Shake, Rattle and Roll

The first time Shake, Rattle and Roll played on the radio, it wasn’t the version we associate with rock and roll today. The original, recorded by Big Joe Turner in February 1954 in New York, topped the rhythm and blues charts without relying on electric guitars or a fast-paced rhythm. Turner, a vocalist rooted in Kansas City blues, gave the song a playful and carefree vibe, where the title was little more than a pun about movement and dancing. The hook wasn’t in the lyrics but in how the phrase "shake, rattle and roll" became an invitation to move, almost like a secret code between the performer and the audience.

The song was born from a specific commission: Ahmet Ertegun, of Atlantic Records, asked Jesse Stone—who sometimes used the name "Charles Calhoun" for certain rights societies—to write a fast-paced track for Turner, an artist with decades of experience in the African American music scene. Stone, who had already worked with danceable rhythms, took a popular expression from the early 1900s ("You Got to Shake, Rattle and Roll", from 1910) and turned it into a catchy chorus. The studio recording lasted less than three hours, and the result was a single that, by April 1954, climbed to the top of the R&B charts and even entered the *Top 20* overall. What’s curious is that, while Turner’s version sounds restrained compared to later adaptations today, it was groundbreaking at the time: it blended traditional blues with a tempo that invited jumping, something that would later define the emerging rock and roll. When Bill Haley & His Comets covered it in June of that same year, they gave it a rawer twist, with saxophone and upright bass driving the rhythm, but it was Elvis Presley’s version—recorded in 1956 for RCA Victor—that ultimately cemented it as an anthem. Presley performed it live in January 1956, mixed with another Haley track, "Flip, Flop and Fly", during a broadcast of the *Dorsey Brothers Stage Show* in Cleveland. By then, the song was no longer just a hit but a bridge between rhythm and blues and the new sound poised to dominate the airwaves.