Presents a history of R&B music in the United States, profiles the genre's most notable past and present stars, and features song and album suggestions.

Examines the history of the Negro in America through the music he created.

By the last decades of the 1800s, America's first wholly black folk music-the blues-was being born all across the South. The Blues: Birth of an American Sound tells the story of the blues from the early call-and-response songs of enslaved workers to today's vibrant blues scene. The most highly recognized series on African Americans celebrates Black History Month all year long! Journey to Freedom: The African American Library provides fascinating information...

"Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton is best-known for two songs covered by white rock 'n' roll stars (Elvis Presley, "Hound Dog"; Janis Joplin, "Ball 'n' Chain") but she is unquestionably one of the great blueswomen of her generation. She embodies some of the clichés of the blues, too: Born in the South, raised in the church, appropriated by white performers, hard drinking, relatively early death, big nickname, buried in an indigent's grave. Lynnée...

Traces the rise and fall of the original Stax Records, touching upon the racial politics in Memphis in the 1960s, the personal histories of the sibling founders, and the prominent musicians they featured.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al Green and Isaac Hayes, and by 1968 was a city synonymous with soul music. It was a deeply segregated city, ill at ease with the modern world and yet to adjust to the era of civil rights and racial integration. Stax Records offered an escape from the turmoil of the real world for many soul and blues musicians, with...