R&B Was Born on the American Song River

This episode is dedicated to the memory of  Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts,.  Charlie passed away while I was preparing this episode.  In a career that spanned more than sixty years,  he left us all a massive library of songs and memories that we all will treasure forever.  Thanks for everything, Charlie.  It was only Rock and Roll, but I liked it!

Episode Description

It was a new day in America.  The middle class was big and growing.  Businesses were flush with cash it had come by, which meant people were working and saving and getting ahead. Those returning war-heroes had gotten to work making money, and making babies and America was a young country, too.  So this young, expressive, exuberant, happy music was ideal for a nation that was feeling the same way. The fact that this new, young music became THE music of the day represented a sea change in what America was all about.

Even more, Rhythm’n Blues set the stage for the next big arrival – rock and roll….. like the great R&B singer, Ruth Brown said, “when the white kids started dancing to it, R&B turned into Rock and Roll.”  Hold that thought for a future episode!  

Welcome to American Song, Episode 12:  R&B Was Born on the Great American Music River.

Tracks

• Ike and Tina Turner - River Deep, Mountain High
• Barrett Strong - Money, That’s What I Want
• Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddam
• Erskine Hawkins - After Hours
• Ahmet Ertegün and Charlie Rose Interview Excerpt
• Bib Mama Thornton - Hound Dog
• James Jamerson (isolated bass) - What’s Goin’ On
• Louis Jordan - Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?
• Louis Jordan - Saturday Night Fish Fry
• Erskine Hawkins - Tuxedo Junction
• Harlem Hamfats - Weed Smokers Dream
• Cab Calloway - Minnie the Moocher
• Count Basie - One O’CLock Jump
• Bullmoose Jackson - Big Ten Inch
• King Curtis - Instant Groove
• Lionel Hampton - Flying Home
• Lionel Hampton - Hey!  Bop a Re Bop
• T Bone Walker - Stormy Monday
• BB King - Live at Sing Sing Prison
• Elvis Presley - That’s Alright Mama
• Hoss Allen Interview
• Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary
• Booker T and the MGs - Green Onions
• Martha and the Vandella’s - Dancing in the Street
• Stevie Wonder - Heaven Help Us All
• Funk Bros. - Aint No Mountain High Enough
• Funk Bros. - You Keep My Hangin’ On
• Funk Bros. - I Was Made to Love Her
• Marvin Gaye - What’s Goin’ On
• The New Moonglows - Twelve Months of the Year
• Marvin Gaye - How Sweet it Is
• Berry Gordy Talks about Marvin Gaye
• Ray Charles - Hit the Road Jack
• Ray Charles Interview on Dick Cavett
• Maxin Trio - Blues Before Sunrise
• Ray Charles - I Got a Woman
• Ray Charles - What’d I Say
• Ray Charles - Georgia on My Mind
• Ruth Brown - 5-10-15 Hours
• Ruth Brown - I’ll Wait For You
• Ruth Brown Interview with Terri Gross (NPR)
• Aretha Franklin - Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
• Aretha Franklin Interview with Terri Gross (NPR)
• Aretha Franklin - (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman
• Aretha Franklin - Respect
• Aretha Franklin - I Say a Little Prayer For You
• Aretha Franklin - Chain of Fools
• Sam & Dave - Soul Man

Join our community and continue your journey through American Song: Visit us on Facebook.

There, you'll get more information, video content, and more about the music and personalities covered in all our episodes.  

Transcript

The Great Migration

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.  We’ve talked a lot about the kinds of hardships Americans have encountered and overcome throughout the American Song series. We’ve seen courage and determination in all kinds of situations as we’ve traveled the American Music River from our earliest colonial days to the present.  The years 1916 through 1930 ushered in a period in American history called the Great Migration.  We have to start our story about RnB here. 

America’s industrial machine revved into high high gear during both world wars.  During the Great War, in the years that America was involved – 1917 and 1918 – it’s estimated that America invested $12 to $13 billion dollars to equip the first 5 million American soldiers sent to the battle lines.  Our production of machine guns outweighed production by Great Britain by 250% and production of rifles by 207%.  US production of fighter planes – WW I was the first war in which planes were used – outstripped what Europe was capable of producing in a similar way to the munitions figures.  All the airplane factories were in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Los Angeles and Seattle.  The war required thousands and thousands of ambulances, trucks, jeeps, and tanks; American factories were pressed into the war effort, opening millions of jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey again.  If it hadn’t been for the war, there still would have been a big exit out of the South; King Cotton had collapsed following massive crop failures due to boll weevil infestations.   

For American blacks, these manufacturing jobs provided the promise of new and better lives outside the South – finally.  Millions of black Americans took whatever they could carry with them, or load into their trucks and headed north in an exodus that today we call the “Great Migration”.  We talked about it in our ‘blues’ episode, because it meant that black culture, especially music, was spreading further outside the south.  RnB like the first generation of Israelites born outside of bondage, was the newborn child of the exodus.

Unfortunately, they found race issues in the north too, discriminatory housing, discriminatory hiring practices, and segregation.  Black families were confined places like Chicago’s South Side, Harlem in New York City, and Central Avenue in Los Angeles.  In the folk music episode, we talked about the work that the progressives and socialists in America were doing to improve conditions for the working class and minority races.  These were the years when the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), the National Urban League (1910), and later, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925)—began their work for institutional change.  Social progress encouraged the rise of black communities and a rise in black pride; a pride that was expressed in their music.  RnB has always played an important role in encouraging the black community, and not only blacks, but ultimately many people from many walks of life.

What’s In A Name

The 1920’s through 1940’s were the golden age of jazz – it spread across the country like wildflowers, but growing in the shadows and places people weren’t paying much attention, something new was growing too.  It came from the seeds of jazz, but it wasn’t jazz; more like an exotic mutation.  And what to call this new species?  The early experimental names all smacked of intolerance and racism; names like Sepia Records, Race Records.  Over generations, across continents, through the deepest hardship and across times of the greatest elation, music that started out almost as the monanings of an oppressesd and despised people, had, by the late 1940’s flowered into something altogether new and beautiful – again!  

The hip cognoscenti were the ones first attracted to it.  They heard something special in it, and they could also hear the exciting ca-ching of fortunes waiting to be made.  The early recordings were produced by small indy labels – mostly in Los Angeles.  

