Host Nate Wilcox asks Ed about 1960, a year when the American corporate brass thought they had tamed the rock and roll rebels of the 1950s. 

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Host Nate Wilcox asks Ed about 1959, a year that started with tragedy for rock n’ roll and went on to see the first flowerings of soul music and the Brill Building pop that would dominate the early 60s. 

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Host Nate Wilcox asks Ed about 1958, the backlash year. This was the year that Elvis got drafted and Jerry Lee Lewis ruined his career with a bigamous marriage to his 13 year old cousin. It was also the year that the music business figured out how to package pretty faces with rocking beats and foisted Fabian and Frankie Avalon on the world. We’ll also be hearing a lot about “the wild anarchic spirit” that Sam Phillips and Elvis had unleashed, the reinvention of Johnny Cash, the Million Dollar Quartet, the mini-dramas Lieber & Stoller made with the Coasters, the dance craze called the stroll and much more.

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Host Nate Wilcox asks Ed Ward about what he calls the “Miracle Year” of rock and roll. The year when Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and others were at the peak of their powers and dominated the charts. 

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This week Ed tells host Nate Wilcox about rock and roll in 1956 with a focus on the rocky and yet productive relationships between African-American recording artists and the Jewish entrepreneurs who brought their work to market. We’ll talk about the relationship between James Brown and Syd Nathan of King Records, the tragic relationship between the gifted 13 year old Frankie Lymon and his gambling addicted record mogul George Goldner, Lieber & Stoller and the songs they wrote and produced and much much more.

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Host Nate Wilcox talks with Ed Ward about 1955 and 1956. These are the years when the “American Prometheus” brought forth Elvis Presley, when Chuck Berry culturally appropriated Western Swing for his first hit and Hollywood shocked the masses with the first rock and roll movies. As always we’ll touch on the non-musical factors that made all this possible -- changing demographics and new musical formats -- as well as a few outside factors that slowed down, but couldn’t stop, this musical revolution.

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Host Nate Wilcox asks Ed Ward about the period when Rock and Roll really got started. We’ll hear about the woman who discovered Elvis Presley, a pair of Jewish music fans who become legit R&B legends, how a Turkish record mogul wrote Ray Charles’ first hit, when country music discovered cheating songs and a whole lot about dirty dirty naughty rhythm and blues records. But it’s not all fun and games. We’ll take some morbid and weird turns and learn about two promising talents ruined by car wrecks, the singer who confessed to murder on record -- before he committed it, and a hit song about a funeral.

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Nate talks to rock historian Ed Ward about the early 1950s and the emergence of Rhythm and Blues. They discuss the legendary song “Good Rockin’ Tonight” and the two simultaneous hit versions that came out in 1949 plus the early work of Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Ruth Brown and the late, great Johnny Ace.

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Nate Wilcox and Ed Ward discuss some of the factors that made the first five years after World War II so critical to the evolution of Rock and Roll.

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