Changing the Record? The (re)Making of Rock ‘n’ Roll, ‘Race’ and Teenage Leisure in 1950s Cleveland

Abstract This paper aims to explore, and reframe, the relations between rock ‘n’ roll, leisure, ‘race’ and youth in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950s, utilizing archival research to question the heritagization of the city’s popular music histories. Specifically drawing upon accounts of radio broadcasting and vinyl records, we offer an archival study of Cleveland, Ohio, a city that claims to be the “birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll” and (since 1986) is the site of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. After contextualizing the 1950s, we conceptualize the recent archival (re)turn in socio-cultural research. Through this methodological lens we overview the special collections, documents and artefacts explored in fieldwork at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Library and Archives. Then, three counter-stories are presented toward decentring and demythologizing the canonical history of rock ‘n’ roll in Cleveland. Against this canonization, we “change the record” of histories of local radio broadcasting, record stores and eyewitness accounts from Cleveland’s black teenage audiences often absent from many authorized heritage discourses of early rock ‘n’ roll. In deconstructing myths of Cleveland’s musical past, the paper frames archival research as a critical, if under-utilized resource, in leisure research.