Shake, Rattle and Roll
"Shake, Rattle and Roll" is a prototypical blues-form rock and roll song written by Jesse Stone (under his working name Charles Calhoun). The song was first recorded in 1954 by Big Joe Turner, a blues shouter whose career began in Kansas City before World War II. Bill Haley and the Comets' cover version, released later in the year, had sanitised lyrics in an attempt to be slightly more palatable to white audiences.
This cleanup of lyrics meant removal of references considered sexual in nature, such as lines about "the devil in nylon hose", "you make me roll my eyes, baby make me grit my teeth", and "you wear those dresses, the sun comes shining through". It is evidence of the innocence of these bowdlerizers that the most provocative line in Turner's version of the song, "I'm like a one-eyed cat, peeping in the sea food store", was left untouched in the Haley version. Elvis Presley's version hewed closer to Turner's than to Haley's, but had elements of both.
In 1919, Alfred Bernard recorded a song about gambling with dice with the same title, clearly evoking the action of shooting dice from a cup. The phrase is also heard in "Roll The Bones" by the First rock and roll record
