Blues is the true cornerstone of Rock.  It has been around for a very long time.  This music, which comes out of pain, sadness, and sorrow tells of personal stories.  For many years it was recorded only by memory, and passed down live person to person. Blues came from African musical traditions, work songs, spirituals, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed ballads.  Early Blues was also characterized by its lyrics, basslines.  Early traditional blues consisted of a single line repeated four times.   In  the 20th century it changed to a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. (AAB form)

Blues Musicians of yesteryear were major influences on Rock and Roll.  Robert Johnson, Louis Jordan, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters are only a few that inspired musicians such as Chuck Berry, Beatles, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and Jimi Hendrix.

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues.  Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States.  One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style (Delta blues) with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.

Handy was an educated musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.

St. Louis Blues is a 1958 American film broadly based on the life of W. C. Handy. It stars jazz and blues greats Nat "King" Cole, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, and Barney Bigard, as well as gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and actress Ruby Dee. The film's soundtrack used over ten of Handy's songs including the title song.

In conjunction with the film, Cole recorded an album of W. C. Handy compositions, arranged by Nelson Riddle, and Fitzgerald incorporated "St. Louis Blues" into her concert repertoire.

Awards and honors

Bronze statue of Handy in Handy Park, Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee

• Handy was the subject of Paramount's St. Louis Blues (1958), heavily fictionalized biographical film starring Nat King Cole with Eartha Kitt and Ruby Dee.

• On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.

• Handy was inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

• He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.

• He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.

• He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1993.

• Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first blues music" the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues".

• Handy was honored with two markers on the Mississippi Blues Trail, the "Enlightenment of W.C. Handy" in Clarksdale, Mississippi and a marker at his birthplace in Florence, Alabama.

• Blues Music Award was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.

• W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama.

• In 2017, his autobiography Father of the Blues was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame in the category of Classics of Blues Literature.

• Handy Park, named for him, was opened by the City of Memphis, Tennessee in 1931 at 200 Beale St.  A public park with a stage for live musical performances, it was designated for renewal to begin after the design choice was announced in the summer of 2018. Renovation continues in 2020. A large bronze statue of Handy, erected by the city in 1960, is prominently displayed in the park.

Wikipedia, W.C. Handy,  last edited on 5 June 2020 

Robert Leroy Johnson  1911-1938 (27 years old)  was an American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter.  His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians.  He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the delta blues styles.  Famous for the legend of the Crossroads. 

As a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs. These songs, recorded at low fidelity in improvised studios, were the totality of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch, 78 rpm singles from 1937–1938, with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has been reconstructed after his death by researchers. Johnson's poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The one most closely associated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success. 

 Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived."

 Musicians such as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson's lyrics and musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson's songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians. 

Born in 1915, David Edwards was a Delta blues guitarist and singer from Mississippi.  His father was a musician and taught David how to play guitar.  At 14, he began traveling with Bluesman Big Joe Williams.   He was a contemporary and a performer with Robert Johnson.  Edwards formed a close friendship and traveled to play in juke joints, on the streets, traveling truck to truck and train to train.  Edwards was the last living Delta Blues man to live and tell the story.  He claims he was there when Robert Johnson was poisoned.  Much what we know about Robert Johnson came from "Honeyboy" Edwards.  Nicknamed "Honeyboy" by his sister.  

Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded the songs "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama", among many others, for various record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992.

The blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) described Williams's performance:

When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. When he played, everything rattled but Big Joe himself. The total effect of this incredible apparatus produced the most buzzing, sizzling, African-sounding music I have ever heard.

Muddy Waters,   1913 – 1983  was an American Blues artist widely considered to be one of the most important figures in post-World War II Chicago blues.  He popularized several early Delta blues songs such as “Rollin’ and Tumblin”.  Many recordings went on to become blues standards including “Got My Mojo Working”. 

Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.

In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included "Hoochie Coochie Man," "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I'm Ready." In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.

Muddy Waters' music has influenced various American music genres, including rock and roll and rock music.

wikipedia, Muddy Waters,  last edited on 30 August 2021 

Jump blues is an up-tempo, jazz tinged style of blues, usually played by smaller groups, usually featuring a vocalist in front of a large, horn – driven orchestra with less reliance on guitar work than other styles. These bands wanted to “play for the people” and were very popular in the 1940’s.  Musicians such as Louis Jordan, Arnett Cobb, Earl Bostic, Johnny Otis were popular in Jump blues.

Louis Thomas Jordan (1908 – 1975) was an American musician, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.  Known as “The King of the Jukebox”, he earned his highest profile towards the end of the Swing Era.

Jordan was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and he fronted his own band for more that twenty years.  He dueted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.  Jordan was also an actor and appeared in dozens of “soundies” (promotional clips).  Made cameos and starred in two feature films. 

Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, but he became known as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of jump blues, a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Typically performed by smaller bands consisting of five or six players, jump music featured shouted, highly syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban themes. It strongly emphasized the rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; after the mid-1940s, this mix was often augmented by electric guitar. Jordan's band also pioneered the use of the electronic organ.

With his dynamic Tympany Five bands, Jordan mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock-and-roll genres with a series of highly influential 78-rpm discs released by Decca Records. These recordings pre-aged many of the styles of black popular music of the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and exerted a strong influence on many leading performers in these genres. Many of his records were produced by Milt Gabler, who went on to refine and develop the qualities of Jordan's recordings in his later production work with Bill Haley, including "Rock Around the Clock".

Jordan ranks fifth in the list of the most successful African-American recording artists according to Joel Whitburn's analysis of Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and was the most popular rhythm and blues artist with his "jump blues" recordings of the pre-Rock n' Roll era. Though comprehensive sales figures are not available, he had at least four million-selling hits during his career. Jordan regularly topped the R&B charts and was one of the first black recording artists to achieve significant crossover in popularity with the mainstream (predominantly white) American audience, having simultaneous Top Ten hits on the pop charts on several occasions.

wikipedia, Louise Jordan, last edited on 19 August 2021 

Eugene Earl Bostic (April 25, 1913 – October 28, 1965) was an American alto saxophonist. Bostic's recording career was diverse, his musical output encompassing jazz, swing, jump blues and the post-war American rhythm and blues style, which he pioneered. He had a number of popular hits such as "Flamingo", "Harlem Nocturne", "Temptation", "Sleep", "Special Delivery Stomp", and "Where or When", which all showed off his characteristic growl on the horn. He was a major influence on John Coltrane.

Bostic discussed his approach to improvising in an interview with Kurt Mohr. "Of course I am maybe one of the few musicians who like simple recurring melody patterns and in all my playing I try to keep a basic melody line in my mind and attempt to develop meaningful inversions and variations...I like the basic blues.... The blues has it all; basic rhythmic quality, genuine lyric content, essential and basic chord structure and maybe above all else, personality. Blues and jazz are inseparable."

Bostic's recording career was diverse and it included small group swing-based jazz, big band jazz, jump blues, organ-based combos and a string of commercial successes. 

Wikipedia, Earl Bostic, This page was last edited on 10 September 2022, at 02:28 (UTC).

Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940’s in the United States Appalachian region. The genre was named after Bill Monroe's band The Blue Grass Boys.    Bluegrass has roots in traditional English, Scottish and Irish ballads and dance tunes, and in traditional African-American blues and jazz.  Bluegrass was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt.  Bluegrass features acoustic string instruments and emphasizes the off-beat.

https://folkways.si.edu/bluegrass-folkways-american-roots-tradition/history/music/article/smithsonian#:~:text=Bluegrass%20music%20came%20out%20of,issues%20important%20to%20everyday%20people.

Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with roots in the black oral tradition.  Hymns and sacred songs were often repeated in a call and response fashion.  Most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment.  Most of the singing was done a cappella.  The first published use of the term “gospel song” probably appeared in 1874.  The original gospel songs were written and composed by authors such as George F Root, Phillip Bliss, Charles H Gabriel, William Howard Doarie and Fanny Crosby.  With the common use of the radio in the 20’s, Gospel music became more popular.  After World War II, Gospel moved to large major auditoriums and the gospel music concerts became very elaborate. 

Black gospel music (often termed simply as gospel) is a genre of African-American Christian music. It is rooted in the conversion of African slaves to Christianity, both during and after the trans-atlantic slave trade, starting with work songs sung in the fields and, later, with religious songs sung in various church settings, later classified as Negro Spirituals (which shaped much of traditional Black gospel).

Black Gospel music has been traditionally concerned with the African-American quest for freedom. It has provided both "spiritual and communal uplift," first in the fields, and later in the Black Church; during the 1960s era in the South, it was described as the "soundtrack of the struggle for civil rights," helping create unity and faith for the work.

The modern iteration of the genre, contemporary gospel, emerged in the late 1970s as a fusion of the traditional genre with the musical stylings of the era in secular Black music, which resulted in popularizing a whole new generation of artists and songs, expanding the larger genre's reach.

Also a popular form of commercial music, Black gospel was revolutionized in the 1930s by Thomas Dorsey, the "father of gospel music," who is credited with composing more than 1,000 gospel songs, including "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" and "Peace in the Valley." Dorsey also created the first gospel choir and sold millions of copies of his recordings nationwide. The Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, Dorsey's home church, is currently in development as the National Museum of Gospel Music.

