It would make perfect sense – and be absolutely logical – if the key influences on Rock’n'Rollers Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were the pioneering Blues shouters of the of the 30s and 40s such as Big Joe Turner (see ABON 0139) and the R’n'B stars of the late 40s such as Wynonie Harris who were the first to move towards a R’n'R-tinged music.

So it might be a bit of a surprise to most people when they realise that this is wrong. The single artist who seems to have influenced all three future stars most, by their own admission, is actually Sister Rosetta Tharpe. And Sister Rosetta didn’t even sing the Blues.

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When we last met Big Joe Turner he was a Blues Shouter trying his hand at Boogie Woogie, supported by Pete Johnson on piano (see ABON 0138). But in the years since 1938 he’d moved on from Boogie Woogie to the 1940s craze of Jump Blues – an up tempo form of Blues built for dancing and played by bands with brass sections. And so had Pete Johnson, his piano-playing partner in crime, who had seamlessly switched from Boogie Woogie piano-accompanist to leader of the Jump Blues band that Big Joe usually sang with.

But by 1950 Big Joe and Pete’s partnership had run its 13-year course. Big Joe signed solo to Atlantic Records and started the third stage of his long career - as a Rock’n'Roller. Albeit a Rock’n'Roller who was still at heart a Blues Shouter and who shouted his own particular version of R’n'R that very firmly still had at least one foot in Jump Blues.

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The first wave of Punk – from say late ’76 to late ’78 - was consciously revolutionary. As it attempted to rip everything up and start again it shouted its intentions very clearly and very loudly in both the press and in the lyrics it wrote as it went along. Being seen to be revolutionary was at least as important as actually creating something revolutionary. But what seemed radical, dangerous and confrontational at the time, now seems a little tame and safe and in many ways more the natural successor or evolution of ’50′s Rock’n'Roll than a revolution.

That’s not a criticism - some of the most remarkable music ever comes from that period and that genre.  It’s also not a suggestion that Punk wasn’t a very big and necessary departure from what came immediately before - it was and it acted like a well needed cleanser on the bloatedness and laziness of much mid ’70′s music.

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Everyone is at least vaguely aware that Rock’n'Roll in the ’50′s was about rebellion. But it wasn’t just about that. R’n'R was also a liberating force. The advent of R’n'R seemed to inspire a horde of people to believe that they could make music and even release a single or two. People who in a previous generation would not have felt confident or skilled enough to take the plunge. So, whilst the ’50′s R’n'R boom created many of the most famous names ever in rock music, it also spawned a whole generation of recording artists who recorded one or two brilliant singles and then disappeared.

Now Punk in 1976 and 1977 was also about rebellion. But to my mind Punk wasn’t just about rebellion either. Early Punk, the early spirit of Punk, was all about refusing to accept the idea that you needed to be musically expert or well trained or well produced in order to create great music. Punk, before mohicans and tartan took over and turned it into a fashion, made creating your own record a legitimate aspiration for anyone who could hold a guitar or a microphone and (ideally) had an idea. And as a result a horde of young people began to put out a single or two – often a brilliant single or two – and then disappear without trace.

So I’d argue that R’n'R and Punk had far more in common with each other than either had with anything that happened in the intervening 20 years. They had very similar values. They were both brilliant cleansing and empowering agents. And I’d even go so far as to say that musically they were quite similar as well.

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