The Emergence of Southern Soul: The Next Music Wave? Black music – the blues, R&B, and the basis of Rock and Roll – provided the creative lifeblood of one of the wealthiest industries in the world. Most American popular music (including country... Read More...
Lanre Gaba named Co-President, Black Music for Atlantic Records Lanre Gaba has been promoted to Co-President, Black Music for Atlantic Records. Gaba, who celebrates her 20th anniversary with the label this year, was most recently Atlantic's General Manager/Executive Vi... Read More...
Why Are Major Black Music Divisions Run By Non-Blacks? An Essay by Stan Sheppard “Why Are Major Black Music Divisions Run By Non-Blacks?”On the Rap Music side of business in the United States, it has always amazed me that all the REAL power at the major labels is in the hands of people who... Read More...
The Nelson George Mixtape: Artists Issues The creation of black music departments meant bigger advances, larger recording budgets, more coordinated national promotion, and better royalty rates. However, artists still didn’t own their masters, meani... Read More...
The Nelson George Mixtape: The Slow Death of Mom & Pop Retailers Down at the bottom of the musical food chain, yet historically crucial to its health, were Mom & Pop record stores. In every African-American community there were at least one and often two or three ret... Read More...
The Nelson George Mixtape: Is It Black or Urban Radio? Since its invention in the 1940s black oriented radio had been the chief vehicles for promoting all forms of black music, from R&B to jazz, gospel to funk. For much of its history these stations had bee... Read More...
Nelson George Mixtape: The R&B World Circa 1979-Black Music Departments Starting in the early ‘70s all the major record companies made a commitment to being in the black music business. Up until then prolific independent labels like Detroit’s Motown, Memphis’ Stax, New York’s A... Read More...
The Nelson George Mixtape: R&B World Circa 1979 & the Black Music Association If you had no skin in the game, were not even conceived or simply wish to help yourself…..read…take notes and read more while remembering that what you are about to read IS history. Thank you, Nelson Georg... Read More...
The Nelson George Mixtape Funky Demise of Black Band Culture Part III This is the final section of a series of essay son funk ensembles in the 21st century. Funk was in transition from a music created with live horns, Latin percussion, and a tight rhythm section to a... Read More...
The Nelson George Mixtape:The Funky Demise of Black Band Culture, Part One At the intermission of a performance in Boston in 1919, band leader James Reese Europe called an impromptu meeting with his two drummers, Steve and Herbert Wright. Apparently, Europe, a man who had high sta... Read More...