Rhythm and blues (also known as R&B or RnB) is a popular music genre combining jazz, gospel, and blues influences, first performed by African American artists. The term was coined as a musical marketing term in the United States in 1947 by Jerry Wexler at Billboard magazine.^[1] It replaced the term race music (which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world) and the Billboard category Harlem Hit Parade in June 1949.^[2] In 1948, RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name Blues and Rhythm. The words were reversed by Wexler of Atlantic Records, the leading label in the R&B field in the early years.^[1]

Writer/producer Robert Palmer defines "rhythm & blues as a catchall term referring to any music that was made by and for black Americans.^[3] He has the term R&B as a synonym for jump blues..^[4] Lawrence Cohn, author of Nothing but the Blues, writes that rhythm and blues was an umbrella term invented for industry convenience. According to him, the term embraced all black music except classical music and religious music, unless a gospel song sold enough to break into the charts. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was being used as a blanket term to describe soul and funk. In the 2000s, the acronym R&B is almost always used instead of the full rhythm and blues, and mainstream use of the term refers to a modern version of soul and funk-influenced pop music that originated as disco became less favorable.

History

In its first manifestation in the late 1940s, rhythm and blues was played by small combos of four or five musicians; usually a bass, drums, one or two saxophones, and possibly a rhythm guitar or piano. In 1951 it was also being called rock and roll. It was strongly influenced by jazz, jump blues and black gospel music. It also influenced jazz in return. Rhythm and blues, blues, and gospel combined with bebop to create hard bop.

Several musicians recorded both jazz and R&B, such as the swing bands of Jay McShann, Tiny Bradshaw and Johnny Otis. Count Basie had a weekly live rhythm and blues broadcast from Harlem. Bebop icon Tadd Dameron arranged music for Bull Moose Jackson and spent two years as Jackson's pianist after establishing himself in bebop. Most of the R&B studio musicians were jazz musicians, and many of the musicians on Charlie Mingus' breakthrough jazz recordings were R&B veterans. Lionel Hampton's big band of the early 1940s — which produced the classic recording Flying Home (tenor sax solo by Illinois Jacquet) — was the breeding ground for many of the bebop legends of the 1950s. Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson was a bebop saxophonist and a blues shouter.

In the 1950s, overlapping with other genres such as jazz and rock and roll, R&B developed regional variations. A strong, distinct style straddling the border with blues came out of New Orleans, and was based on a rolling piano style first made famous by Professor Longhair. In the late 1950s, Fats Domino hit the national charts with the songs "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame". Other artists who popularized this Louisiana flavor of R&B included Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Frankie Ford, Irma Thomas, The Neville Brothers and Dr. John. The first rock and roll hits consisted of R&B songs such as "Rocket 88" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which appeared on popular music charts as well as R&B charts. The song "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On", the first hit by Jerry Lee Lewis, was an R&B cover song that reached number one on the pop, R&B and country and western charts.

By the early 1960s, rhythm and blues had taken on more gospel-influenced elements, as pioneered by artists such as Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. This newer style was given the name soul music. A little more than a decade later, however, rhythm and blues made a comeback."^[2] The early and mid 1960s saw the rise of young white bands whose music was labelled R&B or blue-eyed soul; such as The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things, The Small Faces, The Animals, Dr. Feelgood, Deep Purple, The Spencer Davis Group and The Who. Those bands all played covers of songs by established black performers, in addition to their own material. The Who were once considered Maximum R&B by their mod fans. Around the same time in Jamaica, a local variation of R&B was emerging, called ska. Like soul music, it was also popular with mods and their offshoots: the skinheads, suedeheads, casuals and scooterboys.

See also

• Contemporary R&B
• Blues
• Rhythm
• Gospel music
• jump blues
• New Orleans Rhythm and Blues
• Rhythm and Blues Foundation
• British blues

Footnotes

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