{"id":1080281,"date":"2026-07-10T09:29:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1080281\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T09:29:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:29:23","slug":"the-1939-single-ian-anderson-called-the-beginnings-of-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1080281\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1939 single Ian Anderson called the beginnings of rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ian<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Will Ireland<\/p>\n

Fri 10 July 2026 6:00, UK <\/p>\n

Rock music\u2019s genesis has a long and contested history, but Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson<\/a> pulled such arguments back right to the final days of the 1930s.<\/p>\n

We all know it took Bill Hailey & His Comets\u2019 \u2018Rock Around the Clock\u2019 to first shoot rock and roll to the top of the charts in 1954, but the spit-curled frontman\u2019s enshrining in post-war youth culture was cemented by the momentum behind him. A brief examination of the era\u2019s plugged-in upheaval reveals buried sediments of plentiful blues, solid clumps of old-school R&B, and kernels of country and gospel spirituals, all largely pulled from the US Black tradition.<\/p>\n

Before long, Sister Rosetta Tharpe\u2019s \u2018Strange Things Happening Every Day\u2019 and Arthur Crudup\u2019s \u2018That\u2019s All Right\u2019 would plant essential signposts in the 1940s, but 1951 was the year that the old crooners must have first sniffed some new competition in their Billboard domination.<\/p>\n

A double lightning strike landed on the music world: one being DJ Alan Freed first labelling his R&B \u2018race music\u2019 spins as rock and roll<\/a>, the other being \u2018Rocket 88\u2019 from Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but, in fact, Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm as the backing band, boasting a piano stomp so influential that Little Richard was taking notes.<\/p>\n

But 1939? While naturally we could follow the blues\u2019 threads right back to the late 19th century, Anderson once confessed his feelings that rock\u2019s roots could be traced back to the heyday of the jazz big band, struck by how one key 78 in his father\u2019s record collection arrested his senses as a tender seven year old with its brash three-chord jaunt and its world\u2019s apart from the church music and Scottish folk he was otherwise accustomed to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI particularly liked \u2018In the Mood\u2019 by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, which is a bright, syncopated swing piece,\u201d Anderson revealed to Classic Rock in 2021, later adding, \u201cIn some ways, this was a precursor to rock and roll. My dad wasn\u2019t really a music fan. He didn\u2019t sit around listening to this sort of thing, but I guess before I was born, he did. I enjoyed this one \u2013 it was a fun piece of music. Perhaps it planted a seed of things to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a sprightly energy that bursts from \u2018In the Mood\u2019, pulling kids to the dancefloor with its tight arrangements and offering a joyous escape as the threat of war slowly loomed over the nation for fans across the Atlantic. Yet, also like the white end of rock, Miller offered a reassuringly tamer form of jazz to conservative stiffs paranoid about the harder bebop\u2019s nebulous forms, deemed to be the Devil\u2019s score to ghastly racial mingling for a youth<\/a> drifting away from God\u2019s good and wholly segregationist word.<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, three-chord roll and urgent energy can certainly wade into the rock\u2019s genesis conversation with some clout, but Miller\u2019s \u2018In the Mood\u2019s place in the rock canon is unwittingly bolstered by a curious detail from Anderson\u2019s recollections.<\/p>\n

The fact that the Jethro Tull founder can\u2019t remember his father ever listening to that old Miller 78 in his youth precisely attests to rock\u2019s eternal fuelling of adolescent fire, a soundtrack to his old man\u2019s youth before work, family, and life\u2019s responsibilities snuffed out such a spirited pre-life. Long buried in his singles collection and gathering dust when Anderson was a boy, \u2018In the Mood\u2019 reveals that rock music is perhaps just another incarnation of that eternal charge of youthful rebellion, a feature that has existed in the human condition since time immemorial in some fashion or another.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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