Pilgrimage in Music Part 5: 1920 -1925 Music Facts & Events

1920 Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues is the first blues by a black singer to become a nation-wide hit



Westinghouse Electric starts the first commercial radio station, "KDKA"

1921 106 million records are sold in the USA, mostly published on "Tin Pan Alley", but control of the market is shifting to the record companies


Okeh introduces a "Colored Catalog" targeting the black community, the first series of "race records"





1922 The words "rock" and "roll", which were black slang for sexual intercourse, appear on record for the first time, Trixie Smith's "My Baby Rocks Me With One Steady Roll".



James Sterling buys out the British division of Columbia

1923 Bessie Smith cuts her first blues record
John Carson records two "hillbilly" songs and thus founds country music

1924 The Music Corporation of America (MCA) is founded in Chicago as a talent agency
German record company Deutsche Grammophon (DG) founds the Polydor company to distribute records abroad

Riley Puckett introduces the "yodeling" style of singing into country music

1925 The Mills Brothers popularize the "barbershop harmonies"

Carl Sprague is the first musician to record cowboy songs
(the first "singing cowboy" of country music)

the electrical recording process is commercially introduced, quickly replacing the mechanical one

78.26 RPM is chosen as a standard for phonographic records because
phonographs at that speed could use a standard 3600-rpm motor and 46-tooth
gear (78.26 = 3600/46).


Nashville's first radio station is founded (WSM) and begins broadcasting a
program that will change name to "Grand Ole Opry"


For a most detailed music timeline, you can visit www.scaruffi.com/music