This month's museum pick...

Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
Cleveland, OH  

The most important museum for the late 20^th century’s most important musical form is in Cleveland? Not London or San Francisco? Not even Memphis?

What gives? 

Alan Freed gives. Freed was a white disc jockey in Cleveland who, sponsored by a local record store owner, began playing rhythm and blues records on a local radio station in 1951 under the name “Moondog.” When he went to name his show, Freed remembered a phrase he’d heard in an R&B record called “60-Minute Man” that had stuck with him: thus, “Moondog’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Party.” 

It wasn’t the first time anybody had used the expression – some historians trace the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll” back to the early 20s. But it was the first time the words had been consciously applied to a distinct form of music that was popular among young people. 

For Freed, though, “rock ‘n’ roll” was more than just a delightful description. He needed a way to describe what he saw was happening with R&B, namely that it was morphing into a faster, more upbeat genre. He also needed a way to get white teens to listen to the music without turning them off to it by calling it R&B. 

Freed knew the music was instantly likable and begged to be danced to. But R&B was “race” music, and in those pre-integration days it was considered too sensual and other-side-of-the-tracks for respectable white kids to hear.  

So Freed’s “rock ‘n’ roll” slipped by the radar of white adults even as it attracted white teen listeners. Freed fanned the popularity of the music so much that when he threw his “Moondog Coronation Ball” in March 1952, it drew 25,000 teens. Unfortunately the venue, Cleveland Arena, had only 10,000 seats, meaning more than half of the attendees were gate crashers. Over fears about safety, the show was cancelled.

But the Coronation Ball became a legend. Music historians agree it was the first rock concert and that it was notable for another thing: Many of the kids in attendance were white. Not only had black music “crossed over” to appeal to a white audience, it has done in an integrated setting in a large public place.

Freed had laid the foundations for rock ‘n’ roll’s emergence as a genre with an immense appeal to an interracial fan base that was willing to ignore, then later knock down, the barriers of segregation. Since he built those foundations in Cleveland, it was only natural that the city would become the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The museum building’s great pedigree

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was designed by I. M. Pei, the Chinese-born American architect whose oeuvre includes some of the great icons of modern architecture: Hong Kong’s Bank of China, the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the renovation of the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Javits Convention Center in New York City and the Hancock Tower in Boston.

What makes Pei a master of modernism is that he knows how bad modern architecture can be if it stints on materials. Most modern architecture looks great on paper – there’s no snow, humidity or temperature variations to twist and deform all those beautiful straight lines. But in real life, where cheap materials reign, buildings that looked great on paper often become slowly rotting horrors in real life. Every large U.S. city has a modernist skyscraper or two whose once pristine façade is stained from mildew, leaching, bird poop and the buckling effects of climate and weather.

Pei has always insisted on materials that are both appropriate to the design and resistant to the forces of nature. To this day people are astounded how the acute angle of the meeting of two sides of the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, DC maintain their almost razor-sharp edge and perfect alignment. That’s because Pei factored in all of the things that could work against his exquisitely chiseled effect. He tested materials and approaches to handling them that assured him he could build the East Wing – and make it last – the way he wanted.

That workmanship shows up in the Cleveland museum. Nine years after its opening in one of the worst weather areas of the U.S., the building’s edges and finish look as sharp and pristine as ever. By designing a structure that retains its freshness through the years, Pei has honored rock ‘n’ roll’s own greatest strength.

By Patrick Totty