Rock and Roll Trivia for Seniors
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60 free Rock and Roll Trivia for Seniors trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This rock and roll trivia for seniors quiz goes back to the music of the 1950s and early 1960s: Elvis and Sun Records, Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, Chuck Berry's duck walk, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the day the music died, Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Chubby Checker and the Twist, American Bandstand, the Ed Sullivan Show and the night the Beatles arrived. It finishes with a few from the later 1960s, from the Rolling Stones to Woodstock. The questions are written for activity directors, senior centres, family gatherings and anyone who grew up with a transistor radio. Most are easy or medium and lean on well-remembered names and songs; a few near the end will reward the real record collectors. For a tougher run, try our hard rock and roll trivia, and the main rock and roll trivia page has the whole spread. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on the artist, song or show, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Elvis Presley was born in 1935 in which Mississippi town?
Tupelo
Tupelo. He was born in a two-room house there; his twin brother was stillborn, so Elvis grew up an only child, and the family left for Memphis when he was 13.
Q 02Which blues song, played for fun during a break in a 1954 session, became Elvis Presley's first single?
That's All Right
That's All Right. The slow ballads were going nowhere when Elvis tore into Arthur Crudup's blues at speed; the producer heard it through the control-room door and had the trio start again.
Q 03What was Elvis's first single for RCA Victor, released in January 1956, and his first million-seller?
Heartbreak Hotel
Heartbreak Hotel. Its writers said the spark was a newspaper story about a man who died leaving one line, 'I walk a lonely street'; the song put a hotel at the end of that street.
Q 04Who managed Elvis for almost his entire career?
Colonel Tom Parker
Colonel Tom Parker. The rank was honorary and the name invented: he was Andreas van Kuijk, a Dutchman who had entered the US illegally and claimed to come from West Virginia.
Q 05What was Elvis's first movie, released in November 1956?
Love Me Tender
Love Me Tender. The Civil War drama was to be called The Reno Brothers until the studio renamed it after the ballad Elvis sings in it.
Q 06Elvis spent most of his Army service stationed in which country?
West Germany
West Germany: he served with a tank battalion at Friedberg and lived off base with family and friends, and at a party at his house there he met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he later married.
Q 07Which Memphis mansion did Elvis buy in 1957 and live in for the rest of his life?
Graceland
Graceland: after his death the house cost over half a million dollars a year in upkeep and taxes, so Priscilla Presley and her fellow executors opened it to paying visitors in 1982.
Q 08Elvis's 1973 concert special, beamed by satellite across Asia and Europe, was staged in which US state?
Hawaii
Hawaii: Aloha from Hawaii went out live from Honolulu to prime-time audiences in Japan and across Asia and the Pacific, but viewers in the United States did not see it until April, three months later.
Q 09On his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance, how was Elvis famously filmed?
From the waist up only
From the waist up only: the cameras stayed above his hips all night, yet Ed Sullivan ended the show by telling the country that Elvis was 'a real decent, fine boy'.
Q 10Which US president mourned Elvis as 'irreplaceable'?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter said in August 1977 that the death 'deprives our country of a part of itself'. In 1970 Elvis had written to another president, Richard Nixon, and turned up at the White House to ask for a federal narcotics badge.
Q 11Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock took off after it played over the opening credits of which 1955 film?
Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle: the song first came out in 1954 as a little-noticed B-side, until the film-makers borrowed records from star Glenn Ford's young son to hear what teenagers liked, and picked it.
Q 12Chuck Berry's first hit, Maybellene, was recorded for which Chicago label in 1955?
Chess Records
Chess Records: of the songs Berry brought to Chicago, Leonard Chess liked best a take-off of the country tune 'Ida Red', which Berry rewrote as Maybellene, the story of a car chase.
Q 13Chuck Berry was famous for what stage move?
The duck walk
Q 21Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper played their last show at the Surf Ballroom in which Iowa town?
Clear Lake
Clear Lake: fed up with poorly heated tour buses that had left musicians with flu and frostbite, Holly chartered a small plane after the show, and it crashed shortly after take-off.
