in 1949, what term did the billboard charts uses to replace "race records"?

The cover of race records catalogue of Victor Talking Machine Visitor

Race records were 78-rpm phonograph records marketed to African Americans between the 1920s and 1940s.^[one] They primarily contained race music, comprising various African-American musical genres, including blues, jazz, and gospel music, and also comedy. These records were, at the fourth dimension, the majority of commercial recordings of African American artists in the U.Due south., and few African American artists were marketed to white audiences. Race records were marketed by Okeh Records,^[2] Emerson Records,^[3] Vocalion Records,^[4] Victor Talking Machine Company,^[v] Paramount Records, and several other companies.

History [edit]

Before the ascension of the record industry in America, the price of phonographs prevented nigh African Americans from listening to recorded music. At the turn of the twentieth century, the cost of listening to music went down, providing a majority of Americans with the power to afford records.^{[half dozen]} The primary purpose of records was to spur on the sale of phonographs, which were most unremarkably distributed in furniture stores. The stores white and black people shopped at were carve up due to segregation, and the blazon of music bachelor to white and black people varied.^[7]

Mainstream records during the 1890s and the first 2 decades of the 1900s were mainly made by and targeted towards white, middle course, and urban Americans.^[vii] There were some exceptions, including George W. Johnson, a whistler who is widely believed to exist the first black artist ever to record commercially, in 1890. Broadway stars Bert Williams and George Walker recorded for Victor Talking Motorcar Company in 1901, followed by blackness artists employed past other companies.^[8] Withal, the African American artists that major record companies hired earlier the 1920s were not properly compensated or acknowledged. This was because contracts were given to black artists on a unmarried record basis, then their future opportunities were not guaranteed.^[9]

African American civilization greatly influenced the popular media that white Americans consumed in the 1800s. Still, there were not any primarily black genres of music sold in early records.^[x] Perry Bradford, a famous black composer, sparked a transition that displayed the potential for African American artists. Bradford persuaded the white executive of Okeh Records, Fred Hager, to tape Mamie Smith, a black artist who did not fit the mold of popular white music.^[vii] In 1920, Smith created her Crazy Blues/It's Right Here for Yous recording, which sold 75,000 copies to a majority blackness audition in the first calendar month. Okeh did not conceptualize these sales and attempted to recreate their success by recruiting more black dejection singers.^[11] Other big companies sought to turn a profit from this new trend of race records. Columbia Records was the showtime to follow Okeh into the race records industry in 1921, while Paramount Records began selling race records in 1922 and Vocalion entered in the mid-1920s.^[12]

Terminology [edit]

The term "race records" was coined in 1922 by Okeh Records.^[12] Such records were labeled "race records" in reference to their marketing to African Americans, but white Americans gradually began to purchase such records every bit well. In the sixteen October 1920 effect of the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper, an ad for Okeh records identified Mamie Smith as "Our Race Artist".^[13] Nigh of the major recording companies issued "race" series of records from the mid-1920s to the 1940s.^[xiv]

In hindsight, the term race record may seem derogatory; in the early on 20th century, however, the African-American press routinely used the term the Race to refer to African Americans as a whole and race man or race adult female to refer to an African-American individual who showed pride in and support for African-American people and civilisation.^[fifteen]

Billboard (magazine) began publishing charts of striking songs in 1940. By 1949, the term rhythm and blues had replaced the term "race music".^[16]

Marketing [edit]

Marketing race records was especially important in the late 1920s, when the radio brought contest to the record industry.^[xi] To maximize exposure, record labels advertised in catalogs, brochures, and newspapers popular amidst African Americans, like the Chicago Defender. They advisedly implemented words and images that would depict in their targeted audience.^[ix] Race records ads frequently reminded readers of their shared feel, claiming the music could aid African Americans who moved to the North stay continued with their Southern roots.^[17]

Companies like Okeh and Paramount enforced their objectives in the 1920s by sending field scouts to Southern states to record black artists in a one-fourth dimension deal. Scouts neglected the aspirations of many singers to continue working with their companies.^[seven] Field recordings were presented to the public equally gamble encounters to seem more than genuine, nonetheless they typically were arranged.^[ix]

Perspectives on the reason white tape companies invested in marketing race records vary, with some claiming it was "for the purpose of exploiting markets and expanding the majuscule of producers."^[vi] Advocates of this philosophy emphasize the control that the companies had on the type and form of songs that artists could create.^[6] Another perspective points to evidence such as the fact that "race records were distinguished by numerical series… in effect, segregated lists," to support the claim that white-endemic companies aimed to maintain the racial divisions in society through race records.^[1] Media companies even implemented racial stereotypes in advertizement to invoke blackness sentiments and sell more records.^[17] Others regard the investments as being motivated only by profit, namely by the low toll of production resulting from the easy exploitation of black writers and musicians, combined with the ease of distribution to a highly targeted grade of consumers who have little access to a fully competitive marketplace.

