109 Fun Facts About Black Music

Who was the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Aretha Franklin was inducted in 1987 by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, but she was not on stage to hear it: her brother Cecil and Clive Davis accepted the honour for her.

Which arranger and bandleader produced Michael Jackson's Thriller?

Quincy Jones worked with Jackson on the 1978 film The Wiz, where the singer played the Scarecrow, and that job led to Jones producing his next solo album. Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad followed.

Michael Jackson first showed the moonwalk to a TV audience on which 1983 special?

Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, taped in March 1983 and aired on NBC that May, is where Jackson's 'Billie Jean' performance popularised the moonwalk.

Whitney Houston's biggest hit, 'I Will Always Love You', was written and first recorded by whom?

Dolly Parton wrote it in 1973 as a farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner. When Elvis Presley's manager asked for half the publishing rights before he would record it, she turned him down.

Which singer was Whitney Houston's cousin?

Dionne Warwick and Whitney Houston were first cousins: Whitney's mother, Cissy Houston of the Sweet Inspirations, was Warwick's aunt, and Cissy started out in the family gospel group that Warwick's mother managed.

Which 1965 song gave James Brown his first top-ten pop hit and first Grammy?

'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' reached No. 8 on the Hot 100 in 1965 and won Brown the Grammy for Best R&B Recording; its stripped-down, interlocking rhythm became the template for funk.

Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' was picked to represent rock and roll on what?

The Voyager Golden Record carries it into deep space; when a colleague objected that rock music was adolescent, Carl Sagan replied that there are a lot of adolescents on the planet.

Chuck Berry recorded his 1955 breakthrough 'Maybellene' for which label?

Chess Records, the Chicago blues label of Leonard and Phil Chess, released 'Maybellene' in 1955; Berry had reworked it from the country fiddle tune 'Ida Red'.

Beyoncé rose to fame in the late 1990s as lead singer of which group?

Destiny's Child began as Girl's Tyme, which lost on the TV talent show Star Search; renamed, the Houston group topped the Hot 100 with 'Bills, Bills, Bills' in 1999.

Which Kendrick Lamar album was the first non-classical, non-jazz Pulitzer Music winner?

DAMN. won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music; Lamar had built the album to play in reverse order too, and released a collectors' edition with the track list flipped.

Which 1979 single by the Sugarhill Gang took hip hop from the Bronx to the national Top 40?

'Rapper's Delight' reached No. 36 on the Hot 100; its backing track replayed Chic's 'Good Times', and Chic's writers won songwriting credits after threatening to sue.

Which DJ's 1973 back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx is celebrated as the birth of hip hop?

DJ Kool Herc played his sister's party in the building's recreation room, switching between two copies of a record to stretch out the drum passages the crowd loved.

Alongside rapping, DJing and graffiti, what is the fourth principal element of hip hop?

Breakdancing, or b-boying, grew up around the drum breaks that early Bronx DJs stretched out, because that was when dancers saved their best moves.

'The Message' (1982), a landmark of politically conscious rap, was released by which act?

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released 'The Message' on Sugar Hill Records in 1982; Melle Mel's verses about life in the projects broke from the party rhymes of early rap.

Run-DMC's 1986 crossover hit 'Walk This Way' was recorded with which rock band?

Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry joined Run-DMC on the 1986 'Walk This Way', which reached No. 4, put rap on MTV's rock-heavy rotation and revived Aerosmith's career.

Louis Armstrong's 1964 recording of 'Hello, Dolly!' reached No. 1 by dislodging which act?

'Hello, Dolly!' knocked The Beatles' 'Can't Buy Me Love' off No. 1 in May 1964, ending their 14-week run at the top; Armstrong, then 62, spent 22 weeks on the chart.

Which nickname belonged to New Orleans trumpeter Louis Armstrong?

Satchmo, short for 'satchel mouth', was Louis Armstrong's best-known nickname; he was also called Satch and Pops, and rose to fame with his Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of the 1920s.

Which 1920 Mamie Smith record is regarded as the first blues recording by an African-American singer?

