CLEVELAND, Ohio – You’d be hard-pressed to find too many people with first-hand accounts of the first major rock and roll concert in history.
First and foremost, it happened 70 years ago. Second, it didn’t last all that long.
The Moondog Coronation Ball held at the Cleveland Arena on March 21, 1952, lasted just 45 minutes. But its impact can be felt anytime someone buys a ticket to a music concert, walks through the doors to the venue and heads towards the stage hoping for the experience of a lifetime.
“This is the most significant date in rock and roll,” says Norm N. Nite, music historian and co-author of “The House That Rock Built,” a definitive retelling of how the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame made Cleveland its home. “The Moondog Coronation Ball was a defining moment, especially for Cleveland. If it wasn’t for Alan Freed and that event, Cleveland would never have gotten the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
The origins of rock and roll concerts can be traced back to 1940s Los Angeles, where the city’s collection and jazz musicians would begin to gravitate to R&B music, small-scale revues and matinee concerts that would take place at tiny clubs on the city’s south side.
It’s something Leo Mintz, owner of Record Rendezvous in Cleveland caught wind of. Mintz became the first person to sell R&B records locally. One of his customers was Alan Freed, a disc jockey at WAKR in Akron.
When Freed made his move to WJW in Cleveland in 1951, he began playing the R&B records purchased from Record Rendezvous. Freed got in trouble for breaking the station’s format. However, once Mintz and other local businesses agreed to sponsor Freed’s show, dubbed the “The Moondog House,” Freed became a local star.
“By the end of 1951 and into the winter of ‘52, my dad held a series of dances at small local venues where he played R&B records that were featured on his show,” Lance Freed, son of Alan, tells author Marc Meyers in his book “Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There.” “They were called record hops. By February 1952, he and Mintz – along with Mintz’s associate, Milton Kulkin – planned a large dance and concert.”
Plans for the Moondog Coronation Ball were set. Cleveland to concert promoter Lew Platt provided the funding of the concert. Unlike the smaller R&B shows that had taken place in Los Angeles and now Cleveland, the Moondog Coronation would take place at the Cleveland Arena with a planned audience of 8,600 people.
Poster for the Moondog Coronation Ball, organized by Alan Freed, March 21, 1952.The Plain Dealer
The lineup for the Moondog Coronation Ball was to feature Paul “Hucklebuck” Williams, Tiny Grims and His Rockin’ Highlanders, the Dominoes, Danny Cobb and Varetta Dillard. The event would take place from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. with tickets costing $1.50.
“They booked the show, but no one had any real idea of what was going to take place,” says Nite. “Alan went on air and promoted the whole thing and that got the word out. But the venues selling the tickets didn’t think a lot of people would show up. So, they didn’t keep track of tickets.”
The Moondog Coronation Ball quickly sold out. In fact, it was oversold. Accounts differ, but as the arena stood at capacity around 9:30 p.m., thousands of people were left outside Cleveland Arena hoping to gain access.
“After Paul Williams and His Hucklebuckers took the stage, those outside began to force open the doors,” Lance Freed says in “Rock Concert.” “The arena was jammed, making it impossible to dance, let alone hear the live attractions on the primitive speaker system.
“When the fire department had the lights turned on at 10:45 p.m. and announced that the concert had been canceled, people were urged to leave in an orderly fashion. Many refused at first. According to the papers back then, one person inside was stabbed in the pushing and shoving that followed.”
The Plain Dealer reported that 6,000 people had crashed the gate to Cleveland Arena. The Cleveland Press reported “a crushing mob of 25,000.” Mintz and Kulkin denied the show had been oversold. But it was Freed who felt the most heat.
With his job at WJW on the line, Freed went on air to apologize to his listeners. The impassioned speech worked. Listeners rallied behind Freed, who had become the King of the Moondogs.
The news outlets were all writing up about how terrible the event was,” says Nite. “Alan went on the air before he did his show, apologized and asked for his listeners’ continued loyalty. And the people just were overwhelmed by it.”
Freed would get a do-over weeks later when he produced two more Moondog events that would go off without a hitch. Their success would allow Freed to take his concerts on the road throughout the state and region.
Freed’s popularity caught the ear of New York station WINS, which would lure the Cleveland DJ away in 1954 to a bigger audience where he would popularize the term “rock n’ roll,” a phrase Mintz invented to describe the dancing teenagers would do when listening to music at Record Rendezvous.
“If it weren’t for Alan, that event and his listeners supporting him in the aftermath, who knows what would have happened with rhythm and blues or rock and roll at that particular time?” says Nite. “This is where it all started. It’s why we have rock and roll concerts and why Cleveland has the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”