109 Fun Facts About Black Music

Who was the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Aretha Franklin became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and won 18 Grammys, including the first eight ever given for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

Which arranger and bandleader produced Michael Jackson's Thriller?

The pair first worked together on the 1978 film The Wiz, and Jones went on to produce three of Jackson's solo albums.

Michael Jackson first showed the moonwalk to a TV audience on which 1983 special?

Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, taped in March 1983 and aired on NBC that May, is where Jackson's 'Billie Jean' performance popularised the moonwalk.

Whitney Houston's biggest hit, 'I Will Always Love You', was written and first recorded by whom?

Dolly Parton wrote and recorded 'I Will Always Love You' in 1973, a country No. 1 in 1974; Houston's 1992 version from The Bodyguard spent 14 weeks atop the Hot 100.

Which singer was Whitney Houston's cousin?

Dionne Warwick is Whitney Houston's cousin: Warwick's aunt is Whitney's mother, gospel and soul singer Cissy Houston, whose Sweet Inspirations sang backing vocals for Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley.

Which 1965 song gave James Brown his first top-ten pop hit and first Grammy?

'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' reached No. 8 on the Hot 100 in 1965 and won Brown the Grammy for Best R&B Recording; its stripped-down, interlocking rhythm became the template for funk.

Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' is the only rock and roll song included on what?

The Voyager Golden Record, launched in 1977 aboard the two Voyager probes as a message to any civilisation that finds them, carries 'Johnny B. Goode' as its only rock and roll track.

Chuck Berry recorded his 1955 breakthrough 'Maybellene' for which label?

Chess Records, the Chicago blues label of Leonard and Phil Chess, released 'Maybellene' in 1955; adapted from the fiddle tune 'Ida Red', it sold over a million copies.

Beyonce rose to fame in the late 1990s as lead singer of which group?

Beyoncé fronted Destiny's Child, the Houston group whose 'Bills, Bills, Bills' and 'Say My Name' topped the Hot 100 in 1999 and 2000, before going solo with Dangerously in Love in 2003.

Which Kendrick Lamar album was the first non-classical, non-jazz Pulitzer Music winner?

DAMN., released in April 2017, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, announced on April 16, 2018, the first winner from outside classical music and jazz.

Which 1979 single by the Sugarhill Gang took rap from the Bronx to the national Top 40?

'Rapper's Delight', released in September 1979, reached No. 36 on the Hot 100; by then its party-rhyme style was already old news at the Bronx block parties where hip hop began.

DJ Kool Herc's August 11, 1973 party, the 'birth of hip hop', took place at which Bronx address?

1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a Bronx apartment building, hosted Cindy Campbell's back-to-school party on 11 August 1973, where her brother Kool Herc extended records' drum breaks for the dancers.

Alongside rapping, DJing and graffiti, what is the fourth principal element of hip hop?

Breakdancing, or b-boying, is the fourth element alongside MCing, DJing and graffiti, a canon set out by the Universal Zulu Nation as hip hop emerged in the 1970s Bronx.

'The Message' (1982), a landmark of politically conscious rap, was released by which act?

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released 'The Message' on Sugar Hill Records in 1982; Melle Mel's verses about life in the projects broke from the party rhymes of early rap.

Run-DMC's 1986 crossover hit 'Walk This Way' was recorded with which rock band?

Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry joined Run-DMC on the 1986 'Walk This Way', which reached No. 4, put rap on MTV's rock-heavy rotation and revived Aerosmith's career.

Louis Armstrong's 1964 recording of 'Hello, Dolly!' reached No. 1 by dislodging which act?

'Hello, Dolly!' knocked The Beatles' 'Can't Buy Me Love' off No. 1 in May 1964, ending their 14-week run at the top; Armstrong, then 62, spent 22 weeks on the chart.

Which nickname belonged to New Orleans trumpeter Louis Armstrong?

Satchmo, short for 'satchel mouth', was Louis Armstrong's best-known nickname; he was also called Satch and Pops, and rose to fame with his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of the 1920s.

Which 1920 Mamie Smith recording is regarded as the first of its kind by an African-American singer?

