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The Rolling Stones - Come To The Ball

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated as R&B or RnB, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when urban, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat was becoming more popular. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands usually consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, saxophone, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy. Lyrics focus heavily on the themes of triumphs and failures in terms of relationships, freedom, economics, aspirations, and sex.

The term was used in Billboard as early as 1943. It replaced the term race music, which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world. The term rhythm and blues was used by Billboard in its chart listings from June 1949 until August 1969, when its Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart was renamed as Best Selling Soul Singles. Before the Rhythm and Blues name was instated, various record companies had already begun replacing the term race music with sepia series. In 2010 LaMont Robinson founded the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame Museum.

The term rhythm and blues has undergone a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s it was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term R&B became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. In the 1960s, several British rock bands... were referred to and promoted as being RnB bands, This tangent of RnB is now known as British rhythm and blues. By the 1970s, the term rhythm and blues changed again and was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as Contemporary R&B. It combines elements of rhythm and blues, soul, funk, pop, hip hop and dance.


The Rolling Stones - Come To The Ball
  • Vocals overdubs: Spring 2021
  • Written by: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
  • Released: August 24 1981

"The Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically driven sound that came to define hard rock. Their first stable line-up consisted of vocalist Mick Jagger, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, guitarist Keith Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts."

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