Q 22Which future country star gave up his seat to the Big Bopper on Buddy Holly's fatal 1959 flight?
Waylon Jennings
Waylon Jennings, Holly's bass player on the tour, joked as they parted that he hoped Holly's plane would crash, after Holly said he hoped the bus would freeze up; the remark haunted Jennings for decades.
Q 23Ritchie Valens's hit La Bamba was adapted from a folk song from which country?
Mexico
The duck walk: by his own account he first did it as a boy, stooping under a table to fetch a ball, and when he revived it on a New York stage years later a journalist gave it the name.
Q 14Which Chuck Berry song was sent into space in 1977 on the Voyager Golden Record?
Johnny B. Goode
Johnny B. Goode: when critics of the choice called rock music adolescent, Carl Sagan, who chaired the selection committee, replied that there are a lot of adolescents on the planet.
Q 15Little Richard was born in which Georgia city, later home to Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers Band?
Macon
Macon: at 14 he was overheard singing before a Sister Rosetta Tharpe concert at the city auditorium, and she invited him on stage to open her show and paid him afterwards.
Q 16Which Jerry Lee Lewis hit gave its title to the 1989 film in which Dennis Quaid played him?
Great Balls of Fire
Great Balls of Fire: hours into the session Lewis, raised in the Assemblies of God church, argued with producer Sam Phillips that the song was too sinful to record, and the tape caught their quarrel.
Q 17Which rock and roll star's career collapsed in 1958 after he married his 13-year-old cousin?
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis: the news about his wife Myra broke as his British tour began, the tour was quickly cancelled, and back in the United States radio stations refused to play his records.
Q 18Fats Domino, the pianist who sang Blueberry Hill, was born and raised in which city?
New Orleans
New Orleans: he stayed in his Lower Ninth Ward home when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and was rumoured dead for days, until word came that a Coast Guard helicopter had rescued him.
Q 19Buddy Holly was born in 1936 in which Texas city?
Lubbock
Lubbock: Holly's band played country and western there until he opened for Elvis Presley in 1955, after which, a bandmate recalled, they became Elvis clones overnight and switched to rock and roll.
Q 20Which Buddy Holly hit took its title from a John Wayne line in The Searchers?
That'll Be the Day
That'll Be the Day came out under the Crickets' name because Holly had already recorded it for Decca, which shelved that version, and it reached number one in the United States and Britain.
Mexico: La Bamba, an old wedding tune from Veracruz, was only the B-side of his ballad Donna, yet it became the song Valens is remembered for.
Q 24What was the Big Bopper's best-known song?
Chantilly Lace
Chantilly Lace began as a B-side: the Big Bopper, a Texas disc jockey, put a novelty spoof about a purple people eater on the front, but DJs and listeners preferred the flirty phone call on the flip.
Q 25Ricky Nelson grew up on TV in which family sitcom?
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet began on radio, where actors played the Nelsons' two sons because the boys were too young; Ricky, aged eight, and his brother David took over as themselves in 1949.
Q 26Which song, rejected by some 30 acts, was the Everly Brothers' first hit?
Bye Bye Love
Bye Bye Love: once it was a hit, its writers, the husband-and-wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, kept writing for the brothers and gave them Wake Up Little Susie.
Q 27Which singer, known for his dark sunglasses, sang Only the Lonely and Oh, Pretty Woman?
Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison left his ordinary glasses on a plane while touring with the Beatles in 1963, went on stage in his prescription sunglasses instead, and kept the look for good.
Q 28Chubby Checker's The Twist was a cover of a song first recorded by which R&B group?
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: Ballard was sure The Twist was a hit, but his label put it on the B-side of a ballad, and it was Checker's cover that went to number one.
Q 29Chubby Checker's real name is what?
Ernest Evans
Ernest Evans was singing for customers at a poultry shop when he was discovered doing impressions of Fats Domino, and his stage name is a play on the older star's: Chubby for Fats, Checker for Domino.
Q 30Who hosted American Bandstand for more than three decades?
Dick Clark
Dick Clark took over in 1956 after the original host was arrested for drunk driving and fired, and his boyish looks earned him the nickname 'America's oldest teenager'.