Rhythm & Blues

The term rhythm & blues was invented as a marketing term in the late 1940s, replacing the term race records to describe popular African American recordings and remaining dominant through the mid-1960s. Early 1950s rhythm & blues was a direct descendant of Jump Blues and the blues shouters, who may be categorized as either jump-blues or rhythm & blues, are generally credited with the first Rock & Roll recordings. The increasingly melodic and Pop-friendly sound of rhythm & blues in the early 1960s gave way to Soul in the late 1960s, while the abbreviated term R&B was used to broadly capture the sound of urban America. In 1945, the Harlem Hit Parade became the Juke Box Race Records chart, and in 1949 both the Juke Box and Best Sellers charts replaced the term race with rhythm & blues. The chart's first major hits were Louis Jordan's "Saturday Night Fish Fry" and Joe Liggins's "Pink Champagne", which spent 12 and 13 weeks at number one respectively. These big early hits reflect the blurry line between jump-blues and rhythm & blues. Late-period jump-blues can be seen as the beginning of rhythm & blues. More narrowly, rhythm & blues can be defined as a small-band style with a stronger link to rock & roll and pop and a much weaker link to Jazz and Swing compared to jump-blues.