Rhythm and blues (also known as R&B, R'n'B or RnB) is a popular music genre combining jazz, gospel, and blues influences.  This music strongly influenced the direction of rock and roll, and continues to lay the foundation for many rock music forms today.

Wikipedia notes that Jerry Wexler (left) of Billboard magazine coined the term rhythm and blues in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.

Writer/producer Robert Palmer defined rhythm & blues as "a catchall term referring to any music that was made by and for black Americans". He has used the term R&B as a synonym for jump blues.

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.

Late 1940's [ top ]

In 1948, RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name Blues and Rhythm. In that year, Louis Jordan (portrait, right) dominated the top five listings of the R&B charts with three songs, and two of the top five songs were based on the boogie-woogie rhythms that had come to prominence during the 1940s.

Jordan's band, the Tympany Five (formed in 1938), consisted of him on saxophone and vocals, along with musicians on trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums.

Lawrence Cohn described the music as "grittier than his boogie-era jazz-tinged blues". Robert Palmer described it as "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat". Jordan's cool music, along with that of Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Billy Wright, and Wynonie Harris, is now also referred to as jump blues.

Also in 1948, Wynonie Harris' (left) remake of Roy Brown's 1947 recording  Good Rockin' Tonight hit the charts in the #2 spot, following band leader Sonny Thompson's Long Gone at #1.

In 1949, the term rhythm and blues replaced the Billboard category Harlem Hit Parade.  Also in that year, The Huckle-BucK, recorded by band leader and saxophonist Paul Williams, was the #1 R&B tune, remaining on top of the charts for nearly the entire year. Written by musician and arranger Andy Gibson, the song was described as a "dirty boogie" because it was risque and raunchy.

Paul Williams (right) and His Hucklebuckers' concerts were sweaty riotous affairs that got shut down on more than one occasion. Their lyrics, by Roy Alfred (who later co-wrote the 1955 hit (The) Rock and Roll Waltz), were mildly sexually suggestive, and one teenager from Philadelphia said "That Hucklebuck was a very nasty dance."

Also in 1949, a new version of a 1920s blues song, Ain't Nobody's Business was a #4 hit for Jimmy Witherspoon, and Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five once again made the top 5 with Saturday Night Fish Fry.

Early to mid 1950s

Working with African American musicians, Greek American Johnny Otis (left), who had signed with the Newark, New Jersey-based Savoy Records, produced many R&B hits in 1951, including: Double Crossing Blues, Mistrustin Blues and Cupid's Boogie, all of which hit number one that year. Otis scored ten top ten hits that year.  Other hits include: Gee Baby, Mambo Boogie and All Nite Long.

The Clovers, a vocal trio who sang a distinctive sounding combination of blues and gospel, had the #5 hit of the year with Don't You Know I Love You on Atlantic Records.

Also in July 1951, Cleveland, Ohio DJ Alan Freed started a late-night radio show called "The Moondog Rock Roll House Party" on WJW-AM (850).  Freed's show was sponsored by Fred Mintz, whose R&B record store had a primarily African American clientele. Freed began referring to the rhythm and blues music he played as rock and roll.

Ruth Brown (right), on the Atlantic Records label, placed hits in the top 5 every year from 1951 through 1954: Teardrops from My Eyes, Five, Ten, Fifteen Hours, (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean and What a Dream.

Faye Adams‘s Shake a Hand made it to #2 in 1952.

In 1953, the R&B record-buying public made Willie Mae Thornton's original recording of Leiber and Stoller's Hound Dog the #3 hit that year. That same year The Orioles, a doo-wop group, had the #4 hit of the year with Crying in the Chapel.

In 1954 The Chords' Sh-Boom became the first hit to cross over from the R&B chart to hit the top 10 early in the year. Late in the year, and into 1955,  Hearts of Stone by The Charms made the top 20.

Fats Domino (left) made the top 30 of the pop charts in 1952 and 1953, then the top 10 with Ain't That a Shame. 

R&B was an upfront use of gospel music conventions in an R&B context. Ray Charles came to national prominence in 1955 with I Got a Woman. Big Bill Broonzy said of Charles' music: "He's mixing the blues with the spirituals... I know that's wrong."

At the urging of Leonard Chess at Chess Records, Chuck Berry had reworked a fiddle tune with a long history, Ida Red. The resulting Maybellene was not only a #3 hit on the R&B charts 1955, but it also reached into the top 30 on the pop charts.

Alan Freed, who had moved to the much larger market of New York City, helped the record become popular with white teenagers.  Freed had been given part of the writers' credit by Chess in return for his promotional activities; a common practice at the time.

Also at Chess Records in 1955, Bo Diddley's debut record Bo Diddley/I'm A Man climbed to #2 on the R&B charts and popularized the Bo Diddley beat.

Late 1950's [ top ]

In 1956, an R&B "Top Stars of '56" tour took place. With headliners Al Hibbler, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and Carl Perkins (left), whose Blue Suede Shoes  was very popular with R&B music buyers. Some of the performers completing the bill were Chuck Berry, Cathy Carr, Shirley & Lee, Della Reese, the Cleftones, and the Spaniels with Illinois Jacquet's "Big Rockin' Rhythm Nand.

Cities visited by the tour included Columbia, SC, Annapolis, MD, Pittsburgh, PA, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, NY, into Canada, and through the mid Western US ending in Texas.

In Columbia the concert ended with a near riot as Perkins began his first song as the closing act. Perkins is quoted as saying, "It was dangerous. Lot of kids got hurt. There was a lot of rioting going on, just crazy, man! The music drove 'em insane."

In Annapolis 50,000 to 70,000 people tried to attend a sold out performance with 8,000 seats.  Roads were clogged for seven hours.

Film makers took advantage of the popularity of "rhythm and blues" musicians as "rock n roll" musicians beginning in 1956.  Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Big Joe Turner, The Treniers, The Platters, The Flamigos, all made it onto the big screen.

Two Elvis Presley records made the R&B top five in 1957: Jailhouse Rock/Treat Me Nice at #1, and All Shook Up at #5, an unprecedented acceptance of a non-African American artist into a music category known for being created by blacks.

Nat King Cole (right), a former jazz pianist who had had #1 and #2 hits on the pop charts in the early 1950s (Mona Lisa at #2 in 1950 and Too Young at #1 in 1951), had a record in the top 5 in the R&B charts in 1958, Looking Back/Do I Like It.

In 1959, two black-owned record labels, one of which would become hugely successful, made their debut: Sam Cooke's Sar, and Berry Gordy's Motown Records.

Brook Benton was at the top of the R&B charts in 1959 and 1960 with one #1 and two #2 hits. Benton had a certain warmth in his voice that attracted a wide variety of listeners, and his ballads led to comparisons with performers such as Cole, Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

Lloyd Price, who in 1952 had a #1 hit with Lawdy Miss Clawdy regained predominance with a version of Stagger Lee at #1 and Personality at #5 for in 1959.

1960's and Later [ top ]

Sam Cooke‘s (left) #5 hit Chain Gang is indicative of R&B in 1960, as is Chubby Checker's #5 hit The Twist.  By the early 1960s, the music industry category previously known as rhythm and blues was being called soul music, and similar music by white artists was labeled blue eyed soul.

Motown had its first million-selling single in 1960 with The Miracles' Shop Around.  In 1961, Stax Records had its first hit with Carla Thomas' pop-influenced Gee Whiz! (Look at His Eyes), which featured violins, piano, drums and backup singers.  Its next major hit, the Mar-Keys' instrumental Last Night, was released the same year. 

Last Night introduced the rawer Memphis soul sound, built around horns, electric organs, guitars, and drums, which became the sound that Stax would be most noted for.

Around this time in the United Kingdom, R&B influenced beat music, rock and roll skiffle.  Notable beat groups included The Who, The Creation, The Action, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles.

Simultaneously, ska emerged in Jamaica as another local R&B variant. Thailand's String music and wong shadow mixed R&B (brought over by American and Australian soldiers serving in the Vietnam War) with indigenous musical forms and other Anglo-American musical styles.

By the 1970s, the term rhythm and blues was being used as a blanket term to describe soul and funk. In the 2000s, the initialism R&B is almost always used instead of the full rhythm and blues, and mainstream use of the term usually refers to contemporary R&B, which is a modern version of soul and funk-influenced pop music that originated as disco faded from popularity.

Soul Fusion  [ top ]

Soul music has some of its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues. Many consider soul music to be a genre of music created by African Americans in northern United States inner cities, particularly Chicago.

Ray Charles is widely considered to be the inventor of soul music by putting the blues and gospel music together with his groundbreaking hit I Got A Woman, recorded in 1954.  Others credited with the evolvement of Soul Music include Little Richard, Fats Domino and James Brown, although all were happy to call themselves rock and roll performers at the time.

As rock developed away from R&B in the 1960s, both Charles and Brown claimed that they had always really been R&B singers.  Little Richard proclaimed himself the "king of rockin' and rollin', rhythm and blues soulin'", because his music embodied elements of all three, and because he inspired artists in all three genres.

By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to evolve both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms.

By the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres.  The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length statements with hard-hitting social commentary.

Artists like James Brown led soul towards funk music, which became typified by 1970s bands like Parliament-Funkadelic and The Meters.  More versatile groups like War, The Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire became popular around this time.

During the 1970s, some slick and commercial blue-eyed soul acts like Philadelphia's Hall & Oates and Oakland's Tower of Power achieved mainstream success.

By the end of the 1970s, disco and funk were dominating
the charts.  Philly soul and most other soul genres were dominated by disco-inflected tracks.  During this period, groups like The O'Jays and The Spinners continued to turn out hits.

In the early1980s, soul music survived for a short time before going through another metamorphosis.  With the introduction of influences from electro music and funk, soul music became less raw and more slickly produced, resulting in a newer genre that was called R&B, (often known as contemporary R&B), which sounded very different from the original rhythm and blues style.

After the decline of disco and funk in the 1980s, House and Techno rose to mainstream popularity in the late 1980s and remained popular in the 1990s and 2000s. 

Also starting in the 1980s, soul music from the United Kingdom become popular worldwide, with artists such as Soul II Soul, Loose Ends, Imagination, Mica Paris and Sade.

British soul music became very popular in the 2000s too with artists such as Joss Stone, Terri Walker, Beverley Knight, Corrine Bailey Rae, Adele, Duffy, Amy Winehouse and the Brand New Heavies achieving great success.

The United States saw the development of neo-soul around 1994.  Mainstream record label marketing support for soul genres cooled in the 2000s due to the industry's re-focus on hip hop.

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