Then, along came the  son of a Turkish diplomat  who wanted in on the action.  His name was Ahmet Ertegun, a jazz fan and he launched a small little company called Atlantic Records.  The year was 1947.  Here’s Ahmet, himself, to tell us about that time in his life.  https://charlierose.com/videos/17701

This episode will come full circle, so remember 1947. With this one act, R&B’s center shifted from the West Coast to the Big Apple.  Around that time, RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name Blues and Rhythm. But that just didn’t have the musical ring to it – it sounded kind of clumsy.  It wasn’t too long before a music journalist named Jerry Wexler, writing for a little paper called “Billboard”, flipped the words to coin it Rhythm & Blues, R and B for short.   

I’m intrigued by how, time and again in this story of American Song, astounding, marvelous things have continually grown from tiny beginnings.  Just think of how influential this music has been!

Before R&B, dominant white America had all but relegated music by African Americans to the ‘curiousity’ shelf, or the late-night jazz and blues clubs that dotted urban streets like New York, and Chicago.  We’ve seen how big-band music was a sterilized, white-washed version of the music invented in New Orleans which had crept up the delta into the big northern cities along with the Great Migration.  R and B blew that restrictive notion away, like a spring breeze blows the dust off the blinds and out of the corners after a long, dark winter.  

And there was a collective ‘shaking it loose’ that R and B brought back to music.  The African roots of jazz had a ritual, sexual element that had been all but buried over the years.  Over time, R and B freed the music from the sophisticated arrangements that had been a straight jacket around music created to express freedom.  Music went from a controlled and muted sound and got harder and harder.  Guitars acquired a sharper edge, vocals went from crooning to shouting or crying.  The beat got louder and more insistent.  Lyrics, like the clever poetry and double-entendre of Cole Porter and George Gershwin became simpler, more youth-oriented. More street.  Less style, more booty shaking. Less intellectual,  more brave, naked emotion.   In a lot of ways, it resembled the grittiness of the Northern citie a lot more than it did the rural South. 

R and B also changed the profile of the audience. Over time, jazz had become the music of the middle-class and, more often, the urban "aristocracy”.   Rhythm'n'blues represented a return to true jazz origins – music for the working class, in fact even to the street gangs of the day. 

It was a new day in America.  The middle class was big and growing.  Businesses were flush with cash it had come by, which meant people were working and saving and getting ahead. Those returning war-heroes had gotten to work making money, and making babies and America was a young country, too.  So this young, expressive, exuberant, happy music was ideal for a nation that was feeling the same way. The fact that this new, young music became THE music of the day represented a sea change in what America was all about.

Even more, Rhythm’n Blues set the stage for the next big arrival – rock and roll….. like the great RnB singer, Ruth Brown said, “when the white kids started dancing to it, R&B turned into Rock and Roll.”  Hold that thought for a future episode!  

Welcome to American Song, Episode 12:  

RnB Was Born on the Great American Music River.

Early Days

“Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby”

R&B is like a fabric, woven from many different strands and colors.  It’s steeped in the deep red of the blood of African Americans who helped build this country and died doing it, all the while infusing it with their powerful soul and spirit.  It’s got the steady, driving athletic heartbeat of a young nation just coming into its own and confident from its recent testing in war.  It’s a mixed punchbowl of jump blues, big band swing, gospel, boogie, and blues.  Check out our recent episode on Gospel if you missed it.  But we haven’t spent too much time talking about jump blues.  So let’s stop and rest a spell; there’s some great stuff to dig into.   

Jump blues’ got its name because of its insane, driving beat that ‘made you jump’.  We can’t talk about it without talking about Louis Jordan.  He was a band leader and sax player and one of his songs was “Is You Is, or Is You Aint my Baby” – Isn’t that an awesome song title?  This tune, like a whole lot of RnB that would follow it was built on important R&B building blocks like shuffle rhythm, boogie-woogie bass lines, and short horn riffs.   Lyrically, the song also pioneered the use of African American slang, a sense of humor, and vocal call-and-response sections between Jordan and his killer band.  

Besides “Is You Is…” Jordan was by far the most popular of the jump blues players.  His band was called the Tympany Five and they had a whole list of songs that made it big.  One of them was “Saturday Night Fish Fry”.  It actually includes one of the first uses of distorted guitar.  Their ‘sound’ was about catchy, fun melodies, pushing the tempo, amplifying the beat, and of course Jordan’s own bluesy saxophone playing.  

So, RnB owes a lot to the 1940’s jazzers.  Besides Louis Jordan, other memorable musicians like Cab Calloway, The Harlem Hamfats, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton all started laying down jazz with a heavy beat.  You can hear it first in Jump Blues, but when you add in the gospel and other influences, you pretty quickly arrive at RnB.  More than eighty years along the path, R&B is one of America's greatest art forms.  Along the way, RnB has had numerous children.  Rock and roll was founded by cross-over RnB artists, and on down the line, Doo Wop, Funk, Disco, Rap and Hip Hop all grew up under the canopy of RnB.  Like gospel, it even played a major role uniting people around the Civil Rights movement.  Apparently, America is having to re-learn the 1960’s and 70’s Civil Rights lessons all over again, so it’s a blessing to still have RnB as a vital, still-evolving, socially tuned-in force in our world today. 

Tuxedo Junction

Erskine Hawkins, was a trumpet player from Birmingham, Alabama.  He made a name for himself in the 1930’s, and became known as the “20th Century Gabriel”.  His best-known song is “Tuxedo Junction”.  During WW II, his recording made it to No. 7 on the charts.  Then, Glenn Miller and his band covered it, and took it all the way to No. 1.  

 Weed Smoker’s Dream

From Alabama, let’s go up north, all the way to Chicago.

That’s where the Harlem Hamfats were from and they had a sound called “dirty blues”.  This sound - a blend of blues, dixieland and swing – was the shit back in the 1930’s!  With songs like ” “Weed Smoker’s Dream,”  “Gimme Some of that Yum Yum and "Let's Get Drunk and Truck" they weren’t going to win any prizes for politeness, but man, they had rhythm, don’t you think?  

