blues

By SprayAndPray612

  • Minstrel Shows

    Minstrel Shows
    The minstrel show, with its blackface performers and grotesque racial caricatures, becomes part of American popular culture, as does the song "Jump Jim Crow."
  • Period: to

    The start and the end

  • Slave Songs

    Slave Songs
    The first collection of African-American folk music, Slave Songs of the United States, is released.

  • Maple Leaf Rag

    Maple Leaf Rag
    "Maple Leaf Rag" is published by Scott Joplin. Ragtime will have a significant influence on the Piedmont blues style.

  • Black Music

    Black Music
    Victor Records issues the first known recording of Black music, "Camp Meeting Shouts."

  • Bluesman

    Bluesman
    At a railroad stop in Mississippi, musician W.C. Handy witnesses a bluesman playing guitar with a knife.

  • Folk Blues Debuts

    Folk Blues Debuts
    In Atlanta, Georgia, Ralph Peer, the well-known Artist & Repertory man for Okeh and Victor Records, makes his first field recordings, marking the beginning of both folk blues and what would later be known as country music.

  • First Folk Blues Records

    First Folk Blues Records
    The first male folk blues records are released, including Papa Charlie Jackson and Daddy Stovepipe.

  • Black Thursday

    Black Thursday
    On Black Thursday, 1929, the Wall Street Crash occurs, signifying the start of the Great Depression in the United States. Record and phonograph sales plunge amid broad economic collapse, destroying the recording industry.

  • Jump Blues

    Jump Blues
    A catchy mix of swing and blues that served as a forerunner to R&B. Louis Jordan is credited with inventing the jump blues.

  • The Electric Guitar

    The Electric Guitar
    Eddie Durham is the first to record music with an electric guitar. The current instrument, which was created in the early 1930s by musician George Beauchamp and engineer Adolph Rickenbacher, will contribute to change the sound of the blues.

  • Muddy Waters

    Muddy Waters
    Muddy Waters makes his first recordings in Chicago, launching his career as the city's leading bluesman and a vital link between Mississippi Delta and metropolitan styles.

  • Elvis Debuts

    Elvis Debuts
    With a cover of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right," Elvis Presley makes his Sun Records debut.

  • The Country Blues

    The Country Blues
    The Country Blues is published by Samuel Charters, igniting the blues part of the folk music renaissance.

  • White Fan Base

    White Fan Base
    Muddy Waters and B.B. King play in front of a mostly white audience at the Fillmore East, a concert venue in New York City's East Village.

  • Year of the Blues

    Year of the Blues
    The "Year of the Blues" is declared by Congress to commemorate the 100th anniversary of W.C. Handy's encounter with an unknown early bluesman at a Mississippi railroad station.