The 9 best Rhythm and Blues tracks of all time
Rhythm and Blues
Blues played by a small band with a shuffle, a honking saxophone and somewhere to be. The post-war music that turned twelve bars into a dance floor, and the common ancestor of rock and roll, soul and Jamaican ska.
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Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats / Rocket 88
Regularly called the first rock and roll record, which it is not — it is the best jump blues record, with a guitar amp that fell off a car roof and was recorded broken anyway.
Louis Jordan / Choo Choo Ch'Boogie
Jordan's small band outsold the big bands by being funnier, tighter and cheaper to book. The template for every self-contained rhythm section that followed.
Big Mama Thornton / Hound Dog
Three years before Elvis, and considerably more menacing. Thornton is talking to a specific person and you would not want to be him.
Wynonie Harris / Good Rockin' Tonight
A shouted invitation over a band that will not let up. The word rocking is doing exactly what everyone thinks it is doing, six years early.
Big Joe Turner / Shake, Rattle and Roll
The original, before the lyric was laundered for white radio. Turner's version swings where the cover marches, which is the difference the whole decade turned on.
Fats Domino / The Fat Man
New Orleans piano, a rolling triplet figure and a million copies sold. Domino was doing this before the phrase rock and roll existed and simply never stopped.
Lloyd Price / Lawdy Miss Clawdy
Price singing, Domino on piano, and a record that crossed to white audiences without anybody planning it. The commercial accident the next decade was built on.
The Drifters / Money Honey
Clyde McPhatter's gospel-trained tenor applied to a song about rent. The exact point where the quartet tradition walks out of the church and into the charts.
The Midnighters / Work with Me, Annie
Banned by broadcasters, a million-seller regardless, and answered by half a dozen other records within the year. Rhythm and blues as a running conversation nobody could police.