December 30, 1950: The Dominoes Record "Sixty Minute Man"

December 30, 1950: The Dominoes, an all-black vocal group specializing in rhythm & blues songs, record "Sixty Minute Man" on Federal Records, National Studios, at 460 West 42nd Street in New York City.

At the time, The Dominoes consisted of singer, pianist, manager and songwriter Billy Ward; tenor Clyde McPhatter; baritones Charlie White, Joe Lamont; and bass singer Bill Brown. Ward had teamed up with white songwriter Rose Marks to write "Sixty Minute Man," in which a man brags about how he's a great lover:

Look-a-here, girls, I'm telling you now:
They call me Lovin' Dan.
I rock 'em, roll 'em, all night long.
I'm a sixty-minute man.

If you don't believe I'm all I say
come up and take my hand.
When I let you go, you'll cry, "Oh, yes:

He's a sixty-minute man!"

There'll be fifteen minutes of kissin'.
Then you'll holler, "Please, don't stop!"
There'll be fifteen minutes of teasin'
and fifteen minutes of pleasin'
and fifteen minutes of blowin' my top!

If your man ain't treatin' you right
come up and see ol' Dan.
I rock 'em, roll 'em, all night long.
I'm a sixty-minute man.

The record was released in May 1951, and within a month, it reached Number 1 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, holding that top spot for 14 weeks, a record at the time. It actually crossed over onto Billboard's Popular Music chart -- in other words, white people's music -- reaching Number 17. Black singers had done better than that, but they were pop singers like Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine, not R&B groups or soloists.

If you're asking, "How did a line like 'Fifteen minutes of blowin' my top' get past the censors in 1951?" I don't have an answer. 

Unusual for single records, then as now, the bass singer takes the lead, Bill Brown. There is guitar playing from René Hall, and the drumming is on the 2nd and 4th beats. By a certain definition -- and not just because the words "rock" and "roll" are used together -- this is the very first rock and roll record. 

Another candidate, "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats -- actually Ike Turner and the band he was using at the time -- was recorded in March 1951 (after "Sixty Minute Man"), released in April (before "Sixty Minute Man"), but didn't debut on the charts until June (after "Sixty Minute Man"). It also has the drumming on the 1st and 3rd beats, which tends to disqualify it from the strict definition of "rock and roll." But then, rock and roll has always been about challenging boundaries, and thus strict definitions don't always apply. So either one of these songs could be claimed as the first.

(What was a "Rocket 88"? An Oldsmobile Delta 88. Where did the number come from? Naming conventions used by General Motors since the 1910s for all divisions used alphanumeric designations that changed every year. Starting after World War II, the Oldsmobile division changed their designations and standardized them, so that the first number signified the chassis platform, while the second number signified how many cylinders: 8 and 8. The Delta 88 was sold from 1949 until 1999. GM phased out the Oldsmobile name in 2004.) 

With his own name on the group, Ward took in most of the group's income, despite the fact that McPhatter was the lead singer on most songs. Ward even had Clyde billed as "Clyde Ward," to make it seem like Clyde was his brother. In 1953, Clyde decided he'd had enough, and left to form a new group, The Drifters, arguably inventing "doo-wop."

In 1955, after 2 years of great success on the R&B charts, Clyde was drafted into the U.S. Army. After serving a year, he started a solo career, while The Drifters built an entirely new lineup led by Ben E. King. After years of hard drinking and drug use, Clyde McPhatter died in 1972, not quite 40 years old.

But back in 1953, Ward was ready for Clyde's departure, as he already had a replacement lined up: Jackie Wilson. Eventually, he got sick of Ward, too, and launched a solo career in 1957. He became known as "Mr. Excitement," and had a bunch of hits.

In 1975, performing for a Dick Clark-sponsored oldies show at the Latin Casino in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Jackie suffered a heart attack -- just as he was singing the opening line of his 1st big solo hit, from 1959, "Lonely Teardrops": "My heart is cryin', cryin'... "

Since throwing his body all over the stage was a part of his act, it took about 30 seconds for people to realize that this collapse wasn't, and it cost his brain precious oxygen. It also didn't help that he was already sweating like crazy, as that was part of his act, too, so that didn't seem like a sign that anything was wrong. He was told that women liked that, and that taking salt tablets would make him sweat more. Those tablets are probably the reason he had a heart attack at the age of 41. He spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitals and nursing homes, dying in 1984.

