The History of Rhythm and Blues - Volume One: The Pre-War Years
4 CDs in a paperback-sized fold-out box set with a 32-page booklet containing in-depth analysis of the 97 tracks pointing out relevant stylistic and musical innovations.

Disc One - The Blues - From The Delta To The City
Country Blues And Spirituals, Jug Bands & Hokum
Disc Two – The Rhythm
Piano Boogie-Woogie Ragtime & Jazz
Disc Three - Up River To Chicago
Urban Blues & Gospel
Disc Four - Jazzin' The Blues
After Hours Swing Boogie & Jive

£19.50 plus postage - UK £2.20, Europe £2.80,
Rest of World £4.50. Catalogue number RANDB001

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The History of Rhythm and Blues - Volume Two: The Post-War Years
4 CDs in a paperback-sized fold-out box set with a 64-page booklet
containing in-depth analysis of the 101 tracks pointing out relevant stylistic and musical innovations.
Disc One - Jumpin’ from Harlem to the West Coast
Disc Two - Guitar Boogies - Sax Screamers - Gospel Roads
Disc Three - Have You Heard The News
Disc Four - Soul Train Mambo - Destination New Orleans

£19.50 plus postage -UK £2.20, Europe £2.80, Rest of World £4.50
Catalogue number RANDB003

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The History of Rhythm and Blues - Volume Three: 1952 - 1957
4 CDs in a paperback-sized fold-out box set with a 68-page booklet
containing in-depth analysis of the 109 tracks pointing out relevant stylistic and musical innovations.

Disc One - Blues In The City - Downhome Southern Blues from Memphis to Chicago
Disc Two - Rockin’ The House - The Jukebox's Blowin' A Fuse
Disc Three - Street Corner Sounds - Blues Ballads To Doo-Wop
Disc Four - This Soul’s On Fire - Gospel And Late Night Soulful Blues

£19.50 plus postage -UK £2.20, Europe £2.80, Rest of World £4.50
Catalogue number RANDB011

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Highlights from The History of Rhythm and Blues -The Pre-War Years
Single CD with 25 fantastic tracks from the Vol1 boxset, with 28 page booklet.

A condensed version of the original 4CD box set containing 25 of the most representative tracks on one single disc

£3.50 plus postage - UK £1, Europe £1.50, Rest of World £2
Catalogue number RANDB002

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for Amazon (may be more expensive) Click here

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The History Of Rhythm And Blues

Rhythm and Blues has become one of the most identifiable art-forms of the C20th, with an enormous influence on the development of both the sound and attitude of modern music. But it wasn't always that way. The History of Rhythm and Blues investigates the accidental synthesis of jazz, gospel, blues, ragtime, country and pop into a definable form of black music, which in turn would influence pretty well all popular music from the 1950s to the present.
The end of the 19th century was a period of major social upheaval for the black population in America. Musicians who had previously been maintained on plantations were no longer required, and took to the road begging, as the abolition of slavery led to huge numbers of itinerant workers. The hardships of segregation caused by the ensuing Jim Crow laws caused a cultural revolution within Afro-American society. New forms of music arose: spirituals, ragtime, barrelhouse, jazz, black ballad form. Over the years, these distinctive sounds would come to merge into a recognisably “new” musical style.
From its humble rural beginnings in the early 1900s as a method of self-expression in the southern states, the blues gradually became a form of public entertainment, initially for workers and drinkers, in lumber camps, barbeques and juke joints, picking up dance rhythms along the way. The blues, originally a slow dance, only evolved into the form we know today after the introduction of sound recording - the first blues record, Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues, was released in 1921.
Between 1910 and 1970, nearly five million African Americans left the South, looking for higher wages, better homes and political rights. The route they took was determined largely by the price of the cheapest rail ticket. Chicago was the favoured destination from Mississippi, while those from the Eastern Seaboard left for New York. Attracted by the expansion of industrial production during and after World War II, they moved to California from states like Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
It was the move to the city, which brought the increase in popularity for the blues, and it was the technology of sound recording, which helped to define its structure. Wider dissemination came with the development of radio and the jukebox, but also through touring bands playing the new network of dance halls and ballrooms that were springing up throughout the States in the 1930s. It was in these ‘territory’ bands that the first major fusion of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie is to be found.
Over the course of 4 thematically arranged CDs, The History of Rhythm and Blues illustrates how these dramatic social and economic upheavals were reflected in the congruence of different musical styles into a form that became recognisable both in terms of sound and marketing. Old songs were turned into new. Cow Cow Blues mutated into Ray Charles’ Mess Around. Little Richard appropriated Keep a Knockin’ from an old hillbilly tune via Louis Jordan. A new form of commercial dance music was born from these many disparate sources, few of which survived in its original form.
The History of Rhythm and Blues Part One takes the story up to the eve of the American entry into the Second World War. It will appeal to anyone interested in the evolution of the blues, or simply curious as to how the sounds of today continue to be shaped and forged by the aural fusions and experiments of the early decades of the C20th.