Blues Timeline

By kwiliams108

  • Slaves arrive in america

    The first African slaves are brought to the American colony of Virginia.

  • The end of slave importation

    Congress legislates an end to the importation of slaves to the United States.

  • Minstrel Shows gain popularity

    The minstrel show, with its blackface performers, crude racial caricatures, and the song "Jump Jim Crow" becomes part of American popular culture.

  • Civil War begins

    The Civil War begins with the first shots on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.

  • Emancipation Proclamation issued

    President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, nominally freeing the slaves.

  • Civil War Ends, Southern reconstruction begins

    The Civil War ends with the surrender of the Confederate Army. Reconstruction begins in the South.

  • Slave Songs are Published

    Slave Songs of the United States, the earliest collection of African-American spirituals, is published.

  • Radical Reconstruction ends

    Radical Reconstruction ends when federal troops are withdrawn from the South.

  • Rise of Jim Crow

    Southern states move to the "Jim Crow" system of legal segregation, passing laws to circumscribe many aspects of African-American life and producing, in effect, a quasi-slave society reinforced by the economics of the sharecropping system. Racial violence and lynchings increase.

  • "Maple Leaf Rag" Published

    Scott Joplin publishes "Maple Leaf Rag." Ragtime will become a key influence on the Piedmont style of blues

  • Black music first Recorded

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

  • Bluesman Discovered

    The musician W.C. Handy sees a bluesman playing guitar with a knife at a train station in Mississippi.

  • Blues Songs first Recorded

    The first blues songs, including W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", are published as sheet music.

  • The Great Migration

    The United States enters World War I. Military and economic mobilization accelerates the great internal migration of African Americans that is already underway.

  • Mamie Smith

    Mamie Smith records for Okeh Records. Her "Crazy Blues" becomes the first blues hit, beginning the business of "race" recording.

  • Bessy Smith & Ma Rainey

    Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, the defining performers of the classic blues, make their recording debuts.

  • Folk Blues Debuts

    Ralph 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 Records

    The first male folk blues records, featuring singers Papa Charlie Jackson and Daddy Stovepipe, are issued.

  • New Recording Technology

    Electrical recording technology is introduced.

  • Blind Lemon Jefferson

    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.

  • Charley Patton

    The early Delta bluesman Charley Patton is first recorded.

  • Great Depression

    The Wall Street Crash of 1929 begins on Black Thursday, signaling the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States. Amid widespread economic ruin, sales of records and phonographs plummet, crippling the recording industry.

  • Robert Johnson

    Legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson begins his short recording career.

  • Electric Guitar introduced

    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.

  • Muddy Waters Recorded

    Alan Lomax records McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, for the Library of Congress at Stovall's Farm in Mississippi.

  • "That's All Right" Recorded

    Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup records "That's All Right," a tune that recalls Blind Lemon Jefferson's "That Black Snake Moan" from twenty years earlier. Within a decade, Elvis Presley will record "That's All Right" for his debut.

  • T-Bone Walker Goes Electric

    Bluesman T-Bone Walker plays electric guitar on the recording of his standard "Call it Stormy Monday."

  • Muddy Waters and Chicago Blues

    Muddy Waters makes his first Chicago recordings, beginning his tenure as the dominant figure in the Chicago blues and a key link between the Mississippi Delta and the urban styles.

  • "Rhythm and Blues" is Born

    Jerry Wexler, an editor at Billboard magazine, substitutes the term "rhythm and blues" for the older "race" records.

  • B.B. King

    B.B. King has his first major rhythm and blues hit with a version of "Three O'Clock Blues."