RHYTHM AND BLUES

Billboard magazine first used the term "Rhythm and Blues" as the title for its black music charts in 1949, replacing "race music." But more than the name was new. The postwar era had created an entirely new musical landscape, involving new black audiences, new black musical styles, and new musical markets that were being serviced by a new music business.

There were social and technological reasons for these changes. The black migration to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Detroit, with their healthy blue collar economy of defense plants that then retooled to service the postwar economy, created a solid urban working class with some disposable income and a changed social dynamic. Black performers, meanwhile, had been hardest hit by the wartime demand for shellac in the defense industry, which had drastically cut back on the production of records, and had made labels trim their rosters dramatically. But a war-created technology was about to open unprecedented possibilities for entrepreneurship in the music industry. The development of recording tape meant that anyone could have a recording studio, and the recording business was no longer in the hands of a few major companies. Thus newly entrepreneurial musicians began producing music for a waiting audience.

The precursors of rhythm and blues came from the jazz and blues worlds, which were starting to come closer together in the 1930s. Singer-pianist Leroy Carr was the first of the Delta blues singers to incorporate jazz influences and smooth urban stylings. Through the early 1930s, until his death in 1935, Carr was one of the most influential figures in blues. Kansas City blues shouter Big Joe Turner worked with piano player Pete Johnson and such jazz greats as Benny Moten and Count Basie to create a robust, sexual, and celebratory style. Texas-born T-Bone Walker created a solo style on a new instrument, the electric guitar. Jazzman Illinois Jacquet, in Lionel Hampton's 1941 recording, "Flying Home," played a honking, emotionally charged tenor sax solo that became the model for rhythm and blues instrumentals.

The most important jazzman to enter rhythm and blues, though, was Louis Jordan, who virtually created "jump blues." Like so much of the music of the 1940s, jump blues came out of the driving dance music of Count Basie's great 1930s bands, in such numbers as "One O'clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside." Jordan adapted Basie's big band swing to small group instrumentation, with an emphatic 2/4 shuffle beat and brilliant comic showmanship derived from Cab Calloway and black vaudevillians. Jordan dominated the charts throughout the early 1940s.

Jordan recorded on Decca. The new rhythm and blues performers of the 1940s, though, were a phenomenon of the new independent labels. Many of these labels were located in the entertainment centers of New York and Los Angeles, but others were regional. They tended to be run by entrepreneurs (more often than not white) who had businesses that serviced the black urban communities and who saw a hugely popular sound ripe for commercial exploitation. Each label contributed some facet of the developing rhythm and blues sound.

The earliest important indie label was Savoy (founded in 1942). Founded by a Newark, New Jersey, record store owner, Herman Lubinsky, Savoy was one of the few labels to specialize in both of the cutting edge black musical styles of the 1940s: bebop and rhythm and blues. Apollo (founded in 1943), a New York label, and King (1944), a Cincinnati label that also recorded country singers, also came along during the war years, but the real explosion of independents began in the postwar era.

Los Angeles, in these years, became a huge center for rhythm and blues recording. T-Bone Walker had settled in Los Angeles. The first breakout rhythm and blues single, "I Wonder," was recorded by Private Cecil Gant in a simple basement studio and released in 1944 on Gilt Edge Records, a short-lived L.A. indie. When "I Wonder" went to the top of Billboard's race charts, a number of labels sprang up to capitalize on the smooth, cool, Leroy Carr-derived L.A. blues style Gant had popularized. The most successful of these was Modern Records, which was to have its biggest success with a T-Bone Walker disciple, B. B. King. Aladdin Records signed Charles Brown, who brought jazz-pop stylings reminiscent of Nat "King" Cole to R&B. Swingtime recorded Lowell Fulson, who combined the smooth L.A. sound with a T-Bone Walker-influenced guitar style and a Charles Brown-influenced singer-pianist who would later develop his own, revolutionary style: Ray Charles.

The two most important postwar independent labels out of L.A. were Imperial and Specialty. Imperial, founded by record producer Lew Chudd in 1945, became a major player--and changed the face of rhythm and blues--when Chudd moved his talent search from Los Angeles to New Orleans and signed Fats Domino.

Domino had some of the smooth style of the L.A. singers, but he also had the robust energy of Big Joe Turner, and the rollicking, quirky rhythm that grew up in the Caribbean seaport city of New Orleans. Imperial, which also recorded other New Orleans R&B performers like Smiley Lewis and Guitar Slim, adopted the finest New Orleans session musicians--producer-arranger Dave Bartholomew, and brilliant instrumentalists like saxophonist Lee Allen and drummer Earl Palmer. Domino was also one of the first successful R&B artists to incorporate the influence of white country music. Generally, when discussing the fusion of rhythm and blues and country that produced rock 'n' roll, music historians point to white singers like Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, but the real pioneers were Domino and, a few years later, Chuck Berry.

Other L.A. labels started to scout New Orleans for talent. Aladdin signed Shirley and Lee, whose 1950s hits like "Feel So Good" and "Let the Good Times Roll" were a unique amalgam of the mature sexuality of the blues and the teenage sexuality of rock 'n' roll. But the most important Los Angeles beachhead in New Orleans was established by Specialty Records' Art Rupe.

Rupe, who started Specialty in 1946, had developed a successful small label, originally recording jump blues bands like Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers, then signing former Swingtime artist Percy Mayfield, a fine singer in the L.A. style, and one of the century's greatest songwriters. Mayfield's first recording for Specialty in 1950 was his masterpiece, "Please Send Me Someone to Love."

In 1951, Rupe, excited by Imperial's New Orleans roster, sent producer Bumps Blackwell to scout for talent in New Orleans. Blackwell's first success was Lloyd Price, who hit with "Lawdy, Miss Clawdy," backed by Domino and Bartholomew, in 1952. Specialty had a hit in 1954 with Guitar Slim's "The Things I Used to Do" (with Ray Charles). But the label's most significant performer, also signed and produced by Blackwell, was Little Richard. Richard had made a few marginally successful records for Peacock, a Houston-based indie owned by Don Robey, one of the few black entrepreneurs in the rhythm and blues business (romantic balladeer Johnny Ace recorded for Robey's Duke-Peacock, as did Big Mama Thornton and Bobby "Blue" Bland). With Blackwell, he developed a new, over-the-top style. His first single, "Tutti Frutti," came out in 1955, and was one of the most important developments in the merging of rhythm and blues into rock 'n' roll.

Basically, the big difference between rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll was that white teenagers, as well as blacks, listened to rock 'n' roll. As a result, rock 'n' roll was generally safer and more conservative. As Robert Palmer pointed out in his book, Baby, That Was Rock and Roll (about Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller), the theme of conflict between blacks and the surrounding white culture turned into the theme of conflict between teens and their parents. Little Richard was an exception to that rule. His songs were full of heavy sexual innuendo, and his performances held nothing back.

Specialty had a strong lineup of gospel singers along with its rhythm and blues line. One of its best gospel groups, the Soul Stirrers, had Sam Cooke as its lead singer. Cooke wanted to go into R&B, but Rupe, afraid of losing his gospel audience, forbade it. Cooke and Blackwell left the label together. Rupe hired Sonny Bono as his new chief talent scout, and Specialty lost its edge.

Chess Records, begun in Chicago in 1947 by Leonard and Phil Chess, drew on a different musical style: the Delta blues singers who had migrated north from Mississippi and electrified their sound. The Chicago audiences, like other postwar urban black audiences, were ready for something newer and livelier than the traditional blues they--or their parents--had left behind in the Mississippi Delta.

They wanted the big sound of jump blues, and the loud, electric sound that could be heard in the nightclubs they frequented; but they were also still largely recent Southern immigrants, and they wanted a more down-home sound. The musicians were ready to give the public what it wanted, but they were blues-based guitar and harmonica players, not jazz-based horn players. The most successful performers were the ones who could adapt the country blues style to the group configuration of jump. The best of these was Muddy Waters, who put together bands with such brilliant instrumentalists as Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Otis Spann, and Fred Below.

The Chess brothers were nightclub owners who realized that there was a record market for the music that was packing their clubs. Using the talent of a brilliant producer/songwriter Willie Dixon, Chess Records began to sign up the top Chicago rhythm and blues acts. Muddy Waters first recorded for them in 1950, singing traditional blues with only a bass accompaniment. These records were so successful that the Chess brothers were reluctant to change the formula, and it was not until 1950 that they let Waters record with his group. Waters was the prototype of the Chicago blues style; other successful Chess rhythm and blues acts were Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter. These artists did not cross over, at least in the 1950s; their sales were to black audiences. But they were the most profound of influences on the British rockers of the 1960s and the guitar rock bands of the 1970s.

The first Chess rhythm and blues record that made an impact on what was to become the rock 'n' roll market was "Rocket 88," by Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner. Produced in Memphis by Sam Phillips and leased to Chess, it inspired Phillips to go on experimenting with the sound that was to lead to Sun Records and Elvis Presley. The Chess artist who was to change the face of American music most profoundly, though, was Chuck Berry.

Berry, introduced to the Chess brothers by Muddy Waters, was a formidable musician who had absorbed the jump blues of Louis Jordan, the jazz guitar innovations of Charlie Christian, the Chicago rhythm and blues of Waters, and--as with Fats Domino--country. Berry's first recording for Chess was "Maybellene," in 1955, and it was one of the key records to cross black rhythm and blues over to a white audience. Berry's style was so immediately accessible to the new rock 'n' roll market that his hits, unlike Domino's or Little Richard's, were never taken away from him by white artists like Pat Boone. Berry's gifts as a lyricist have led literary critics, as well as pop culture scholars, to hail him as one of the century's most significant writers.

Because of Berry and other rhythm and blues artists who appealed to rock 'n' roll audiences (Bo Diddley, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, and groups like the Flamingoes, the Dells and the Moonglows), Chess became one of the most influential independent R&B labels of the 1950s.

The most important label, though, was unquestionably Atlantic. Founded in 1948 by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun and Herb Abrahamson, Atlantic came to dominate both rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll.

Atlantic's biggest drawback became its greatest strength. Since there was no blues tradition to speak of in New York, the Erteguns were more or less forced to invent one. Using a brilliant black producer, Jesse Stone, and musicians drawn from the jazz clubs on 52nd street, they created a slick but bluesy sound that redefined American music.

Atlantic's first major star was Ruth Brown, a jazz-pop singer who told Ahmet Ertegun when he signed her, "I don't like blues." But her pop-blues amalgam was perfectly suited to the hip New York audience, and to the white teenagers who were starting to listen to rhythm and blues.

She and Lavern Baker, signed in 1954, became the biggest female stars in R&B.

The vocal harmony group style that came to be known as doo-wop found its most popular manifestation on Atlantic, with the Clovers, the Drifters, and the Coasters as the label's biggest stars. Doo-wop came from one of the oldest traditions of black music: harmony singing. In the early 1940s, the principle harmony purveyors were gospel groups and smooth pop groups, principally the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots. The doo-wop groups modeled themselves after the smooth groups, but they had something of the rawness and the rocking rhythm of the gospel groups, too.

The first important doo-wop group was the Orioles, on Jubilee Records. Chess developed a significant doo-wop stable with the Flamingoes, the Moonglows, and the Dells. The Los Angeles scene produced the Penguins and the Platters. In New York, record executives George Goldner and Morris Levy, on a succession of labels, recorded a number of classic doo-wop groups, the most famous being Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

The Clovers signed with Atlantic in 1951, and from their first recordings--Orioles-influenced harmonies with a stronger, more danceable beat--they were at the top of the charts. The Clovers had a strong career throughout the 1950s. The Drifters were signed by Atlantic in 1953 as a setting for the talents of Clyde McPhatter, whose gospel-tinged voice and erotic passion were the precursors of Sam Cooke, and then the soul singers of the 1960s. McPhatter left the Drifters in 1955, but the group, with a series of other lead singers, continued into the 1960s. The Coasters, originally a West Coast group, were produced by songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, two white men who began by writing blues and who became, along with Chuck Berry, the architects of the rock 'n' roll sensibility. Berry, Lieber, and Stoller had always had a wider range to their writing than sexuality, which was the subject of most blues writing.

Atlantic signed and rejuvenated the careers of R&B pioneers T-Bone Walker and Joe Turner. But artistically, the label's most important solo star was Ray Charles, who had begun on the West Coast as a ballad singer in the Charles Brown/Nat "King" Cole tradition. With Atlantic, Charles moved from the Cole piano trio model to a horn-driven band that was unlike Louis Jordan's Tympany Five, and created a gospel-influenced sound that remains one of the most powerful, original contributions to American music.