This is the second in a series of posts about rock music.

I wasn't a rock and roll baby. In 1951, when I was born, the now-familiar hybrid of pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western music had yet to be concocted. I was exposed only to the pop part.  My mother had been a devoted "Your Top 40" radio show listener in her youth, so my earliest memories were of crooners  and smooth-sounding vocal groups.  I remember my mother  telling me to come closer to the radio because it was playing "my song"  --  "Mr. Sandman" by the Chordettes.  I probably liked it because I had been told that the Sandman was the person who put me to sleep.

I think my transition to listening to rock music took place gradually. There wasn't a defining moment, but I still remember a period when the change was becoming obvious, even to a 5-year-old. In the fall of 1957, when I was in kindergarten, I would come home from school and "American Bandstand" would be playing on TV. I  don't know if it was on because my mother liked it or she thought I liked it, but it became one of the programs I watched every weekday . I loved the music, and I liked watching the teenagers  dance.

I've always enjoyed nonsense sounds, so I was captivated by doo-wop music. I remember asking my mother if she knew the  title to what I called the "bumpsy rattle-rattle" song. I had a couple of  pre-teen female cousins who liked to dance to it. That's how I first heard it. My mother finally figured out I was talking about "Little Darlin'" by the Diamonds, and the words I liked were "bop do waddah-waddah."

Ten years later, this would be one of the songs that the rock  revival group Sha Na Na  would perform, kind of as a spoof of the  era. But "Little Darlin'" was  intended to be tongue-in-cheek rendition of doo-wop, with its maudlin lyrics and singers whose voices  were spread across the musical scale, one singing in a falsetto tenor and another  in a deep bass. And let's not forget the cow bell that opens the song. Such silliness was bound to beguile a 5-year-old.

Two other doo-wop songs I liked were "Come Go With Me" by the Del Vikings and "Little Star" by the Elegants, which had the immortal line "oh-oh-oh-oh-rata-tata-tata-too-ooo-oo."  Whenever  I hear the name of the Middle Eastern dish called ratatouille I think about this song.

I suppose it sounds strange to be starting off my history of rock music with doo-wop, when in my last post I talked about the music's subversive quality. This isn't exactly a contradiction. Back in the 1950s, it didn't take much to shake up the prevailing culture. Any music with a beat that you could dance to was bound to stir things up.  Even silly little doo-wop had that power.

But, of course, the real rockers -- Elvis Presley,  Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and  Chuck Berry -- were the main threat.  They were out to claim the hearts and souls of America's youth.  They claimed me before I even started the first grade. "Heartbreak Hotel"  is the first Elvis song I remember hearing. It thundered across the airwaves. Before this time, popular music had not thundered.

I can't emphasize enough the good that something as basic as rock music brought to what was then an uptight, rigid, conforming society. You could even argue that the music was born in response to a culture that had become too repressive. Rock music's longterm  effects have  perhaps been less laudable. Perhaps  things have loosened up too much -- or maybe that's just the old fogey in me, starting to assert itself as I approach 60.