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slaves would sing songs while working out in the fields
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slave songs of the united states is published
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Victor Records issues the first known recording of black music
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The musician W.C. Handy sees a bluesman playing guitar with a knife at a train station in Mississippi.
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the musician W.C handy's Memphis Blues are published as sheet music.
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Mamie Smith records for Okeh Records. Her "Crazy Blues" becomes the first blues hit, beginning the business of "race" recording.
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Mamie Smith records for Okeh Records. Her "Crazy Blues" becomes the first blues hit, beginning the business of "race" recording.
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Blind Lemon Jefferson is first recorded. He will become the dominant blues figure of the late 1920s and the first star of the folk blues.
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The early Delta bluesman Charley Patton is first recorded.
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Legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson begins his short recording career.
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Eddie Durham records the first music featuring the electric guitar. The modern instrument, first developed by musician George Beauchamp and engineer Adolph Rickenbacher in the early 1930s, will help to transform the sound of the blues.
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Alan Lomax records McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, for the Library of Congress at Stovall's Farm in Mississippi.
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Bluesman T-Bone Walker plays electric guitar on the recording of his standard "Call it Stormy Monday."
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Samuel Charters publishes The Country Blues, fueling the blues element of the folk music revival.
