R&B Music History
2/9/22 Update: New Orleans Blues phenom Chris Thomas King has deftly set the record straight in his 2021 book: The Blues: The Authentic Narrative of My Music and Culture. We finally have the gaps filled in – at least in America from the turn of the century onward! King has also provided the thread which reaches back much further all the way to Egypt. The Blues – which was both what Anglos coopted and called “jazz” and “Dixieland jazz,” and which is the basis for what became Gospel, Rhythm & Blues, Rock, Soul, Hip Hop & Rap – all originated in at least the mid-1880s if not before in New Orleans with educated, highly trained, free Creole musicians playing what they called The Blues, inspired by the French exclamation “sacre bleu,” as a rebellious response to attempted Protestant Anglo constrictions after the U.S. bought Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803. Free Creoles of African descent had actually settled in the territory first named La Florida by the Spanish who claimed it as early as 1513 – 100 years before the 1619 landing of enslaved Africans in Jamestown. The first noted wafts of the bold, fierce, joyful, freeing Blues infecting the air of downtown were heard from Mamie Desdunes piano playing her 2:19 Blues (Mamie’s Blues)- the first known Blues composition – in the late 1880s, while trumpeter “The Black Rose” Buddy Bolden blasted The Blues from 1894-1907 so far forward – there was no going back. Pianist Jelly Roll Morton, who heard Mamie playing as a child, carried The Blues from there, along with trumpeters King Oliver (Louis Armstrong’s mentor), trombonist Kid Ory, guitarist Lonnie Johnson – and a free-spirited, cosmopolitan city and international port chock full of free Creole highly -trained musicians creating high art. It was Lonnie Johnson who carried The Blues on guitar to the Mississippi Delta, through touring and phonograph records. He was the inspiration for what came later out of Robert Johnson, (no relation – but whom Robert Johnson tried to claim to be, or at least related to, and definitely tried to imitate) and all of the other Mississippi Delta blues guitarists. As the New Orleans Blues musicians began to tour and record, The Blues (erroneously called “jazz”) infectiously became the 1920s soundtrack in a craze spread around America and the world. The Blues party that is still New Orleans was spread by speakeasies, flappers, and phonographs like fire around the globe. In fact, it is now known that W.C. Handy actually saw New Orleans musician Prince McCoy performing Jelly Roll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues” in Mississippi, and appropriated this song calling it his and publishing it as “Memphis Blues.” He wasn’t the first one to co-opt New Orleans Blues – and he certainly wasn’t the last. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery – but I’m sure these New Orleans original Blues musicians would have rather gotten paid for their art and gotten credit where credit is due. It is never too late to give credit where credit belongs.
Source: Thomas King, C. (2021) The Blues: The Authentic Narrative of My Music and My Culture. Chicago Review Press Inc.
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R&B Music History: It was Louis Jordan’s exuberance that lit the Rhythm & Blues fire, garnering him the title “Father of 
Rhythm & Blues” and prompting Billboard magazine to recognize this new black sound and finally change their “race” category to Rhythm & Blues in 1949. Jordan, who had played sax and sang in Chick Webb’s big band, pared down the standard big band into his Tympany Five in 1938, with a rhythm section and sax and trumpet as melody instruments. Pioneering a joyful shuffle-boogie rhythm, Jordan’s jumpin’ and shoutin’ style, with humor on top, had a big impact on the likes of Johnny Otis and Chuck Berry. Berry said, “”If I had to listen through eternity to music, it would be Nat Cole, and if I had to work through eternity, it would be with Louis Jordan.”
“Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” was perhaps Jordan’s most popular, but even today, most Americans could hum “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,” or “Beans and Cornbread.”
R&B singers to follow would strive to capture the exultation and excitement of Gospel music, shouting with head thrown back and mouth open wide. Guitar players would try to follow “T-Bone” Walker’s lead with electric guitar mastery, and sax players would practice honking like Battiste Illinois Jacquet, whose solo on Lionel Hampton’s disk of “Flying Home” (1941) caused a sensation among black musicians, using repetitive phrases and dissonant intervals, relying on repeated sounding of a deep, low, resonant note followed by high, squeaking, freak notes.
R&B wove together threads of all the American music, originated by African-Americans, that came before, building a bridge to all the American music yet to be, with amazing tenacity.
On the Shoulders of R&B Giants:
Joe Turner – “Chains of Love,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (1954)
Ruth Brown – “5-10-15 Hours,” “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”
La Vern Baker – “Tweedle Dee,” “Jim Dandy”
Willie “Big Mama” Thorton – “You’re Nothing But a Hound Dog”
Fats Domino – “Goin’ Home,” “Ain’t It A Shame,” “Blueberry Hill,” “I’m Walkin’”
BB King – “Three O”Clock Blues,” “Every Day I Have the Blues,” “The Thrills is Gone”
Arthur Crudup – “Kind Lover Blues” “Mean Old Frisco Blues,” “That’s All Right Mama”
Muddy Waters – “Rolling Stone” “Stormy Monday” “Mannish Boy”
Howlin’ Wolf – “Killing Floor” “Evil is Goin’ On” “Smokestack Lightning”
Sources:
Shaw, Arnold. Black Popular Music in America, 1986
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans – A History, Third Edition, 1997
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