50 free Hard Rock and Roll trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This hard rock and roll trivia quiz is for the people who know the B-sides. It asks who actually played on Rocket 88, how Willie Kizart's amplifier ended up producing the first distorted guitar on record, which country song Chuck Berry rebuilt into Maybellene, why the Crickets needed a band name, how Decca misspelled Holley, what theme record Alan Freed used in Cleveland, how long the FBI spent failing to decode Louie Louie, and who was paid at Monterey when everyone else played for free. There are questions on the pioneers, the British Invasion, the festivals of 1969, the guitars themselves and the payola scandal. It is written for serious record collectors, music-history teachers and quiz hosts who need a round nobody sweeps. Almost everything sits at hard or expert level; our main rock and roll trivia page and the rock and roll trivia for seniors quiz cover the friendlier ground. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on the artist, song, label or event, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Rocket 88 (1951) was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but whose band actually played on it?
Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm
Brenston was Turner's saxophonist; the record went to number one on the R&B chart and helped fund Sun Records.
Q 02Legend says Willie Kizart's damaged amp on Rocket 88 was repaired with what, creating its fuzz tone?
Wadded newspaper
Sam Phillips liked the buzz and kept it, giving rock its first fuzz tone by accident on Highway 61.
Q 03Sam Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Service at what address in January 1950?
706 Union Avenue
Sun Records itself followed on 1 February 1952, funded partly by the success of Rocket 88.
Q 04Who bought the Sun label from Sam Phillips in 1969?
Shelby Singleton
Singleton was a Mercury Records producer; the label still trades on the original 1950s rooster-and-sunrise logo.
Q 05Elvis's That's All Right, cut at Sun in 1954, was a 1946 blues number by which artist?
Arthur Crudup
Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played it on his Red, Hot, and Blue show three days later.
Q 06Elvis made his first television appearance on a KSLA-TV broadcast of which radio show, the Opry's rival?
Louisiana Hayride
The Hayride booked him for a year of Saturday nights and its drummer D. J. Fontana turned the trio into a quartet.
Q 07What newspaper story inspired Heartbreak Hotel's writers Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden?
A lonely man's suicide
Elvis recorded it on 10 January 1956 with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer in the room, and it became his first million-seller.
Q 08Elvis first heard Hound Dog performed by which Las Vegas lounge act, whose version he copied?
Freddie Bell and the Bellboys
The song had been a 1953 hit for Big Mama Thornton, written by Leiber and Stoller.
Q 09Elvis paid how much for Graceland in March 1957?
$102,500
He had given his parents a $100,000 budget to find a farmhouse-like property with room around it.
Q 10Chuck Berry's Maybellene was his adaptation of which country song?
Ida Red
Leonard Chess preferred it to Berry's blues material, and Willie Dixon played bass on the session.
Q 11What was Chuck Berry's only number-one single?
My Ding-a-Ling
The 1972 novelty song came almost two decades after Maybellene topped only the R&B chart.
Q 12Which songwriter was hired to clean up the lyrics of Little Richard's Tutti Frutti?
Dorothy LaBostrie
Producer Bumps Blackwell heard the hit in it; Pat Boone's sanitised cover then charted higher than Richard's own.
Q 13Little Richard's breakthrough came at which Los Angeles label, run by Art Rupe?
Specialty Records
Lloyd Price suggested he send a demo there in February 1955; Rupe loaned him the money to escape his Peacock contract.
Q 21Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball, called the first rock and roll concert, was shut down in 1952 at which venue?
Cleveland Arena
Far more people turned up than the arena could hold and the show ended in a near-riot.
Q 22Freed left New York's WINS in May 1958 after a riot at a dance featuring which performer?
Jerry Lee Lewis
The dance was in Boston; the payola hearings finished his career the following year.
Q 23Which Chicago DJ told the 1959 Congressional payola hearings he had taken $22,000 to play a record?
Phil Lind of WAIT
Dick Clark testified too and survived, partly because he had sold off his music-industry holdings.
Q 14Buddy Holly's real surname was Holley. What changed it?
A misspelling in his Decca contract
He signed with Decca in February 1956 and simply kept the error.
Q 15Why did Buddy Holly's band record That'll Be the Day under the name the Crickets?
To get around Decca's contract limitations
Norman Petty produced it in Clovis, New Mexico, and sent the demo to Brunswick, and it topped both the US and UK charts in 1957.
Q 16Which Nashville producer, famous for Patsy Cline, produced Buddy Holly's unhappy early Decca sessions?
Owen Bradley
Holly wanted more control, so he drove to Norman Petty's studio in Clovis and cut the demos that made his name.
Q 17Which bassist in Buddy Holly's Winter Dance Party band gave up his plane seat to the Big Bopper?
Waylon Jennings
Tommy Allsup lost his seat to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss, and drummer Carl Bunch was in hospital with frostbite.
Q 18What type of aircraft crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, on 3 February 1959?
A Beechcraft Bonanza
Pilot Roger Peterson lost control shortly after take-off in wintry weather; the band was heading for Moorhead, Minnesota.
Q 19Bill Haley's band was renamed the Comets over Labor Day weekend 1952. What had they been called?
The Saddlemen
As the Saddlemen they had already covered Rocket 88 in June 1951, and Crazy Man, Crazy charted in 1953.
Q 20Bo Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates in which Mississippi town?
McComb
He grew up on Chicago's South Side as Ellas McDaniel and played rectangular guitars through tremolo and reverb.
Q 24How long did the FBI investigate the Kingsmen's Louie Louie for obscenity before giving up?
31 months
Drummer Lynn Easton later admitted he did yell an expletive after fumbling a fill at 0:54, which the Bureau missed.
Q 25Louie Louie was written and first recorded in 1956 by which R&B musician?
Richard Berry
He was inspired by a Latin band's take on El Loco Cha Cha; the Kingsmen's 1963 version made it a garage-rock anthem.
Q 26Chubby Checker's The Twist set what record?
First song to hit number one in two separate runs
It hit the top in September 1960 and again in January 1962 when high society belatedly caught the craze.
Q 27Ricky Nelson's 'Poor Little Fool' was the first number one on which new listing in 1958?
Billboard's Hot 100
He placed 54 songs on the Hot 100 and its predecessors between 1957 and 1973.
Q 28Cliff Richard's 1958 single often called Britain's first authentic rock and roll record was what?
Move It
He was born Harry Webb in Lucknow, India, and with the Shadows ruled British pop until the Beatles.
Q 29John Lennon's pre-Beatles skiffle group took its name from what?
Their school song
Quarry Bank High School's song ran "Quarry men old before our birth"; Lennon formed the group in November 1956 at sixteen.
Q 30Stuart Sutcliffe bought the bass guitar that got him into the Beatles with money from what?
Selling a painting
He joined in January 1960 and stayed in Hamburg with photographer Astrid Kirchherr when the band went home.