| R&B Article |
Rhythm and blues (also known as R&B or RnB) is a popular music genre combining jazz, gospel, and blues influences, first performed by African American artists. The term was coined as a musical marketing term in the United States in 1947 by Jerry Wexler at Billboard magazine. It replaced the term race music (which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world) and the Billboard category Harlem Hit Parade in June 1949. In 1948, RCA Victor was marketing black music under the name Blues and Rhythm. The words were reversed by Wexler of Atlantic Records, the leading label in the R&B field in the early years.
Writer/producer Robert Palmer defines rhythm & blues as a catchall term referring to any music that was made by and for black Americans. He has the term R&B as a synonym for jump blues.. Lawrence Cohn, author of Nothing but the Blues, writes that rhythm and blues was an umbrella term invented for industry convenience. According to him, the term embraced all black music except classical music and religious music, unless a gospel song sold enough to break into the charts. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was being used as a blanket term to describe soul and funk. In the 2000s, the acronym R&B is almost always used instead of the full rhythm and blues, and mainstream use of the term refers to a modern version of soul and funk influenced pop music that originated as disco became less favorable.
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