Learn about the musical genre rhythm and blues . Also learn about the r&b meaning, blues history, origin of the genre's name, r&b artists and their biggest hits.
Updated: 11/21/2023
What does R&B Stand For? | Rhythm & Blues Overview, History & Artists
Table of Contents
- What Does R&B Stand For?
- Rhythm and Blues
- Rhythm and Blues Artists
- Rhythm and Blues Songs
- Lesson Summary
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is R&B called race?
During the 1920s and the 1930s, race music was used as a marketing term for African American music that was mostly blues and jazz. In the 1940s, R&B (Rhythm and Blues) replaced the term and expanded its genres to include both secular and religious music.
Is R&B the same as rap?
R&B is not the same as rap music. In Rhythm and Blues, the focus is on the melody of the song. In rap music, the flow and beat of the music is emphasized.
What is R and B known for?
Rhythm and Blues music is known for soulful music and singing. It also has its own distinct rhythm, repetition of verses and notes, and a blend of instruments, especially horns.
What is the difference between rhythm and blues?
Blues music is also called soul music. It often includes songs about pain, emotional distress, and hopelessness. While Rhythm and Blues is still soul music, it also includes more noise and upbeat lyrics.
Table of Contents
- What Does R&B Stand For?
- Rhythm and Blues
- Rhythm and Blues Artists
- Rhythm and Blues Songs
- Lesson Summary
R&B stands for rhythm and blues, a genre of music that began as an umbrella term created in 1949 by Jerry Wexler, a music marketing executive for Billboard magazine. The term's purpose was to classify all genres of African American music into a single category. It was also a replacement for the demeaning term "race music," as well as Billboard's "Harlem Hit Parade." R&B music's meaning, along with artistic expression, was also often stories of the struggles African Americans were confronted within America. R&B songs began as both gospel and secular, with their inspirations coming from worship, work, minstrel shows, and were both emotional and biographical in nature.
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R&B meanings are derived from both the lives of the singers and songwriters, with musicians lending rhythm to the mix. What R&B stands for, Rhythm and Blues, is a genre that contains several other classifications and styles of music. Folk, blues, gospel, jazz, soul, funk, and boogie-woogie are their own categories within the broader term of Rhythm and Blues. R&B identifies as the history of musical artists and musicians who expressed their lives through songs, in a genre that has evolved into worldwide music with a mainstream crossover appeal. R&B musical styles and lyrics have been influenced by musical genres as jump blues, gospel, and jazz. Rhythm and Blues music influenced rock and roll, which then branched out into its own divisions.
The history of blues music began in southern America and, although its music is often accompanied by instruments, especially guitars and harmonicas, the primary power of blues music comes from its lyrics. They are often derived from sadness, hardships, and melancholy. Several key contributors to blues music are Jimmy Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, and B.B. King. Numerous genres of music have spawned from Rhythm and Blues and evolved into successful music with a lasting legacy. In fact, Atlanta Records broadened its R&B reach with its acquisition of Stax Records in the late 1960s. Motown Records was home to other R&B singers such as Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, and Smokey Robinson.
Boogie-Woogie
Boogie-Woogie music began in the southwestern states of America at the beginning of the 20th century. Due to its geographical origin, the music was first called "Western Rolling Blues" and "fast Western style." Although boogie-woogie was mostly played in honky-tonk bars in the 1920s, it did not gain national popularity until the 1930s. Its popularity rapidly declined after World War II.
Afro-Cuban Music
Afro-Cuban music originated in Africa and moved into the Caribbean and Cuban music scene. In rural Cuba, a musical folk style called "son Cubano" was developed; the metropolitan adaptation of this musical style is "son montuno." Once the two musical genres blended their harmonies, lyrical styles, and instruments, Afro-Cuban music made its way into New York and grew from there. Eventually, Afro-Cuban music began to influence jazz in the 1940s, and the two were combined into Afro-Cuban Jazz.
Gospel
Much of the history of early gospel music cannot be traced because the stories behind the songs were not written down, and many early recordings of the songs have been lost. Gospel music began primarily in churches as a form of praise and worship. Emotion, improvisation, personal involvement, and audience participation are a few of the defining characteristics of gospel music. Many gospel songs are performed by choirs as well as individuals, sometimes containing sermons and always a form of religious expression.
Jazz
Jazz music is emotional and contains a great deal of instrumental improvisation. Its entrance into American culture originated in the early 20th century in New Orleans, Louisiana, where there was a richly diverse population of people from varied cultures and ethnicity. Jazz emerged from a combination of different kinds of music, including marches, blues, and ragtime. This genre of music gave rise to such notable artists as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Louis Armstrong.
Blues
Although blues music evolved in the southern states of America, it originated in Africa, with enslaved people bringing work and spiritual songs with them to America. Work songs were sung in time to the task being performed, and spiritual songs were mostly sung during church services. An early kind of blues music originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region riddled with poverty where plantation owners treated enslaved people harshly. Blues is a sad, emotional kind of music that brought about talented artists such as Bessie Smith, B.B. King, and T-Bone Walker.