'Crazy Blues', recorded for Okeh in August 1920 and written by Perry Bradford, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and convinced labels there was a market for Black artists.

Which composition is regarded as W. C. Handy's signature work?

'Saint Louis Blues', published in 1914, became Handy's most recorded work and earned him the title 'Father of the Blues'; he had published 'The Memphis Blues' two years earlier.

B.B. King gave what name to his guitars, after a fire at a show in Twist, Arkansas?

Lucille: two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a kerosene heater at a 1949 dance in Twist, Arkansas; King ran back into the blaze for his guitar and named it, and every successor, after her.

Jamie Foxx won the Best Actor Oscar for portraying which blind singer and pianist?

Ray Charles was played by Jamie Foxx in Ray (2004); the biopic runs from the 1930s to 1979, the year 'Georgia on My Mind' became Georgia's state song.

Which 1962 Ray Charles album includes his No. 1 hit 'I Can't Stop Loving You'?

Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962) topped the Billboard album chart for 14 weeks, and its 'I Can't Stop Loving You' spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100.

Which 1976 Stevie Wonder double album includes 'Sir Duke' and 'Isn't She Lovely'?

Songs in the Key of Life (1976) entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 and won Album of the Year; 'Sir Duke', its tribute to Duke Ellington, topped the Hot 100 in 1977.

Berry Gordy's Detroit headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard carried what nickname?

Hitsville U.S.A. was the name painted over the door of 2648 West Grand Boulevard, the house that served as Motown's headquarters from 1959 to 1968 and held its Studio A, nicknamed the Snake Pit.

In June 1972 Berry Gordy's label announced it was moving all operations from Detroit to which city?

Motown moved to Los Angeles in 1972, following Gordy's push into film with Diana Ross's Lady Sings the Blues; he sold the company to MCA and Boston Ventures in 1988 for $61 million.

Diana Ross's group, holder of twelve Hot 100 number ones, was originally called what?

The Supremes began in 1959 as The Primettes, a sister act to the Primes (later of the Temptations), before Berry Gordy signed and renamed them in 1961.

Which song was Marvin Gaye's first Hot 100 number one, topping the chart for seven weeks from December 1968?

'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks from December 1968, Gaye's first No. 1; Gladys Knight & the Pips had taken the same song to No. 2 a year earlier.

Which Prince film won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score?

Purple Rain (1984), the loosely autobiographical film whose soundtrack spent 24 weeks at No. 1, won Prince the Oscar for Best Original Song Score, the last time that award was given.

Prince's home and recording complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota, is called what?

Paisley Park, opened in 1987 in Chanhassen, Minnesota, was Prince's home, studio and soundstage complex; he died there in April 2016, and it opened to the public as a museum that October.

Which 1984 compilation is the best-selling reggae album of all time?

Legend, released in May 1984 three years after Marley's death, collects Bob Marley and the Wailers' hits and has sold over 25 million copies worldwide, far ahead of any other reggae album.

Miles Davis's 1959 album Kind of Blue is built entirely on which approach, a break from hard bop?

Kind of Blue is the landmark of modal jazz: Davis built its pieces on scales (modes) rather than fast chord changes, with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans in the sextet.

A 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald won first prize at an amateur night in 1934 at which Harlem venue?

The Apollo Theater's amateur night on 21 November 1934 launched Ella Fitzgerald: she had planned to dance but sang instead and took the $25 first prize, aged 17.

Which saxophonist gave Billie Holiday the nickname 'Lady Day'?

Lester Young, the tenor saxophonist of Count Basie's band and Holiday's closest musical partner, named her 'Lady Day'; she in turn called him 'Prez', short for President.

'Strange Fruit', the 1939 protest song Billie Holiday made famous, was written by whom?

Meeropol, a Bronx schoolteacher, adapted it from his own poem; the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues later dramatised Holiday's life with Diana Ross.

From late 1927 Duke Ellington's orchestra was the house band at which Harlem nightspot?

Duke Ellington's orchestra opened at the Cotton Club on 4 December 1927 after King Oliver turned the booking down; nightly radio broadcasts from the club made Ellington a national name.

