How influential was Jazz to Rock and Roll Music?

In order to understand how jazz was influential on rock & roll, we have to scroll back to the 1930s and very early 1940s, in which swing music was America's popular music. Swing was rhythmic, extremely danceable and a lot of fun, but it also had scope for enormous harmonic and rhythmic sophistication. read more

Short answer: jazz was not influential on the development of rock 'n roll music. Whereas a standard jazz progression is the ii-V-I, rock music is generally based on the I-IV-V chord progression that was taken straight from the American Blues. read more

Best Answer: Besides having common roots in the 12-bar blues form, one very influential jazz musician on both jazz and rock in the 60s was John Coltrane. He started the trend toward improvising (jamming) for a long time on one chord or one scale. read more

When we get down to cases, we find that several of the most distinctive and influential rock & roll performers of the mid-Fifties were making music that could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be defined as a continuation of pre-1955 R&B. read more