Cincinnati’s modern musical legacy begins with the blues and jazz during the early 20th century, two of the most influential musical genres in history. Though it never had a distinctive “sound,” such as New Orleans, Memphis or Chicago, Cincinnati did enjoy a wide range of styles. As Blacks migrated to the city from across the South, they brought their distinctive regional styles, and effectively made Cincinnati a melting pot for jazz, and especially blues music.
Well before the Civil War started, Cincinnati was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Today, the city honors this legacy with the award-winning National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in downtown. After the war, the Queen City became an important destination for former slaves and their descendants, especially after 1910, during what is now referred to as the “Great Migration.” Most of these migrants settled in the West End of Cincinnati, roughly located along the first mile of the present-day I-75 corridor north of the Ohio River. As a result, the West End became the cultural center for Blacks during the first half of the 20th century. This included music. From the 1920s through the 1950s, blues and jazz thrived in the West End. Neighborhood residents enjoyed numerous venues to watch, listen and dance to their favorite local and national acts. By far the most important nightclub during this period was the Cotton Club, which became the first racially integrated music venue in Cincinnati. Because the city stood at a major crossroads for touring artists during this era, the club attracted a wide variety of nationally-known entertainers, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Sarah Vaughn, Tiny Bradshaw, Lonnie Johnson, Mae West, and Pearl Bailey.
Before this timeframe, however, the Vocalstyle Music Company had already been established in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Founded in 1906, this innovative venture became the first manufacturer to print song lyrics on piano rolls, which allowed them to be read or sung as the music was played. A piano roll is a sheet of paper with punched holes, each representing a note. When the roll is fed through a player, the corresponding piano keys are struck, thus allowing automatic pianos to play themselves. Popular with middle-class families who couldn’t play music, piano rolls with printed lyrics functioned as primitive home karaoke systems at that time. During its peak, Vocalstyle recorded some of the most talented piano players of the day. Roughly a year after recording his first phonograph records in 1923, pioneering jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton recorded his first of fifteen piano rolls at Vocalstyle. Later in life, Morton claimed that he invented jazz in 1902. Though he was widely criticized for making this bold assertion, some jazz historians now believe it’s possible he may have been telling the truth.
Three years before Jelly Roll Morton made his first recordings in the Queen City, ragtime composer Artie Matthews and his wife, Annna, opened the Cosmopolitan School of Music in Cincinnati’s West End, which provided advanced musical education to young African Americans. The school was likely the first Black-owned conservatory in America. Matthews’ most famous student was Frank Foster, who became the principal arranger for the Count Basie Orchestra in 1954.
Though Foster wasn’t from the West End, the neighborhood produced its fair share of homegrown talent, some of whom would gain a degree of national attention. Artists from this period include Sam Jones (aka Stovepipe No. 1), The Cincinnati Jug Band, James "Pigmeat" Jarret, Big Joe Duskin, and James Mays. Many artists from this era sang about the West End neighborhood. For example, in 1936, Walter Coleman of The Cincinnati Jug Band recorded "I'm Going to Cincinnati," which had some rather colorful lyrics:
Now when you come to Cincinnati stop on Sixth and Main
That’s where the good hustling women get the good cocaine
Because I'm goin to Cincinnati, the times is good
I'm goin to Cincinnati where they eat fried food
And I'm goin to Cincinnati, boys, where the bottle is good
Unquestionably, Mamie Smith was the most famous musical artist to come out of Cincinnati during this period. Known as "The Queen of the Blues," Smith holds the distinction of being the first Black vocalist to record a song. Born in Cincinnati’s West End in 1891, Smith began her entertainment career at the age of ten as a dancer in a White act known as the Four Dancing Mitchells. At fifteen she left her hometown, and in 1913, moved to New York to sing in Harlem. In early 1920, she recorded two songs, which became the first tunes to be recorded by a Black vocalist. Later that same year she recorded "Crazy Blues." After selling more than a million copies within a year, "Crazy Blues" became the first genuine hit in the blues genre, as well as the first certified hit by a Black artist. Its success launched a new recording industry category known as "race records," and prompted record companies to seek other Black female blues singers. Reflecting its historical significance, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994, and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005. Several months after recording the tune, Smith went on tour, which included a stop in Cincinnati where she performed to a sold-out audience at Music Hall, a rare event for Black performers at that time. Though she retired from the music business in 1931, Smith appeared in several films before passing away in New York City in 1946, reportedly penniless.
