The (Sort of) Birthplace of Rock n Roll
Where: 300 Prospect Avenue (almost directly across the street from Flannery’s Pub)
By Greg Deegan
To be clear, this story is sort of about the birthplace of rock n roll, but really it’s mostly about how whites discovered Black music. In 1938, Leo Mintz established a record store called Record Rendezvous at 214 Prospect Avenue. He was one of the first record store owners who allowed customers to listen to the music with headphones in listening booths before they purchased their music.
In 1945, he moved to 300 Prospect Avenue, and he noticed in particular that young white customers would get animated and dance around the store when they heard rhythm and blues music – also known at the time as black music or race music. Legend has it that Mintz coined the term “rock n roll” as a way to make the music more acceptable to a wider – and whiter – audience. (In fact, he did not coin the term – as it had been around for decades in Black communities as a reference either to dancing or to having sex.)
Turns out Mintz was friends with Alan Freed, a young disc jockey on WAKR-AM, who he invited to Record Rendezvous to check out for himself the young people’s enthusiasm in the store, and Mintz encouraged Freed to play the music on the air. In 1949 Alan Freed did, and the music’s popularity took off. Eventually Freed organized the Moondog Coronation Ball at the Cleveland Arena on March 21, 1952, widely considered the first rock n roll concert.
Eventually, Freed would move on to a much bigger audience in New York City and he regularly promoted himself as the person who coined the term “rock n roll.” So, part of the origin story of today’s popular music sits quietly at 300 Prospect Avenue, without a single historical marker to tell the tale of the thousands of young people who fell in love with a new style of music all those years ago. Check out more at the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