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The R&B musical genre contains numerous rhythm and blues artists, talented singers, and musicians who have contributed lasting legacies to R&B music.
Ray Charles
Ray Charles was a man of many talents: composer, songwriter, singer, and musician who lost his eyesight at a young age. His first number one song, "I've Got a Woman," topped the musical charts in 1955. Since then, he has had many famous hits such as "Georgia on My Mind," "Hit the Road, Jack," and "What'd I Say?" with Atlanta Records.
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Little Richard
Little Richard, known for his flashy costumes, facial makeup, and shrieking voice, entered the music scene in 1956 with "Tutti Frutti." He followed up that smash hit with "Good Golly, Miss Molly," "Long Tall Sally," and "Rip It Up." His lyrics, often sexual in nature, and his style of playing the piano, which mostly involved pounding on the keys, made him famous worldwide.
Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley, born Ellas Otha Bates, studied the violin and trombone before performing music on street corners in Chicago. In March of 1955, when the song "Bo Diddley" reached the number one spot on the musical charts, he officially adopted the stage name of Bo Diddley. He was known for the '"Bo Diddley Beat"' during which he slap or pat his chest, arms, and legs to create the beat while chanting the song lyrics. He created such hit songs as "Who Do You Love?," "I'm a Man," "Say, Man," and "Say, Man, Back Again."
Fats Domino
Antoine '"Fats"' Domino began playing the piano at an early age. He began a musical career in 1949 with his hit single, "The Fat Man," which earned the number two spot on the R&B charts and became the first rock and roll record to sell over a million copies. He also sang 'Blueberry Hill," "Ain't That a Shame," and "I'm Walking." During the span of his 50-year career, Fats Domino had 25 gold records and sold approximately 65 million copies of his hits.
Ruth Brown
During her six-decade career, Ruth Brown, known as the girl with a tear in her voice, was not only a talented R&B singer but also an advocate for musicians' rights. Like so many rhythm and blues singers, she first began singing in church, where her father was the choir director. She recorded one of the first hit songs in the R&B genre in the 1950s and went on to create and sing such hits as "So Long," "Teardrops from my Eyes," and "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean." She later sang in both Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals and did a stint in Las Vegas.
Elvis Presley
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Known worldwide as the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley was an only child from Tupelo, Mississippi. Influenced by country, R&B, pop, and gospel music, Elvis began his singing career in 1954. Within two years, he was internationally famous. He won three Grammy awards for gospel songs, and some of his most famous hits include "Hound Dog," "Heartbreak Hotel," and "Jailhouse Rock." Elvis also added more than 30 films and television specials to his list of achievements, and his home, Graceland, remains a landmark in Memphis, Tennessee.
Etta James
Born Jamesetta Hawkins, Etta James entered the music scene in 1954 after moving to Los Angeles, California, and recording "The Wallflower." She followed that up with "I'd Rather Go Blind." "At Last," and "Something's Got a Hold on Me." After the height of her career, she continued to perform and record albums and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Aretha Franklin
Known as the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin began her musical career while accompanying her father on a traveling revival show. She had previously sung in the church choir and played piano from a young age. Her first major hit song was "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," followed by more successful hits: "Respect," "Chain of Fools," and "I Say a Little Prayer." She performed at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral in 1968 and the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention later that year. Aretha continued recording and performing until her retirement in 2017, a year before her death.
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Rhythm and Blues music paved the way for innumerable Rhythm and Blues songs that broke cultural and social barriers and leave a lifetime legacy to their listeners.
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R&B, which stands for the genre of Rhythm and Blues music, is a collective term that was coined by Jerry Wexler in 1949. Replacing the offensive former classification of "race music," R&B includes many genres within its category such as blues, jazz, gospel, boogie-woogie, and Afro-Cuban music. R&B has given rise to many famous singers and musicians like Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, and Ray Charles. With origins in Africa, Cuba, the Caribbean, and the southern United States, R&B is an emotional expression filled with soulful lyrics, powerful stories of struggles and successes, and a lasting lifetime legacy of truly phenomenal music.
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Video Transcript
Rhythm & Blues
When it comes to things with long and complex histories (like music), we tend to forget just how strongly the present has been influenced by the past. Pop music today is diverse and draws from many different genres; however, many of these present day styles wouldn't exist without the strong influence of the rhythm and blues music from the mid-20th century.
Rhythm and blues (sometimes called R&B) is a style of American music that emerged from the various sub-genres of jazz and blues that were popular throughout the first half of the 20th century. Like all styles of music, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where and when it began. That said, rhythm and blues has deep roots in a variety of African-American styles. Gospel music, with its rhythmic style and religious or spiritual call-and-response vocal arrangements, was particularly important to R&B musicians.