Black Swan Records [edit]

The control of white owned music companies was tested in the 1920s, when Blackness Swan Records was founded in 1921 by the African American businessman Harry Step. Blackness Swan was formed to integrate the black community into a primarily white music industry, issuing around 5 hundred race records per year.^[6] The creation of this company brought widespread support for race records from the African American community. However some white companies in the music manufacture were strongly against Blackness Swan and threatened the company on multiple occasions.^[6]

Pace not only issued jazz, dejection, and gospel records, just he put out race records that deviated from pop African American categories. These genres included classical, opera, and spirituals, chosen past Pace to encourage the advancement of African American culture. He intended the visitor to provide an economic ideal for African Americans to strive towards, proving that they could overcome social barriers and be successful. Hence, Blackness Swan paid off-white wages and allowed artists to showcase their race records using their real names.^[9] Pace urged tape companies endemic by white individuals to recognize the demands of African Americans and increment the flow of race records in the future. Blackness Swan was eventually purchased past Paramount Records in 1924.^[1]

Decline [edit]

The Great Depression destroyed the race record marketplace, leaving most African American musicians jobless. Almost every major music visitor removed race records from their catalogs as the state turned to the radio.^[vii] Blackness listenership for the radio consistently stayed below x percent of the total black population during this time, as the music they enjoyed did not get airtime. The exclusion of black artists on the radio was farther cemented when commercial networks like NBC and CBS started to rent white singers to cover black music.^[10] It was not until after World War II that rhythm and blues, a term spanning most sub-genres of race records, gained prevalence on the radio.^[1]

It has been noted that "whole areas of black vocal tradition have been disregarded, or at best have received a few tangential references."^[i] Though non studied comprehensively, race records have been preserved. Publications similar Dixon and Godrich'southward Blues and Gospel Records 1902-1943 listing the names of race records that were commercially recorded and recorded in the field.^[1]

Transition to rhythm and blues [edit]

Billboard published a Race Records chart between 1945 and 1949, initially covering juke box plays and from 1948 also covering sales.^[18] This was a revised version of the Harlem Hit Parade chart, which it had introduced in 1942.

In June 1949, at the proposition of Billboard announcer Jerry Wexler, the magazine changed the proper noun of the nautical chart to Rhythm & Blues Records. Wexler wrote, "'Race' was a common term then, a self-referral used by blacks...On the other mitt, 'Race Records' didn't sit well...I came upwards with a handle I idea suited the music well – 'rhythm and blues.'... [Information technology was] a label more advisable to more enlightened times."^[xix] The nautical chart has since undergone farther name changes, becoming the Soul nautical chart in Baronial 1969, and the Black chart in June 1982.^[xx]

Run into also [edit]

• African American music
• Cover versions
• Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, for a history of the Billboard R&B record chart, known as the Race Records chart from February 1945 to June 1949
• List of number-one rhythm and blues hits (United States) (Billboard, 1942–1959)

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Oliver, Paul. "Race record." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. thirteen Feb. 2015.
2. ^ "Photo". Indiana.edu . Retrieved 8 June 2021.
3. ^ "Photo". Archived from the original on 12 October 2008. Retrieved 8 June 2021.
4. ^ "Photo". Archived from the original on 8 February 2007. Retrieved eight June 2021.
5. ^ "Scout Jazz | A Pic by Ken Burns | PBS | Ken Burns". Pbs.org . Retrieved 8 June 2021.
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} Suisman, David (2004). "Co-Workers in the Kingdom of Civilisation: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music". The Journal of American History. 90 (4): 1295–1324. doi:x.2307/3660349. JSTOR 3660349.
7. ^ ^{a b c d e} Roy, William (2004). ""Race Records" and "Hillbilly Music": Institutional Origins of Racial Categories in the American Commercial Recording Industry". Poetics. 32 (3–4): 265–279. doi:x.1016/j.poetic.2004.06.001.
8. ^ Brooks, Tim (2004). Lost Sounds. Chicago: U of Illinois P. p. 5.
9. ^ ^{a b c d} Barretta, Paul (2017). "Tracing the Color Line in the American Music Market and Its Upshot on Contemporary Music Marketing". Arts and the Market. vii (two): 217. doi:ten.1108/AAM-08-2016-0016.
10. ^ ^{a b} Barlow, William (1995). "Blackness Music on Radio during the Jazz Age". African American Review. 29 (2): 325–328. doi:ten.2307/3042311. JSTOR 3042311.
11. ^ ^{a b} Cussow, Adam (2002). Seems Like Murder Here. Chicago: U of Chicago P. p. 160.
12. ^ ^{a b} Oliver, Paul (1984). Songsters and Saints. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. pp. 8–13.
13. ^ Killmeier, Matthew A. (2002). "Race Music". St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture.
14. ^ Gammond, Peter (1991). The Oxford Companion to Pop Music. p. 477.
15. ^ "Race Music: Affiliate One". Ucpress.edu . Retrieved viii June 2021.
16. ^ Menand, Louis (nine November 2015). "The Existent History of Rock and Gyre". The New Yorker . Retrieved 23 February 2021.
17. ^ ^{a b} Dolan, Mark (2007). "Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show Due south from Afar". Southern Cultures. 13 (three): 107–110. doi:10.1353/scu.2007.0027. S2CID 144836496.
18. ^ Killmeier, Matthew A. (2002). "'race music' and 'race records' were terms used to categorize practically all types of African-American music in the 1940s". St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Civilisation.
19. ^ Wexler, Jerry; Ritz, David (1993). Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-224-03963-6.
20. ^ George, Nelson (June 26, 1982). "Black Music Charts: What'southward in a Proper noun?". Billboard. p. 10.

• Ramsey, Guthrie P., Jr. (2003). Race Music: Blackness Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop. Music of the African Diaspora, 7. Berkeley and London: University of California Press; Chicago, Illinois: Center for Black Music Inquiry, Columbia College. ISBN 0-520-21048-iv.
• Foreman, Ronald C. Jr. (1969). Jazz and Race Records, 1920–32. Academy Microfilms International.

Listening [edit]

• NPR, Mamie Smith and the Nascence of the Dejection Market

External links [edit]

• St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Civilization, Race music
• PBS, Race records
• NPR, Black and White: Crossing the Edge, Endmost the Gap

gillencounto.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_record

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