“Young whites hired R&B bands for high school dances and frat parties. Then the craze spread to the North, where it was picked up by an enterprising DJ in Cleveland named Alan Freed, who decided to make a splash with an R&B radio show aimed specifically at white youth. To mask the racial origins of the music, Freed borrowed a phrase from the blues that referred to dancing, or to lovemaking, or (in time-honored fashion) to both: ‘rock ‘n’ roll” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 112).
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