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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. -
Period: to
From the Beginning to the End
whole timeline -
Slave Songs Published
Slave Songs of the United States, the earliest collection of African-American spirituals, is published. -
"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. -
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. -
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. -
Jump Blues
A danceable amalgam of swing and blues and a precursor to R&B. Jump blues was pioneered by Louis Jordan -
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 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. -
Elvis Debuts
Elvis Presley makes his recording debut on Sun Records with a version of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right." -
The Country Blues
Samuel Charters publishes The Country Blues, fueling the blues element of the folk music revival. -
White Fan Base
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. -
"Year of the Blues" Declared
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.