Bill Brown was even unluckier than McPhatter and Wilson: He got sick of Ward's military-style discipline, left in 1952, joined The Clovers in 1953, and didn't even live to see their success, as he died in 1956. (I've looked for a cause, but I can't find one: Not an illness, not drugs, not an accident, not a murder.) He didn't live to see how his lead vocal would affect rock and roll, inspiring such basses as Fred Johnson of The Marcels (who hit Number 1 in 1961 with a doo-wop version of "Blue Moon") and Melvin Franklin of The Temptations.

René Hall died in 1988, Joe Lamont in 1998, Billy Ward in 2002, and Charlie White was the last survivor, living until 2005. I can find no record of when Rose Marks died, but a photograph of her suggests that she was already middle-aged in 1950, so she has likely been dead for a long time.

Fats Domino, one of the founding fathers of rock and roll, did not name himself for the group: His real name was Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. However, later singer Ernest Evans did take the name "Chubby Checker" as a play on the name "Fats Domino." Still later, in 1970, Van Morrison released the song "Domino," and Eric Clapton formed a group named Derek & The Dominos (no E on the end). Both were tributes to Fats, not Billy Ward's group. (Morrison recorded another song with a tenuous connection to the Dominoes, "Jackie Wilson Said.")

The debate over "the first rock and roll record" continues, but I'm satisfied that it's "Sixty Minute Man" by The Dominoes.

*

December 30, 1950 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. There were no college football games played. The NFL season had ended 6 days earlier, with the Cleveland Browns beating the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL Championship Game.

There were 3 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Boston Celtics, 77-60 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Baltimore Bullets, 90-80 in overtime at the Baltimore Coliseum.

* And the Rochester Royals beat the Washington Capitols, 91-77 at the Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester, New York. The teams were going in opposite directions: At the end of the year, the Royals won the NBA Championship, while the Caps folded. The Royals became the Cincinnati Royals in 1957, the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

There were 2 games in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-3 at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal beat Sheffield Wednesday, 2-0 at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, Yorkshire.

March 21, 1952: The 1st Rock and Roll Concert

Alan Freed hosting the Moondog Coronation Ball

March 21, 1952: The Moondog Coronation Ball is held at the Cleveland Arena. It is now widely regarded as the 1st rock and roll concert -- and the 1st example of backlash against rock and roll.

It was hosted by Alan Freed, a disc jockey at Cleveland radio station WJW, 850 on the AM dial. He hosted a classical music show, until he met Leo Mintz, owner of Record Rendezvous on Prospect Avenue, on the East Side, which was, and remains, mostly black. Mintz was selling records made by black performers to both black teenagers and white teenagers.

For songs like this, there were various terms used: "Race music," "jump music," and "rhythm and blues," or "R&B" for short. Mintz agreed to sponsor Freed's show, if Freed would play these records. The words "rock" and "roll," sometimes close together, were used in many of the songs, and while it is disputed whether Mintz or Freed was the first person to call the entire genre of music "rock and roll," it seems pretty clear that, together, they started it.

Freed called his show "The Moondog House" and himself "Moondog." It proved so successful that Mintz agreed to produce and promote an entire concert of the new music. It would be called "The Moondog Coronation Ball," and Freed was sure it could sell out the 10,000-seat Cleveland Arena.

The lead act was Paul Williams. Not to be confused with other musical personalities with that name -- including one of the original Temptations and the diminutive singer-songwriter of the 1970s -- he was a saxophonist whose playing style presaged that of many who went on to use the instrument in rock and roll, including Rudy Pompilli of Bill Haley's Comets, and King Curtis, best known for his work on The Coasters' records.

In 1949, Williams hit Number 1 on the R&B chart with "The Huckle-Buck," a dance tune that would later be recorded by Kay Starr (her version is the one Jackie Gleason and Art Carney danced to on The Honeymooners) and Chubby Checker. The song was so successful, for the rest of his life -- though possibly also to avoid confusion with the other Paul Williamses -- he was billed as "Paul 'Hucklebuck' Williams." (At some point, "Hucklebuck" became one word.) He also had a hit with "The Twister," a precursor to "The Twist" by Hank Ballard and Checker.

