Historian Randall J. Stephens Traces Early Rock and Roll to Pentecostal Worship

Rock and roll drew fierce criticism from Christian preachers when it reached national attention in the mid-1950s, yet historian Randall J. Stephens argues that the music was deeply shaped by Christian worship, especially the energetic, music-filled services of Pentecostal churches.

Stephens writes that Pentecostalism began in the early twentieth century with lively revival meetings in the American West and South. Preachers and crowds, Black and white, men and women, sang, shouted and spoke in tongues, and they described their time as the last days before Jesus’s return.

By the 1920s, Pentecostal congregations had generally divided into separate Black and white fellowships, and women preaching had become less common. The services, often held in storefront spaces, barns and other makeshift churches, nonetheless remained filled with rhythmic music, faith healing and ecstatic shouts.

People from more formal churches, Black or white, often found Pentecostal worship undignified. Stephens writes that elite and middle-class commentators mocked worshipers, many of them agricultural or domestic workers, as “holy rollers” with suspiciously suggestive practices. Pentecostals often embraced that difference. One Black worshiper from Ohio, interviewed in the 1960s, said, “I wouldn’t give two cents for a religion that wouldn’t make me move. My God is a living God.” Judging a community by its critics’ terms, rather than hearing its own account, is a lesson in fairness (Proverbs 18:17).

Several well-known musicians began in Pentecostal churches, according to the article. Rosetta Tharpe, a 1930s gospel singer and guitarist known as the Godmother of Rock, got her start in one, as did B. B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette and Elvis Presley. Stephens writes that Presley attended the Memphis First Assembly of God as a teenager, though he sometimes slipped away to Black churches with similarly high-energy traditions. Asked about his stage movements, Presley once said, “I always liked spiritual quartets and they sing like that.”

James Brown also credited a Pentecostal preacher, Bishop Daddy Grace, a Cape Verdean immigrant. Grace wore his hair shoulder-length, favored gold-trimmed suits and sometimes a cape, and led worship so vigorously that posts in his church had to be padded to prevent injury. Brown later recalled worship sessions with trombones, singing and clapping. “They had the beat,” he said. “Sanctified people got more fire.”

The backlash against rock and roll, the article notes, was fueled by concerns about race-mixing and teenage sexuality and often echoed language once aimed at Pentecostals. Many Pentecostal leaders also denounced the new secular music. Some denied any link to their own worship style, while others plainly saw one. Pastor David Wilkerson claimed that Elvis had made a pact with the devil and said, “Satan has used rock and roll to imitate the work of God at Pentecost!”

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