Minnie the Moocher

Let’s hop over to the Big Apple now, the city that never sleeps – not even back in the day to meet the American jazz singer, dancer, bandleader and actor, Cab Calloway.  Cab got his start in New York City, at Harlem’s Cotton Club.  He presented a totally original mashup of jazz and vaudeville, and was one of the first vocalists to ‘scat’ along with Louis Armstrong and of course, Ella Fitzgerald.  Some of the most important names in jazz got their start in Cab’s band -  including the bebop horn player, Dizzy Gillespie – we talked a lot about him in an earlier episode – the immortal sax player Ben Webster also came out of Cab’s band.  So did the guitarist Danny Barker.  Cab Calloway is the first African American musician to sell a million records from a single, and he had his own nationally syndicated radio show.   "Minnie the Moocher").  Years later, Cab made an unforgettable cameo in the Blues Brothers movie with Dan Akroyd and, of course, the irrepressible John Belushi.

Musicians Don’t Think Like That

Count Basie: One O’Clock Jump

You know, I SAY that these musicians were coming out of the jazz world to found RNB.  Actually, musicians don’t think about it like that.  This whole classifying, categorizing thing is a journalist’s hang-up.  Most musicians just want to play great music; you can call it whatever you want to.  

In the late ‘40s, there were plenty of swing bands who started making RNB records.  For instance, originally from way west of New York, over in Kansas City, had his own live rhythm n blues radio show, streaming straight out of Harlem.  There was a  bebop musician, Tadd Dameron, who played bebop piano, composed and arranged for major artists, and he also wrote charts for an early RNB artist named Bull Moose Jackson; 

Bull Moose Jackson

he spent two years on the road, playing keys for him.  When Mingus recorded his first break-out records, his backing band was made up mostly of R&B veterans. 

Working together, and independently, some of the greatest musicians America’s ever known developed a new body of compositions in a shared style.  Rhythm is one of the most important elements in it.  Mable John, Motown’s first female recording artist, and a backing singer for Ray Charles said once, "Rhythm and Blues IS the beat, it’s the rhythm and it’s the message of the heart.  If your heart is hurting, it expresses that. If your heart is glad, it can express that. If you are just trying to give a message, it can express that.  Rhythm and Blues is the soul."

It’s dance music to its core – it’s rhythms range from blues shuffles with a back beat (Chuck Berry “Rock and Roll” it’s got a back-beat, you can’t lose it)  to boogie-woogie (Louis Jordan – boogie woogie blue plate), modified rumba rhythms (Heartbreaker – Ray Charles), and the four on the floor rhythms of rock and roll and more. Slow, steamy R&B ballads feature a palpable rhythmic pulse (Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get it On), and on the other side, faster songs with a beat are heavily influenced by the polyrhythms that we’ve talked about a few times before, and coming from – where else? – Africa.  

Rhythm ‘n Blues was the daddy of rock and roll.  Some of the earliest RnB artists are also widely known as the original grandfathers of rock and roll.  We all know who they are – there’s Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino.  Without these early rockers, there’s no Beatles or Rolling Stones.  Heck, the music we listen to today, wouldn’t exist.  It’s like Paul Simon said in one of his songs (Paul Simon the Boy in the Bubble – Every Generation Throws a Hero up the Pop Charts). And remember – these guys were drawing on what the jazz and blues guys had laid down before them.

RnB was electric guitar driven music, built around a formidable rhythm section - drums, a double bass (and later the electric bass), and a piano. Melodies were mostly sung, and sometimes carried by a sax man, like King Curtis  (King Curtis – Instant Groove) and usually, the singers were sirens like Ruth Brown or Aretha Franklin, that’s an important difference versus rock, which from the beginning has been more male-dominated, of course, the women rockers could put a lot of the dudes to shame!  

RnB guitar and Rock guitar differ in some pretty important ways, too.  An obvious one is the actual chords that are common in each genre.  RnB draws a lot more from jazz chord structures with it’s 7ths and 9ths – Funk, for instance, uses a lot diminished and augmented chords.  Turn the 45 over though, on the early rock side,  and we hear mainly major chords, limited to I,  IV, and V7 or flat-V7  in whatever key the song is in.   R&B guitar sounds are usually ‘clean’ instead of the high gain power chords that gives rock its aggressive crunch.  Rock bands are usually four piece combos, or at most a five piece band.  RnB groups tend to be larger, since besides guitars, base and drums, they add keys, horns, and even strings.  Also, rock songs tend to be faster than RnB songs. 

I mentioned “Jump Blues” a few minutes ago.  It got its name because of its insane, driving beat that ‘made you jump’.  We can’t really talk about it without talking mentioning Louis Jordan – the “Is You Is, or Is You Aint my Baby” guy – Isn’t that an awesome song title? - a little more.  Jordan was by far the most popular of the jump blues players.  His band was called the Tympany Five and besides “Is You Is…”, he had a whole list of songs that made it big.  One of them was “Saturday Night Fish Fry”.  

Louis Jordan Saturday Night Fish Fry

It actually includes one of the first uses of distorted guitar.  Jordan’s ‘sound’ was about pushing the tempo, amplifying the beat, and creating musical textures by adding bluesy saxophone and fun melodies.

Lionel Hampton; Flying Home

Lionel Hampton was a vibes player, and another example of jazz players in the Jump Blues scene.  This song, Flying Home, was recorded in 1942, in the Big Band hey.  It’s a great example of how big band music pointed the way to Jump Blues.  Like the electric guitar in Saturday Night Fish Fry, Flying Home featured an electrifying ‘screaming sax’ solo that knocked people out at the time, and totally influenced the coming flurry of R&B sax players that followed.  On its release, Billboard described "Flying Home" as "a jumper that defies standing still.”  And it went on to say that the song was “a sure-fire bet to make the youngsters shed their nickels—and gladly."  In another article, Billboard said that Hampton’s concerts were “strictly for hepsters who go for swing and boogie, and beats in loud, hot unrelenting style.  The Hampton band gave with everything, practically wearing itself out with such numbers as 'Hey Bop a Re Bop', 'Hamp Boogie' and 'Flying Home’.  So you can definitely see how jazz was leading to RnB’s driving beat – and eventually rock and roll, too.