'Crazy Blues', written by Perry Bradford and cut for Okeh in August 1920, sold so well that record labels began seeking out Black singers.

Which composition is regarded as W. C. Handy's signature work?

'Saint Louis Blues', published in 1914, is Handy's best-known work; he called himself the 'Father of the Blues' and used the phrase as the title of his 1941 autobiography.

B.B. King gave what name to his guitars, after a fire at a show in Twist, Arkansas?

Lucille: two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a kerosene heater at a 1949 dance in Twist, Arkansas; King ran back into the blaze for his guitar and named it, and every successor, after her.

Jamie Foxx won the Best Actor Oscar for portraying which blind singer and pianist?

Ray Charles died in June 2004, four months before Ray reached cinemas, so he never saw Jamie Foxx collect the Oscar for playing him.

Which No. 1 hit came from the 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music?

'I Can't Stop Loving You' was a Don Gibson country song, written the same day as his 'Oh Lonesome Me'; the 1962 cover topped three Billboard charts at once.

Which 1976 Stevie Wonder double album includes 'Sir Duke' and 'Isn't She Lovely'?

Songs in the Key of Life won Album of the Year, Wonder's third; the year before, Paul Simon had thanked him from the stage for not releasing an album.

Berry Gordy's Detroit headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard carried what nickname?

Hitsville U.S.A. was Gordy's own hopeful name for the two-storey house he bought in 1959; he lived upstairs while the studio at the back ran 22 hours a day.

In 1972 Berry Gordy's label moved its operations from Detroit to which city?

Los Angeles drew Gordy with the chance to make films: that year his company released Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross.

Which Detroit girl group began in 1959 as the Primettes, a sister act to the Primes?

The Supremes got their name when Berry Gordy signed the Primettes in 1961 but wanted a new one: Florence Ballard picked it from a list of suggestions.

Which song gave Marvin Gaye his first Hot 100 number one?

'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' sat unreleased after Berry Gordy passed over Gaye's recording; it only became a single once radio DJs started playing it off his 1968 album.

Which Prince film won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score?

Purple Rain won Prince the Oscar for Best Original Song Score; he wrote 'When Doves Cry' overnight when the director asked for one more song, then pulled out its bass line.

Prince's home and recording complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota, is called what?

Paisley Park was Prince's home, studio and soundstage; he died there in April 2016, and that October it opened for public tours, which his sister said he had always wanted.

Which 1984 compilation is the best-selling reggae album of all time?

Legend, released three years after Bob Marley's death, became the best-selling reggae album ever; its track list favours his mellow love songs over the angrier protest ones.

Which 1959 Miles Davis album is the landmark recording of modal jazz?

Kind of Blue was recorded in two sessions with almost no rehearsal: Davis gave the band only sketches of scales to improvise on, in place of bebop's dense chord changes.

A 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald won first prize at an amateur night in 1934 at which Harlem venue?

The Apollo Theater's amateur night in November 1934 launched Ella Fitzgerald: she had planned to dance, lost her nerve and sang instead, and won first prize.

Which nickname did saxophonist Lester Young give Billie Holiday?

Lady Day was Young's play on her surname; she returned the favour by calling him 'Prez', short for President, and the two were close musical partners for years.

'Strange Fruit', the 1939 protest song Billie Holiday made famous, was written by whom?

Abel Meeropol, a Bronx schoolteacher, set his own poem to music; he and his wife later adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after the couple's execution.

From late 1927 Duke Ellington's orchestra was the house band at which Harlem nightspot?

The Cotton Club's radio broadcasts carried Duke Ellington's orchestra across the country, and the residency pushed him to enlarge the band and write on a bigger scale.

Which Billy Strayhorn composition became the theme song of Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1941?

Take the A Train grew out of the subway directions Ellington gave Strayhorn for reaching his Harlem home; Strayhorn said writing it was like writing a letter to a friend.

Which 1899 composition made Scott Joplin's name as the leading composer of ragtime?

