An analytical closed-form solution for wave propagation velocity and damping in saturated porous media is presented in this paper The fully coupled field model with compressible solid Brains and pore water were used to derive this solution. An engineering approach for the analysis of fully saturated porous media was adopted and closed-form solutions for one dimensional wave propagation in a homogeneous domain were derived. The solution is highly versatile in that it considers compression of the solid grains, compression of the pore water, deformation of the porous skeleton, and spatial damping and can be used to compute wavespeeds of first and second kind and damping coefficients in various geologic materials. This solution provides a means of analyzing the influence of material property variations on wavespeed and attenuation. In Part 2 of this work the theoretical solution is incorporated into the numerical code and the code is used in a parametric study on wave propagation velocity and damping.