Hey, if you like this stuff – and I’m pretty sure you do – can I suggest that a few Jump Blues artists for you to check out?  Listen to Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, T-Bone Walker, Louis Prima, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee - just a few of the ‘hepcats’ in the jump blues scene!  You’ll be wearing your carpet threads thin with all the sock dancing you’ll be doing – it’s unavoidable!  Don’t worry – no one’s watching!  

Radio Turns America On

The advent of radio in the 1920’s was like a widening and a deepening of that great river and its carrying capacity swelled like never before.  You and I have talked about the birth of radio a few times before in prior episodes; check out my episodes about Country music between the 1920’s and 1950’s, or jazz in the big band and bebop eras for more on that!

What radio did for those genres, it also did for Rnb.  

SFX:  Old time radio dial tuning in crossfades into T-Bone Walker Stormy Monday

Gene Nobles was a white disk jockey, working at WLAC in Nashville in the 1940’s.  One day,  a handful of African American college students came by the station and asked him, “Would you play some of our music?"   The students handed Nobles a stack of their favorite R&B and jazz records to play. That was the spark that lit the fuse that started RnB and later Rock radio going!  Starting that evening, WLAC started playing those ‘race records’ – that was the term in those days –across an excited South, like  a big, wide net, catching listeners, using its 50,000-watt clear signal to reach a massive audience. With that much power, WLAC reached an unheard 10% of the entire nation’s African American market.  For a time, WLAC was the most powerful force in R&B broadcasting.

Pretty quickly, “race records” or RnB records as they were quickly becoming known, were beginning to be big business.  A number of white entrepreneurs spotted an opportunity and jumped all over it, literally “like white on rice”.  A good old boy named Ernie Young started Ernie’s Record Mart in Nashville, and advertised on WLAC. Two years later, another white dude by name of Randy Wood, ‘from just over yonder there, near the cow patties’, in Gallatin, Tennessee also started running ads on Glen Nobles show.  Like Ernie, Randy started shipping vinyl RnB records to customers all over the nation right out the back of his record shop.  The Godfather of Funk, James Brown, once said "WLAC was all we ever listened to".

BB King from Sing Sing Prison concert, Thanksgiving 1973

It took a few more years, but finally in 1949, a former country and pop station in Memphis called WDIA switched its programming to focus EXCLUSIVELY on the African American community.  You know who their first dee jay was?  I think this is going to surprise you.  Would you believe it if I told you it was the great blues guitarist and vocalist, B.B. King?  B.B. signed a contract to be the on-air musician, with his ever-present guitar/ side kick with him, Lucille. Let’s let B.B. tell the story himself though. During his entire career, King talked about that station job as the thing that broke him wide open.

WDIA signed off every evening leaving the airwaves open for more black programming. Right after that, another station, WHBQ , took over the same airwaves frequency to broadcast a late night show called Dewey Phillips’ Red Hot and Blue show where he played a steady rotation of rhythm and blues, country music, boogie-woogie, and jazz.  

Phillips was another good old boy from Tennessee.  He’d been in the army, during WW II, and saw action in Germany.  When he got back he became a disc jockey.  His on-air persona was a speed-crazed hillbilly, with a frantic delivery and country styled sense of humor. 

Elvis Presley – That’s Alright Mama

You’re listening to Elvis’ first single, That’s Alright Mama, recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis in 1954.  Dewey Phillips is the DJ that introduced Elvis to a world that was about to be changed with the coming of rock and roll.  Phillips played the hell out of Elvis’s first single, a 45 with That’s All Right Mamma as the A side and Blue Moon of Kentucky as the B side.  Boy, don’t those words take you back a ways…. I hope y’all know what I’m talking about there…. We’ll come back to Elvis and rock and roll in a future episode, so for now, just tuck that away for safe-keeping.  

The Elvis connection is important for what it symbolizes.  The record labels themselves tried to market RnB and a little later Rock and Roll as black music for black audiences.  Hoss Allen, another popular DJ from the time, had a driver’s seat to this particular road race though, and he told the story this way; “At that time white kids couldn't buy black records, so they'd listen to them on the radio, and black kids couldn't go into the record shops in their towns to buy records, so they ordered them.''  Here’s Hoss, talking about that period in his life:  https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_FE815F7016AA4DB5BD7484C85ABEC45B#at_177.98_s

 I love the little drama in this story; it was the music that brought the kids together – the black kids and the white kids – because all of them were loving the new, joyous, powerful music.  Despite the Jim Crow laws in the South, it was the music that was bringing people together.

Then, in December 1951, WSOK became the second major Nashville station – and the first in the US to broadcast full-time as an all-black station.  and like all the other entrepreneurs who set sail on this newest branch of the American Music river, WSOK was white owned.  The station, however, had a staff of all African-American announcers and their black-oriented programs, such as Cook's Blues, Cool Rhythms, and Peace in the Valley, also had a big role in bringing the kids together around the music.

SFX:  Rowing on a river.  

We’re travelling on a river of music, that stands outside of time, and where every ship or vessel floats on a current of sheer inspiration.  Every major river has its famous port cities, places where an out-sized amount of important business is done.  The same holds true for the American Music River.  Nashville was already an important music city, because of Country Music, when WLAC began playing its first R & B records.  Of course, when we think of Nashville, the first image that comes to mind is usually dressed in blue jeans, a Stetson hat, and a pair of boots.  But in the years that closely followed World War II, Music City was a hub for rhythm and blues.   It was a regular stop on the show circuit that Little Richard, Aretha Franklin and B.B. King traveled.  Nashville was where James Brown went to bust out the funk, Etta James re-wrote the blues in that town’s clubs and the list went on for miles.  Nashville was where Jimi Hendrix got an early gig playing guitar behind a Country act called Buddy & Stacy, in the years immediately leading up to his short-reign as the Guitar-God who changed Rock Music.  

Proud Mary Ike and Tina Turner

Nashville is our stop on the American Music River.  Then, like now, it was a city where every kind of music - jazz, blues, country, R&B – had a home.  

The city’s music scene itself reflected the cultural melting pot of the country that the city grew up in.  Music was one of those places where – even if the city itself was segregated – the music itself was not.  There was a lot of exchange going on.   R&B musicians, and jazz musicians and country musicians – they all knew each other.  Country music – itself a mixed gumbo of mountain music and blues – had a much more fluid and lively relationship back in the day.  

