A timeline of history-making Black music
by Lou Papineau
February 13, 2019
Every February, The Current honors Black History Month. We'll be celebrating by spotlighting black musical artists whose voices and songs changed the world, throughout the decades and across genres. We're also posting a series of essays delving into a deep, enduring and ever-evolving body of work. In this entry, we trace a timeline of historic black musical events, with extended riffs on selected items.
1912
Trumpeter W.C. Handy — who earned the sobriquet "Father of the Blues" — publishes the sheet music for "Memphis Blues, " which he called a "southern rag"; two years later he penned the classic "Saint Louis Blues." In 1969, Handy was the first black performer to be honored on a United States postage stamp. Subsequent honorees include Duke Ellington (1986), Otis Redding (1993), Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf (1994), Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk (1995), Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Josh White, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1998), "Hip-hop culture" (2000), Ella Fitzgerald (2007), Miles Davis (2012), Ray Charles (2013), and Sarah Vaughan (2016).
1925
Louis Armstrong records the first of a series of singles for Okeh Records with his Hot Five and Hot Seven combos. The trumpeter's take on the songs, including "Saint James Infirmary," "Basin Street Blues," and "Muskrat Ramble," "helped to change the course of American music," as writer Charles Hiroshi Garrett noted in a review of a 2000 collection of the complete recordings. "This music has been described as the birthplace of jazz, the musical shot heard 'round the world, the Alps of jazz — indeed, both the music's Holy Grail and its Rosetta Stone."
1934
The Apollo Theater opens and becomes a cultural and musical mecca in the heart of the Harlem neighborhood in NYC.
1935
Pianist Teddy Wilson is part of the "first known interracial jazz group" — the Benny Goodman Trio, with the namesake clarinetist and drummer Gene Krupa.
1936
On November 23 in a room at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Robert Johnson starts a three-day recording session that produces batch of songs, including "Come On In My Kitchen," "Kind Hearted Woman Blues," I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," and "Cross Road Blues," which epitomize the Delta blues style. They were reissued in 1961 on the King of the Delta Blues Singers compilation, which influenced new generations of blues acolytes, including Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and Jimi Hendrix.
1938
"From Spirituals to Swing," a showcase of black performers curated by producer/talent scout John Hammond, is presented at Carnegie Hall on December 23. The bill featured the Count Basie Orchestra, Albert Ammons, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Big Bill Broonzy (a second show was staged in 1939 on Christmas Eve). The liner notes in the 1999 boxed set of the shows noted that "the musical significance of the two 'From Spirituals To Swing' concerts is difficult to deny. Equally important, however, were the social and political implications. The racial impact cannot be overlooked as African-American artists were being presented to an integrated audience at Carnegie Hall at a time when such an occurrence was, if not unheard of, extremely rare."
1944
Sister Rosetta Tharpe releases "Down by the Riverside" which highlights her pioneering electric guitar playing, which is widely-cited as an influence for countless Rock & Roll musicians. The Library of Congress added the song to the National Recording Registry in 2004, saying the song "captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style, demonstrating clearly her influence on early rhythm-and-blues performers." Her originality played a pivotal role in the conception of Rock & Roll as a genre of music and earned her the honorific "the Godmother of rock and roll."
1951
The Kings of Rhythm, Ike Turner's Mississippi-based R&B group, record "Rocket 88" at Sam Phillips' Sun Records. The 78-rpm single, credited to Jackie Brenston (the group's saxophonist and vocalist) and His Delta Cats, was released on Chess Records and is often cited (and debated) as the first rock 'n' roll record. Writer Nick Tosches said it "was possessed of a sound and a fury the sheer, utter newness of which set it apart from what had come before."
1955
Marian Anderson is the first black singer to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.
1955
Chess Records releases Chuck Berry's debut 45, "Maybellene." It's No. 18 on Rolling Stone's ranking of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. "Rock & roll guitar starts here," the magazine said. "The pileup of hillbilly country, urban blues and hot jazz in Chuck Berry's electric twang is the primal language of pop-music guitar, and it's all perfected on his first single." And Chuck was just getting started!
1956
Nat King Cole is the first black star of a national TV show [NBC's The Nat King Cole Show].
1959
Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is released on August 17. In a 2010 list of the "100 greatest and most influential musical compilations since 1954," Time magazine enthused: "In 1959, Miles Davis had already remade jazz in his own image several times over...But when he assembled an unprecedented all-star team (featuring John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on tenor and alto saxophones, and the masterful pianist Bill Evans) for the two-day sessions that became the Kind of Blue album, Miles left his most lasting mark. The open-ended songs, barely sketched out around 'modes,' or scales, rather than chord changes, were given just one or two takes — and the glorious results, the best-selling jazz disc of all time, are simultaneously delicate and powerful, and teeming with life."
1959
Berry Gordy Jr. launches Tamla Records in Detroit with $800 loaned by family members; the label evolves into the Motown Record Corporation in 1960. In the ensuing decade, Motown's studio, dubbed Hitsville U.S.A., produces hundreds of hit songs — which the label proudly proclaims "The Sound of Young America" — by the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Jackson 5, and many other acts.
1963
James Brown's Live At the Apollo (recorded at the Harlem landmark on October 24, 1962) is released in May and is a crossover smash, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard album chart (and lodging on said chart for 66 weeks). In The One: The Life and Music of James Brown, RJ Smith noted that the record was "so staggeringly new it scarcely bore any connection to the music called rhythm and blues. Here was the new soul music." After the success of the album, Brown said, "I started seeing different things and my brain started to intercept new ideas. I became a big city thinker."
