalk (a "walk of fame" or an "avenue of fame"). In others, the hall of fame is more figurative, and just simply consists of a list of names of noteworthy individuals maintained by an organization or community.

The English-language term was first used for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College, in New York City, although its inspiration, the Ruhmeshalle in Munich, Germany, also means "Hall of Fame". The Walhalla Temple in Bavaria, Germany, is an even earlier hall of fame, conceived in 1807 and built between 1830 and 1842.

Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music. Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in blues records from the 1920s, rock and roll did not acquire its name until the 1950s.

The term "rock and roll" now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage. The American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. Encyclopædia Britannica, on the other hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later developed "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music". For the purpose of differentiation, this article uses the second definition.

In the earliest rock and roll styles of the late 1940s and early 1950s, either the piano or saxophone was often the lead instrument, but these were generally replaced or supplemented by guitar in the middle to late 1950s. The beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, the latter almost always provided by a snare drum. Classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm), a string bass or (after the mid-1950s) an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit.