Now, it’s important when pursuing music education or online music education to know the history of the business. The early music industry business is essentially divided into categories that mirror American society at that point. American society was in the middle of a period called “Jim Crow,” which is essentially legal segregation. The early segments of the record business essentially mirrored that segregation.
First, you have the mainstream, popular records. Then you have a category called “Race,” which is where all the black artists were signed and sold. Then, you have something called hillbilly, which is seen in many ways as the province of poor, white Americans. This triangle of Jim Crow became embedded in the architecture of the modern music business.
As the music business grew up, what you’re hearing on these records is, in general, musical forms that come from African Americans. We’re talking about ragtime. We’re talking about blues, and we’re talking about jazz. Those became the main drivers of popular music in America.
When creativity came into the music business, it was a whole other story. In the 1920s, an African American woman named Mamie Smith recorded a track called “Crazy Blues.” To everyone’s surprise, this track by an African American sold a million copies even in the midst of segregation and everything else going on in this period of history.
Suddenly, the big companies in New York–RCA, Columbia, and what would later become Sony–realized that they could make money doing this. They hustled down to the South, and they started recording African American artists. It’s that culture–it’s black American culture–that essentially established the recording industry as one of the most creative forms of expression in the 20th century as it is still seen today.
