Knowra Rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues is African American popular music that emerged in the 1940s, combining blues, jazz, and gospel influences. Its sound and meaning have shifted across later generations of musicians.
Race records : A U.S. record-industry category for music marketed to African American audiences, used from the 1920s into the 1940s. The industry category that preceded the commercial label “rhythm and blues.”
Backbeat : A rhythmic emphasis on the second and fourth beats of a four-beat measure. The emphatic backbeat gives much rhythm and blues its propulsive feel.
Jump blues : An upbeat, small-band style of blues that features strong rhythms, horns, and lively vocals. It was a prominent dance-oriented form of early rhythm and blues.
Soul music : A popular music style that developed from African American gospel, rhythm and blues, and other traditions in the 1950s and 1960s. Soul is a later, closely related style often distinguished by its stronger gospel imprint.
Billboard (magazine) : An American music-industry magazine that publishes charts and reports on recorded music. Its 1949 chart renaming helped establish “rhythm and blues” as a market category.
Call and response : A musical pattern in which one voice or instrument is answered by another. Singers, backing vocals, and instruments often trade phrases in this tradition.
Doo-wop : A vocal-group style built around close harmonies, nonsense syllables, and a lead singer. Its vocal-group approach grew within the postwar rhythm and blues scene.
Contemporary R&B : A popular music category that developed from rhythm and blues and incorporates elements of pop, hip-hop, funk, and electronic music. The modern label covers a sound far removed from the genre’s 1940s beginnings.
Jerry Wexler : An American music journalist and record producer who worked at Atlantic Records. He helped popularize the phrase as a replacement for “race records.”
Twelve-bar blues : A twelve-measure harmonic pattern, commonly built around three chords, used in blues and related music. The form provides a recurring harmonic framework for many early rhythm and blues songs.
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