As Little Richard’s drummer, Charles Connor, who later played with James Brown, put it, rock and roll is really just “rhythm and blues played with a fast beat.”
Now, however, black artists were sharing spaces formerly reserved for white artists, and were at the forefront of American popular culture.
In spite of the efforts of segregationists to ban this “licentious jungle music,” especially in the Jim Crow south,
The record companies were paying attention. So as to capitalize on the success of early (black) rock and roll, and to quietly influence white parents to lift their unofficial restrictions on the lucrative teen record-buying market, white artists were enlisted to cover songs first recorded by black artists.