There should be no argument that the transformations in popular music that we associate with the rise and development of rock were the result of white fascination with black music. During the 1950s, increasing numbers of white teenagers tuned into radio stations that were programming music for black audiences, began to request recordings by black musicians at their local record stores, and tentatively ventured into nightclubs in black neighbourhoods in order to hear black performers. Rhythm and blues music seemed to promise some young white listeners a different relationship between the pleasures of the body and the dominant social formation of modern industrialised America. Whether racist primitivism or liberal cross-cultural identification, this white fascination with black music was nothing new (see McClary and Walser 1994).

In 1828, Thomas D. Rice, an itinerant musician, watched an older African–American with rheumatism perform a strange twisted dance while singing, ‘Weel about and turn about and do jus so; Every time I weel about, I jump Jim Crow.’ Rice was an experienced performer who was looking for gimmicks to add to his act. He learned this song and dance, wrote new verses and used burnt cork to make himself up to look like his source for this material. The act created a public sensation and toured major entertainment centres, including New York and London. Not surprisingly, this interpretation of African–American culture was a misinterpretation. The melody to ‘Jim Crow’ had been a familiar English tune and the words – neither unusual nor especially clever – were mostly Rice's creation.