Another act on the bill was Billy Ward and his Dominoes. In 1951, they had a Number 1 R&B hit with "Sixty Minute Man," which some have called "the first rock and roll record." That group had Clyde McPhatter, before he formed The Drifters. After Clyde left, he was replaced by a man who would go on to even bigger solo success, Jackie Wilson.

Also on the Moondog bill were Tiny Grimes and the Rocking Highlanders (black men who sang in Scottish-style kilts), male soloist Danny Cobb, and female soloist Varetta Dillard.

$1.75 in 1952 would be about $18.74 today.

History, relatively cheap.

But there was a problem: More tickets were printed than the Arena held seats. And they were sold. At 10:00 PM, Williams and his band went on, and played their set. Contrary to legend, the show was not stopped after their set, much less after their first song.

Valena Williams (no relation to Paul) covered the show for the Cleveland Call and Post, a black newspaper, still in business although published only weekly. She confirmed that the Hucklebuckers played their entire set, and that Tiny Grimes and the Highlanders did begin playing.

They could hardly be heard, because there was a noise outside the Arena that had worked its way inside: Fans with extra tickets got in, perhaps 6,000 of them. Valena Williams wrote that 99 percent of the attendees were black, so if Freed was hoping for an integrated audience, his hopes were not met. The Police shut the show down at 10:30, for fear that there might be a riot. There wasn't one: Although some doors were broken down, there was no fighting, and no damage inside the Arena.

The next day, on the air, Freed delivered an apology. Cleveland's self-appointed moral arbiters tried to frame the event as a "riot," but there was no riot. The Cleveland Police Department arrested no one. No injuries were reported. The 1st backlash against rock and roll turned out to be a lie, although, to this day, there are those who say the Ball ended in a riot.

Nevertheless, Freed's popularity, and that of the music, soared. He continued to play rock and roll, and began to call himself "The King of the Rock-and-Rollers." With a particularly beaty song, he would pound his fist on a telephone book, making the sound even beatier.

In 1954, he was brought to New York by WINS, 1010 AM, and took the Big Apple by storm. But his role in the 1960 "payola" scandal and his heavy drinking brought him down. Rock and roll has never really died, but Alan Freed did, in 1965, only 45 years old.

Mintz expanded his record store into a chain, and was still running it when he died in 1976, at age 65.

The Cleveland Arena stood at 3717 Euclid Avenue, about 2 miles east of Public Square. It opened in 1937, and was the home of the American Hockey League's Cleveland Barons from then until 1974. In the NBA's 1st season of 1946-47, the Cleveland Rebels played there. The Cleveland Cavaliers moved in for the 1970-71 season, and the Cleveland Crusaders of the World Hockey Association did so in 1972.

In 1988, the film Heartbreak Hotel premiered, taking place in 1972, and featured a concert by Elvis Presley at the Arena. Elvis did once sing at the Arena, but early in his career, on November 23, 1956. He gave only one concert in Ohio in 1972, and that was in Dayton.

The Arena was replaced by The Coliseum, in the suburb of Richfield, Ohio, in 1974, and was torn down in 1977. The Cleveland Chapter of the American Red Cross now occupies the site.

In 1986, because of its status as the location of the 1st rock and roll concert, Cleveland was selected as the location of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, although it took until 1995 for the actual museum to open. In voting taken by the Hall's board, Memphis was a distant 2nd.

Since 1992, a Moondog Coronation Ball, featuring early rock and roll acts, has been held in Cleveland ever year; since 1994, at the arena now named the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. By now, the acts are tribute performers, since the original rock and rollers are now either dead or elderly.

Since 2001, Cleveland's 850 AM has hosted all-sports radio station WKNR.

On July 4, 1954, Varetta Dillard, who didn't get to take the stage at the Moondog Coronation Ball, was among the acts at the 1st rock and roll concert in New Jersey, at Patrylow's Grove Park in Kenilworth, Union County. Among the other acts were Roy Hamilton, Sonny Til & The Orioles, and Nappy Brown. Dillard lived until 1993.

Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams lived until 2002, and may have been the last survivor of the principals of the Moondog Coronation Ball.

*

March 21, 1952 was a Friday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. And no games were scheduled in either the NBA or the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.