R&B History Paper

Genre of Analysis

Rhythm and Blues (vocal performance)

Rhythm and Blues (r&b) which also overlaps as “Soul Music” started in the South during the 20th century in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was created by and for African Americans. Gospel music is a heavy component of R&B, even ministers would have the members of the church “testify”. Testimonies are people speaking on something that happened in their life and God turned it around for the better. Most of the pioneers of R&B like Ray Charles, B.B. King, James Brown etc. were black children that grew up in church and branched off into R&B which was seen as unholy to religious folk. It was deemed secular because churchgoers felt as if the music was blasphemous. This act of testifying is the base of rhythm and blues lyrics. In R&B you release bottled up emotions, but through song you “testify” and tell personal experiences. R&B also came from African folk songs called “work songs”. Work songs use “call” and “response”, which has a leader who calls out a word or sentence and the group responds back. Work songs were therapeutic and helped the shift go by. Eventually, the “call” and “response” method of R&B, which involves a crowd turned into a solo performance. R&B lyrics, as I said earlier are heavily influenced and derived from gospel. The instrumentation comes from Blues and Jazz causing the instruments to mirror the words.

In 1947, Jerry Wexler, who was at the time a reporter for billboard, named “R&B” as a genre while editing the charts for the magazine. Wexler is credited for the term. Before the term Rhythm and Blues, all music made by blacks had an offensive category name called “race music”. R&B came from African American’s merging Gospel, Jazz, and Blues. In the 1950s, R&B was considered a lower class style of music compared to Jazz which was considered a high class form of black expression. R&B was apart of the social scene for black youth especially in clubs.

In classic R&B, the “Rhythm” is from the strong use of backbeat and four-beat measures. The “Blues” is about expressing how you feel, which was usually “blue” and “sad”. Why was the music blue and sad ? Racism was a huge issue, this affected the African American community. Also, this music’s rise was among the World War II era. People were being killed because of the war, experienced mental issues because of the trauma of war and hate crimes because of the color of their skin. Majority of the music reflected the times. Instruments like the electric guitar, piano, harmonica, bass, drums, blues harp, slide guitar, and xylophone were used but the main focus is the singer. The singer expresses how they are feeling and set the tone of the song. There are many instrumentals of rhythm and blues but most of the time they are imitating a singer’s voice.

Ray Charles is one of the key players in R&B music. In several songs he collided gospel and blues together to make masterpieces. Evident in “I Got A Woman” (1954), in 1959 “What’d I Say”, and also “Hit The Road Jack” in 1960. R&B star James Brown is one of the most influential performers of all time. His first number 1 single on the R&B Charts was “Try Me” in 1959. He won a Grammy in 1965 for “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”. The category for the 1965 Grammy was for best R&B recording. He also won another Grammy for his song “Living in America” in 1987, the category was best R&B vocal performance, male. In 1986 Ray Charles,, and James Brown were among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. This shows how R&B started to become a cross-over genre.

In the 1980s, rising stars like Michael Jackson, Prince and Luther Vandross change the way R&B would be forever. Michael Jackson started out with the group called Jackson Five, which consisted of him and his four brothers. They would cover many different R&B songs. Eventually, Michael Jackson went on to be the “King of Pop”, without R&B this would not have been possible. Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” and Luther Vandross “Always and Forever” are R&B hits. “Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” is marked number 4 on the charts for Greatest of all time hot r&b/hip-hop songs. R&B even influenced a popular genre today called “Hip-Hop”. Many rappers have sampled tons and tons of R&B artists music to create new sounds. For example Kanye West sampled Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman” (1954) in his song called “Gold Digger” (2005) featuring R&B artist Jamie Foxx.

Popular contemporary R&B stars include Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, R. Kelly and Usher. R&B has branched off into many sub genres, one that is extremely popular and current right now is alternative R&B. Alternative R&B was used in the late 1990s to categorize artists like Erykah Badu, Andre 3000 etc. It was of course R&B, mixed with influences of rock, electronic, neo-soul etc. Now artists like Frank Ocean or even Miguel are today’s alternative R&B. The Weekend’s “The Beauty Behind the Madness”, Miguel’s “Simplethings”, Frank Ocean’s “Thinking about you”, FKA twigs x inc’s “Untitled” are the “new wave” of R&B.

Rhythm and Blues is a strong foundation and stepping stone genre, but continues to progress and evolve. I am sure the legends of R&B would be quite shocked and amazed on how the genre has grown.

Instructions:

each song that is listed needs either lyrics showing the example of how it is R&B or for example the frank ocean (new master) thinking about song needs to be compared to Ray Charles (old master).

Spiritual need to be talked about

gospel could be expanded upon

An R&B star from both 1930s and 1940s needs to be talked about

has to be four pages long

6. Outline order

I. Definition and Key Characteristics

II. History

III. Key Players/ Experts

VI. Notable Works

V. Sub-genres

7. Analysis of genre (R&B) this paper is supposed to a mini/short brief field guide to a newbie in R&B