What classifies a band as rhythm and blues, or as anything special, depends largely on when it played. John Phillips Sousa became famous for his marches although he conducted a popular dance band in San Francisco. In early 1900, America was a growing, marching, not dancing, nation. The big band era and WWII music are still popular because they are nostalgic to millions who lived memorable moments while those bands played. Glen Miller and his band stood and played during an air raid in England. Nostalgia is in the ears of the hearer.
Today rhythm and blues bands are the popular everyday music to a large portion of our population. Patriotic, gung ho music is inappropriate as you are burning your draft card or reading a letter from Iraq where your brother is vacationing involuntarily, although at government expense. Bands today are specialized because their music is specialized. Rhythm and blues bands play the music of their generation. The anti-government, anti-big business, anti-war music is what those bands play. Bands that play it most become the most popular and those who sing it most become the best known.
Three excellent examples are The Beach Boys, The Grateful Dead and the Mamas and the Papas. In each case the bands have grown lives of their own, without and distinct from the original participants. In each case, the founders have become famous as rhythm and blues musicians through their connection to the bands.
Specifically rhythm and blues bands and rhythm and blues musicians, all long dead still live as part of our lives. Their names, their bands, their songs are immediately identified when they are pictured, heard or mentioned. They live as old, familiar parts or our lives.
Photo © zimbio
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