My Daddy Rocks With With One Steady Roll
Trixie Smith (1922). Excerpt from "The 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"
By most accounts, Atlanta native Trixie Smith was the first to make lyrical reference to “rock” and “roll” in a secular recording.
Born in 1895, Smith relocated to New York in 1915 and joined the vaudeville circuit. After winning a blues contest at the Manhattan Casino, Smith earned a recording contract with Black Swan. Her cabaret training translated into this bawdy 1922 recording.
Sonically speaking, Trixie’s titillating performance is not dramatically different from other vaudeville recordings of the time. It is even evocative of more famous songs like the traditional “St. James Infirmary Blues” and Cab Calloway’s later smash hit, “Minnie the Moocher” (1931).
What distinguishes Smith’s song is the refrain, which says:
My man rocks me, with one steady roll
There’s no slippin’ when he wants take hold
I looked at the clock, and the clock struck one
I said now, Daddy, ain’t we got fun
Oh, he was rockin’ me, with one steady roll.
Trixie Smith (and the song’s author, J. Berni Barbour) may be the first to invoke rock and roll in song as euphemism for sex. Smith continued to record and perform into the 1930s, making the transition from stage to screen, and working closely with legendary clarinetist Sidney Bechet toward the end of the decade. Trixie Smith died in 1943 at the age of 48, but her recording would be a landmark first stop on the path to rock and roll.
See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll