Although its stirrings could be heard in tunes dating as far back as the late 1940s-early 1950s, rock and roll had finally taken root by the time Bill Haley and His Comets' seminal '(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock' topped the charts in 1955. A major turning point in pop music was the birth of rock and roll in the mid 1950s. As America entered the 1950s, traditional and jazz-infused pop as performed by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Frankie Laine, and Patti Page, gradually gave way to doo-wop, rockabilly, R&B, and other more modern styles. The 'golden oldies' are those songs that date from the 1950s through the early 1960s, and they have remained a permanent fixture in pop music history. Due to ever-changing demographics, some radio stations that specialize in oldies are now also considering songs from the 1980s and even the 1990s to belong to this category as well (although they may refer to them by other names, e.g., 'classic hits').Įlvis Presley stars in the movie,'Jailhouse Rock,' 1957. Today, most of what is considered to be oldies music covers the 1950s through at least the 1970s. Since the beginning of rock and roll in the mid 1950s, popular music has undergone many radical changes and branched out into a wide variety of genres, with each decade being defined by a different set of styles. This broad category includes styles as diverse as doo-wop, early rock and roll, novelty songs, bubblegum pop, folk rock, psychedelic rock, baroque pop, surf rock, soul music, funk, classic rock, most hard rock, some blues, and some country. 'Oldies music' is a wide-ranging and ever-expanding catch-all term that has come to encompass most pop, rock, and R&B songs released and played on the radio between 1950 and up to at least 10-20 years before the present.

Motown oldies but goodies