This post is my attempt to save the various playlists I created at the National Museum of African American Music (museum website) when we visited in March 2022. These playlists are by no means definitive, but they seem like a good souvenir and I hope they stay active here rather than disappearing on the NMAAM site within 60 days.
The heart of the NMAAM were two sets of interactive touch screen databases within which you could explore vast archives of curated music selections. The first, Rivers of Rhythm, was organized by a timeline of major eras in African American history. The second, Roots and Streams, was a way to explore by artist based on who influenced them, their peers, and who they in turn influenced. Both databases were excellent and extremely educational; I wish they were available online. While the museum doesn’t make the databases publicly available, you can create personalized playlists of your favorite songs, which at least hints at some of the connections.
As a sidenote, after our journey I discovered the Americana Music Triangle website which includes an informative set of Timelines, each with their own excellent playlists. I’ve included links to specific pages and playlists below.
Rivers of Rhythm
The Rivers of Rhythm section organized music by chronological historical themes. There was a narrative within each section of the interactive database that gave a good introduction to each period — I wish I could reference it again. Within each section there was a variety of representative music and a rationale for each piece of music belonging in that section. Here are the different timeline categories and musical selections that I liked within each one.
Africa to America: 1619–1760
Revolution and Slavery: 1761–1807
African American Culture Emerges: 1808–1860
Civil War and New Beginnings: 1861–1877
Defying Jim Crow: 1878–1902
The Great Migration: 1903–1919
The Harlem Renaissance: 1920–1929
Depression and War: 1930–1945
Postwar America: 1946–1960
Civil Rights: 1961–1972
Desegregation and Its Legacy: 1973-1985
Hip Hop Nation: 1986-1999
The New Millennium: 2000-2016
Americana Music Triangle Timelines
I discovered the Americana Music Triangle website after our trip but it includes a section of informative timelines that cover general history and a number of musical genres within the Americana umbrella. The musical timelines each have their own well-curated Spotify playlists that I recommend. They are good educational complements to the NMAAM playlists, so I include them here. There are specific timelines and playlists for Blues, Jazz, Country, Rock ‘n’ Roll, R&B/Soul, Gospel, Southern Gospel, Cajun/Zydeco, and Bluegrass.
Roots and Streams
The Roots and Streams section was essentially a database organized by artist that showed the artist’s roots (the other artists that influenced them), their contemporaries, and the subsequent generations of artists they directly influenced. It was a fascinating presentation. I can’t really replicate the connections between each artist, but I grabbed the ones that most interested me, nabbing a “top 5” set of songs for each.
I figure if I (or you, dear reader) can develop a decent understanding of each of these artists, their histories and their top tunes then I (we) will have a pretty darn good grounding many of the central pillars of American music. With apologies to Wikipedia, I grabbed the lead sentence or two from their bios on that site to give some reference — use it as a jumping off point to learn more.
Ma Rainey
Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (née Pridgett; April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early blues recording artist. Dubbed the “Mother of the Blues”, she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers.
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the “Empress of the Blues”, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues.
Memphis Minnie
Lizzie Douglas (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973), better known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter whose recording career lasted for over three decades.
Tampa Red
Hudson Whittaker (born Hudson Woodbridge; January 8, 1903 – March 19, 1981), known as Tampa Red, was an American Chicago blues musician. He is best remembered as a blues guitarist who had a distinctive single-string slide style.
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy (born Lee Conley Bradley; June 26, 1903 – August 14, 1958) was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star.
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Lemon Henry “Blind Lemon” Jefferson (September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929) was an American blues and gospel singer-songwriter and musician. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s and has been called the “Father of the Texas Blues”.
Charley Patton
Charley Patton (April 1891 (probable) – April 28, 1934), also known as Charlie Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. Considered by many to be the “Father of the Delta Blues”, he created an enduring body of American music and inspired most Delta blues musicians.
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1893 – November 2, 1966), better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist.
Dom Flemons
Dominique Flemons (born August 30, 1982) is an American old-time music, Piedmont blues, and neotraditional country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. He is a proficient player of the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. He is known as “The American Songster” as his repertoire of music spans nearly a century of American folklore, ballads, and tunes.[
Keb’ Mo’
Kevin Roosevelt Moore (born October 3, 1951), known as Keb’ Mo’, is an American blues musician and five-time Grammy Award winner. He is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, living in Nashville, Tennessee. He has been described as “a living link to the seminal Delta blues that traveled up the Mississippi River and across the expanse of America”. His post-modern blues style is influenced by many eras and genres, including folk, rock, jazz, pop and country.
Lead Belly
Huddie William Ledbetter (January 23, 1888 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer, musician, and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced.
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin (c. November 24, 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an African-American composer and pianist. Joplin is also known as the “King of Ragtime” because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, music that was born out of the African-American community.
Wilbur Sweatman
Wilbur Coleman Sweatman (February 7, 1882 – March 9, 1961) was an American ragtime and dixieland jazz composer, bandleader and clarinetist.
Eubie Blake
James Hubert “Eubie” Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American pianist, lyricist, and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans.
James P. Johnson
James Price Johnson (February 1, 1894 – November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording and one of the key figures in the evolution of ragtime into what was eventually called jazz.
Fats Waller
Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, violinist, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano.
Art Tatum
Arthur Tatum Jr. (October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest in his field.
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (October 20, c. 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz’s first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated.
Lil Armstrong
Lillian Hardin Armstrong (née Hardin; February 3, 1898 – August 27, 1971) was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader. She was the second wife of Louis Armstrong, with whom she collaborated on many recordings in the 1920s.
Note: It was an oversight of mine not to grab the playlist for Louis Armstrong. I’d be curious to see what the NMAAM curators thought his top 5 songs might be.
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Joseph Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, and first recorded several months before trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
King Oliver
Joseph Nathan “King” Oliver (December 19, 1881 – April 10, 1938) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong.
Kid Ory
Edward “Kid” Ory (December 25, 1886 – January 23, 1973) was an American jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of New Orleans jazz.
Cab Calloway
Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer, songwriter, dancer, bandleader, conductor and actor. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era.
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader.
Chick Webb
William Henry “Chick” Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer and band leader. In 1931, his band became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom in New York and in 1935 he began featuring a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.
Jimmie Rodgers
James Charles Rodgers (September 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as “the Father of Country Music”, he is best known for his distinctive rhythmic yodeling.
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing.
Memphis Jug Band
The Memphis Jug Band was an American musical group active from the mid-1920s to the late 1950s. The band featured harmonica, kazoo, fiddle and mandolin or banjolin, backed by guitar, piano, washboard, washtub bass and jug. They played slow blues, pop songs, humorous songs and upbeat dance numbers with jazz and string band flavors.
Jim Jackson
Jim Jackson (June 1876 – December 18, 1933) was an American blues and hokum singer, songster, and guitarist, whose recordings in the late 1920s were popular and influential on later musicians.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (born Rosetta Nubin, March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) was an American singer and guitarist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar that was extremely important to the origins of rock and roll.
T-Bone Walker
Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker (May 28, 1910 – March 16, 1975) was an American blues musician, composer, songwriter and bandleader, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds.
Odetta
Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”.
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, athlete, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.
Son House
Edward James “Son” House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
Elmore James
Elmore James (January 27, 1918 – May 24, 1963) was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and bandleader. He was known as “King of the Slide Guitar” and was noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.
Charlie Christian
Charles Henry Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist. Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar and a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. His single-string technique, combined with amplification, helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument.
Teddy Wilson
Theodore Shaw Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was an American jazz pianist. Described as “the definitive swing pianist”, Wilson had a sophisticated, elegant style.
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981)[1] was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records.
Bobby McFerrin
Robert Keith McFerrin Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is an American folk and jazz artist. He is known for his vocal techniques, such as singing fluidly but with quick and considerable jumps in pitch—for example, sustaining a melody while also rapidly alternating with arpeggios and harmonies—as well as scat singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and improvisational vocal percussion.