'Take the A Train', the theme song of Duke Ellington's band, was written by whom?

Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's composing partner from 1939, wrote 'Take the A Train' from the subway directions Ellington had given him; the 1941 recording replaced 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo' as the band's theme.

Scott Joplin's 1899 piece, the first big hit of ragtime, was which composition?

'Maple Leaf Rag', published by John Stark in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1899, sold steadily for years on a royalty of one cent a copy and made Joplin the 'King of Ragtime'; he received a posthumous Pulitzer in 1976.

Which ex-Soul Stirrers singer had a three-week No. 1 in 1957 with 'You Send Me'?

Sam Cooke left the gospel group the Soul Stirrers for pop in 1957; 'You Send Me' topped the Billboard pop chart for three weeks that December, and he later founded SAR Records and wrote 'A Change Is Gonna Come'.

Little Richard's breakthrough single, recorded in three takes in September 1955, was which song?

'Tutti Frutti', cut in three takes at J&M Studio in New Orleans on 14 September 1955 with its lyrics cleaned up on the spot, reached No. 2 on the R&B chart and launched Richard Penniman of Macon, Georgia.

What chart distinction does Otis Redding's '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' hold?

Redding recorded it days before he died in a plane crash in December 1967, months after closing a night at Monterey Pop.

Which 1984 song gave Tina Turner her first and only Hot 100 number one?

'What's Love Got to Do with It' topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in September 1984 and won Record of the Year; the Private Dancer album that carried it was recorded in about two weeks.

In 2013 Tina Turner gave up her US citizenship to become a citizen of which country?

Tina Turner became a citizen of Switzerland in 2013 and relinquished her US passport; she had lived near Zurich with husband Erwin Bach since the 1990s and died there in May 2023.

Under what name was Nina Simone, the 'High Priestess of Soul', born?

Eunice Waymon, a trained classical pianist from Tryon, North Carolina, took the stage name Nina Simone in 1954; she blamed prejudice for her rejection by Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music.

Which gospel singer performed 'How I Got Over' at the 1963 March on Washington?

Mahalia Jackson sang 'How I Got Over' at the 1963 March on Washington and, moments later, urged Martin Luther King to 'tell them about the dream'; her 1947 'Move On Up a Little Higher' sold millions.

Earth, Wind & Fire's sound is built around which African instrument?

The kalimba, the thumb piano founder Maurice White played on stage and in the studio, gave Earth, Wind & Fire a signature; White even named the band's production company Kalimba Productions.

Which 1998 album was the first by a hip-hop artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, recorded after the Fugees went on hiatus, won five Grammys in February 1999 including Album of the Year, then a one-night record for a woman.

Which producer worked with Donna Summer on the futuristic 1977 hit 'I Feel Love'?

Giorgio Moroder, with Pete Bellotte, built 'I Feel Love' almost entirely on a Moog synthesizer in Munich in 1977; it reached No. 6 in the US and topped the UK chart.

The name 'house music' is said to come from the Warehouse, a Chicago club whose resident DJ was who?

Frankie Knuckles was resident DJ at the Warehouse from 1977 until he left in 1982 to open the Power Plant; his blend of disco, Philly soul and drum machines earned him the title 'godfather of house'.

The squelchy Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer defines which subgenre of dance music?

Acid house takes its name from the TB-303's squelch: Roland sold the 303 as a bass-guitar substitute and it flopped, until Chicago's Phuture twisted its knobs on 'Acid Tracks' in 1987.

Detroit techno pioneers Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson are known as what?

The Belleville Three take their name from Belleville, the Detroit suburb whose high school brought Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson together in the late 1970s.

When Billboard began a separate chart for African-American music in October 1942, what was it called?

The Harlem Hit Parade, launched on 24 October 1942, was Billboard's first chart for African-American music; it was renamed 'Race Records' in 1945 and 'Rhythm and Blues Records' in 1949.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, who popularised spirituals for concert audiences, first toured in which year?

The Fisk Jubilee Singers set out from Nashville on 6 October 1871 to raise money for Fisk University, carrying spirituals to concert halls in the North and, by 1873, to Britain.

