Various Artists - Hall Of Fame: The Beginnings Of Rhythm & Blues

The Hall Of Fame music series is a great way to explore and discovery the origins of our collective recorded music history. The series has been lovingly remastered, giving new life to the original tracks and allowing them to sound as they never have before! Rhythm and blues is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to African Americans, at a time when urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat was becoming more popular. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy. Here we chronicle the beginnings of a genre that would one day become the baseline for all others.