A history of the genre R&B.

Rhythm and blues is the name given to a wide-ranging genre of popular music created by African Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Term was originally used by record companies to refer to recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular.

The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in the meaning. In the early 1950s and beyond, the term "rhythm and blues" was frequently applied to blues records, for instance John lee Hooker's "I'm in the mood" became number-one Billboard R&B Music Charts.  Starting in the 1960s, after this style of music contributed to the development of "rock and roll", the term "R&B"became used particularly by white groups
to refer to music styles that developed from incorporate electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, "rhythm and blues" was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. The modern evolution of R&B is named "contemporary R&B"


Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music" which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.

This video is called jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley, it made it to number 1 in the R&B charts in 1957 and was seen as an acceptance of non-African American artist into a music category known for being created by a africans americans.