Memphis

Booker T and the MG’s – Green Onions

Float further down the American Music River and you’ll run into Memphis – which we all remember as Elvis’ home.   But without RnB, there would have been no Elvis.  Elvis was the miracle, flown in from heaven, to open the excitement, romance, and beat of black music for white audiences.  Elvis, they said, was ‘a white man that sounded like a black man’.  Before Elvis, white kids had to make due with placebos like Pat Boone; not the real thing, couldn’t get you to that ecstatic musical high you yearned for, but socially acceptable for kids living in a rigidly segregated world to listen to. 

Memphis gave rise to a unique sound in RnB; part urban, part rural, more laidback than what was happening in Nashville.  The Memphis sound eventually became “Soul”.  The number one band credited for shaping the sound of Memphs Soul is Booker T. & the MG’s.  They had some great songs, including “Time is Tight”, “Groovin’, and “Boot-leg” but their best known one is called “Green Onions”.  

Detroit

We’re doing this river trip because we’re on a quest to hear the greatest RnB music ever recorded, so our next stop cannot be missed.

It’s not easy and it’s not direct, but it IS possible to travel from the American Music River to Detroit if we navigate carefully.   First, we’ll put in on the Detroit River and float to Lake Michigan.  From Lake Michigan we float down the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal from Chicago to the Des Plaines River, until we merge with the Illinois River, and then to the American Music River.  We’re going to Detroit because there’s a new record label in town, owned by this guy named Berry Gordy.  Cool name, too.  MoTown – you know, after Detroit, the Motor City….

Detroit was home base for MoTown until 1967, when moved his company to L.A. 

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles – Tracks of My Tears

Smokey Robinson once said, “Motown is spiritual, and it came from the people who made it happen.”    Talent ran deep in the Detroit/ MoTown stretch of the American Music river.  And that talent was MoTown’s heart and soul.  Talent poured out of the singers, and the musicians, and the songwriters.  It was the deep well from where the songwriters pulled draft after draft of perfect, beautiful songs.  Talent was the rinse used by the producers to make every measure sparkle.  The arrangers poured it abundance, making every three minute pop song a minor miracle and brought you just a little bit closer to heaven.  

Mary Welles, Martha and the Vandellas, Brenda Holloway, Smokey and the Miracles, the Marvelettes, David Ruffin, the Temptations, Junior Walker, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Jackson 5, the Diana Ross with or without the Supremes,  Holland and Dozier, Stevie Wonder, Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Otis Redding, the Isley Brothers, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Jimmy Ruffin, Junior Walker and the All Stars.  No wonder they also call MoTown, Hitsville USA!

While the stars on stage got all the attention, the chefs, back in the kitchen, knew the stew was no good if you left out a single ingredienta.   Nobody, and I mean No Body, could cook up any tastier R&B than the Funk Brothers.  

When you ask yourself what was it that made all those great songs on the Motown label sound like they did, besides the singer up front, it was the Funk Brothers.

MoTown’s HOUSE BAND.  Amazing fact:  These guys played on more number one records than the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys, and Elvis COMBINED during MoTown’s 1960’s hey-day period.  And yet, no one knew they even existed for most of their career.  

Funk Brothers Aint No Mountain High Enough

Berry Gordy hired a triple-threat roster of some of the baddest (and, for my global listeners, by that I mean BEST) musicians anywhere.  And he built enough depth into that band that, by interchanging players from song to song, he could get any style, any sound, and mind-blowing innovations CONSISTENTLY.  Three bass players.  Three drummers.  Three percussionists.  Three guitarists.  Three keyboard players.  And then a host of wailing horn players and back-up singers.  It was Maximum R&Bl.  

These were the best musicians of their time,  influenced by the greatest musicians and composers ever.  On keys, the Funk Brothers included Earl Van Dyke who played on “Ain't Too Proud To Beg",  "My Guy," and "For Once In My Life”

They referenced people like Art Tatum and Sergei Rachmaninoff Glenn Gould Oscar Peterson Charlie Parker Wes Montgomery Buddy Rich and Tito Puentes Max Roach Tito Puente Art Blakey Charles Mingus.

Let’s see who’s tickling those ivories!

Joe Hunter – Berry Gordy’s first hire, and MoTown’s first band leader, he put the heat into “Heat Wave”, and "Pride And Joy,"

Johnnie Griffith played on such classics as “Wonderful One," "Stop In The Name Of Love," "I Heard It Through The Grapevine", and "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher".

Let’s check out the rhythm section now.

Funk Bros. You Keep Me Hanging On

Willie Benjamin – the extraordary jazz drummer, who put the rhythm into Shop Around," "Get Ready," and  "Going To A Go-Go

Pistol Allen another incendiary jazz drummer, who actually had to learn to play a little less, to fit MoTown.  He told the story about how Willie Benjamin showed him the ropes. Willie said, 'Jazz don't work down there. They want it straight with 8th notes and a big backbeat. Just play mm-mm-da, mm-mm-da and keep your mouth shut.”   Pistol developed a new drum style with a sledgehammer backbeat with and heavy hi-hat.  

The third member of the drumming trifecta was Uriel Jones – the master of MoTown’s slammin’ drum grooves.  You’ve been digging his rhythms on Ain't Too Proud To Beg," and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" all your life.  

Guitar

Eddie Willis gave songs like "I Was Made To Love Her," "The Way You Do The Things You Do” an inspired, funky electric guitar feel.  

Joe Messina was the jazz guitarist with the unbeatable backbeat.  It was Joe behind "Your Precious Love.," and "Dancing In The Street,"  

Robert White helped make songs like "My Girl," "My Cherie Amour," "and You Keep Me Hanging On" unforgettable.  

Funk Bros. I Was Made to Love Her

And you’ve got to have some killer bass lines if you’re going to call it R&B.  

