CHAPTER 17 | RHYTHM AND BLUES 421
RHYTHM AND BLUES
At mid-century the music-industry trade magazine Billboard tabulated retail and
jukebox revenues and radio airplay for popular records by dividing the market
into three categories, each with its own chart appearing weekly. The “pop” chart
listed mainstream popular records—those thought to appeal primarily to middle-
class white listeners, the largest segment of the market. “Country and western”
was the new name for what had formerly been called “hillbilly”: records that
targeted lower-class white audiences in the South and Southwest. The third
chart, listing records that aimed to capture the attention of African American
music lovers, also underwent a name change, from “race” to rhythm and blues.
That term, often shortened to R&B, is still used to refer to music rooted in the
new blues styles that sprang up in the postwar years.
Like Billboard’s other two categories, rhythm and blues encompassed a variety
of styles. At one extreme was Chicago blues, an electrifi ed version of Mississippi
Delta blues performed by musicians who had migrated from the Delta to Chicago.
The iconic Chicago bluesman was Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfi eld in
Mississippi), whose “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Mannish Boy,” and “Got My Mojo
Working” exude a swaggering machismo emulated by later generations of rockers
and rappers; in the 1960s a British band would take its name from his song “Rollin’
Stone.” Waters’s label, Chess Records, was also the home of such notable blues fi gures
as Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, Otis Spann, and Willie Dixon.
At the other extreme of the rhythm and blues spectrum were jump bands,
scaled-back versions of the big bands of the Swing Era. Under the leadership of
musicians like Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson,
jump bands typically consisted of a rhythm section and a front line of two or three
melody instruments, such as sax, trumpet, and electric g uitar, with vocals supplied
by any or all of the instrumentalists. Jump bands specialized in up-tempo blues
numbers with elements of piano boogie-woogie and a heav y backbeat mixed in.
Between the rawness of Chicago blues and the tight ensemble precision of
the jump bands were a variety of R&B styles, with acts ranging from electrifi ed
versions of Texas blues, represented by guitarist T-Bone Walker, to vocal har-
mony groups like the Orioles and the Dominoes, whose ensemble scat singing
inspired the genre label doo wop. Also popular were solo vocalists such as Dinah
Washington, Ruth Brown, and LaVern Baker, as well as blues shouters—men and
women who could project over an amplifi ed blues band—like Big Joe Turner, Big
Mama Thornton, and Wynonie Harris.
Songwriter Roy Brown recorded “Good Rocking Tonight” in 1947. Though
successful, Brown’s version was eclipsed the next year when a version by Wynonie
Harris (LG 17.3) reached the top of the rhythm and blues charts. Harris’s blues
shouting, backed by the band’s heav y backbeat and a honking tenor sax, is the
epitome of postwar R&B.
An increase in the number of companies that produced R&B records points
to the music’s growing strength in the postwar marketplace. Famous bandlead-
ers like Hampton and Jordan recorded on major labels. But much of the music
came from new, independent fi rms—indie labels—including Savoy (founded in
1942 in Newark, New Jersey), King (1944, Cincinnati), Modern (1945, Los Angeles),
Atlantic (1947, New York), Chess (1947, Chicago), Peacock (1949, Houston), and
Sun (1952, Memphis). Capturing the sound of regional R&B scenes, each of theseK Alabama-born Dinah
Washington (1924–1963) was
one of the most successful R&B
singers of the 1950s.R & BChicago bluesjump bands172028_17_412-439_r3_sd.indd 421 23/01/13 10:58 AM