By the 1940s and 50s, the West End blues scene was on the decline. However, this doesn’t mean that the blues had died in Cincinnati. Rather, it was more of the passing of old style country blues and the emergence of rhythm & blues and electric blues bands. This new era coincided with the emergence of King Records in 1943, an independent label that originally focused on making country (what was then known as “hillbilly music”), blues, and rhythm and blues records, but would eventually branch out to record other genres. Andy Leach, the Senior Director of Museum & Archival Collections for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, stated in a 2022 interview that “King Records really changed American music forever. From the early 40s through the early 70s, it really changed the way music was recorded, the way it was manufactured, and the way it was promoted.” Leach also mentioned that roughly 500 singles recorded at King Records charted on Billboard, with 32 reaching the #1 spot on the R&B, country, and pop charts between 1943 and 1971.
King of Them All
The number and range of nationally-known artists who recorded at King Records is truly amazing. Dozens have been inducted into the halls of fame in various genres. Among them include:
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME: James Brown, Hank Ballard, Freddie King, Albert King, Five Royales, Bootsy Collins, Roy Byrd (aka “Professor Longhair”), Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, The Platters, O’Jays
BLUES HALL OF FAME: Charles Brown, Wynonie Harris, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Freddie King, Johnny Otis, Eddie Vinson, Lonnie Johnson
RHYTHM AND BLUES HALL OF FAME: James Brown, Ohio Players, O’Jays, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, Bootsy Collins, Johnny Otis
COUNTRY HALL OF FAME: Grandpa Jones, Merle Travis, Delmore Brothers, Stanley Brothers, Bill Carlisle
Other notable artists who recorded at King include The Ink Spots, Lonnie Mack, Otis Williams and The Charms, Memphis Slim, Tiny Bradshaw, Bull Moose Jackson, Cowboy Copas, and Bonny Lou.
Without a doubt, the "Godfather of Soul," James Brown, was the most famous and most important artist on the King label. Most of his studio albums, starting with Please Please Please in 1958 through Sho Is Funky Down Here in 1971, were recorded at King. In fact, during that 13-year span, Brown recorded 23 albums at King Records. Additionally, the label also released several live albums, including the seminal Live at the Apollo. This phenomenal output clearly demonstrates why Brown was indeed "the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business!"
During his tenure at King Records, Brown recruited local bass guitarist, Bootsy Collins, to join his backing band in 1970. By this time, James Brown had already transitioned to a funk sound. In his original Cincinnati-based band, The Pacemakers, which formed in 1968, Bootsy Collins had also established himself as a pioneer in the emerging funk sound. Less than a year after joining Brown, however, Bootsy left to become the bassist in George Clinton’s funk rock group, Funkadelic, which eventually became known as Parliament-Funkadelic (or P-Funk). Today, Collins is widely recognized as one of the most important musicians in funk music history. Moreover, in 2020, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number 4 on their list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.
King Records’ success is attributed to its willingness to experiment with new sounds, as well as its colorblindness - in an era when communities were still mostly separated by race. The latter point is supported by a 1949 Cincinnati Post article titled, “Record Firm Here Smashes ‘Jim Crow’; Workers Positions, Pay Keyed to Ability.” The King Records website goes on to explain that “The fusion of Country & Western and Rhythm & Blues that led to Rock and Roll occurred at King Records because the company practiced racial integration at every level.” With artists from various genres on the label, the founder of King Records, Syd Nathan, created a melting pot for music, and was most likely the first producer to cross boundaries between musical genres. In 2017, Xavier University created an online exhibit of materials that provide an overview of King Records’ history. The university explained that:
Syd had white musicians play their version of a song in the King catalog that was originally performed by a black artist, and vice versa. In this way the white market would be exposed to a Country/Appalachian version of a popular Rhythm & Blues song, and again vice versa. It was Syd's way of doubling down by expanding his reach into both cultural markets. An unintended consequence of this marketing effort led to the introduction of new sounds and musical stylings in the late 40’s that resulted from the twang and melodies of Country guitars mingling with the rhythms of the R&B players. This open-mindedness and experimental sound combined with the risqué lyrics of 'jump blues' had a direct influence on the future sound of rock 'n roll.Many music enthusiasts cite the fusion of White artists with Black rhythm and blues music at Sun Records in the early 1950s—such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash—as the birth of rock & roll. However, as already mentioned, Syd Nathan preceded Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records in Memphis, by several years. Some musicologists also cite Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88,” also recorded by Phillips in 1951, as being the first rock & roll song. Turner, however, disagreed, explaining later that "I don't think that ‘Rocket 88’ is rock ‘n’ roll. I think that ‘Rocket 88’ is R&B, but I think ‘Rocket 88’ is the cause of rock and roll existing." Prior to this single, there were several other recordings that contend for the distinction of being the first rock and roll record. However, there’s no real consensus among historians. It’s probably best to understand that the genre developed and evolved over a period of time in several locations. Terry Stewart, the former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Director, once proclaimed that: “There are only three places in the world that can claim to be the birthplace of Rock & Roll: New Orleans, Memphis & Cincinnati.” Larry Nager, author of the book Memphis Beat, was quoted in the New York Times in 2009, stating: “While no single city has naming rights as the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll, the elements that made rock ’n’ roll — the blend of country, blues and the big beat — were being created at King Records.”
