page_title: Jimmy Cavallo
section_title: The Navy and North Carolina
hierarchical_section_title: Jimmy Cavallo / The Navy and North Carolina
caption_attribution_description: English: Jimmy Cavallo's 1951 record of Rock the Joint, originally done in 1949 by Jimmy Preston.
context_page_description: James Cavallo was an American musician best known for performing with his band in the 1956 movie, Rock, Rock, Rock, by pioneering music DJ Alan Freed. Jimmy and the Houserockers were the first white band to play at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where they celebrated the movie's release.
context_section_description: When he left home to serve in the United States Navy at the end of World War II, Cavallo took his saxophone with him. While in the service in North Carolina, and Washington DC, he spent his free time in black clubs, listening to the latest in the blues, and jamming with some of the rising stars of what would soon be called rhythm and blues, and later, rock and roll.
  Upon his discharge, Cavallo hit the Carolina beaches with a band called the Jimmy Cavallo Quartet, one of the world's first white R&B bands, playing Wynonie Harris, Louis Jordan, and Hucklebuck Williams tunes, as well as originals. The line-up was Bobby Wrenn, drums; Max Alexander, bass; Bobby Hass, sax, and Diz Utley, sax. They played in the beach music or "shag" scene all over North Carolina through 1947-48, and during 1949 had a residency in Carolina Beach at a dance club called Bop City, drawing huge crowds of dancers.
caption: The 1951 Jimmy Cavallo version of Rock The Joint, originally done by Jimmy Preston in 1949.
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