60 Fun Facts About Black Music

Which 'Queen of Soul' was the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

She was inducted in 1987 and went on to win 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?

The special was subtitled Yesterday, Today, Forever, and the performance of 'Billie Jean' that night is credited with popularising the move.

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

The country original dates from 1974; Houston's version led The Bodyguard soundtrack, which became the best-selling soundtrack album in history.

Which singer was Whitney Houston's cousin?

Houston's mother Cissy sang backing vocals for major soul stars and Elvis, and opera star Leontyne Price was also a cousin.

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

Its stripped-down, interlocking rhythm is a template for the funk that Brown is credited with inventing.

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

The record was launched into space in 1977 aboard the two Voyager probes as a message to any civilisation that finds them.

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

The song was an adaptation of the country tune 'Ida Red' and sold over a million copies.

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

She now holds the record for the most Grammy Awards won by anyone, and her 2016 album Lemonade was that year's best seller.

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

The prize was announced on April 16, 2018, a year after the album's release.

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

By the time it charted, the style it captured was already considered old news at Bronx block parties.

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

It was a back-to-school rent party thrown by his sister Cindy Campbell, where Herc extended the drum breaks of records.

Rapping, DJing and graffiti art are three of hip hop's four principal elements. What is the fourth?

The culture emerged in the early 1970s among African-American and Afro-Caribbean communities in New York City.

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

Its focus on life in the housing projects broke from the party rhymes that dominated early rap records.

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

The collaboration put rap on MTV's rock-heavy rotation and revived the band's own career.

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

At 62 he became the oldest person to top the Hot 100, and the record stayed on the chart for 22 weeks.

Which nickname belonged to New Orleans trumpeter Louis Armstrong?

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?

The song was written by Perry Bradford, and its success convinced labels that there was a market for Black artists.

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

Handy had published 'The Memphis Blues' two years earlier, in 1912, one of the first blues pieces in print.

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

Two men had started the fire fighting over a woman of that name, and King ran back into the burning building to rescue the guitar.

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

The 2004 biopic covered his life from the mid-1930s to 1979, the year his 'Georgia on My Mind' became Georgia's state song.

Which 1962 album by the singer of 'What'd I Say', with 'I Can't Stop Loving You', pulled a genre into pop?

Its cover of 'I Can't Stop Loving You' became one of the biggest singles of the year.

Stevie Wonder holds the record for the most Grammy Awards won by a solo artist. How many?

He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award, and topped the Hot 100 at 13 with 'Fingertips', the youngest artist ever to do so.

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

The house served as headquarters from 1959 to 1968; the label started life as Tamla Records with an $800 family loan.

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

Gordy later sold the company to MCA Records and Boston Ventures in 1988 for $61 million.

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

Most of their hits were written and produced by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland.

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

Gladys Knight & the Pips had already taken the same song to No. 2 a year earlier.

Which 1984 Prince film won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score?

The loosely autobiographical film and its album cemented the Minneapolis sound he pioneered.

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

In 1993 he swapped his name for an unpronounceable symbol in a dispute with Warner Bros. over how fast his backlog was released.

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

It collects Bob Marley and the Wailers' hits and was released three years after Marley's death.

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

The sextet included John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans, and the album is the highest-certified jazz record in the US.

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

In 1959 she became the first African-American woman to win a Grammy, at the very first ceremony.

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

In return she 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 September 1927 Duke Ellington's orchestra was the house band at which Harlem nightspot?

The booking had first been offered to King Oliver, who turned it down; Ellington got a posthumous special Pulitzer in 1999.

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

The 1941 hit replaced 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo' as the band's signature.

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

Joplin, the 'King of Ragtime', wrote more than 40 rags and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1976.

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

Often called the 'King of Soul', he also founded his own label, SAR Records, and wrote 'A Change Is Gonna Come'.

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

Born Richard Penniman in Macon, Georgia, he was later dubbed the 'Architect of Rock and Roll'.

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?

It won Record of the Year among three Grammys, and the Private Dancer album that carried it was recorded in two weeks.

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

Born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, she lived there until her death in 2023.

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

A trained classical pianist from Tryon, North Carolina, she was turned down by the Curtis Institute of Music, a rejection she blamed on prejudice.

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

Her 1947 record 'Move On Up a Little Higher' sold two million copies nationwide.

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

Founder Maurice White's tenor contrasted with Philip Bailey's falsetto, and 'September' hit No. 1 on the soul chart in 1978.

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

Recorded after the Fugees went on hiatus, it won five awards that night, then a record for a female artist.

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

It reached No. 6 in the US and gave the 'Queen of Disco' her only UK number one.

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

The club ran from 1977 to 1982, and fans call him the 'godfather of house'.

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

The 303 was a commercial flop as the bass-guitar substitute Roland intended; Chicago producers made it famous by misusing it.

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

The name comes from Belleville, the Detroit suburb where the three met at high school.

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

It was renamed 'Race Records' in 1945 and 'Rhythm and Blues Records' in 1949.

In which year did Cole and Johnson's musical, the first written and produced by African Americans, debut on Broadway?

Black musicals returned to Broadway in 1921 with Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along.

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

Folk spirituals had originated among enslaved people in the South in the late 18th century.

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

The Seattle-born guitarist had formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience in London after being brought there by Chas Chandler.

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

The label took its later name from founders Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton in September 1961, after a complaint from another company with the same name.

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

The money bought an Ampex tape recorder; she later ran the record shop in the old cinema foyer that became the label'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?

It was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in April 1960; the name blends 'motor' and 'town'.

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

The Supremes, Four Tops and Jackson 5 led the way on the main label while Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye recorded for 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.