Black Music Trivia
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This black music trivia quiz has 109 free questions with answers and runs the whole story: field spirituals and the first blues recording, ragtime and the Harlem clubs, gospel and Motown, soul, funk and disco, then the Bronx block parties, Chicago house and Detroit techno that came after. You will meet Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, James Brown and Aretha Franklin, Prince and Whitney Houston, and end up with Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar. It works for a Black History Month classroom round, a music trivia night, or a solo test of how much you really know. The early questions are easy enough for anyone who has heard the radio; the later ones ask about labels, producers, chart records and the people behind the songs. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopedic source before it went in, and each question shows its explanation as soon as you answer, so you leave knowing a little more than when you started.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Aretha Franklin
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.
Q 02Which arranger and bandleader produced Michael Jackson's Thriller?
Quincy Jones
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.
Q 03Michael Jackson first showed the moonwalk to a TV audience on which 1983 special?
Motown 25
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.
Q 04Whitney Houston's biggest hit, 'I Will Always Love You', was written and first recorded by whom?
Dolly Parton
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.
Q 05Which singer was Whitney Houston's cousin?
Dionne Warwick
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.
Q 06Which 1965 song gave James Brown his first top-ten pop hit and first Grammy?
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag
'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.
Q 07Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' was picked to represent rock and roll on what?
The Voyager Golden Record
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.
Q 08Chuck Berry recorded his 1955 breakthrough 'Maybellene' for which label?
Chess Records
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'.
Q 09Beyoncé rose to fame in the late 1990s as lead singer of which group?
Destiny's Child
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.
Q 10Which Kendrick Lamar album was the first non-classical, non-jazz Pulitzer Music winner?
DAMN.
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.
Q 11Which 1979 single by the Sugarhill Gang took hip hop from the Bronx to the national Top 40?
Rapper's Delight
'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.
Q 12Which 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
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.
Q 13Alongside rapping, DJing and graffiti, what is the fourth principal element of hip hop?
Breakdancing
Q 21Jamie Foxx won the Best Actor Oscar for portraying which blind singer and pianist?
Ray Charles
Ray Charles died in June 2004, four months before Ray reached cinemas, so he never saw Jamie Foxx collect the Oscar for playing him.
Q 22Which No. 1 hit came from the 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music?
I Can't Stop Loving You
'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.
Q 23Which 1976 Stevie Wonder double album includes 'Sir Duke' and 'Isn't She Lovely'?
Songs in the Key of Life
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.
Q 14'The Message' (1982), a landmark of politically conscious rap, was released by which act?
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
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.
Q 15Run-DMC's 1986 crossover hit 'Walk This Way' was recorded with which rock band?
Aerosmith
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.
Q 16Louis Armstrong's 1964 recording of 'Hello, Dolly!' reached No. 1 by dislodging which act?
The Beatles
'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.
Q 17Which nickname belonged to New Orleans trumpeter Louis Armstrong?
Satchmo
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.
Q 18Which 1920 Mamie Smith record is regarded as the first blues recording by an African-American singer?
Crazy Blues
'Crazy Blues', written by Perry Bradford and cut for Okeh in August 1920, sold so well that record labels began seeking out Black singers.
Q 19Which composition is regarded as W. C. Handy's signature work?
Saint Louis Blues
'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.
Q 20B.B. King gave what name to his guitars, after a fire at a show in Twist, Arkansas?
Lucille
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.
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.
Q 24Berry Gordy's Detroit headquarters at 2648 West Grand Boulevard carried what nickname?
Hitsville U.S.A.
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.
Q 25In 1972 Berry Gordy's label moved its operations from Detroit to which city?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles drew Gordy with the chance to make films: that year his company released Lady Sings the Blues, starring Diana Ross.
Q 26Which Detroit girl group began in 1959 as the Primettes, a sister act to the Primes?
The Supremes
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.
Q 27Which song gave Marvin Gaye his first Hot 100 number one?
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
'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.
Q 28Which Prince film won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score?
Purple Rain
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.
Q 29Prince's home and recording complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota, is called what?
Paisley Park
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.
Q 30Which 1984 compilation is the best-selling reggae album of all time?
Legend
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.