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Period: to
Era
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Slave Songs Published
The first song, by W.C Handy's, Memphis Blues was turned into sheet music. -
Blues Player Discovered
W.C. Handy saw a man playing a guitar with a knife in a train station in Mississippi. -
Blues Song First Recorded
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Mamie Smith
Mamie Smith records for Okeh Records. Her "Crazy Blues" becomes the first blues hit, beginning the business of "race" recording. -
Discovery of Bessie Smith & Ma Rainey
Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, the defining performers of the classic blues, make their recording debuts. -
Folk Blues Debut
https://youtu.be/BZMoikK3ct8Ralph Peer, the famous Artist & Repertory man for Okeh and Victor Records, makes his first field recordings in Atlanta, Georgia, marking the recording debut of both the folk blues and what will later be called country music. -
First Folk Blues Record
The first male folk blues records, featuring singers Papa Charlie Jackson and Daddy Stovepipe, are issued. -
New Recording Technology
Electrical recording technology. This new recording technology that was made made it easier to produce songs, ultimately making more artists published. -
Lemon Jefferson
He will become the dominant blues figure of the late 1920s and the first star of the folk blues. -
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a crash economically which ultimately led to a fail in the recording industry. -
Electric Guitar
Eddie Durham recorded the first music featuring the electric guitar. First developed by musician George Beauchamp and engineer Adolph Rickenbacher in the early 1930s, helped transform the sound of the blues. -
Muddy Waters and Chicago Blues
Muddy Waters made his first Chicago recording, which began his start as the dominant figure in the Chicago blues and a key link between the Mississippi Delta and the urban styles. -
"Rythm" and "Blues" is born
Jerry Wexler, the editor at Billboard magazine, substituted the term "rhythm and blues" for the older "race" records. Which changed the way music was talked about. -
Country Blues
It is an art form that transcends its original times, offering a lasting body of material, techniques, and approaches to improvisation. Samuel Charters published The Country Blues, fueling the blues element of the folk music revival. -
Year of the Blues
Congress declared 2003 the "Year of the Blues," commemorating the 100th anniversary of W.C. Handy's encounter with an unknown early bluesman at a train station in Mississippi.
