Rock and Roll; Interview with Lloyd Price [Part 1 of 3]

Let me help us get around that you 50 50. What was going on there musically. Starting starting to change the name. Well when I was a kid and they were doing that period say 49 50. Lloyd Jordan Charles Brown Amos Milburn. Smaller Louis was on the scene. Fats Domino had just started a record had a local record called Fat Man and Dave was the big man in town. And I had a little local band out in Kenner which is like seven miles out of New Orleans. My little brother Leo and I and we played all the local problems in the local clubs and the area of Canada. And we thought alike by not being musicians qualified musicians. We played things that we actually peer from the heart and the music was changing.

What happened was we heard a record by Billy Ward I think in a dominoes. Roy Brown. Mr. Google eyes started to change from the big bands from the earth going Hawkins and from Roy Milton and of course the Jimmy leggins and his brother T-Bone Walker Peewee Crayton. This was the music was listened to and Muddy Waters was slipping into the John Lee Hooker and another guy called me about it. But the biggest change of all during that period was Rock Around The Clock in 1051 by Bill Haley. They were some white boys playing rhythm but they was used in brushes and stuff like that and that was Imagine the biggest change in my generation of music.

No all right. And of course during that period I had I had the news car in town my brother was being shipped to Korea and he gave me a new down a road mass the Buick was bigger than the mayor's car. So we were able to listen to radio because I had the car. And I would listen to the music that we liked and the names that I just name would come from Nashville Tennessee. I had about John R. or Bernie's record mark but we had to wait till 10:30 11:00 o'clock at night to hear this music and we listened to it and then doing it period end the day time there was like two o'clock in the evening until. 3:00. 230 we would hear Papa stop and another jockey called Ernie to

whip me. I think Jack ticket again Jack the cat. Papa stop and Jack Jack the cat was beginning to play rhythm and blues records but they played a lot of country and western music as well. So did play one of two you might hear Louis Jordan you might hear Louis Armstrong you might hear Duke Ellington at that same time as he was on air number one is it was race music and you did not hear. There was no charts and there were no rhythm and blues there were actually the songs had no titles and we would just it was called Music of course I forgot a great guy during that time Nat King Cole and three Blazers was coming along and that was again new music. It didn't really have a format it just was thrown and called music. But that's exactly what it was.

Tell me about well before we get to that tell me a little bit. Well the kind of music that we're talking about in terms of now known as a rhythm and blues and rock and roll know why people didn't listen to it because it was not around what they listened to. If it was black it would have been Louis Armstrong probably Ella Fitzgerald saying in a way with Ben Crosby and that kind of stuff was called Black music. I don't even think BASIC was considered black music Duke Ellington was a white Cab Calloway was considered a white music but played by blacks. And of course you had the woody Herman's and things like that it was no mix. The only thing that was integrated at that time was the radio band. And that was about it.

There was no us. Yeah. OK. OK. The only thing integrated during that period of what I'm speaking of now and music terms was the radio band there was no such thing as black and whites getting together.