Though earlier examples of rock 'n' roll exist, the cultural explosion of rockabilly is what definitively delivered a message to America that popular music had been irreversibly altered. In the mid '50s, white Southerners like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis married the twang of the country music they were raised on with the hurtling rhythms of the Black rhythm ‘n’ blues artists they loved, and rock 'n' roll's rawest, most sensual and primal form was born. But while rock evolved over the years, loyalists would keep making rockabilly records for generations to come.