MUSC 3385 History of Popular Music

Ch 5: St. Louis Blues: Race records and hillbilly music, pp. 88-117

Name _______________________________________________________________

Type your responses to the following questions. Include the page number(s)
in your responses. Multiple pages will be stapled together. Include this sheet.
1.
Describe the terms race music and hillbilly. When were they used?
Race music is music performed by blacks and hillbilly music was for southern
white people; they were used in advertising music (89)
2.

What were four common features between race music and hillbilly music?
They both originated in American south, rooted in long-standing folk
music traditions, they provided the basis for forms of popular music
that emerged after WWII, and both grew out of the music industrys
efforts to develop alternative markets during a national decline in
record sales.

3.

Who was the first to apply the catchphrase race music to African
American music from the South? What did this imply? Ralph peer; It
implied black nationalism (90)
4.

What large record companies took several years to catch on to race music?
What other record companies emerged in the 1920s? Columbia Records,
Vocalion/Brunswick Records, and Victor Company; African American owned
record companies started to emerge(91)
5.

Who called himself the Father of the Blues? What were his contributions to
Blues music, from both a creative point of view and a business point of view?
W. C. Handy; his forms was based on tin pan alley songs but drew upon African
American folk traditions as well. He created the first African American owned
music publishing house (92)
6.

What was the barn dance format? What radio stations featured this type of
program? Who were featured on these programs, and what were their backgrounds?

7.

How did classic blues and country blues differ? Who were the songwriters?
Identify a performer for each type of blues and describe their style. Classic
blues was normally performed in nightclubs and was mostly used for
dance music and country blues was usually used to tell a story and was
more drawn from its heritage and roots; Louis Armstrong, Ma Rainey (93102)

8.

Why was radio more crucial in the development of hillbilly music and
not race music?

9.

Identify the two most famous performers recorded in Bristol, TN in 1927.

Explain their significance to country music. Who recorded this session
and why? Why was this person in Bristol? Carter Family and Jimmie
Rodgers; the Carters provided a new way of playing melodies and
singing harmonies and arrangement of church hymn and other styles
of music. Jimmie style was more of a rebel to society(111-112)

10.

How did the Great Depression affect the music industry? How did it affect
the race record market? How did it affect the hillbilly record market? It
nearly wiped out sales of phonograph and record labels were going out of
business because many people were not buying music anymore; The race
market was nearly crushed and shutdown the black owned businesses
including the music publishing and film producing companies. Hillbilly music
became the music to rise during that time, sales accounted for 25% of the
American market and started appearing in movies and on radio (115-116)