What was the origin of rock and roll? Andrew Cole focuses a diamond-tipped stylus—and a bit of sardonic humor—on that period in the late 1940s and early 1950s when rhythm and blues and country music were fused into early rock and roll. He embeds several videos for easy comparison of early versions and rocking versions of the same song and hones in on Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Big Joe Turner, and Elvis.

Andrew Cole separates songs from their arrangements and dissects songs that became famous as rearrangements from their original form, starting with “Mack the Knife.”