Southern gospel music is a genre of Christian music. Its name comes from its origins in the Southeastern United States whose lyrics are written to express either personal or a communal faith regarding biblical teachings and Christian life, as well as (in terms of the varying music styles) to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music. Sometimes known as "quartet music" for its traditional "four men and a piano" set up, southern gospel has evolved over the years into a popular form of music across the United States and overseas, especially among baby boomers and those living in the Southern United States. Like other forms of music the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of southern gospel varies according to culture and social context. It is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. 

Boogie-Woogie is a music genre that became popular during the late 1920’s, developed in African-American communities in the 1870’s.  It was eventually extended from piano, to piano duo and trio, guitar, big band, country and western music, and gospel.  While the blues traditionally expresses variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly associated with dancing.  The lyrics of one of the earliest hits, “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie", consist entirely of instructions to dancers.  In the 40’s it was a natural for big bands to incorporate a boogie beat into some of their music.  Glen Miller incorporated it into his hit “In the Mood” in 1939.  Tommy Dorsey recorded a Boogie Woogie beat with his hit “Pine Top’d Boogie Woogie: in 1938.  The Andrews sister’s sang some boogies with “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B”.  The floodgates were open and every big band was playing at least one song with the Boogie Woogie beat.

Wikipedia, Boogie Woogie

Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins (July 7, 1913 – March 21, 2011) was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame. Perkins was born in Belzoni, Mississippi and raised on a plantation in Honey Island, Mississippi. He began his career as a guitarist but then injured the tendons in his left arm in a knife fight with a chorus girl in Helena, Arkansas in the 1940s. Unable to play the guitar, he switched to the piano. 

He recorded "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" at Sam Phillips's Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. The tune was written by Pinetop Smith, who created the original recording in 1928. Perkins didn't write; he "got as high as third grade in school." He learned to play-off Smith's records. As Perkins recalled, "They used to call me 'Pinetop' because I played that song."

At the age of 97, Perkins won a Grammy Award in the category Best Traditional Blues Album for Joined at the Hip, which he recorded with Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, thus becoming the oldest winner of a Grammy Award, edging out the comedian George Burns, who had won in the spoken word category 21 years earlier.

wikipedia, Pine Top Perkins

Jazz is a musical genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans.  Since the 1920’s “jazz age”,  it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music.  Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, and improvisation. 

As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures with its roots in blues and ragtime.

This created such a variety of jazz culture and styles that we cannot possibly go through them all.  Or we would have to call this course “Jazz” instead of “Rock and Roll”.  But you can see whether it is the Afro-Cuban influence, Ragtime, Blues, New Orleans, Swing, bebop, Kansas City, Cool or the Free style, Jazz had a big influence on the making of Rock and Roll. 

We will bring up a few great and famous names of Jazz History.   

Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Adelaide Hall, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, Anita O'Day, Dinah Washington, and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, trumpeter Valaida Snow, and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields. Women began playing instruments in jazz in the early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano.

When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO, touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson. Beginning in the 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from the late 1950s into the 1990s.

Melba Doretta Liston (January 13, 1926 – April 23, 1999) was an American jazz trombonist, arranger, and composer. Other than those playing in all-female bands she was the first woman trombonist to play in big bands during the 1940s and 1960s, but as her career progressed she became better known as an arranger, particularly in partnership with pianist Randy Weston. Other major artists with whom she worked include Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane and Count Basie. 

Irene Higginbotham (June 11, 1918 – August 27, 1988) 

Was an American songwriter and concert pianist. She is best known for co-writing the Billie Holiday song "Good Morning Heartache" (1946). 

Higginbotham was born on June 11, 1918, in Worcester, Massachusetts.[1] While her closest connection in the popular music of the 1930s and 1940s was Billie Holiday, the prolific songwriter was niece of the classic African-American jazz trombonist J. C. Higginbotham. She was a music student of choral conductor Kemper Harreld, of Morehouse College fame, and Frederic Hall. She was also a concert pianist at the age of 15 and joined the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1944 when she was about 26. She was a composer of nearly 50 published songs. However, because she was an African-American woman who worked as a composer on Tin Pan Alley during a period when composers there were overwhelmingly white and male, some scholars and musicologists have speculated that Higginbotham may have composed many more songs that were never published and/or where she was never given a credit as a composer or co-composer. 

Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score, with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on the contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members, the performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures.

1. Miles Davis

2. Louis Armstrong

3. Duke Ellington

4. John Coltrane

5. Ella Fitzgerald

6. Charlie Parker

7. Billie Holiday

8. Thelonious Monk

9. Bill Evans

10. Oscar Peterson

Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz. He received numerous accolades including the Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance for Hello, Dolly! in 1965, as well as a posthumous win for the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972, and induction into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2017.