'Maple Leaf Rag', published by John Stark of Sedalia, Missouri, paid Joplin a royalty of one cent a copy, which gave the 'King of Ragtime' a steady income for the rest of his life.

Which ex-Soul Stirrers singer topped the pop chart in 1957 with 'You Send Me'?

Sam Cooke had tested the water with a pop single under the name Dale Cook, hoping gospel fans would not notice; under his own name, 'You Send Me' reached No. 1.

Little Richard's breakthrough single, recorded in September 1955, was which song?

'Tutti Frutti' began as a bawdy club number; songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie was brought in to clean up the words at the session, and the record became his first major hit.

Which Otis Redding song became the first posthumous No. 1 single in the US?

(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay was recorded three days before Redding died in a plane crash; guitarist Steve Cropper mixed it afterwards, dubbing in the waves and seagulls.

Which 1984 song gave Tina Turner her first and only Hot 100 number one?

'What's Love Got to Do with It' had been turned down for Cliff Richard, and Turner disliked it at first; at 44 she became the oldest solo woman to have topped the Hot 100 at the time.

In 2013 Tina Turner gave up her US citizenship to become a citizen of which country?

Tina Turner became a citizen of Switzerland in 2013 and relinquished her US passport; she had lived near Zurich with husband Erwin Bach since the 1990s and died there in May 2023.

Which singer and pianist, the 'High Priestess of Soul', was born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina?

Nina Simone invented the name in 1954 to hide a job playing piano in an Atlantic City bar from her mother, a Methodist preacher; the owner insisted she sing as well.

Which gospel singer performed 'How I Got Over' at the 1963 March on Washington?

Mahalia Jackson sang twice that day: 'How I Got Over' and, at Martin Luther King's request, the spiritual 'I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned', shortly before his 'I Have a Dream' speech.

Which African instrument did Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White make a trademark of the band's sound?

The kalimba, a thumb piano White picked up in a Chicago drum store while drumming for the Ramsey Lewis Trio, became his trademark; he named his production company Kalimba Productions.

Which artist's 1998 solo debut was the first hip-hop album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

Lauryn Hill took the sessions to Jamaica, recording at Tuff Gong, the studio in Bob Marley's old home; The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill won her five Grammys in one night.

Which producer worked with Donna Summer on the futuristic 1977 hit 'I Feel Love'?

Giorgio Moroder, with Pete Bellotte, built 'I Feel Love' almost entirely on a Moog synthesizer in Munich in 1977; it reached No. 6 in the US and topped the UK chart.

The name 'house music' is said to come from the Warehouse, a Chicago club whose resident DJ was who?

Frankie Knuckles moved from New York to become the Warehouse's resident DJ in 1977 and left in 1982 to open his own club, the Power Plant; he is remembered as the 'godfather of house'.

The squelchy Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer defines which subgenre of dance music?

Acid house is built on the TB-303's squelch: Roland's bass machine sold poorly and was dropped in 1984, until Chicago's Phuture started twisting its knobs mid-pattern on 'Acid Tracks'.

The Belleville Three, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, pioneered which electronic genre in 1980s Detroit?

Techno grew from the school friends' love of Kraftwerk's electronic pop and of futurist Alvin Toffler's talk of 'techno rebels'; Belleville is the Detroit-area town where they met.

In 1949 Billboard renamed its 'Race Records' chart with which term, coined by its writer Jerry Wexler?

Rhythm and blues was Wexler's replacement for chart names the record companies found demeaning; the chart had begun in 1942 as the Harlem Hit Parade.

Which university's Jubilee Singers set out in 1871 to save their school and brought spirituals to concert halls?

Fisk University's singers toured to rescue the school from debt; the proceeds built Jubilee Hall, and in 1873 they sang for Queen Victoria.

Jimi Hendrix played 'The Star-Spangled Banner' on August 18, 1969, at which festival?

Woodstock ran so far behind schedule that Hendrix, its closing act, did not play until the morning of Monday 18 August, when the three-day festival was meant to be over.