Wynonie Harris’s cover of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” in 1948 is also widely recognized as an early rock & roll single. Originally recorded by Roy Brown on Deluxe Records in 1947, Harris recorded a cover of the track at King Records in the following year. Though Brown enjoyed some success with the tune, Harris' version became a No. 1 hit on the R&B charts, and remained on Billboard for nearly half a year. Though Brown’s original version is arguably more advanced and closer to the early rock & roll sound than any of the Delmore Brothers recordings, the piano-driven Wynonie Harris cover is more energetic, and has far more swing. In fact, I hear a lot of Fats Domino in this song, who recorded his first track, "The Fat Man," in New Orleans in 1949, which is also often cited as one of the candidates for the first rock & roll single.
Elvis covered the song in 1954, which actually has more of a rockabilly sound, while featuring a country twang guitar. Thirty years later, Robert Plant recorded his version of the song, which he renamed as "Rockin' at Midnight” on his outstanding, but highly underrated EP, The Honeydrippers: Volume One. This version features even more swing.
During his tenure at King Records, Wynonie Harris scored fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952. Today, many music scholars consider him to be one of the founding fathers of rock & roll.
One other song from the King Records catalog that should be considered—but is often overlooked as an early rock & roll record—is Tiny Bradshaw’s “The Train Kept A-Rollin’.” Recorded in 1951, musicologists normally exclude it from consideration because it’s an upbeat jump blues tune. However, it’s been said that jump blues put the roll in rock & roll. Moreover, though it was rearranged to include guitars, The Johnny Burnette Trio’s rendition from 1956 was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll." If you need any more proof that this is a foundational rock & roll recording, it’s also been covered by The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Motorhead and Aerosmith. That in and of itself is a pretty strong vote of support!
Though seemingly forgotten after its demise in 1971, King Records’ groundbreaking legacy has been resurrected in recent years. In addition to the online exhibit on the Xavier University website, PBS produced an outstanding documentary about the label in 2025. King of Them All: the Story of King Records unearths the “untold story” of “the underdog label that transformed American music and culture.” I highly recommend this if you ever get a chance to see it.
The second installment in this four-part series explores how Cincinnati radio broadcasts and its recording studios shaped country and bluegrass, while highlighting some of the diverse homegrown talent that's emerged from the region.
Part 1: Embryonic Journey
Part 2: Green, Green Grass of Home
Part 3: The Kids Are Alright
Part 4: Live and Dangerous
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What are the chances that one of the most beloved movies of all time is artistically linked to one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded?
For the uninitiated, the “Dark Side of the Rainbow” theory asserts that Pink Floyd purposely synchronized The Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz. For those who have seen it, the mashup produces dozens of striking coincidences between the film and the album, where actions on the screen seemingly correspond to the lyrics, chords and musical moods of the Dark Side tracks.
So, is it real, a cosmic coincidence, an ingenious marketing ploy, or just another conspiracy theory? In addition to a complete viewing guide for the synchronicities, The Dark Side of the Rainbow explores a possible explanation for their existence. The book is now available in both paperback and eBook!
