The distinctions between 'R&B' and 'rock 'n' roll' were mostly racial

A DJ helped popularize the term 'rock 'n' roll' to resell R&B to a broad audience

Cleveland DJ Alan Freed launched his radio show "Moondog's Rock 'n' Roll Party," rebranding R&B records, largely performed by Black artists, as "rock 'n' roll" to appeal to a largely white audience. The name was a double-entendre, describing the sound and the sexual activities it was said to induce.

Blues was a major influence on early rock

Early rock ‘n’ roll had a straightforward sound, relying mostly on guitar, bass, drums, piano, and saxophone playing up-tempo 12-bar blues. In subsequent decades, the form evolved and splintered into countless subgenres that used more diverse sounds, instruments, and lyrics.

Rock 'n' roll began as a hybrid of several American musical styles

Rock ‘n’ roll combined blues, swing, country, and other American musical forms in the late 1940s. From there, it splintered into countless subgenres and is still evolving.

'Rock 'n' roll' eventually became 'classic rock'

As the 1980s arrived, rock radio began pivoting to the term “classic rock,” allowing them to focus on the Baby Boomer demographic and ignore the still-evolving genre. Since then, “classic rock” remains, though it’s constantly being redefined, due in no small part to its slippery name.

Billboard's early music charts were racially segregated

In 1942, the publication introduced the Harlem Hit Parade chart, listing the top 10 records sold at select record stores in the majority-Black borough of New York. In 1945, it changed the chart’s name to Most Played Juke Box Race Records, using the music industry term (“race record”) that identified recordings by Black artists, even if they played music markedly similar to the white artists on the other charts.

In the 1920s, country was often called 'hillbilly music'

The term was meant to describe the rural people who typically performed the Appalachian folk music. Though Black people were also making country music at the time, their records were categorized as “race music.”

Jazz brought together ragtime and blues

Ragtime was a popular music genre that blended African-American spirituals, European folk songs, and military marches. Blues, brought to New Orleans by free Black people seeking opportunities, allowed musicians to play within basic standards. Jazz combined both forms by merging the syncopated, dance-friendly sounds of ragtime with the soulful, brass-instrumental style of the blues.

Take a look at an early rock 'n' roll artifact

This 1956 jukebox musical, "Rock, Rock, Rock!," is an early example of the burgeoning rock 'n' roll culture—with performances from Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, D.J. Alan Freed, and several others. It was also a catalyst, sending the new youth culture into theaters around the country.

Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music' albums blurred genre lines

Released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Charles’ records showed that country music, by then largely segregated, was an American music, no matter one’s background.

Ragtime was criticized as dangerous, 'unmusical rot'

The genre—short for "ragged time," a reference to the music's syncopation—was wildly popular at the turn of the 20th century, leading some to deem it morally corrupting and an inferior form. In 1901, the American Federation of Musicians, then the most prominent musicians' union in the country, adopted a resolution designating ragtime as "unmusical rot."

Rock expanded to Africa, where it was used as a political artform

The Nigerian rock scene began after Bill Haley’s "Rock Around the Clock" film premiered in the country, inspiring young people to take up electric guitars. The music was also an integral part of the country’s civil war, with conscripted bands entertaining soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

Fearing the corruption of its youth, Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll in 1956.

Rapping has roots in numerous aspects of the Black oral tradition

Although “rapping” began in New York with hip-hop in the early 1970s, it can be traced back to griots, who were storytellers in West Africa, and “toasting,” which was a similar talk-sing style practiced by dancehall DJs in Jamaica.

Elvis was allegedly chided for playing rock 'n' roll at the Grand Ole Opry

Elvis Presley had deep roots in country music, though the Grand Ole Opry and its audience weren’t happy with Presley’s rocking take when he performed for his first (and only) time in 1954. Afterwards, the Opry’s manager Jim Denny allegedly told Presley, “Don’t quit your day job.”

How British youth resurrected overlooked American soul music

Motown released some of the 1960s' biggest soul records and changed the sound of pop music. The label also inspired countless smaller, regional labels that released songs by lesser-known artists that received limited attention. That changed with the rise of British Northern Soul, an underground scene that repurposed these obscure records (including several overlooked Motown releases) for all-night dance parties and, in the process, minted some unexpected American superstars.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

The Rolling Stones got their name from a Muddy Waters song

The band was set to play a live session on the BBC in 1962, though they still didn't have a name. When guitarist Brian Jones spoke to Jazz News magazine about the upcoming appearance, he realized the group still didn't have a name. He saw Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone" record on the ground and decided in that moment that it would be the name of the band.

Brazil's tropicália movement fused rock 'n' roll, Latin music, and poetry

Tropicália was a short-lived Brazilian style of rock 'n' roll that blended samba, bossa nova, modernist poetry, and American rhythm and blues that offered provocative, anti-authoritarian, and avant-garde ideas through popular music, much to the delight of the country's evolving youth culture.

Rick James and Neil Young both played in a band that was signed to Motown

The Mynah Birds were a short-lived Canadian rock group active before either artist's career took off. In 1966, the band signed to Motown Records and released a single. That same year, they were dropped by the label after it was revealed that James had settled down in Canada to avoid US military service.

The first Grammys acknowledged only 4 genres

At the first Grammys, there were six awards presented in four genres: classical, jazz, country, and R&B. But over time, it became clear that plenty of music didn't fit neatly into those categories. Now there are more than a dozen genres recognized, spanning multiple cultures and continents.

The time Bob Dylan was accused of plagiarizing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is a defining song of the Civil Rights Movement, one that Dylan openly acknowledged was based on a traditional African spiritual. But when Newsweek accused Dylan of stealing the song in 1963, they weren’t talking about influence. They suggested he’d jacked the tune from a helpless high school student. This article breaks down the falsehood and why it was given so much attention while Dylan was becoming a household name.

The Chitlin Circuit provided Black entertainers a safe network during Jim Crow

Black musicians and comedians regularly toured the Chitlin Circuit, an informal entertainment network that developed performers like Tina Turner and Redd Foxx during the Jim Crow era.

Southern race riots in 1866 galvanized support for more radical Reconstruction

In 1866, white mobs in Memphis and New Orleans killed dozens of Black residents and burned Black neighborhoods. The massacres horrified Northerners, convincing Congress that stronger federal action was needed to protect freedpeople's rights and enforce Reconstruction.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Watch Diana Ross posthumously induct Billie Holiday into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Holiday was posthumously inducted into the Hall in 2000 for her influence on the generations that followed her. Fittingly, Diana Ross, who played Holiday in a 1972 biopic, did the honors. She took the opportunity to sing an acapella verse of "Strange Fruit" and then offer some honorific poetry: "In this, a lesson: Artist, handle with care. Don't lose yourself in the music, beware stardom's glare."

2 Tone ska aimed to counteract a segregated England

The 2 Tone record label, spearheaded by the Specials, popularized second-wave ska in the late ‘70s, which married British punk with Jamaican rhythms. The music—intentionally multicultural and performed by multiracial bands—was a response to England’s growing nativism.

Norman Rockwell was sometimes confused with another Rockwell, who was a notorious Nazi

George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party and had no relation to Norman Rockwell, the beloved American painter. But that didn’t stop people from confusing the two or suggesting that they were family members. It was something that Norman Rockwell’s granddaughter said had greatly disturbed the painter.

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

An Ebola vaccine was developed during the 2018 west African Ebola outbreak, but the 2026 Ebola outbreak is with a different species of the virus, not the one that the vaccine is approved to treat.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real