Rhythm and blues (R&B) History

Rhythm and blues famously known as R&B is the term used for a wide range of musical styles black Americans created in the 1940s. Some of the styles under the R&B umbrella include gospel, soul, funk and even pop. is a style of music that came out of the jazz, blues and gospel music  that was being played by African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s. Over the years, , black R&B bands took white songs by New York's Tin Pan Alley writers and revved them up. This more upbeat, exciting type of music caught on in a big way, and for the first time, African Americans had their own style of commercial music.

Rhythm and blues (R&B) was often called jump blues, or blues and rhythm. As the swing era came to an end in the late 1930s, many big bands broke up into smaller units and formed "jump blues" bands which played loud music with a strong dance beat, quickly becoming popular in the dance halls at the time. A typical band had a rhythm section provided by drums and a bass guitar, and sometimes a piano. There would also be a couple of horn instruments. A featured soloist was often a saxophone player from a jazz background.

Early R&B bands were those of Count Basie, Louis Jordan and Lionel Hampton. Basie had a hit in 1937 with "One O'clock Jump", while Jordan had a string of hits from the late 1930s through the 1940s. By the mid 1940s, "R.M. Blues" by Roy Milton and "The Honeydripper" by Joe Liggin each sold one million copies. Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" was a landmark multi-million seller that topped the R&B charts for 18 weeks in 1946. Other hits included "Good Rockin' Tonight" by Roy Brown in 1947, "The Hucklebuck" by various artists, and "The Shufflebuck" by Jimmy Liggins in 1950.

Count Basie Orchestra - One O' Clock Jump

Greek American Johnny Otis had a string of R&B hits in the early 1950s. In 1951 he had ten songs that reached the top ten, including three number ones: "Cupid's Boogie", "Double Crossing Blues" and "Mistrustin' Blues". Otis produced the first recording of Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", later made even more famous by Elvis Presley. It was in 1951 that disk jockey Alan Freed started calling the R&B music he played on his radio program, "The Moondog Rock Roll House Party", rock and roll. In 1954, "Sh-Boom" by the Chords was the first R&B song to reach the pop charts top 10. Fats Domino replicated this feat in 1955 with "Ain't That a Shame". Freed had moved to New York by that time and was helping to make R&B numbers such as Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" popular among white teenagers.

Hand Jive - The Johnny Otis Show

R&B's predecessors are often credited as jazz and the blues, particularly the music scenes of urban industrial centers, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and New York. It is from these genres that R&B musicians formed comparatively simpler ensembles, which usually consisted of a pianist, one or two guitar players, a bassist, a drummer and a saxophonist.

1940s to 1950s
 From 1948 onward, black music was marketed as "rhythm and blues," a term attributed to music journalist/producer Jerry Wexler. In the 1950s, as the hits began to rack up, R&B provided a template for another genre: rock 'n' roll. Motown Records was founded in 1959, the first major record label with an African American owner, Berry Gordy. It went on to become hugely successful, commanding a large share of the market for soul music

1960s
The R&B market was dominated by Berry Gordy's Motown Records in the 1960s,  The "Motown Sound" was soul music with a pop music influence. Some famous artists under this label included Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, the Four Tops and many more. In 11 years from 1961 to 1971, Motown had 110 songs reaching the top 10. Many R&B artists with other labels had huge success too, such as Sam Cooke, Chubby Checker, Otis Redding, and Aretha Franklin. R&B also was referred to as soul music. Sam Cooke was as one of the founders of that style, which combined elements of gospel music.

Sam Cooke - You Send Me

1970s to 1980s
Later, "R&B" was applied as a blanket term for more than just soul music. It also included funk, the danceable, more rhythmic product of soul and jazz; and disco, a genre of dance music. R&B resurfaced as contemporary R&B, describing the R&B style that rose to the fore after the end of the disco music era in the 1980s. It combines soul, funk and dance and, from 1986, hip hop. The style features a slick electronic sound with drum machine rhythm. Vocal arrangements are smooth and lush, and often use melisma, where a single syllable is sung as two notes. Early artists of contemporary R&B in the first half of the 1980s included Michael Jackson and Prince. In the late 1980s, Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston had hits. Tina Turner made a comeback with a string of contemporary RB hits in the 1980s and 1990s.

Say Say Say by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson


1990s to present
R&B is now referred to as "contemporary RB." This term is used to define a genre of black-dominated pop that traces its roots as far back as the demise of disco in the late '70s and early '80s. Boyz II Men led a number of boy bands that popularized classic soul harmonies. Some R&B was gaining a distinct hip hop sound by this time. It was Mariah Carey, along with TLC and Boyz II Men, who brought R&B back to the mainstream in the mid 1990s. These three artists all released albums that sold over 10 million copies. Further offshoots of R&B occurred in the late 1990s and the 2000s by artists such as Jennifer Lopez, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera.

Boyz II Men - It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday



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