His best known songs include "What a Wonderful World", "La Vie en Rose", "Hello, Dolly!", "On the Sunny Side of the Street", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "When You're Smiling" and "When the Saints Go Marching In". He collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald, producing three records together: Ella and Louis (1956), Ella and Louis Again (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1959). He also appeared in films such as A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932), Cabin in the Sky (1943), High Society (1956), Paris Blues (1961), A Man Called Adam (1966), and Hello, Dolly! (1969). 

"What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released in 1967 as a single. In April 1968, it topped the pop chart in the United Kingdom, but performed poorly in the United States because Larry Newton, the president of ABC Records, disliked the song and refused to promote it.

After it was heard in the film Good Morning, Vietnam, it was reissued as a single in 1988, and rose to number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100. Armstrong's recording was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Country music’s roots can be traced back to Celtic ballads brought to America by British immigrants.  The genre also has its roots in Blues, old time music, American folk music including Appalachian, Cajun, and the cowboy Western music styles of New Mexico, Texas country, and Tejano.  There were three generations of country Music.   1920's, 1930s - 1940s, 1950s

Jimmie Charles Rodgers was considered the "Father of Country Music" and was called the "Singing Brakeman".  He worked on the railroad until he contracted Tuberculosis and lost his job in 1927.  He recorded, toured until he lost his battle with Tuberculosis.  Rodgers died in 1933 at 35 years of age.  

1.  Before Rock and Roll, what were the genres that people listen to?  

2. What made the biggest and most important contribution to Rock and Roll? 

3. Early traditional blues consisted of a single line repeated four times.  True or False

4. Who was "Father of the Blues?"

5. David Edwards was born in 1915 and was a Delta blues guitarist who was famous for what?

6. Who was famous for the legend of the Crossroads?

7. Who was "Mother of the Blues? 

8. Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the sound of his ______________________.  

9.  Muddy Waters was an American Blues artist considered to be one of the most important figures in post-World War II Chicago blues.  He recorded a blues standard called ___________________________________. 

10.  Who was comedic, a bandleader and known as "The King of the Jukebox"? __________________________________.  

11. Jump blues is a slow tempo, jazz tinges styles of blues, usually played in smaller groups.    True or False

12. Blue Grass got the name from a famous band.  What was the name of the band? 

 __________________________________ .   

13.  AFter 1960, Gospel moved to large major auditoriums and the gospel music concerts became very elaborate.  True or False 

14.  The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B was sung and made famous byr the ______________________________________ . 

15.  The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice.  True or False  

16.   She was an American songwriter and concert pianist, and known for co-writing the Billie Holiday song "Good Morning Heartache".  Who was she? ________________________ . 

17.   Jimmie Charles Rodgers was considered the "Father of Country Music" and was called the _____________________________________. 

18.   The Grand Ole Opry aired in ________________ in Nashville. 

19.   Who was the first representatives of the new Rockabilly style of country music?    _____________________________.

Quiz Answers

1.  Before Rock and Roll, what were the genres that people listen to?    Classical, Folk, Blues, Bluegrass, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel, Boogie Woogie, Jazz, Country, Big Band with singers like Frank Sinatra.

2. What made the biggest and most important contribution fo Rock and Roll?  Blues

3. Early traditional blues consisted of a single line repeated four times.  True

4. Who was "Father of the Blues?"    W.C. Handy

5. David Edwards was born in 1915 and was a Delta blues guitarist who was famous for what?       Witness to the early blues artists and living a long time to tell about it.

6. Who was famous for the legend of the Crossroads?   Robert Johnson

7. Who was "Mother of the Blues?  Ma Rainey

8. Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the sound of his ______________________.  Nine-string guitar.

9.  Muddy Waters was an American Blues artist considered to be one of the most important figures in post-World War II Chicago blues.  He recorded a blues standard called ___________________________________.   Got My Mojo Working

10.  Who was comedic, a bandleader and known as "The King of the Jukebox"? __________________________________   Louis Thomas Jordan

11. Jump blues is a slow tempo, jazz tinges styles of blues, usually played in smaller groups.    True or False

12. Blue Grass got the name from a famous band.  What was the name of the band?  __________________________________     Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys

13.  After 1960, Gospel moved to large major auditoriums and the gospel music concerts became very elaborate.  True or False       False - after World War II

14.  The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B was sung and made famous byr the ______________________________________    Andrew Sisters

15.  The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice.  True or False    True

16.   She was an American songwriter and concert pianist, and known for co-writing the Billie Holiday song "Good Morning Heartache".  Who was she? ________________________  Irene Higginbotham

17.   Jimmie Charles Rodgers was considered the "Father of Country Music" and was called the _____________________________________.   Singing Brakeman

18.   The Grand Ole Opry aired in ________________ in Nashville.     1925

19.   Who was one of the first representatives of the new Rockabilly style of country music?    _____________________________    Johnny Cash