1967
The Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut album, Are You Experienced, is released in the UK in May and the US in August. The genre-blurring visionary was a flamboyant showman (and underrated songwriter) who is oft-cited as the greatest guitarist of all time. Hendrix's astonishingly creative (and tragically short) run at the zenith of the rock world blazed through 1970, when he died at age 27.
1971
Charley Pride is the first (and so far last) black artist to win the Country Music Association's most prestigious award, Entertainer of the Year; in 2000, he was the first black inductee at the Country Music Hall of Fame (harmonica player DeFord Bailey is the only other honoree).
1972
Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" wins the Academy Award for Best Original Song (the soundtrack was nominated for Best Original Score); Hayes is the first black artist to win an Oscar in a non-acting category and the first winner who wrote and recorded the award-winning song.
1973
Reggae begins to insinuate its alluring riddims in the US, with the release of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Catch a Fire and the soundtrack for the film The Harder They Come, featuring Jimmy Cliff, the Maytals, and the Melodians. "That was an incredible one-two punch that knocked out America for Jamaican music," historian Roger Steffens said.
1973
DJ Kool Herc, who would earn the honorific "The Father of Hip-Hop," creates the template for the groundbreaking genre at clubs and block parties in the South Bronx. Adapting the style of the Jamaican sound system DJs that Herc (nee Clive Campbell) heard during his youth, he masterfully builds breakbeats, cutting snippets of James Brown and Booker T. & the M.G.s' discs on a pair of turntables — a technique that he termed "the Merry-Go-Round." Herc also rocked the mic, hyping the crowd and his dancing b-boys and b-girls. His innovations inspired Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and everyone else who worked with two turntables and a microphone.
1974
Stevie Wonder is the first black artist to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Innervisions; he also garners the top honor in 1975 (Fulfillingness' First Finale) and 1977 (Songs In the Key of Life).
1979
"Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang is released in October. The ebullient track, featuring Wonder Mike, Big Bank Hank and Master Gee slinging rhymes over the music from Chic's "Good Times" (Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards sued and eventually received co-writing credit), was the first crossover rap smash, reaching No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 (moving two million copies) and spreading the fresh sound to the 'burbs.
1982
Michael Jackson's Thriller is released. It sold 66 million copies worldwide. It topped the Billboard album chart for 37 weeks and spawned seven top 10 singles (three reached No. 1). It won eight Grammys, including Album and Record of the Year. And a few of its audacious videos became staples on MTV and helped break the channel's perceived color barrier.
1984
Prince's Purple Rain is released. It sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. It topped the Billboard album chart for 24 consecutive weeks and spawned five singles (two reached No. 1). It won two Grammys (and was nominated for Album of the Year) and grabbed the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. And a few of its audacious videos became staples on MTV.
1986
Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, and Little Richard are five of the 10 honorees at the first annual induction ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
1986
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated as a national holiday for the first time on January 20. Legislation for a holiday was first submitted four days after his assassination in 1968; a few states enacted observances in the '70s, and a 1979 House bill fell five votes short of approval in 1979. Support for the holiday was bolstered when Stevie Wonder recorded "Happy Birthday" (the closing track on Hotter Than July) in honor of MLK in 1980, with the lines, "I just never understood / How a man who died for good / Could not have a day that would / Be set aside for his recognition Why has there never been a holiday / Where peace is celebrated / All throughout the world?" Wonder and King's widow, Coretta Scott King, lobbied Congress and helped generate a petition with six million signatures supporting their cause; in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed the bill which created the holiday. (Hear the full story on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day episode of the Music News podcast.)
1992
The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album, featuring six songs by the film's co-star, Whitney Houston, and six tracks by other artists (plus the movie's theme), is a worldwide sensation — it has sold 45 million copies. Houston's bravura cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks; the collection won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and is the all-time best-selling soundtrack.
1999
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is the first hip-hop disc to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year (the lone subsequent winner: OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2004). Hill's reaction at the podium: "This is crazy 'cuz this is hop-hop music!"
2003
The October 18 issue of Billboard hailed "Black Music's Historic Week": "R&B/hip-hop's mainstream popularity was further validated last week [Oct. 11]. That was when the top 10 songs on The Billboard Hot 100 were all by black artists for the first time in the chart's history." (The artists from 1-10: Beyoncé featuring Sean Paul; Nelly, P. Diddy & Murphy Lee; Lil John & the East Side Boyz featuring Ying Yang Twins; Chingy; Pharrell featuring Jay-Z; YoungBloodZ featuring Lil Jon; 50 Cent; Fabolous featuring Tamia Or Ashanti; Ludacris featuring Swawnna; Black Eyed Peas.) Ron Fair, president of A&M Records, observed, "It means pop music has no color. We've obliterated the color line. An awful lot of folks of all colors worked on these Hot 100 records, black and white artists, producers, label execs. Call it 'hip-hop' or 'R&B,' but it's the universal language of today's music and it's pop."
2010
Beyoncé is hailed as the best-selling artist of the 2000s, with 64 gold and platinum certifications for her albums, digital songs, ringtones, and videos.
2017
Nielsen reports that hip-hop/R&B surpasses rock as the most-consumed music (sales, streaming, etc.) in the US.
2017
Nicki Minaj dethrones Aretha Franklin as the female singer with the most appearances on Billboard's Hot 100 (76, eclipsing The Queen of Soul's 73).
2018
Kendrick Lamar is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2017 album Damn, becoming the first non-classical/jazz artist to be honored in that category. The Pulitzer committee hailed its "affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life."
2019
"This Is America," by Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover), is the first rap song to win Grammy Awards for Song and Record of the Year (it also grabbed the trophy for Best Music Video and Rap/Sung Performance).
