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R & B
Rhythm & Blues is a specific and ever-evolving genre. Derived from jazz, blues, and gospel music, R&B has become synonymous with soul music in modern times.
With the 1930’s Great Migration of black Americans from the south into urban centers, like New York and Chicago, came a niche for jazz and blues, which quickly intersected. Musicians began putting heavier emphasis on piano, saxophone and electric guitar within jazz/blues. In the forties, R&B matured…
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Rhythm & Blues is a specific and ever-evolving genre. Derived from jazz, blues, and gospel music, R&B has become synonymous with soul music in modern times.
With the 1930’s Great Migration of black Americans from the south into urban centers, like New York and Chicago, came a niche for jazz and blues, which quickly intersected. Musicians began putting heavier emphasis on piano, saxophone and electric guitar within jazz/blues. In the forties, R&B matured into a grittier style akin to early rock and roll, with driving percussion and brass instrumentation. Helping to bring about this change were bands like Tympany Five, the founders of “jump blues”.
Billboard magazine soon adopted “Rhythm & Blues” as a category, and Paul Williams’ notoriously raunchy number “The Huckle-Buck” hit number one. Little Richard soon gained a following, recording “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” “Long Tall Sally,” and “Tutti Frutti,” all still considered classics. Next came Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and their ilk, who irreversibly solidified R&B in the public consciousness.
This provided a perfect lead-in for 1950’s rock and roll, with artists like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry winning immense and lasting popularity. Sam Cooke brought “soul” into the mix with his smooth-as-butter vocals, and others like Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra joined the storm that was taking the world. By the 1960’s the genre had attracted both white and black audiences and eventually branched out into Motown and disco.
Contemporary R&B is much funkier than its roots, incorporating the soulful style of its predecessors with hip hop’s robust beats. It was popularized by solo artists like Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Mariah Carey. Some acts have blended pop and electronic dance music into the mix. Like most modern musical genres, R&B has made its name by fusing an enormous cross-section of popular music and has done so with huge, decade-spanning success.
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