December 30, 1950: The Dominoes Record "Sixty Minute Man"

Rock and roll is 75 years old? How can that be? Well, it be.

December 30, 1950, 75 years ago: The Dominoes, an all-black vocal group specializing in rhythm & blues songs, record "Sixty Minute Man" on Federal Records, at National Studios, at 460 West 42nd Street in New York City.

At the time, The Dominoes consisted of singer, pianist, manager and songwriter Billy Ward; tenor Clyde McPhatter; baritones Charlie White and Joe Lamont; and bass singer Bill Brown. Ward had teamed up with white songwriter Rose Marks to write "Sixty Minute Man," in which a man brags about how he's a great lover:

Look-a-here, girls, I'm telling you now:
They call me Lovin' Dan.
I rock 'em, roll 'em, all night long.
I'm a sixty-minute man.

If you don't believe I'm all I say
come up and take my hand.
When I let you go, you'll cry, "Oh, yes:

He's a sixty-minute man!"

There'll be fifteen minutes of kissin'.
Then you'll holler, "Please, don't stop!"
There'll be fifteen minutes of teasin'
and fifteen minutes of pleasin'
and fifteen minutes of blowin' my top!

If your man ain't treatin' you right
come up and see ol' Dan.
I rock 'em, roll 'em, all night long.
I'm a sixty-minute man.

The record was released in May 1951, and within a month, it reached Number 1 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, holding that top spot for 14 weeks, a record at the time. It actually crossed over onto Billboard's Popular Music chart -- in other words, white people's music -- reaching Number 17. Black singers had done better than that, but they were pop singers like Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine, not R&B groups or soloists.

If you're asking, "How did a line like 'Fifteen minutes of blowin' my top' get past the censors in 1951?" I don't have an answer. 

Unusual for single records, then as now, the bass singer takes the lead, Bill Brown. There is guitar playing from René Hall, and the drumming is on the 2nd and 4th beats. By a certain definition -- and not just because the words "rock" and "roll" are used together -- this is the very first rock and roll record. 

Another candidate, "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats -- actually Ike Turner and the band he was using at the time -- was recorded in March 1951 (after "Sixty Minute Man"), released in April (before "Sixty Minute Man"), but didn't debut on the charts until June (after "Sixty Minute Man"). It also has the drumming on the 1st and 3rd beats, which tends to disqualify it from the strict definition of "rock and roll." But then, rock and roll has always been about challenging boundaries, and thus strict definitions don't always apply. So either one of these songs could be claimed as the first.

With his own name on the group, Ward took in most of the group's income, despite the fact that McPhatter was the lead singer on most songs. Ward even had Clyde billed as "Clyde Ward," to make it seem like Clyde was his brother. In 1953, Clyde decided he'd had enough, and left to form a new group, The Drifters, arguably inventing "doo-wop."

In 1955, after 2 years of great success on the R&B charts, Clyde was drafted into the U.S. Army. After serving a year, he started a solo career, while The Drifters built an entirely new lineup led by Ben E. King. After years of hard drinking and drug use, Clyde McPhatter died in 1972, not quite 40 years old.

But back in 1953, Ward was ready for Clyde's departure, as he already had a replacement lined up: Jackie Wilson. Eventually, he got sick of Ward, too, and launched a solo career in 1957. He became known as "Mr. Excitement," and had a bunch of hits.

In 1975, performing for a Dick Clark-sponsored oldies show at the Latin Casino in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Jackie suffered a heart attack -- just as he was singing the opening line of his 1st big solo hit, from 1959, "Lonely Teardrops": "My heart is cryin', cryin'... "

Since throwing his body all over the stage was a part of his act, it took about 30 seconds for people to realize that this collapse wasn't, and it cost his brain precious oxygen. It also didn't help that he was already sweating like crazy, as that was part of his act, too, so that didn't seem like a sign that anything was wrong. He was told that women liked that, and that taking salt tablets would make him sweat more. Those tablets are probably the reason he had a heart attack at the age of 41. He spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitals and nursing homes, dying in 1984.

Bill Brown was even unluckier than McPhatter and Wilson: He got sick of Ward's military-style discipline, left in 1952, joined The Clovers in 1953, and didn't even live to see their success, as he died in 1956. (I've looked for a cause, but I can't find one: Not an illness, not drugs, not an accident, not a murder.) He didn't live to see how his lead vocal would affect rock and roll, inspiring such basses as Fred Johnson of The Marcels (who hit Number 1 in 1961 with a doo-wop version of "Blue Moon") and Melvin Franklin of The Temptations.

René Hall died in 1988, Joe Lamont in 1998, Billy Ward in 2002, and Charlie White was the last survivor, living until 2005. I can find no record of when Rose Marks died, but a photograph of her suggests that she was already middle-aged in 1950, so she has likely been dead for a long time.

Fats Domino, one of the founding fathers of rock and roll, did not name himself for the group: His real name was Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. However, later singer Ernest Evans did take the name "Chubby Checker" as a play on the name "Fats Domino." Still later, in 1970, Van Morrison released the song "Domino," and Eric Clapton formed a group named Derek & The Dominos (no E on the end). Both were tributes to Fats, not Billy Ward's group. (Morrison recorded another song with a tenuous connection to the Dominoes, "Jackie Wilson Said.")

The debate over "the first rock and roll record" continues, but I'm satisfied that it's "Sixty Minute Man" by The Dominoes.