ROCK BEFORE ELVIS
Rock and Roll / Rhythm and Blues from 1948 to 1953 was
the greatest
music of all time, though few people know much about it today. The swing
era was dead and the jump blues of WWII was in the decline when, in 1948,
the new beat was born. It was a rocking beat, a hard-driving rhythm like
nothing before it. The year 1948 saw the birth of real rock and roll music.
Where did rock and roll come from? Answer
To hear the music and read about it, go to the top of this page and click.
In order to make it onto the Hoy Hoy website, a record
must be a hard rocker. There's plenty of room in other places for jumping jive, Chicago
blues,
swing bands, sweet doo wop vocal groups, slow blues, or jump blues shuffle boogies. The
record must be a ROCKER, from 1953 or earlier.
HoyHoy.com was created by Morgan Wright.
The recordings on this web site are licensed through BMI 
Here is a link to a very good blues web site
This web site has won the following awards:
This site has been on the web since May 23, 1998, and has been one of the premier pre-Elvis rock web sites ever since. Many other roots-of-rock web sites, printed articles, and books, have copied and pasted from this web site. However, we owe much to those who came before us, mainly Nick Tosches and his book "Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll," and to Jonas Bernholm and his Route 66 and Mr. R&B; record labels, which he ran from his home in Sweden. Bernholm is the man who did more than anybody to bring out the truth about the originators of rock and roll, and to bring their music to the public ear. Not only did he rediscover many of the unsung heroes who originated rock and roll, but he interviewed them, photographed them, documented them and their lives, honored them, and paid them more royalties than they had ever seen before. His record labels were some of the only ones in history whose primary goal was not to profiteer from these original rockers, but to honor them and give them credit, and to document the historical value of their work so others could hear it and learn to honor these artists as well. But even before Bernholm were books like "Honkers and Shouters" by Arnold Shaw. Basically, this information has been out there for a long long time. You should be ashamed of yourself if you don't already know it, and even more ashamed if you still believe that Elvis Presley invented rock and roll during an unrehearsed jam at Sun records in 1954.
Morgan Wright, 2007