Bob Babbitt gave songs like “Mercy, Mercy, Me," "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," and "War” their deep grooves 

James Jamerson, the first truly great electric bass player, at home on upright, 5-string and 8-string bass, infuenced every other bass guitar player that followed him and put the funk into songs like Bernadette," "I Was Made To Love Her," "Home Cookin'.  Here’s James talking about how his father influenced his approach to making every track something special.  https://youtu.be/cQ8AtNylq7k

There’s just no way to adequately cover all the artists from the MoTown roster in an episode that’s as broad as what we’re trying to do today.  Instead, we’ll pick out a couple guys, and a couple gals, and limit our conversation to the period prior to the time that MoTown moved to L.A.  I promise I’ll come back and spend more time on this in future episodes – and I’ll thank you for the grace you’ve always extended this podcast.

SFX:  Sound of rummaging through a hat filled with stuff that clunks, elephant call, woman squealing, tin cans or other metallic sounds….

So, reaching into my magic top hat, let’s see what I pull out.  Hmmm…. Let’s see.  No, not that….. whoops, sorry ma’am….. ok, here he is, the Prince of Soul, Marvin Gaye 

Marvin Gaye What’s Going On.

Marvin Gaye

Marvin was born in 1939 and grew up in a Washington DC slum.  The  buildings in his neighbohood were small, and completely falling down.  There wasn’t even electricity or running water.  His tiny home was crowded with four other brothers and sisters, and the family barely made it on the pastor’s salary his father earned.  But being a PK (pastor’s kid) meant he spent a lot of time in the musically rich environment of the Black Pentecostal church.  His first performances started at age four  in that church, with his father backing him on piano.   It was in his father’s house that Gaye also developed a near-obsessive compulsion for doing things perfectly, and no wonder.  His father was an abusive disciplinarian, doling out  brutal whippings for the smallest step out of line.  As a young man, Marvin described his father like this: "It was like living with a king, a very peculiar, changeable, cruel, and all powerful king".  He once said that, without his mother’s consolation, and how she encouraged his music he would have killed himself.  

Finally, in 1956, Gaye found a way out.  He quit high school and joined the Air Force as a basic airman, but it wasn’t the exciting life he’d envisioned.  He didn’t like having to perform menial tasks.  He found a way out; faking mental illness, he was released under a “General Discharge”. 

The New Moonglows – Twelves Months of the Year (featuring Marvin Gaye)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcr6WNSNVTg&list=RDzcr6WNSNVTg&start_radio=1

In 1959, and fresh out of the service, Marvin auditioned and was asked to join an Ohio-based R&B group called The New Moonglows.  Then in 1961, he released his first solo single, a tune called “"Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide".   A few other singles followed, as well as an album, but none of those early records did well commercially.  So, for the balance of the year, he made his living as a session drummer, driving the beat behind The Miracles, the Marvelettess and Jimmy Reed for $5 per week at the time, about $46/ week today.  He was barely getting by.

Finally his career exploded when he signed to Motown Records.  At Motown, he first was a drummer, as part of the Jungle Brothers.  He played on some of  “little” Stevie Wonder’s early hits as well as providing the steady groove Diana Ross and The Supremes.  Still later in the ‘60s he enjoyed some heady success as a solo artist.  Getting out from behind his drum kit was the key to his success though.  

Marvin Gaye How Sweet It Is

Marvin possessed a sensuous tenor and was also a fine song writer.  His first big solo hit came in 1963, with an original composition called “Pride and Joy”.   Other huge hits from the ‘60s included "Can I Get a Witness", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)", I Heard it Through the Grapvevine, Hitchhike, Aint That Peculiar and many more.   He also recorded a series of duets with Tammi Terrell; there biggest hit as a duet was  “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough” “Your Precious Love”,   and “Good Love Aint Easy to Come By”.  Mary Wells was another female lead he recorded many hits with, including “Deed I Do”, and “What’s the Matter With You Baby”.  With Kim Weston, he recorded “It Just Takes Two”, “It’s Got to Be a Miracle”, and 

“What Good Am I Without You”.  

Standing out at Motown was no easy feat – the record label was literally studded with musical geniuses.  Marvin did though.  Here’s Berry Gordy talking about Marving Gaye at Motown’s 50th Anniversary.  

Berry Gordy Talks About Marvin Gaye:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pn5hAFsuxg

About Gaye, Berry Gordy once said, “Marvin Gaye was the truest artist I’ve ever known. And probably the toughest.”  The man had an awe inspiring FOUR OCTAVE range, sang with such soul and naked emotion, and, just to seal the deal, he wrote is own brilliant songs.  Today, we assume that’ what bands and singers do.  In the 1960’s especially before the Beatles, that was definitely the exception, not the rule.  

In the second-half of the ‘60s, Gaye’s’ career was flying high and for a time it seemed like it might just go on like that forever.  I like thinking of him in that moment, and that’s where we’re going to leave him for right now.  We’ll pick his story up again later too.

Ray Charles

“Hit the Road Jack”

Few artists make the sort of impact on their craft as Ray Charles Robinson.  People had very good reasons for referring to “Brother Ray”, also known as the “Father of Soul”.  Frank Sinatra himself once said of Ray, “He’s the only genius in the business.”    

The way he changed R&B, and pop music in general, could have been reason enough.  But Ray’s greatness wasn’t just limited to that – although what he did, by taking the sound and delivery of Black Gospel music – lifting it from “It Must Be Jesus” and re-working it into “I Got a Woman”- was revolutionary.  In one song, he created a new genre, Soul Music out of Gospel and RnB.   – But that was not his only contribution.   

For Ray, music was life, and life was music!  He made being brilliant look easy.  “Music to me is just like breathing,” he once said in an interview. “It’s part of me.”  When I think of Ray, I see him rocking to the rhythm of his piano, like a giant metronome, flashing a glorious white smile and looking incredible in his custom-made dinner jackets or tuxedos, sporting his Ray Ban sunglasses and singing every song like it was the absolute truth;  baked in warmth, busting at the sides with honesty and experience.  

https://www.biography.com/musician/ray-charles

Like so many of the personalities we’ve come to know together, Ray came from a humble background.  His daddy, Bailey, worked as a mechanic, and his momma, Aretha, was a sharecropper.  They both came from Albany, Georgia, where Ray was born.  They moved to Greenville, Florida, when Ray was still an infant.  Born sighted, he went blind by the age of seven; sadly, one of the last things he saw was the accidental drowning of his younger brother, George.  Here’s Ray talking about that experience in an interview with Dick Cavett.  Soon after, Ray was sent to the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida and he learned to read, write and arrange music in Braille there. He was a child prodigy, and learned to play piano, organ, sax, clarinet and trumpet. By fifteen, he was touring around the South, on the “Chittlin’ Circuit”.    A series of clubs and venues where black musicians could perform and be safe in the middle of the Jim Crow South; a lot of these places served Soul Food, including Chittlin’ – which was fried pig intestines.  I wonder if anyone ever said ‘The music’s great, but the food tastes like shit’?  

