George — The Death of Rhythm and Blues

Author: Nelson George
Title: The Death of Rhythm and Blues
Year: 1988
Type: Book (Pantheon Books)

The Death of Rhythm and Blues is a book by the journalist Nelson George, then the black music editor of Billboard, published by Pantheon Books in 1988. It argues that Black music suffered the fate of an art that accommodates power and money: the “race music” of the 1940s became the rhythm and blues that dominated the airwaves, then was diluted and submerged as crossover music, and in the process the small record stores and radio’s personality DJs disappeared while the record conglomerates rose. Its evidence is a history of Black music from the 1940s to rap, told through the record and radio industries and the executives and promoters who decided which singers were recorded and played. Thomas D’Evelyn, in the Christian Science Monitor, called George a historian-prophet and the book must reading, and Kirkus praised its account of the record and radio business while finding it mean-spirited toward Black artists who crossed over.

George was Billboard’s black music editor for seven years before he became a columnist for the Village Voice in 1989.¹ Pantheon Books published The Death of Rhythm and Blues in August 1988.^{2, 3} The publisher describes it as a history of Black music over fifty years that “chronicles the rise and fall of ‘race music’ and its transformation into the R&B that eventually dominated the airwaves,” only for that music to be “diluted and submerged as crossover music.”¹ D’Evelyn summarized the thesis: “black music suffered the fate of any art that seeks to accommodate power and money,” and “crossover is the real enemy.”²

Kirkus wrote that the book takes the reader “behind the scenes to the record and radio industry machinations” that carried Black music from the rhythm and blues of the 1940s to rap, with its attention on the executives and promoters who decided which singers were recorded and played.³ Newsweek’s reviewer wrote that George had found new information on the booking agents, arrangers and record men as well as the artists.¹ D’Evelyn’s review describes the book’s account of the record conglomerates, including a Harvard Business School study that guided CBS in the 1970s, and of the institutions they displaced: the small, family-run record stores and the personality DJs.² It also cites the book’s point that “Rapper’s Delight” came from a Black-owned label in New Jersey.²

D’Evelyn called George “a brilliant journalist - a historian-prophet” and the book “must reading,” while writing that it leaves a few false impressions: among them, it presents Atlantic as fundamentally sound when Ruth Brown had recently been reported cheated of royalties for years.² Kirkus called it, at its best, “a highly informed and intelligently reasoned work,” but found in it a “mean-spiritedness” toward Black artists’ moves into the white market and too little attention to what Black listeners wanted to hear.³ The Washington Post Book World found its accounts of the business’s characters “often informative.”¹

Key contributions

• Crossover treated as the cause of rhythm and blues’ decline: the success of Black music in the white market dissolved the Black-run institutions around it.
• A history of Black popular music from the 1940s to rap, told through the record and radio business.
• Attention to the executives and promoters behind the music, and to the strategies of the record conglomerates.
• Small record stores and radio’s personality DJs identified as the institutions that disappeared as Black music crossed over.

See also

• Motown Records — the Detroit label whose records crossed into the pop market
• Soul — the genre
• Country Soul — Charles L. Hughes’s 2015 history of the Southern studios where Black and white musicians made soul and country records
• The color line in pop — the color line as industry infrastructure, from market categories to radio formats
• The pop factory — the debate over industrial production in pop