One of soul’s earliest milestone 45s, the wildly inf uential What’d I Say was improvised live onstage by Charles and his backing singers, The Raelettes. The call-and-response style was inspired by the church music that Brother Ray was brought up on, but the “sweet sounds of love”, as he put it, certainly were not.
The early hip-hop 45s were nothing more than party tunes full of self-congratulatory boasting, but The Message’s blossoming brand of social commentary opened up fresh vistas.
The Second World War was not long over when New Orleans native Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino was committing his own embryonic version of rock ’n’ roll to vinyl. Years before the phrase had even been coined, his stripped-down boogie-woogie piano and smutty lyrics blazed a trail for others to follow. The Fat Man was released the same year the 45 format appeared.
Lonnie Donegan’s unfeasibly rapid, almost punk, version of the traditional American folk song played a big part in triggering the skiff e craze in the UK. Following its release, legions of would-be rockstars picked up DIY guitars: including a young John Lennon and even younger Jimmy Page.
On The Kinks’ breakthrough hit, it was mad axeman Dave who nipped brief y out of his elder brother’s shadow to lay down one of rock’s most inf uential riffs. His distorted solo was the heaviest yet witnessed on a UK 45, and lays claim to being a forerunner of the heavy-metal scene that was lurking around the corner.