Race Records

Before the 1940s, throughout the heydays of the 1920s and into the 1930s “race records” were available from many ethnic groups. Anything from Pop Tunes & Vaudeville, to comedy routines, Blue Grass (“hillbilly”), The Blues along with Inner City ethnic recordings from cultures as diverse as “Indian”, “Klezmer”, “Polish”, “Irish”, “Congo”, “Caribbean”, “Spanish Tinge” and even “Chinese”, were available on record. You name it, they had it.

Many of the recordings in the race records category between the two world wars (1920-1941) were filled with dialogue and comedy in one way or another that was blatantly racist, demeaning, and insulting to many of the ethnic groups living in America, hence the name “race records”. Unlike the “politically correct” 21st century, these kinds of records were acceptable in the backward and bigoted under currents of social mores pre-1940s white American society, where racism was a mater of course. Gradually, by the end of WWII, race records were becoming records of the new musical genres of Bop, C&W and R&B, rather than comedic dialogue recordings.

The label “Rhythm and Blues”

Clever marketers started keeping charts like Billboard magazine’s “Harlem Hit Parade” in 1942 to keep track of black records marketed to black buyers. What was previously called “race records”, after WWII, were now called R&B records that were considered to be objectionable in part, R-rated or too “racey” for regular pop mainstream.

The term Rhythm & Blues or R&B for short, was coined by Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine in 1948. The term was used as a catch all phrase for the kind of black music that had a more street or “ghetto” feel to it and made up predominantly by “rural blues”, “gospel”, “jazz – boogie woogie style”, and the new urban blues like “Chicago blues” and “jump blues” and even some “western swing” which all utilize that strong “Back-Beat”.