Rhythm and Blues

C

R&B and Rock and Roll

In the 1950s the dominant strains of R&B began to be directed towards teenagers instead of adults. The vocal-group style of the 1940s gave way to 1950s doo-wop (so called because of the characteristic syllables used to vocalize the background harmonies), which featured close-harmony singing, usually at slower tempos. Artists such as the Five Keys, and later the Coasters and the Drifters, sang songs with lyric themes that voiced the concerns of American teenagers of the time, including rebellion, school, romance, and cars.

Pioneered largely by the guitarist Chuck Berry and the pianist Little Richard, black rock and roll emerged during the 1950s and forever changed American culture. The crucial innovation of black rock and roll was in the expression of rhythm. While jazz and blues artists had almost universally swung the beat, effectively converting a common-time bar of quavers into a triple-time bar of alternating crotchets and quavers, Berry and Little Richard squared the rhythm back into even quavers. With this innovation, coupled with a substantial increase in tempo that gave their music a frantic style that appealed to American teenagers, an exciting, propulsive groove could be achieved. Finally, both artists wrote songs that reflected the youthful fancies of their audience. Classics such as Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” (1955) and “Lucille” (1957) and Berry’s “Maybellene” (1955) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958) were “covered” (performed by other musicians) innumerable times in the 1960s and 1970s. As important as these artists were in originating a new style of music, their influence in later decades was felt primarily by white rock musicians, as trends in R&B tended increasingly to diverge from rock and roll from the early 1960s onwards.

D

Motown and Soul Music

In the 1960s the three most important styles of R&B were: (1) Chicago soul, influenced by gospel-music songs; (2) the Motown sound, which combined polished songwriting with a straightforward vocal delivery; and (3) Southern soul, the most gospel-influenced style of R&B. Chicago soul was epitomized by the work of singer and songwriter Curtis Mayfield and his group the Impressions, whose songs featured several different lead singers trading vocal lines in call-and-response fashion. In 1959 the soul style was taken up by Motown Record Company, based in Detroit. Founder Berry Gordy was so successful at developing a recognizable sound for Motown recordings that the company name quickly began to be applied as a designation for a genre of music. The most important Motown artists of the 1960s included Diana Ross with the female vocal group the Supremes, Smokey Robinson with the male vocal group the Miracles, and the male vocal group the Temptations. Motown represented the sound of American youth through most of the 1960s and, for an independent record company, achieved unprecedented success. Artists such as Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye created a more ambitious version of the Motown sound in the following decade, using string arrangements and employing new, electronic technology to further the potential of soul.

Southern soul was originated by the singer and songwriter James Brown and the singer and pianist Ray Charles, often taking a religious song as a model and basing a secular song on it. Beginning at the same time as Motown, Stax Records, based in Memphis, developed its own unique, identifiable sound around a studio band consisting of instrumental group Booker T. and the MGs, keyboardist Isaac Hayes, and the Mar-Key horn section (later the Memphis Horns). Vocalists such as Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding made the Southern soul sound internationally renowned, while Sam Cooke popularized black phrases in his lyrics, creating pop songs such as “Bring It On Home To Me” (1962).

E

Funk and Disco

In the late 1960s, at the height of soul music’s popularity, significant changes in cultural views began to be articulated by many black Americans. Black militancy began to make its presence felt, accompanied by an increased sense of African heritage. This cultural and social emphasis on African identity was reflected in popular music. With the song “Cold Sweat” (1967), James Brown signalled the birth of funk music. Funk moved the emphasis away from melody and harmony, bringing rhythm, the defining aspect of African music, to the foreground. Funk recordings, like much indigenous African music, often consisted of a complex groove in which every instrument played a different rhythm, each one fitting with the others like parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Complete verses and choruses were often written without a chord change. This style was adopted by a number of artists, perhaps most significantly by the soul group Sly and the Family Stone and the vocalist George Clinton with the groups Parliament and Funkadelic. These musicians synthesized the funk style with elements from white rock music.

Disco rivalled funk’s popularity in the early 1970s and ultimately surpassed it by the middle of the decade. Like funk, disco was a dance-oriented style. In contrast to funk, however, disco was dominated by arrangements featuring strings and synthesizers that tended to boost the importance of the first and third beats in a ¹ bar, often creating a heartbeat-like rhythm. Springing out of Latino, black, and gay subcultures, and prominently featuring women artists, such as Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor, disco was viewed by many as a substantial threat to mainstream rock music. Despite the hostility with which it was met, disco managed to give rise to a handful of highly original ensembles, such as Earth, Wind & Fire and the Fatback Band.

F

Dance Music and Rap

In the 1980s and 1990s disco gave way to a number of other genres. During this period, superstars such as Prince, Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson worked within funk and other styles of dance music and produced songs by borrowing from a number of styles. Michael Jackson, in particular, was influenced by popular music from other ethnic regions, most notably Central and South America. Although a number of hybrid styles were created during this time, most popular R&B music remained dance-oriented. Moreover, with the rise of music videos in the early 1980s, the dancing abilities of performers gained much greater significance.

The most significant development in popular music in the 1980s and 1990s has been the advent of rap, which originated in New York’s south Bronx district in the mid- and late-1970s. Rap soon redefined and challenged notions of musical composition, copyright protection, and intellectual property. The roots of rap lie in African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean verbal games, such as in the work of Jamaican toasting and dub artists (disc jockeys talking over recorded music) of the late 1960s and 1970s; the work of American disc jockeys of the 1940s and 1950s, and the poetry of a number of black writers of the 1960s, such as the Last Poets and the Lost Prophets. The Jamaican dub and toasting styles of declaimed, semi-spoken vocals were taken to the Bronx by Jamaican emigrants and were eventually fused with new technologies, such as electronic drum machines. These topical rhymes were often layered over sound samples (electronically recorded snippets of existing music) of earlier artists to form new songs. The first rap recording was “Rapper’s Delight”, by Sugarhill Gang (1979). It became a novelty hit, but it was not until 1986, when Run-DMC collaborated with popular rock group Aerosmith on a joint version of the latter’s “Walk This Way” in a symbolic meeting of cultures, that rap achieved popularity with white audiences. A year later, politically conscious rap found its most prominent voice in Public Enemy. In the late 1980s, one of rap’s most controversial sub-genres, gangsta rap, rose to prominence with N.W.A.’s debut album Straight Outta Compton (1988).

IV

Current Trends

By the mid-1990s, elements of rap—including sampling, scratching (running a record needle back and forth along the groove of vinyl records to create a rhythmic effect), and declaimed vocals—had become part of the fabric of contemporary pop. The vocal-group tradition of R&B continued, as did the prominence of solo vocal acts, such as singers Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Luther Vandross. Some branches of rap music consciously recalled aspects of classic R&B, creating a hybrid that flourished in the following decade, with the likes of Mary J. Blige, R. Kelly, Alicia Keys, and Beyoncé. Jamaican dance hall rhythms were a highly popular import in 2003, while the British singer Craig David made significant inroads in a market that has been traditionally American.