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The minstrel show, with its blackface performers and grotesque racial caricatures, becomes part of American popular culture, as does the song "Jump Jim Crow." -
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The first collection of African-American folk music, Slave Songs of the United States, is released. -
"Maple Leaf Rag" is published by Scott Joplin. Ragtime will have a significant influence on the Piedmont blues style. -
Victor Records issues the first known recording of Black music, "Camp Meeting Shouts." -
At a railroad stop in Mississippi, musician W.C. Handy witnesses a bluesman playing guitar with a knife. -
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. -
The first male folk blues records are released, including Papa Charlie Jackson and Daddy Stovepipe. -
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. -
A catchy mix of swing and blues that served as a forerunner to R&B. Louis Jordan is credited with inventing the jump blues. -
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 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. -
With a cover of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right," Elvis Presley makes his Sun Records debut. -
The Country Blues is published by Samuel Charters, igniting the blues part of the folk music renaissance. -
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. -
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.