Disc One - From The Delta To The City Country Blues And Spirituals, Jug Bands And Hokum

Disc Two The Rhythm Piano Boogiewoogie Ragtime And Jazz

Disc Three - Up River To Chicago Urban Blues And Gospel

Disc Four Jazzing The Blues After Hours Swing Boogie And Jive

A large size 4CD box set complete with 32 page booklet including comprehensive track by track analysis of all 97 songs, chronologically pointing out the relevant stylistic, musical and technological innovations as they happen. Rhythm & Blues - the accidental synthesis of jazz, gospel, blues, country and pop into a definable form of black popular music. This compilation takes a look at rhythm and blues from a historical perspective and demonstrates the breadth of new forms which grew out of the fusion of the various styles which originally led to its formation. There are plenty of companies providing fine retrospectives covering different artists, labels and sub-genres, but the aim here is to present the subject selectively by chronicling and analyzing the major trends which took place from the 1920s through to the 1960s. Documenting:- The emergence of new technologies such as the electric guitar and the echo chamber A musical analysis of chord structures, riffs, instrumentation and rhythmic innovations Important social changes noted where relevant. Rhythm & Blues was coined as a marketing term in 1949, at the music industry publication, Billboard. In the years before the second world war, race was the term applied by the record industry to all forms of music produced by black artists, which then encompassed blues, jazz, jug band, hokum, sacred and novelty music. However, in the 1940s, some companies, reacting to the sense that the word race was uncomfortably close to racism began to adopt the term sepia , but when Billboard began publishing its weekly Top Ten Rhythm & Blues chart in 1949, record companies quickly fell into line. Volume One takes the story up to the eve of the American entry into the Second World War. Full recording details including personnel, dates of recording and original catalog numbers. Sample Track Details Count Basie as Jones-Smith Inc - Boogiewoogie William Count Basie b. NJ (1904-84), p; Carl Smith, t; Lester Young, ts ; Walter Page, b; Jo Jones, d; Jimmy Rushing, v. Chicago Oct 1936 Vocalion 3459 Count Basie - I can't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play cause my boys and I got to have four heavy beats to a bar and no cheating . While touring as a pianist with a vaudeville troupe, Basie had the great fortune of being stranded in Kansas City in 1927, where he joined Walter Page s Blue Devils. Jones-Smith Inc was born from the ashes of Bennie Moten s Orchestra, of which he had been part until Moten s death in 1935. Basie uses the brass stabs from the conclusion of Ammons Boogie-Woogie Stomp, and makes up a new arrangement around them with Jimmy Rushing providing a strong vocal. Drummer Jo Jones adopted the method of moving the ground beat from the bass and snare-drum to the bass and hi-hat, which had the effect of making the drums quiet in a small group setting, and the resulting ten-ten-t-ten hi-hat beat was to become the defining sound of swing music. The line-up very much prefigures the stripped-down version of a big band with just two horns and a rhythm section, which Louis Jordan perfected in the mid 1940s. Basic is said to have first heard that the blues meant only twelve-bar blues in Oklahoma City in 1926 from Rushing, whose uncle taught him so around 1915.