The 1930s & 1940s
During the 1930s and 1940s, urban cities like Chicago, New York, and Detroit became hotbeds of new musicians like Cab Calloway, a swing bandleader, and T-Bone Walker, a jump-blues guitarist. Unlike jazz, which can have complicated orchestrations and accommodates improvisation, the swing and jump-blues played by artists like Calloway and Walker had a more stripped down, uncomplicated sound. Moreover, some artists, like Walker, placed a greater emphasis on the electric guitar, which led to the popularization of the electric blues, or Chicago blues.
Given the nuanced and intersecting nature of musical styles, there's a certain degree of subjectivity when it comes to assigning these musicians of the '30s and '40s to the category of rhythm and blues. By the late 1940s, however, this diverse collection of African American groups and musicians was labeled as rhythm and blues by Billboard Magazine writer Jerry Wexler.
The 1950s
By 1951, rhythm and blues had established itself as a formal genre, and artists like Ruth Brown scored hits with songs like 'Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean.' These early records stayed true to the genre's roots with simple arrangements, minimal production, and strong, almost gospel-like vocal deliveries. Sensing that there was money to be made from the growing trend, labels like Atlantic Records and Savoy began to shift their focus away from jazz and started signing rhythm and blues singers and groups.
When Jerry Wexler left Billboard Magazine in 1953 to become a partner at Atlantic Records, the label began producing records that have since become genre-defining. With the signing of acts like Ray Charles and the Drifters, Atlantic had a strong hold over the rhythm and blues music charts during the first half of the 1950s with songs like Ray Charles' 'What'd I Say;' Big Joe Turner's 'Shake, Rattle, and Roll;' and the Drifters' 'Such a Night.'
Despite the fact that diverse audiences now consider these records classics, in its early years, R&B was largely marketed towards African-American audiences. In fact, prior to being termed rhythm and blues, the genre was more commonly referred to as race music or negro music. When these songs finally reached white audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was usually through white performers like Elvis Presley recording their own versions of R&B songs.
This paradigm began to shift when disc jockeys like Alan Freed began playing the original African-American recordings on their radio shows. Having discovered that they had been hearing white versions of the songs, white teenagers developed a curiosity about the originals. At a time when much of the country was still struggling with racial tensions, the rising popularity of African-American music with white audiences was a remarkable turning point for American race relations.
The 1960s
During the late 1950s and into the 1960s, rhythm and blues was a major cultural force in the United States. With white audiences increasingly enjoying the genre, many artists began to move away from the strong gospel and blues influences of the previous decade and toward a style influenced by pop music.
It's important to note that pop is more of a marketing term than a musical style. Pop music implied songs that could accommodate radio play, have a familiar verse/chorus/verse format, and otherwise appeal to wide audiences. Adding these elements to R&B moved the genre a bit further away from its roots as an expression of African-American life, weakening the influence of jazz and gospel music.
Throughout the first half of the decade, labels like Atlantic continued their steady stream of hits with new artists like Ben E. King, whose 1960 hit 'Stand by Me' remains one of the most widely recognized classics of the 1960s. The label significantly expanded its roster with new artists like Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, and the acquisition of Stax Records, home to artists like Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Rufus and Carla Thomas, and Isaac Hayes.
While Atlantic and Stax dominated the market for much of the 1950s and early 1960s, the decade saw the rise of one of music's biggest icons: Motown Records. Located in Detroit, Michigan, Motown Records moved rhythm and blues somewhat further from its blues and gospel origins, expanding on the pop-oriented groups at Atlantic and other labels. Throughout the 1960s, Motown released wildly successful records from Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, and the Jackson 5.
The 1970s & Beyond
As it had in previous decades, rhythm and blues evolved yet again in the 1970s, during which some artists like Isaac Hayes and James Brown were repackaged as soul singers. Unlike the mainstream groups and singers of the 1960s, the soul music of the 1970s saw a return to the high-energy influence of gospel music and the slower influences of blues and jazz.
By the mid-1970s, disco dominated the music charts, drawing heavily on the energy, rhythms, and driving beats of earlier R&B acts. Moving into the 1980s, the electronic elements of disco led to the further evolution of rhythm and blues, contributing to the success of neo-R&B singers like Whitney Houston and Anita Baker. These new artists transformed the earlier styles of R&B with technology like synthesizers, electronic drums, and high-end production techniques.
Lesson Summary
Let's review. Rhythm and blues is a style of American music with roots in earlier African-American styles like jazz, blues, and gospel music. The term was coined in the late 1950s by Billboard Magazine writer and Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler.
Early records from Ruth Brown and Ray Charles found success with African-American audiences in the 1950s and later, white audiences in the 1960s. With the rise of labels like Stax Records, home to artist like Booker T. and the M.G.'s and Isaac Hayes; and Motown Records, home to the Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder, the genre expanded greatly into the 1970s with the emergence of disco, drawing heavily on the energy, rhythms, and driving beats of early R&B acts.
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What does R&B Stand For? | Rhythm & Blues Overview, History & Artists
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