OFFERS

Vinyl

R&B CDs

Jazz CDs

Rhythm & Blues Timeline

1877 Invention of the Phonograph

1896 Jim Crow Segregation laws

1908 Introduction of 2-sided records

Black Diaspora from the south

Blues formatted as 8 or 12 bar chorus

1920 1st American Radio Station

1922-7 Boom in sales of radios

1925 New electrical recording process

1925 78rpm record standardized

1927 Lindy-hop introduced

1931 Invention of the Microphone

1932-42 Bluebird Records

1933 Repeal of Prohibition Act

1935 Mass-production of Jukeboxes

1938 1st recording of the electric guitar

1938 Spirituals To Swing Concerts

1942 AFM Musicians strike

1942 Billboard Harlem Hit Parade

1942 US entry into Second World War

1944 Louis Jordan #1 in pop charts

1945 End of Second World War

1946 1st mass-produced TV sets

1948 WDIA 1st black radio station

1948 Columbia unveils 33rpm LP

1949 Billboard Rhythm & Blues Chart

1949 RCA introduces 45rpm vinyl

1950 Introduction of 45rpm Jukebox

1950 Sun Records

1952 Black radio reaches white teenagers

1954 Mambo craze in America

1954 Dec Alan Freed’s Rock’n’Roll Show

1955 Growth of civil rights movement

1958 1st stereo record release

1963 Martin Luther King March on Washington

1963 Billboard suspends R&B chart

1964 Civil Rights Act

The History Of Rhythm And Blues
The History of Rhythm and Blues comes in four box sets, each comprising four CDs, with every track and artist annotated in detail in the richly informative, splendidly illustrated booklets that come with each set. This is a labour of love, and a work of genuine scholarship, but it is also hugely entertaining. I have been listening to almost nothing else for the past fortnight but still feel I am only scratching the surface of a wonderfully rich treasure trove. Throughout, famous names and familiar songs are mixed with the rare and unexpected, but what makes these sets so special is that they aren’t a dry and dusty exercise in musical archaeology.
Charles Spencer – The Spectator

The History Of Rhythm And Blues
Rhythm and Blues has become one of the most identifiable art-forms of the C20th, with an enormous influence on the development of both the sound and attitude of modern music. But it wasn’t always that way. The History of Rhythm and Blues series of box sets investigates the accidental synthesis of jazz, gospel, blues, ragtime, Latin, country and pop into a definable form of black music, which in turn would influence pretty well all popular music from the 1950s to the present.

The hardships of segregation caused by the Jim Crow laws caused a cultural revolution within Afro-American society. New forms of music arose: spirituals, ragtime, barrelhouse, jazz and the blues. From its humble rural beginnings in the early 1900s as a method of self-expression in the southern states, the blues gradually became a form of public entertainment in juke joints and dance halls picking up new rhythms along the way. 
Between 1910 and 1970, nearly five million African Americans left the South for northern cities, looking for higher wages, better homes and political rights. The route they took was determined largely by the price of the cheapest rail ticket. It was the move to the city, which brought the increase in popularity for the blues, and it was the technologies of sound recording, the radio and the jukebox that helped to define its structure. A new form of commercial dance music was born – Rhythm and Blues.

The History of Rhythm and Blues series of box sets will appeal to anyone interested in the evolution of the blues, or simply curious as to how the sounds of today continue to be shaped and forged by this music from the early C20th.

Ring Shouts and Hollers

Ragtime and Cakewalk

New Orleans Bands

Folk Blues

Delta Blues

Texas Blues

Boogie Woogie Piano

Guitar evangelists

Urban songsters

Jug Bands

Gospel Quartets

Black Harmony Groups

Harlem Jive

Swing Jazz

Country Blues

Urban Blues

Swing Boogie

Blues Shouters

California Club Blues

Hillbilly Boogie

Jump Blues

Gospel/Secular Vocals

Jubilee/Secular Groups

Honking Saxophone

Downhome Blues

New Orleans Piano

Rockabilly

Doo-Wop

R&B Vocal Groups

Rock’n’roll

Electric Chicago Blues

Memphis Blues

Uptown R&B

Motown & Stax

Rockin’ Instrumentals

British R&B & Blues

Modern Blues