Which Al Green song, made with Memphis producer Willie Mitchell, topped the Hot 100 in 1972?

'Let's Stay Together' went to No. 1 on the pop and R&B charts; four years later Green opened his own Memphis church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle, and became its pastor.

Which Stax songwriter won the 1972 Oscar for Best Original Song with 'Theme from Shaft'?

Isaac Hayes began at Stax as a session keyboard player and co-wrote 'Soul Man' for Sam & Dave before becoming a recording star himself.

Which Stax house band hit No. 3 in 1962 with the organ instrumental 'Green Onions'?

Booker T. & the M.G.'s jammed 'Green Onions' in studio time left over when a session with another singer fell through; organist Booker T. Jones was 17, and the mixed-race quartet went on to back Otis Redding.

Which label did Berry Gordy found with an $800 family loan on January 12, 1959?

Tamla Records was Gordy's second choice: he wanted to call it Tammy, after the Debbie Reynolds hit, but the name was already taken.

How many top-10 hits did Motown score between 1961 and 1971?

Motown notched 110 top-10 hits between 1961 and 1971, led by the Supremes, Four Tops and Jackson 5 on the Motown imprint and Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye on Tamla.

Which songwriting team quit Motown in the late 1960s after a dispute over royalties?

Holland-Dozier-Holland staged a work slowdown over royalties, then left to start their own labels, Invictus and Hot Wax, where they made hits such as Freda Payne's 'Band of Gold'.

Which song did Big Mama Thornton take to the top of the R&B chart three years before Elvis Presley recorded it?

Hound Dog was written for Thornton by the 19-year-old songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and her version spent seven weeks at number one on the R&B chart.

Black Music Month, launched from the White House in 1979, is celebrated across the United States in which month?

June has been Black Music Month since 1979. President Obama renamed it African-American Music Appreciation Month in 2009, and the original name returned in 2023.

Which instrument did Lizzo play at a 2022 concert when the Library of Congress brought out James Madison's crystal one?

Flute is what Lizzo studied at the University of Houston, and she has named her own instrument Sasha Flute.

Which Louis Armstrong ballad topped the UK chart in 1968 yet first sold under 1,000 copies in the United States?

What a Wonderful World flopped at home because the president of ABC Records disliked its slow pace and refused to promote it.

Which album made Beyoncé the first Black woman this century to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

Cowboy Carter also made her the first Black artist to win Best Country Album and the first Black woman with a number-one country album.

Which music and dance show, created and hosted by Don Cornelius, aired in national syndication from 1971 to 2006?

Soul Train spent a year as a local programme on Chicago's WCIU-TV before going national, and it ran for more than 1,100 episodes.

Which James Weldon Johnson hymn, first performed by 500 students in 1900, is called the Black national anthem?

Lift Every Voice and Sing began as a poem for Abraham Lincoln's birthday, and by 1919 the NAACP was promoting it as a national anthem for Black Americans.

Which contralto sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being refused Constitution Hall because of her race?

Marian Anderson drew an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 that Easter Sunday, and in 1955 she became the first Black American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera.

Which Mississippi bluesman, who died aged 27 in 1938, is said to have sold his soul at a crossroads?

Robert Johnson recorded just 29 songs, in two sessions in San Antonio and Dallas, and several of them became blues standards.

Which string instrument of American folk music descends from gourd instruments made by enslaved West Africans?

Banjo forerunners were crafted from split gourds with animal skins stretched across them, and were played in the Caribbean and North America from the 17th century.

Which singer's 1960 recording turned "At Last", a tune from a 1941 film musical, into her signature song?

Etta James reworked a tune that Glenn Miller's orchestra had taken to number two in 1942, and her version entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Which Motown group scored a first number one in 1965 with "My Girl", written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White?

The Temptations got the song after Robinson saw David Ruffin sing a solo spot on tour and decided to produce a single with him on lead vocals.

Which civil rights anthem did the US president quote to Congress in 1965 after the Bloody Sunday attacks at Selma?