Maxin Trio

Blues Before Sunrise

After a year of gigging around the Chittlin’ Circuit, Ray headed for Seattle, where he met his soon-to-be life long friend and collaborator, Quincy Jones.     It was there, in 1940’s era Seattle,  that Ray started playing in his first group, the  Maxin Trio. Here’s Quincy talking about his first meeting with Ray.

Confession Blues

In 1949, he released his first single, "Confession Blues," with the Maxin Trio. The song did well on the R&B charts. More chart-toppers  followed with "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand" and "Kissa Me Baby."  On these tracks, Ray’s voice and delivery are still developing, and his piano playing is acceptable, but not great.  I like them though, because they hint at the greatness that’s possible if this young musician keeps progressing.    

“I Got a Woman”

1950 was a landmark year in Ray’s career; he scored his first hit with the release of  “I Got a Woman.  

Based on the Gospel Tones’ “It Must Be Jesus,” I Got a Woman marked a departure for Charles. He changed the Gospel Tones’ lyrics, but retained the fervor, making this one of the records pointing from R&B to Soul.  In one song, Ray opened the doors to a whole new genre, Soul Music, that blended Gospel music with secular music, bringing the sounds of theh black church out into the public, especially into the clubs, and bars, and dance halls and concert stages where Gospel had never been heard before.   

Ray Charles knew how to interpret a song!  The New York Times music critics, Jon Pareles and Bernard Weinraub once wrote that, “He could belt like a blues shouter and croon like a pop singer, and he used the flaws and breaks in his voice to illuminate emotional paradoxes. Even in his early years, he sounded like a voice of experience, someone who had seen all the hopes and follies of humanity.”

You definitely hear that in this song.  

What’d I Say

Ray’s ability to blend styles and sounds into something new and exciting was repeated when he crossed over into pop music too with "What'd I Say", which hit No. 1 on the R&B charts and #6 on the pop charts; remember, this was still the Jim Crow era, music was as segregated but Ray Charles, like other African Americans was chipping at the walls keeping separated, while also advancing the status of his own race.  Beautiful.  

His winning streak continued as the calendar page turned over to 1960.  In that year, the Genius gave the world two more great tunes, 

Georgia on My Mind

an astounding reinterpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s "Georgia on My Mind” and "Hit the Road, Jack”.  He actually won a Grammy for “Georgia on my Mind”. 

In his eulogy for his old friend, Quincy Jones said  "There will never be another musician who did as much to break down the perceived walls of musical genres."  Brother Ray was determined to make his mark on as many genres as he could.  In 1962, he released Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.  This was a pretty gutsy move, when you think that until now, Country and Western was pretty much a white genre.  And yet, this was Ray reclaiming a music that had been deeply influenced by blues from its inception.  The album was loaded with great country hits like the Everly Brothers ‘Bye Bye Love’, and Hank Williams ‘Hey Good Lookin’.  Ray made all of them his own.  

We’ll be visiting Brother Ray down the road too.

Ruth Brown

5-10-15 Hours

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/23/559070707/forebears-ruth-brown-the-fabulous-miss-rhythm

Ruth Brown was the first great R&B star.  Her first recording date was in 1949.  She’s another example of a jazz artist who was also an early founder of R&B.   Her earliest influences included jazz vocalists like Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington.  Her first manager was the Blanche Calloway, the sister of  Cab Calloway’.  Blanche owned a Washington D.C. nightclub called Crystal, and she gave Ruth a regular gig there.  Ruth became friends with a local DJ with ties to Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic, and eventually, this led to a lucrative run at the label.  Ruth recorded a string of hits, starting in 1950 with "Teardrops in My Eyes, number one on the R&B charts for an amazing eleven weeks!  

"I'll Wait for You"

She followed that up with two more number ones the one we’re listening to now – I’ll Wait For You - and "I Know".  In 1952, she scored a number one RnB hit with with "5-10-15 Hours", and followed that with the seminal "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean" in 1953, as well as the tender song, "Oh What a Dream"

With this seemingly endless run of hit records, Brown earned al fortune for Atlantic, which came to be know as ‘the house that Ruth built’  - which, as you baseball fans probably know was also the name that Yankee Stadium had during the Bronx Bomber, Babe Ruth’s years on the team.  Not only was Ruth making Atlantic, and Ertegun wealthy, but it seemed as if every record she put out was smacked clear over the center field fence and into the stratosphere!  

Ruth was literally blessed from a very early age.  Like so many in R&B, she ALSO started her career singing in her father’s church, in the choir, and like Marvin Gaye, she started at the tender age of four!  Like Aretha, who followed her nearly twenty years later, Ruth also preferred pop tunes over choir music, and to spite her father, simply refused to learn to read music.  By the time she was 17, Ruth was sneaking out of the house to perform for the soldiers at the local USO clubs. In 1997, Ruth did an NPR interview with Terri Gross, and she shared her memory in this way, (Ruth Brown Interview starts at 8:47)  In a short time, she met her husband, a trumpet player, and the two ran off to Detroit.  While there, Ruth got hired into a jazz band as the vocalist, and she eventually made her way to Washington, D.C.  where she met Blanche Calloway, and you know what happens next.  

"(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean"

So, Ruth’s career continued to sail from success to success throughout the 1950’s, as she earned two dozen R&B chart topping songs.  And then, just as suddenly as she’d appeared on the scene, she was gone.  Atlantic Records opted not to renew her contract in that year, and Ruth eventually fell back on a series of low-paying jobs to support her family.  It seems incredible, but at her lowest ebb, she actually worked as a house maid.  Don’t worry, her story gets better.  

