REFLECTIONS IN BLACK MUSEUM

The 25 Most Important Events In Black Music History
Ebony, June, 2000

For four centuries, from the arrival of the first Blacks in English America in 1619 to the hip-hops of the Millennium, African-Americans have dominated American music and dance. Black music, in fact, is America's only original music, and the Spirituals-Blues-Jazz-Gospel-Charleston-Twist-Hip Hop gift is the foundation not only of rhythm and blues but also of Broadway, the Grammys and Elvis et al. And we can say of this gift what Virgil Thomson said of jazz: It is "the most astounding spontaneous musical event to take place anywhere since the Reformation." Here, then, in honor of Black (American) Music Month are 25--we could have listed 1,000--of the greatest moments of a creative process that started more than 300 years ago and that is--miraculously--still going on in the Harlem's and South Sides of our mind.

1 1660-1860. In the most stupendously creative act in American cultural history, the "Black and unknown bards" of slavery created the Spirituals and the foundations of the blues and American dance. Everything that followed--Broadway, the Grammys, Gershwin, the Cakewalk, the Moonwalk, the Electric Slide--is an elaboration on the original.

2 1870s-1920s. Creation of blues by post-slavery Blacks in Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, everywhere, led to the first written blues, "The Memphis Blues," published in 1912, and great blues singers like MA RAINEY and BESSIE SMITH.

3 1890s-1920s. Invention of jazz music, a collective creation by Blacks in Louisiana, Texas, Missouri and other places, followed by creative syntheses by great individual performers like BUDDY BOLDEN, JELLY ROLL MORTON, LOUIS ARMSTRONG and others. On November 11, 1925, Louis Armstrong recorded the first of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings that defined the rhythmic and improvisational foundation of jazz.

4 1900. JAMES WELDON JOHNSON and J. ROSAMOND JOHNSON composed "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," the African-American National Anthem, for a high school pageant in Jacksonville, Fla.

5 February 14, 1920. MAMIE SMITH recorded the first major "race record," "That Thing Called Love" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find," for Okeh Records. BESSIE SMITH and other artists sold a phenomenal number of records and ensured the survival of Columbia and other recording companies.

6 May 23, 1921. Shuffle Along, first of a series of popular musicals featuring Black talent, opened at the 63rd Street Musical Hall in New York and Blacks began to invent Broadway or, at a minimum, Broadway musical culture. Two years later, on October 29, 1923, Running' Wild opened at Colonial Theatre on Broadway, introducing America's first dance hit, the Charleston, to the world.

7 1925. PAUL ROBISON made his debut as a bass-baritone in the Greenwich Village Theatre (Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians), "singing the first concert consisting solely of Negro spirituals."

8 December 4, 1927. DUKE ELLINGTON opened at the Cotton Club, Harlem's Jim Crow musical magnet, marking the formal beginning of the Swing Age and the Age of the Big Bands of COUNT BASIE, ERKSKINE HAWKINS, JIMMY LUNCEFORD and, later, BILLY ECKSTINE. Ellington, who was arguably America's greatest composer, extended the harmonic and structural dimensions of jazz, which has been called America's classical music.

9 1930s. New Black urban migrants redefined church music, giving it a rhythm and passion that THOMAS DORSEY, the "Father of Gospel Music," put down on paper and SALLIE MARTIN and, later, MAHALIA JACKSON sang. Black music expert Eileen Southern said, "In addition to inventing a name for the new sacred music of black Americans, organizing its first chorus, its first annual convention, and founding its first publishing house, [Dorsey] is credited with establishing the tradition of the gospel music concert."

10 Easter Sunday Morning, 1939. MARIAN ANDERSON, denied permission to sing in Constitution Hall because of her race, gave an open-air concert endorsed by the White House on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000 persons. She had previously triumphed in European concerts where Arturo Toscanini heard her and said: "Yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years."

11 1945. CHARLIE PARKER and DIZZY GILLESPIE brought their musical groups to New York's 52nd Street, inaugurating the Be-Bop age and changing the structure and harmonic foundations of modern jazz.