Jimi Hendrix played 'The Star-Spangled Banner' on August 18, 1969, at which festival?

Woodstock closed on the morning of Monday 18 August 1969 with Hendrix's set, whose feedback-laden 'Star-Spangled Banner' became the festival's defining moment; Chas Chandler had brought him to London in 1966.

The Memphis label Stax was founded in 1957 under what original name?

Satellite Records, started by Jim Stewart in 1957, became Stax (STewart + AXton) in September 1961 after a California label called Satellite complained about the name.

Estelle Axton mortgaged her family home to raise how much for the fledgling Stax label in 1958?

$2,500: Axton borrowed it against her house in 1958 to buy an Ampex tape recorder for her brother Jim Stewart's label; she later ran the Satellite Record Shop in the foyer of the old Capitol cinema that became Stax's home.

Which Stax instrumental group, once the Royal Spades, hit No. 3 with 'Last Night' in 1961?

It was the first single nationally distributed on the Satellite label, which prompted the name change to Stax.

Berry Gordy founded his label on January 12, 1959 under what name?

Tamla Records, the name Gordy settled on for 12 January 1959 after 'Tammy' proved unavailable, was folded into the Motown Record Corporation, incorporated in April 1960; the name blends 'motor' and 'town'.

How many top-10 hits did Motown score between 1961 and 1971?

Motown notched 110 top-10 hits between 1961 and 1971, led by the Supremes, Four Tops and Jackson 5 on the Motown imprint and Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye on Tamla.

Which songwriting trio left Motown in 1967 over royalty disputes?

Their departure, and the 1967 Detroit riot, helped push Gordy toward moving the company to Los Angeles.

Which song did Big Mama Thornton take to the top of the R&B chart three years before Elvis Presley recorded it?

Hound Dog was written for Thornton by the 19-year-old songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and her version spent seven weeks at number one on the R&B chart.

Black Music Month, launched from the White House in 1979, is celebrated across the United States in which month?

June has been Black Music Month since 1979. President Obama renamed it African-American Music Appreciation Month in 2009, and the original name returned in 2023.

Which instrument did Lizzo play at a 2022 concert when the Library of Congress brought out James Madison's crystal one?

Flute is what Lizzo studied at the University of Houston, and she has named her own instrument Sasha Flute.

Which Louis Armstrong ballad topped the UK chart in 1968 yet first sold under 1,000 copies in the United States?

What a Wonderful World flopped at home because the president of ABC Records disliked its slow pace and refused to promote it.

Which album made Beyoncé the first Black woman this century to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

Cowboy Carter also made her the first Black artist to win Best Country Album and the first Black woman with a number-one country album.

Which music and dance show, created and hosted by Don Cornelius, aired in national syndication from 1971 to 2006?

Soul Train spent a year as a local programme on Chicago's WCIU-TV before going national, and it ran for more than 1,100 episodes.

Which James Weldon Johnson hymn, first performed by 500 students in 1900, is called the Black national anthem?

Lift Every Voice and Sing began as a poem for Abraham Lincoln's birthday, and by 1919 the NAACP was promoting it as a national anthem for Black Americans.

Which contralto sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being refused Constitution Hall because of her race?

Marian Anderson drew an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 that Easter Sunday, and in 1955 she became the first Black American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera.

Which Mississippi bluesman, who died aged 27 in 1938, is said to have sold his soul at a crossroads?

Robert Johnson recorded just 29 songs, in two sessions in San Antonio and Dallas, and several of them became blues standards.

Which string instrument of American folk music descends from gourd instruments made by enslaved West Africans?

Banjo forerunners were crafted from split gourds with animal skins stretched across them, and were played in the Caribbean and North America from the 17th century.

Which singer's 1960 recording turned "At Last", a tune from a 1941 film musical, into her signature song?

Etta James reworked a tune that Glenn Miller's orchestra had taken to number two in 1942, and her version entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Which Motown group scored a first number one in 1965 with "My Girl", written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White?

The Temptations got the song after Robinson saw David Ruffin sing a solo spot on tour and decided to produce a single with him on lead vocals.

