How the world's first rock concert ended in chaos

BBC News ^ | 21st March 2012 | Jude Sheerin

[the scotsman]

'Cleveland by two men whose passion for music bridged the racial divide in a segregated US.

Jimmy Sutphin was playing poker and drinking beer in a hotel room with some hockey team pals when they heard the commotion outside.

Peering out of the fifth-floor window, they saw thousands of people besieging the indoor arena across the road. The 20-year-old student and his friends abandoned their card game and piled downstairs to investigate.

It was Friday evening, 21 March 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio, and they were about to witness history being made.

The crowd was angrily demanding entry to a performance featuring a radical new music movement that was about to sweep the nation. The world's first ever rock concert - the Moondog Coronation Ball - was about to end in turmoil after it had barely begun.'

[a fool in paradise]

I'm glad Moondog won his name back in his lawsuit with Alan Freed.

[hinckley buzzard]

Remembered well here in C-town. And that btw, is why the National Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame is situated in Cleveland, on the shore of Lake Erie, a scant couple miles from the site of the Moondog Coronation Ball so many years ago, thanks to Alan Freed.

I met Jimmy Sutphin myself a few years later. Son of a local big shot industrialist, he wasn't much, himself.

[a fool in paradise]

Good Rockin' Tonight was written in 1948 in Galveston.

This picture of Big Jay McNeely (who still blows his horn) is from 1951.

So much for the hype.

[the scotsman]

Great photo.

I love the ‘proto rock and roll’, the 1945-54 stuff: McNeely, Rocket 88, early Ike Turner, ‘race records’....

[a fool in paradise]

I’ve gotten to see both McNeely and Ike Turner in the past decade.

Ike’s history got written out of the history be he was there supplying songs and artists to Sun and Chess.

[Fiji Hill]

Headlining the Moondog Coronation Ball that night 60 years ago was Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers, supported by Tiny Grimes and his Rockin' Highlanders, the Dominoes, Varetta Dillard and Danny Cobb.

• Hucklebuck--Paul Williams & His Hucklebuckers (1949)

• Drinking Beer--J. B. Summers with Tiny Grimes & His Orchestra (1949)

• No Room--Billy Ward and the Dominoes (1952)

• Skinny Jimmy--Varetta Dillard (1956)

• Hey, Mr. Warden--Danny Cobb (1957)

[Fiji Hill]

I have this on a 78 rpm disc.

All That Wine is Gone--Jay McNeely & His Orchestra (1951)

[bigbob]

Great story, I did not know all of this story before...

[Fiji Hill]

"There's good news tonight"--Gabriel Heatter

• The's Good Blues Tonight--Doris Day with Les Brown & is Band of Renown (1946)

• Good Rockin' Tonight--Roy Brown (1947)

• Good Rockin' Tonight--Wynonie Harris (1948)

[Boogieman]

Don't forget the piano players!

The Fatman - Fats Domino (1949)

Rockin' with Red - Piano Red (1950)

Roll 'em Pete - Big Joe Turner/Pete Johnson (1938)

Ray Charles - Mess Around (1953)

Swannee River Boogie - Albert Ammons (1946)

[Defiant]

Is that Jim Carey in the front row?