12 1954 and 1955. RICHARD (LITTLE RICHARD) PENN MAN recorded "Tutti Frutti," and CHUCK BERRY recorded "Maybelline," followed by other recordings by Black artists (BIG MAYBELLE, WILSON PICKETT and others) who influenced the Beatles and Elvis Presley and played major roles in the development of rock `n' roll.

13 1956. THE NAT KING COLE SHOW, the first television variety show to star a Black entertainer, made its debut and ran for 64 weeks on NBC-TV, featuring the musical talents of Cole, who also played a formidable jazz piano, and other Black and White musical giants. Cole, who was perhaps America's first major crossover pop artist, sold millions of records and helped ensure the success of Capitol Records and other White cultural media.

14 January 7, 1955. MARIAN ANDERSON opened at the Metropolitan Opera House in Verdi's Masked Ball, paving the way for Linotype Price, Simon Estes, Jessie Norman and the Black opera stars who followed.

15 December 1955-1968. Freedom music, based on the whoops, hollers and affirmations of the Black Spiritual-gospel-blues-jazz tradition, annealed and transformed African-Americans and their allies in the 10,000 mass meetings, marches, vigils and protests of the Freedom Movement, which was the biggest U.S. social movement of the 20th century and which influenced singers in Soweto, Eastern Europe and Tiananmen Square. Major Black singers sang in the chorus or the choir of the Movement, notably MAHALIA JACKSON ("I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned"), HARRY BELLEFONTE ("Matilda"), Aretha Franklin ("R-E-S-P-E-C-T"), SAMMY DAVIS JR. ("Mr. Bojangles"), JAMES BROWN ("I'm Black and I'm Proud"), CURTIS MAYFIELD ("Keep on Pushing'"), SAM COOKE ("A Change Is Gonna Come"), NINA SIMONE ("What are we going to do now, now that the King of Love is Dead?"), BERNICE REAGAN ("Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free").

16 1957. SAM COOKE, a well-known gospel singer, crossed over into what some called "rhythm and blues," recording "You Send Me," which marked the beginning of the transitional period leading to soul music.

17 March 2, 1959, and April 22, 1959. MILES DAVIS recorded Kind of Blue, "a milestone in jazz history," which changed the directions of modern American music.

18 December 17, 1959. Motown Records was founded by BERRY GORDY JR., who gave the world the JACKSON 5, the SUPREMES, STEVIE WONDER and MARVIN GAYE, and who helped change the understanding, marketing and promotion of American music.

19 1960. ERNEST (CHUBBY CHECKER) EVANS recorded "The Twist," setting off the biggest dance craze since the Charleston craze of the 1920s. The craze changed the patterns of American dance and changed, perhaps forever, the dominant patterns of men and women dancing together.

20 1960s. A new gospel music with a more worldly sound and a catchy, pop-flavored beat flowed out of urban Black churches and was given form and passion by JAMES CLEVELAND and SHIRLEY CAESAR, leading to ANDRÉA CROUCH and the EDWIN HAWKINS SINGERS and contemporaries like KIRK FRANKLIN, the many WINANS and a new growth industry, White gospel singers.

21 1970s. STEVIE WONDER's creative use of synthesizers and over-dubbing and his detailed preparation of albums--he worked on Songs in the Key of Life for more than two years--gave new depth and meaning to popular music. Wonder's crusade and his music, especially his "Happy Birthday" to Dr. King, later played a role in the successful campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

22 1979. THE SUGAR HILL GANG produced the first rap hit, "Rapper's Delight," introducing the world of rap and hip-hop with implications that are still reverberating in the music world.

23 1984. MICHAEL JACKSON'S Thriller video premiered on TV, and revolutionized the making and marketing of pop music, leading to MTV and the new pop technology.

24 August 25, 1998. Mis-education of Lauryn Hill educated musical pundits, and made LAURYN HILL a prophet of new musical gumbo made up of hip-hop, reggae, jazz, soul and Latin music.

25 1990s. Popular crossover success of singers like WHITNEY HOUSTON and JANET JACKSON started new merchandising, marketing trends and led to numerous White imitators like Britney Spears.