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rhythm and blues
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Ike and Tina Turner perform onstage in 1964; Ike plays a white Fender Stratocaster guitar while Tina sings into a microphone, with band members and instruments in the background. Charles Brown smiling and wearing a light-colored suit, posed at a piano with one hand on the keys in a black and white portrait. Map of the Blues Highway, U.S. Route 61, marked in pink with music note icons highlighting key blues cities, including off-route cities like Chicago and Nashville.
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Ike and Tina Turner perform onstage in 1964; Ike plays a white Fender Stratocaster guitar while Tina sings into a microphone, with band members and instruments in the background.
Ike and Tina Turner Ike (playing a Fender Stratocaster) and Tina Turner, 1964.

rhythm and blues

music
Also known as: R & B
Written by
Ed Ward
(d. 2021)Rock critic and historian who wrote for Rolling Stone, Cream, and Crawdaddy magazines. Author of The History of Rock & Roll, Volume...
Ed Ward
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
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•History

rhythm and blues, term used for several types of postwar African-American popular music, as well as for some white rock music derived from it. The term was coined by Jerry Wexler in 1947, when he was editing the charts at the trade journal Billboard and found that the record companies issuing Black popular music considered the chart names then in use (Harlem Hit Parade, Sepia, Race) to be demeaning. The magazine changed the chart’s name...

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