We Shall Overcome was sung by more than 50,000 mourners at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., who had recited its words in his final Sunday sermon.

Which American-born star of 1920s Paris became, in 2021, the first Black woman honoured in France's Panthéon?

Josephine Baker earned the honour partly as a spy: she smuggled intelligence for the French Resistance during World War II and was decorated by Charles de Gaulle.

Which Virginia-born producer became the first female rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, in 2019?

Missy Elliott was only the third rapper of any gender to get in, after Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri, and in 2023 she became the first female rapper in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which trio became the first girl group awarded a diamond album, for CrazySexyCool, home of the hit "Waterfalls"?

TLC saw CrazySexyCool certified 12-times platinum, and it became the best-selling album by an American girl group.

Which pianist and singer won five Grammys in one night in 2002 after releasing her debut album, Songs in A Minor?

Alicia Keys began writing the album at 14, and it entered the Billboard 200 at number one.

Which Chicago blues pioneer's 1950 song "Rollin' Stone" gave the Rolling Stones their name?

Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, is often cited as the father of modern Chicago blues, and the British rockers he inspired later recorded albums with him.

Which fast, intricate jazz style, made for listening instead of dancing, did Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie pioneer?

Bebop got its name, Gillespie said, when audiences asked for the untitled tunes by imitating the scat syllables he sang to his players.

Which 1920s recording star, billed as the Mother of the Blues, did Viola Davis portray in an Oscar-nominated 2020 role?

Ma Rainey is the subject of an August Wilson play, a fictionalised account of a 1927 recording session, which the film adapted.

Which gospel star with an electric guitar, wed before 25,000 paying fans, is dubbed the Godmother of Rock and Roll?

Rosetta Tharpe's 1940s electric guitar recordings have been cited as an influence on Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash named her his favourite singer as a child.

Which girl group gave Motown its first Hot 100 number one in 1961 with their debut single, "Please Mr. Postman"?

The Marvelettes were still known as the Marvels when they auditioned that April, and the Carpenters took the same song back to number one in 1975.

Which singer became the first artist to win the Record of the Year Grammy two years running, in 1973 and 1974?

Roberta Flack won for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, the biggest hit of 1972, and then for Killing Me Softly with His Song.

Which network of theatres and clubs sustained Black entertainers across the South and Midwest during segregation?

Chitlin' Circuit comes from chitterlings, and the name also plays on the Borscht Belt, the Catskills resorts that were popular with Jewish performers.

At which New Orleans gathering place, now inside Louis Armstrong Park, did enslaved Africans sing and dance on Sundays?

Congo Square became the one place such gatherings were allowed under an 1817 city ordinance, and townsfolk came on Sunday afternoons to watch.

Which Midwestern jazz hub of the 1930s produced the Count Basie band and was the hometown of Charlie Parker?

Kansas City had gathered enough jazz talent by the mid-1930s to rival New York and Chicago, and Basie learned his trade there in Bennie Moten's orchestra.

Which Arkansas-born composer became, in 1933, the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major US orchestra?

Florence Price was rediscovered after 2009, when a substantial collection of her works and papers turned up in her abandoned summer home.

James Brown's televised concert the night after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination was staged to calm which city?

Boston's mayor considered cancelling the Boston Garden show, then had public television carry it live so that people would stay home to watch.

Which singer, crowned the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, made her 1992 debut album with the producer Sean Combs?

Mary J. Blige was born in the Bronx and raised in Yonkers, and Rolling Stone later ranked that debut among its 500 greatest albums of all time.

Which 1964 Martha and the Vandellas hit, co-written by Marvin Gaye, stalled at number two behind Manfred Mann?

Dancing in the Street was first tried in the studio by Gaye himself, Martha Reeves recalled, before her group cut the version that became a hit.

Which rapper became the first woman to win the Grammy for Best Rap Album as a solo artist, for Invasion of Privacy?

Cardi B's album also sent both Bodak Yellow and I Like It to number one on the Hot 100, making her the first female rapper to top that chart more than once.