Which civil rights anthem did the US president quote to Congress in 1965 after the Bloody Sunday attacks at Selma?

We Shall Overcome was sung by more than 50,000 mourners at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., who had recited its words in his final Sunday sermon.

Which American-born star of 1920s Paris became, in 2021, the first Black woman honoured in France's Panthéon?

Josephine Baker earned the honour partly as a spy: she smuggled intelligence for the French Resistance during World War II and was decorated by Charles de Gaulle.

Which Virginia-born producer became the first female rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, in 2019?

Missy Elliott was only the third rapper of any gender to get in, after Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri, and in 2023 she became the first female rapper in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which trio became the first girl group awarded a diamond album, for CrazySexyCool, home of the hit "Waterfalls"?

TLC saw CrazySexyCool certified 12-times platinum, and it became the best-selling album by an American girl group.

Which pianist and singer won five Grammys in one night in 2002 after releasing her debut album, Songs in A Minor?

Alicia Keys began writing the album at 14, and it entered the Billboard 200 at number one.

Which Chicago blues pioneer's 1950 song "Rollin' Stone" gave the Rolling Stones their name?

Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, is often cited as the father of modern Chicago blues, and the British rockers he inspired later recorded albums with him.

Which fast, intricate jazz style, made for listening instead of dancing, did Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie pioneer?

Bebop got its name, Gillespie said, when audiences asked for the untitled tunes by imitating the scat syllables he sang to his players.

Which 1920s recording star, billed as the Mother of the Blues, did Viola Davis portray in an Oscar-nominated 2020 role?

Ma Rainey is the subject of an August Wilson play, a fictionalised account of a 1927 recording session, which the film adapted.

Which gospel star with an electric guitar, wed before 25,000 paying fans, is dubbed the Godmother of Rock and Roll?

Rosetta Tharpe's 1940s electric guitar recordings have been cited as an influence on Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash named her his favourite singer as a child.

Which girl group gave Motown its first Hot 100 number one in 1961 with their debut single, "Please Mr. Postman"?

The Marvelettes were still known as the Marvels when they auditioned that April, and the Carpenters took the same song back to number one in 1975.

Which singer became the first artist to win the Record of the Year Grammy two years running, in 1973 and 1974?

Roberta Flack won for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, the biggest hit of 1972, and then for Killing Me Softly with His Song.

Which network of theatres and clubs sustained Black entertainers across the South and Midwest during segregation?

Chitlin' Circuit comes from chitterlings, and the name also plays on the Borscht Belt, the Catskills resorts that were popular with Jewish performers.

At which New Orleans gathering place, now inside Louis Armstrong Park, did enslaved Africans sing and dance on Sundays?

Congo Square became the one place such gatherings were allowed under an 1817 city ordinance, and townsfolk came on Sunday afternoons to watch.

Which Midwestern jazz hub of the 1930s produced the Count Basie band and was the hometown of Charlie Parker?

Kansas City had gathered enough jazz talent by the mid-1930s to rival New York and Chicago, and Basie learned his trade there in Bennie Moten's orchestra.

Which Arkansas-born composer became, in 1933, the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major US orchestra?

Florence Price was rediscovered after 2009, when a substantial collection of her works and papers turned up in her abandoned summer home.

James Brown's televised concert the night after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination was staged to calm which city?

Boston's mayor considered cancelling the Boston Garden show, then had public television carry it live so that people would stay home to watch.

Which singer, crowned the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, made her 1992 debut album with the producer Sean Combs?

Mary J. Blige was born in the Bronx and raised in Yonkers, and Rolling Stone later ranked that debut among its 500 greatest albums of all time.

Which 1964 Martha and the Vandellas hit, co-written by Marvin Gaye, stalled at number two behind Manfred Mann?

Dancing in the Street was first tried in the studio by Gaye himself, Martha Reeves recalled, before her group cut the version that became a hit.

Which rapper became the first woman to win the Grammy for Best Rap Album as a solo artist, for Invasion of Privacy?

Cardi B's album also sent both Bodak Yellow and I Like It to number one on the Hot 100, making her the first female rapper to top that chart more than once.