By the mid 1970’s, Ruth’s sons were fully grown.  She decided to start putting the pieces of her once sterling silver career back together.  She’d always had a great sense of comedic timing, and the first big break she got was playing the part of Mahalia Jackson in a stage production of Selma.  Chewck out our episode about Gospel music and learn about Mahalia Jackson’s important place in the Civil Rights movement.  From there, she began receiving offers to do more acting on stage, tv, and film.  She landed a tv sitcom starring opposite MacLean Stevenson from the show MASH, called Hello, Larry.  And she played the part of DJ Motormouth Maybelle in John Waters’ 1985 film adaption of the musical, Hairspray.

All the new attention and acclaim she won in this second act part of her career gave her the power and leverage to cut a sweet deal with her old label, Atlantic.  In it, Atlantic was required to pay her for years of back royalties, and not only that – Ruth saw to it that other artists who had been similarly dealt with also received what they’d had coming for so many years.  

Aretha Franklin

Do Right Woman

Aretha Franklin was the daughter of a Baptist minister who began her public singing career in her father’s church, singing gospel and then, still keeping one foot in the church, reaching out to the rest of the world and global acclaim.  In 1999, she gave an interview and talked about her experience singing in her father’s church. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgO-zrlsAOA start around 1:08)  Just imagine; she received her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was the first woman inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and, before it was all over, was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.  Over her sixty-plus year career, Aretha was nominated 44 times for a Grammy Award, and received 18.  

For most of us, fame and popularity are rare experiences.  Aretha was born to it.  Her father was a minister with his own church - CL Franklin, the man with “The Million Dollar Voice”.  He was hugely popular, and his church – and ultimately the family home – attracted many other famous folks.  Sam Cooke, whose father was a pastor too, was one!  He was a regular visitor at the Franklin home.  It was actually Sam Cook that ultimately inspired Aretha to follow her path into music.

She signed with Atlantic in ‘67, and headed to Alabama where she got down to business with the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section at FAME studios. There, she fused her heavy gospel influences with R&B and the songs flowed like water .  

“I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”

What a song. It was a cover of a Carol King song from her album, Tapestry, but Aretha gave it a meaning and richness that even King’s version doesn’t have.  As that ‘natural woman’, Franklin is an African American, claiming her own freedom (sexual and political), singing from the depts of some inner sanctuary, and giving thanks to her lover and friend.  She infuses it with both pain and joy.  When Aretha was at the Kennedy Honors some fifty years later, she sang the song again,  bringing President Obama to tears. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/arts/aretha-franklin-respect-copyright.html?.?mc=aud_dev&ad-keywords=auddevgate&gclid=CjwKCAjw95yJBhAgEiwAmRrutCfn1iMtuBkNMCvPIax8gbeO3fT9M0aPGdxLeebw3UiQ65J2DKMPsRoC-xcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

“Respect” 

Respect, r-e-s-p-e-c-t, was written by another RnB genius, Otis Redding.  Otis’s version hit number four on the R&B charts in 1965, but it became Aretha’s first number one.  Otis meant the song as a husband’s demand for respect from his woman.  Aretha, the strong woman that she was, flipped its meaning entirely, and struck a chord with all the women who were on the front lines of the women’s liberation movement (and their supportive significant others, I’m sure).  

But there’s a second rallying cry that this song represents.  In the fifty or so years since its release, Aretha’s version has been played over the radio more than seven million times.  You know how much she made in royalties for that?  Zip.  Nada.  Zero.  Why?  Because the copyright laws that were in effect when the song was recorded said that only writers and publishers got paid.  The law did change in 1972, but it did not extend backwards, only for compositions going forward.  So this means that Redding’s estate got paid for every one of those radio plays.  Unfortunately, Otis died in a plane crash in 1967, the same year that Aretha’s first album was released. 

“I Say A Little Prayer”

https://www.kuvo.org/stories-of-standards-i-say-a-little-prayer/

It’s funny how time changes how we interpret things.  When I hear “I Say a Little Prayer”, I think of a woman talking to her husband, maybe as he’s heading out the door to work. The song was actually written in the midst of the Vietnam war years, and it has a much deeper meaning – a song of concern, a talisman to ward off danger, a heart felt prayer.

It’s a Hal David and Burt Bacharach composition – this great song writing team actually charted 52 top forty hits during the sixties and early seventies.  The first recording was by Dionne Warwick, who, incidentally, was Whitney Houston’s older cousin.  A very talented fam

Interpretation is all about filters.

I thought you were my man

But I found out, I'm just a link in your chain

Oh, you got me where you want me

I ain't nothin' but your fool

Ya treated me mean

Oh you treated me cruel

and, after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, there were a lot of black soldiers who were very angry towards the country they were risking their lives for.  

In many ways, R&B has encapsulated many of the musical experiences that were forged in America up until it’s arrival.  Founded in jazz, and suffused in Gospel, drawing from Blues, R&B both echoed where American Music had come from, and pointed the way to where things were going – because Rock and Roll, as Ruth Brown said, was R&B that white people could dance to.  Strip it back some, peel away the horns, and strings, and the jazz chords, and you’re right there with a four piece rock and roll band.  We’ll see this in coming episodes.  And R&B is more, too.  The two major R&B labels, Motown, and Atlantic, were founded by people who came from minority races.  Berry Gordy, and black man, and Ahmet Ertegun, a second generation Turk living in America.  Both these men heard the greatness in the music, saw a multi-million dollar pot of gold at the end of each of their rainbows, and lived to see their dreams flourish beyond their wildest expectations.  Some of the most loved songs in the American songbook have come from R&B, performed by some of the most talented musicians in the hundreds of years our people have lived on this continent.  R&B brought white kids and black kids together, despite the institutionalized segregation that would have kept them apart; it was a vital part of the Civil Rights movement, voiced by passionate, and inspired musicians commited to change.  Their vision and dedication to seeing a better America was planted in the Black churches most of them had come from, and they shared the sound and the faith of those churches with an audience that lived, loved, danced,  and unfortunately – in the jungles of Vietnam – even died to that music.   Today, R&B is as vital as ever, even if the sound of the music has changed.  Yes, the beat goes on.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of American Song.

If you’re intrigued by some of the stories shared today, come on over to our Facebook page and see our resource list.  You’ll find us on Facebook at American Song Podcast.

As always, thanks for listening everybody!