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This article is about the song. For the band by this name, see Rocket 88 (band).

"Rocket 88" is a rhythm and blues song that was first recorded at Sam Phillips' recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on 3 or 5 March (accounts differ) 1951. It is claimed by some, including Phillips — later to become owner of Sun Records, and pioneer rock and roll record producer — to be the "first rock and roll song".

The original version of the 12-bar blues song was credited to "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats," but that band did not actually exist. The song was written by Ike Turner at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi and recorded by Turner'sKings of Rhythm. The song was based on the 1947 song "Cadillac Boogie" by Jimmy Liggins.[1] Jackie Brenston (1930-1979) was a saxophonist with Turner who also sang the vocal on "Rocket 88," a hymn of praise to the joys of the Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" automobile (see: Oldsmobile 88), which had just been introduced in 1949. Although Brenston was given author credit rather than Turner, it is now agreed that Brenston's contribution was overstated for financial reasons.

Working from the raw material of jump blues and swing combo music, Turner made it even rawer, starting with a strongly stated back beat by drummer Willie Sims, and superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals, his own piano, and tenor saxophone solos by Raymond Hill. The song also features one of the first examples of distortion, or fuzz guitar, ever recorded, played by the band's guitarist Willie Kizart. The legend of how the sound came about says that Kizart's amplifier was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee, but Phillips liked the sound and used it.

Robert Palmer has written that the amplifier "had fallen from the top of the car", and attributes this information to Sam Phillips.^[1][2] In a recorded interview at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington, Ike Turner states that the amplifier was in the trunk of the car, and that rain may have caused the damage. He is certain that it did not fall from the roof of the car. Turner's first hand account surely carries more weight than the second hand version reported by Palmer. (Link Wray had a similar story.)

It was the second-biggest rhythm and blues single of 1951, reaching # 1 in June for five weeks and much more influential than some other "first" claimants. Ike Turner's piano intro to the song was later used note-for-note by Little Richard in "Good Golly Miss Molly."

A second version of "Rocket 88" was recorded by the country music group Bill Haley and the Saddlemen at a recording session on June 14, 1951,[2][3] a few months after Brenston recorded his version. Haley's recording was a regional hit in the northeast United States and started Haley along the musical road which led to his own impact on popular music with "Rock Around the Clock" in 1954.

Those who subscribe to the definition of rock and roll as the melding of country music with rhythm and blues believe that it is Haley's version of the song, not the Turner/Brenston original, that is the first rock and roll record. No matter which version deserves the accolade, "Rocket 88" is seen as a prototype rock and roll song in musical style and lineup, not to mention its lyrical theme, in which an automobile serves as a metaphor for romantic prowess.

The song was also featured in the 1984 film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Buckaroo Banzai and his band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, perform the song in a concert early in the movie although the track was actually recorded by Billy Vera and the Beaters.

All the above versions were in fact preceded by Pete Johnson's "Rocket 88 Boogie" Parts 1 and 2, an instrumental, originally recorded for the Los Angeles-based Swing Time Records label in 1949.

• Brenston Biography

• Jim Dawson and Steve Propes, What Was the First Rock 'n' Roll Record?, Faber & Faber, 1992, ISBN 0-571-12939-0
• Nick Tosches, Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll, Secker & Warburg, 1984, ISBN 0-436-53203-4