Diana Ross earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for playing Billie Holiday in which 1972 film, her screen debut?

Lady Sings the Blues is loosely based on Holiday's 1956 autobiography, and the cast alongside Ross included Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor.

Whitney Houston's national anthem, issued as a Gulf War charity single, was performed at which sporting event?

The Super Bowl of January 1991 hosted the performance, and a 2001 reissue of the single climbed to number six, the only anthem recording to reach the Hot 100's top ten.

Which saxophonist recorded A Love Supreme, a four-part spiritual suite, in a single session in December 1964?

John Coltrane's album is treated as a central text by a San Francisco congregation named after him, the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church.

Which country singer, once a Negro league baseball player, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000?

Charley Pride signed with RCA in 1965, and in 1971 the Country Music Association named him its Entertainer of the Year.

Which singer and jazz pianist hosted an NBC variety series from 1956 that never found a national sponsor?

Nat King Cole had only a regional beer brand behind the programme, and after it ended he remarked that Madison Avenue was afraid of the dark.

Harry Belafonte's 1956 album, credited as the first million-selling LP, is named after which Caribbean music style?

Calypso spent 31 weeks at number one, led by an opening track sung from the point of view of dock workers loading bananas on the night shift.

Which accordion-led genre was created in rural Louisiana by French-speaking African Americans of Creole heritage?

Zydeco pairs the accordion with a washboard worn like a vest, and one theory traces its name to a Louisiana French phrase about snap beans.

Which Oscar-winning 2021 documentary, directed by Questlove, revived footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival?

Summer of Soul drew on about 40 hours of videotape that the television producer Hal Tulchin shot across six Sundays in a Harlem park.

Which Father of Gospel Music wrote "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" in 1932 after his wife and newborn son died?

Thomas A. Dorsey had been one of Chicago's top blues composers, and he went on to pen some 3,000 songs, a third of them gospel, including Peace in the Valley.

Which Prince single, Billboard's top-selling single of 1984, is famous for having no bass line at all?

When Doves Cry did have a bass part at first, but Prince took it out after deciding the song sounded too conventional with it.

Which Michael Jackson single had the first video by a Black artist to air in heavy rotation on MTV, in 1983?

Billie Jean reached MTV, by the account of CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff, only after he threatened to pull all of the label's videos and go public about the network's refusal.

Which early-1980s Stevie Wonder song was written to campaign for a holiday honouring Martin Luther King Jr.?

Happy Birthday helped popularise the cause, and President Reagan signed the holiday into law in November 1983.

Which 1985 charity single, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, was recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa?

We Are the World began with Harry Belafonte, who wanted an American answer to Band Aid, and Jackson and Richie finished writing it the night before the first session.

Which 1988 Tracy Chapman song won the CMA Song of the Year award in 2023 after Luke Combs covered it?

Fast Car made Chapman the first Black songwriter to win that country award, decades after her own recording earned her a Grammy.

Which 1988 Bobby McFerrin hit became the first a cappella song to reach number one on the Hot 100?

Don't Worry, Be Happy uses no instruments at all: every sound is McFerrin's overdubbed voice, and it won Song and Record of the Year at the 1989 Grammys.

Public Enemy wrote their 1989 anthem "Fight the Power" at the request of Spike Lee for which of his films?

Do the Right Thing uses the track as a recurring theme for the racial tension in its Brooklyn neighbourhood, and Lee also directed the music video.

Which 1981 Rick James funk hit supplied the opening riff sampled throughout MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"?

Super Freak earned James a songwriting credit on the 1990 smash after he filed a copyright lawsuit over the sample.

Whitney Houston's hit "Greatest Love of All" was first recorded in 1977 by which guitarist for a Muhammad Ali biopic?

George Benson took the original to number two on the soul chart, and Houston's cover, recorded in 1984, topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in 1986.

Which 1980 Kurtis Blow single became the first rap song to earn a gold certification from the RIAA?

The Breaks was only the second 12-inch single of any genre to go gold, even though it climbed no higher than number 87 on the Hot 100.