-
Blues music was initially a folk music popular among former slaves living in the Mississippi Delta
-
W.C Handy finds a man playing slide guitar with a knife at a train station
-
W.C Handy's "Memphis Blues" is published as sheet music
-
Legendary Delta Blues artist Robert Johnson begins his short recording career
-
Eddie Durham records the first music featuring the electric guitar, this makes way for the evolution of blues music in the form of Chicago Electric Blues
-
Chicago Blues artist McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy Waters is recorded
-
Jerry Wexler, an editor at Billboard magazine, substitutes the term "rhythm and blues" for the older "race" records.
-
B.B. King has his first major rhythm and blues hit with a version of "Three O'Clock Blues."
-
The Supreme Court rules on Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous judgment in favor of school desegregation and reintegration
-
Elvis Presley makes his recording debut on Sun Records with a version of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right."
-
Samuel Charters publishes The Country Blues, fueling the blues element of the folk music revival.
-
The first U.S. tour by the Rolling Stones marks the invasion of British blues rock bands.
-
Freedom Summer, the civil rights campaign to register Black voters, draws young whites to the South.
-
The recently "rediscovered" Delta bluesmen Son House and Skip James perform at the Newport Folk Festival.
-
Muddy Waters and B.B. King perform at the Fillmore East, a concert venue in the East Village region of New York City, to a predominantly white audience.
-
Congress declares 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.
