INFLUENCES

TEEN AGERS
Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. Many early rock and roll songs dealt with issues of cars, school, dating, and clothing. The rock and roll songs described events and conflicts that most listeners could relate to from some point in their lives 

•  Several rock historians have claimed that rock and roll was one of the first music genres to define an age group. It gave teenagers a sense of belonging, even when they were alone. 
• Rock and roll is often identified with the emergence of teen culture among the first baby boomer generation, who had both greater relative affluence, leisure and who adopted rock and roll as part of a distinct sub-culture. 
• This involved not just music, absorbed via radio, record buying, jukeboxes and T.V. programmes like American Bandstand, but it also extended to film, clothes, hair, cars and motorbikes, and distinctive language. 

DRESSING

Women switched to trendy coats instead of the traditional shawls. One also saw the large use of feathers as a part of the 1950s' fashion. Long knee length coats, which had loose sleeves, caught on really well in the 1950s'  Flowers, stripes, spots and abstract shapes all became a part of dresses and skists. 

LIFE STYLE

It was an era of great prosperity for many people. The explosive economy, combined with the generous benefits the government doled out to returning veterans, made it possible for very young couples to marry while the husband was still in school. buy a house without any savings, have several babies right away, and continually ratchet up their standard of living, all on the income froma single salary. 

RACE

In the cross-over of African American "race music" to a growing white youth audience, the popularization of rock and roll involved both black performers reaching a white audience and white performers appropriating African American music.Rock and roll appeared at a time when racial tensions in the United States were entering a new phase.