Work · 1951 · Memphis [35.15, -90.05]
"Rocket 88"
Written by Jackie Brenston and based on an earlier jump blues, 'Rocket 88' celebrates a powerful new Oldsmobile in a roaring R&B shuffle. Recorded at Sam Phillips's studio in 1951 with a distorted guitar amplifier, it is frequently nominated as a contender for the first rock 'n' roll record. Its driving rhythm and overdriven tone prefigured the rougher textures of the music to come. The song carried Memphis R&B into the lineage that Sun would soon make famous.
Evidence1
- Wikidata: Rocket 88Wikidata
www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2638487
accessed 2026-06-04
Connections2
collaborates with → Jackie Brenston
influences → Recording of "That's All Right" (July 1954)
The R&B energy that Sam Phillips first captured on 'Rocket 88' in 1951 is the same charge he spent three years trying to channel through a new kind of singer. When Elvis Presley reworked a blues into 'That's All Right' in 1954, he completed the line that ran from the studio's earliest R&B sides into rockabilly.