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The Flamingos - A Kiss from Your Lips

Musically, rhythm and blues artists, translation,  African American artists, were making tremendous, groundbreaking music, but sales were a tiny fraction compared to lilywhite Pop music, which still made the bulk of the profits for all record companies. Rhythm and Blues was sold as race records through the distributors, a blatant classification based on skin color. Much the same could be said of country music, translation, whites who played rough sounding folk music, sold through the record stores as hillbilly records, it sold well enough for labels to produce these records, but compared to mainstream pop records, hillbilly records were a small blip in sales. There was no disguising the fact that hillbilly was a record company’s classification of poorer, less educated rural Americans.

Just look at the biggest selling artists of the late 1940s and early 1950s... These were the big sellers, the industry leaders, the big stars. It’s hard to visualize today, because now the industry is exactly the opposite, but during this era, really white music for really white people sold lots and lots of records. Even when truly hip African American artists like Nat King Cole scored a mainstream hit, it was always the whitest sounding thing they had ever made, a pander to the suburbanites who bought pleasant sounding recordings.

To come up with an answer for when Rock & Roll began, I believe it depends on several factors. I think to determine the beginning of Rock & Roll, you’ve got to have all three of the factors listed below.

First, I believe there must be a co mingling of black and white cultures, especially when music moved from the back alley blues clubs and the country music barns into the mainstream.


The Flamingos - A Kiss from Your Lips
  • Released in: December 1956
  • Recorded in: 1955–1956
  • Genre: Rock

"The Flamingos are an American doo wop group formed in Chicago in 1953. The band became popular in mid to late 1950s and are have since been hailed as one of the finest and most influential vocal groups in pop and doo wop music history."

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