We jump ahead a few decades to when the blues became commercial. Most young,
white Southerner's first heard black music on a jukebox. Black oriented radio
was crucial to the commercial and creative process that enabled rhythm and
blues (R & B) to establish itself. Almost in succession, the decline of
network radio, the rapid growth of television and the discovery of an expanding
and increasingly concentrated black consumer market shaped the growth of black
oriented radio during the decade after World War II. In the late 1940's, white
owned WDIA in Memphis and WOOK in Washington
D.C. adopted the first all black
programming formats. Shelly Stewart, a resourceful and self educated black man
from Birmingham, Alabama
got a job at WEDR. The stations white owner, J. Edwards Reynolds, carefully
announced his black oriented stations intentions to "stay completely out
of politics". Stewart says he knew what his boss meant. "It was about
dollars and cents. It was not about supporting racial justice...for some of the
white stations owners you could not do a PSA (public service announcement) for
the NAACP...they didn't want you to do an announcement on voter
registration...cause that would empower coloreds."
Blues came from the soul, however, which meant that it was virtually
impossible to stop. All across the country, various forms of the genre were
being created and popularized by emotional lyrics, powerful music and a sense
of pride and communication that echoed throughout the music. Blues was
essentially about two things; the lyrics and the instrumentation. Guitars
weren't a part of the blues until the 1920's when it replaced the banjo. The
history of drums present in African music can be traced back centuries, but the
modern drum set was introduced to the blues right after World War II. The bass
was added in the 1940's, first in the form of an upright bass and later
replaced in the early 50's by the electric bass. The harmonica was a key aspect
of the blues, found in even it's most primitive forms - although the piano is
the first musical instrument heard on a blues record.