The Moondog Coronation Ball is history’s first rock concert
Breathless promotion on the local radio station.Tickets selling out in a single day.Thousands of teenagers hours before show time lining up outside the biggest venue in town.
The scene outside the Cleveland Arena on a chilly Friday night in March more than 50 years ago would look quite familiar to anyone who has ever attended a major rock concert.But no one on this particular night had ever even heard of a rock concert.This after all was the night of an event now recognized as historys first major rock-and-roll show the Moondog Coronation Ball held in Cleveland on March 21 1952.The Moondog in question was the legendary disk jockey Alan Freed the self-styled father of rock and roll who was then the host of the enormously popular Moondog Show on Cleveland AM radio station WJW.
Freed had joined WJW in 1951 as the host of a classical-music program but he took up a different kind of music at the suggestion of Cleveland record-store owner Leo Mintz who had noted with great interest the growing popularity among young customers of all races of rhythm-and-blues records by black musicians.Mintz decided to sponsor three hours of late-night programming on WJW to showcase rhythm-and-blues music and Alan Freed was installed as host.Freed quickly took to the task adopting a new hip persona and vocabulary that included liberal use of the phrase rock and roll to describe the music he was now promoting.
As the program grew in popularity Mintz and Freed decided to do something that had never been done hold a live dance event featuring some of the artists whose records were appearing on Freeds show.Dubbed The Moondog Coronation Ball the event was to feature headliners Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers and Tiny Grimes and the Rocking Highlanders (a black instrumental group that performed in Scottish kilts).In the end however the incredible popular demand for tickets proved to be the events undoing.Helped along by massive ticket counterfeiting and possibly by overbooking on the part of the events sponsors an estimated 20000-25000 fans turned out for an event being held in an arena with a capacity of only 10000.
Less than an hour into the show the massive overflow crowd broke through the gates that were keeping them outside and police quickly moved in to stop the show almost as soon as it began.On the radio the very next evening Alan Freed offered an apology to listeners who had tried to attend the canceled event.By way of explanation Freed said If anyonehad told us that some 20 or 25000 people would try to get into a danceI suppose you would have been just like me.
You would have laughed and said they were crazy.