Diana Ross earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for playing Billie Holiday in which 1972 film, her screen debut?

Lady Sings the Blues is loosely based on Holiday's 1956 autobiography, and the cast alongside Ross included Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor.

Whitney Houston's national anthem, issued as a Gulf War charity single, was performed at which sporting event?

The Super Bowl of January 1991 hosted the performance, and a 2001 reissue of the single climbed to number six, the only anthem recording to reach the Hot 100's top ten.

Which saxophonist recorded A Love Supreme, a four-part spiritual suite, in a single session in December 1964?

John Coltrane's album is treated as a central text by a San Francisco congregation named after him, the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church.

Which country singer, once a Negro league baseball player, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000?

Charley Pride signed with RCA in 1965, and in 1971 the Country Music Association named him its Entertainer of the Year.

Which singer and jazz pianist hosted an NBC variety series from 1956 that never found a national sponsor?

Nat King Cole had only a regional beer brand behind the programme, and after it ended he remarked that Madison Avenue was afraid of the dark.

Harry Belafonte's 1956 album, credited as the first million-selling LP, is named after which Caribbean music style?

Calypso spent 31 weeks at number one, led by an opening track sung from the point of view of dock workers loading bananas on the night shift.

Which accordion-led genre was created in rural Louisiana by French-speaking African Americans of Creole heritage?

Zydeco pairs the accordion with a washboard worn like a vest, and one theory traces its name to a Louisiana French phrase about snap beans.

Which Oscar-winning 2021 documentary, directed by Questlove, revived footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival?

Summer of Soul drew on about 40 hours of videotape that the television producer Hal Tulchin shot across six Sundays in a Harlem park.

Which Father of Gospel Music wrote "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" in 1932 after his wife and newborn son died?

Thomas A. Dorsey had been one of Chicago's top blues composers, and he went on to pen some 3,000 songs, a third of them gospel, including Peace in the Valley.

Which Prince single, Billboard's top-selling single of 1984, is famous for having no bass line at all?

When Doves Cry did have a bass part at first, but Prince took it out after deciding the song sounded too conventional with it.

Which Michael Jackson single had the first video by a Black artist to air in heavy rotation on MTV, in 1983?

Billie Jean reached MTV, by the account of CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff, only after he threatened to pull all of the label's videos and go public about the network's refusal.

Which early-1980s Stevie Wonder song was written to campaign for a holiday honouring Martin Luther King Jr.?

Happy Birthday helped popularise the cause, and President Reagan signed the holiday into law in November 1983.

Which 1985 charity single, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, was recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa?

We Are the World began with Harry Belafonte, who wanted an American answer to Band Aid, and Jackson and Richie finished writing it the night before the first session.

Which 1988 Tracy Chapman song won the CMA Song of the Year award in 2023 after Luke Combs covered it?

Fast Car made Chapman the first Black songwriter to win that country award, decades after her own recording earned her a Grammy.

Which 1988 Bobby McFerrin hit became the first a cappella song to reach number one on the Hot 100?

Don't Worry, Be Happy uses no instruments at all: every sound is McFerrin's overdubbed voice, and it won Song and Record of the Year at the 1989 Grammys.

Public Enemy wrote their 1989 anthem "Fight the Power" at the request of Spike Lee for which of his films?

Do the Right Thing uses the track as a recurring theme for the racial tension in its Brooklyn neighbourhood, and Lee also directed the music video.

Which 1981 Rick James funk hit supplied the opening riff sampled throughout MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"?

Super Freak earned James a songwriting credit on the 1990 smash after he filed a copyright lawsuit over the sample.

Whitney Houston's hit "Greatest Love of All" was first recorded in 1977 by which guitarist for a Muhammad Ali biopic?

George Benson took the original to number two on the soul chart, and Houston's cover, recorded in 1984, topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in 1986.

Which 1980 Kurtis Blow single became the first rap song to earn a gold certification from the RIAA?

The Breaks was only the second 12-inch single of any genre to go gold, even though it climbed no higher than number 87 on the Hot 100.