R&B Trivia
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109 free R&B trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
60 free R&B trivia questions with answers. Rhythm and blues has been reinventing itself since Billboard first printed the phrase in 1949, and this quiz follows it the whole way. You'll get questions on the Atlantic and Motown eras, the 1970s giants like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, the new jack swing years, the 90s golden age of Boyz II Men, TLC, Mary J. Blige and Brandy, the 2000s of Usher, Alicia Keys and Beyoncé, and the current wave from Rihanna to SZA and the Weeknd. It works for a music trivia night, a road-trip playlist argument, or a classroom unit on Black American music. Early questions are for casual listeners; the later ones reward people who read liner notes. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article for the artist or genre in question, and each question shows the sentence that supports it once you answer. Sixty questions, free, no signup.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Billboard writer, later Aretha Franklin's producer, is credited with coining 'rhythm and blues' to replace 'race music'?
Jerry Wexler
Jerry Wexler proposed the term as a Billboard reporter because, as he wrote, the old label 'didn't sit well', and in June 1949 the magazine put his new name on its chart.
Q 02What was Billboard's first chart of records popular with African American listeners, from 1942, called?
Harlem Hit Parade
Harlem Hit Parade took its name from what it counted, the 'most popular records in Harlem'; Billboard retitled the chart Race Records in 1945 and Rhythm & Blues in 1949.
Q 03Ruth Brown's string of 1950s hits earned which label the nickname 'the house that Ruth built'?
Atlantic
Atlantic leaned on Brown's hits through the 1950s, yet she later had to press the label for back royalties, a fight that led to the founding of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1988.
Q 04Which singer nicknamed 'The Genius' pioneered soul in the 1950s and was later played by Jamie Foxx?
Ray Charles
Ray Charles built 'I Got a Woman' on a gospel tune he heard on the radio, giving it secular words, and that blend became one of the prototypes for soul music.
Q 05The Genius's first Billboard 200 number one, in 1962, was a collection of what kind of songs?
Country and western
Country and western standards sung his way won airplay on both country and R&B stations, and the album knocked the West Side Story soundtrack off the top of the chart.
Q 06Sam Cooke, the voice of 'A Change Is Gonna Come', died in 1964 after being shot by whom?
A motel manager
A motel manager, Bertha Franklin, said she fired in self-defence, and a coroner's jury ruled the shooting justifiable homicide; some of Cooke's family and friends have rejected that account.
Q 07Which singer known as 'Mr. Excitement' had hits with 'Lonely Teardrops' and 'Higher and Higher'?
Jackie Wilson
Jackie Wilson suffered a heart attack on stage in 1975 while singing 'Lonely Teardrops' and collapsed mid-song; he never performed again and spent his last years in care.
Q 08Which ballad, recorded in 1960, became Etta James's signature song?
At Last
At Last began as a big-band number written for a 1941 Glenn Miller film; James's recording, the title track of her debut album, turned it into the song she is remembered for.
Q 09Which was Motown's first Hot 100 number one?
Please Mr. Postman
Please Mr. Postman began as a blues song that the Marvelettes' Georgia Dobbins reworked for the schoolmates' Motown audition; the Beatles and the Carpenters later covered it.
Q 10By what name did the Detroit house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Motown's first headquarters, become known?
Hitsville U.S.A.
Hitsville U.S.A. was a house with a photography studio at the back when Gordy bought it in 1959; he turned that into the recording studio and moved his family in upstairs.
Q 11Which Motown songwriting team wrote ten of the Supremes' twelve Hot 100 number ones?
Holland–Dozier–Holland
Holland–Dozier–Holland left Motown in early 1968 after a dispute over royalties and profit sharing, and the Supremes topped the Hot 100 only twice more.
Q 12Which album won Stevie Wonder his third Album of the Year Grammy?
Songs in the Key of Life
Songs in the Key of Life won in 1977; the year before, Paul Simon had accepted the same award by jokingly thanking Wonder for not releasing an album that year.
Q 13The 1972 hit 'Superstition' is famous for the sound of which keyboard instrument?
Hohner Clavinet
Q 21Barry White's 1974 number-one instrumental hit was credited to which 40-piece ensemble he conducted?
Love Unlimited Orchestra
Love Unlimited Orchestra was put together in 1972 to back White's female vocal trio, Love Unlimited; its instrumental 'Love's Theme' first appeared on one of the trio's albums.
Q 22In which city did Maurice White start the Salty Peppers, the band he renamed Earth, Wind & Fire?
Chicago
Chicago was where White, a Chess Records session drummer, started the group in 1969; after moving to Los Angeles he renamed it for the elements of his astrological sign, Sagittarius.
Q 23Which singer led Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes on 'If You Don't Know Me by Now' before going solo?
Teddy Pendergrass
Hohner Clavinet riffs drive a song Wonder had promised to guitarist Jeff Beck; when Beck's album was delayed, Motown issued Wonder's own version first and it went to number one.
Q 14Aretha Franklin's 'Respect' was first recorded in 1965 by which singer, its credited writer?
Otis Redding
Otis Redding sang it as a man's plea for respect when he comes home; Franklin's cover turned the song around and added the 'sock it to me' lines.
Q 15In 1987 Aretha Franklin became the first woman inducted into which institution?
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honours reached her in the hall's second year: Keith Richards inducted her, and her brother Cecil and Clive Davis accepted on her behalf.
Q 16How did the singer of '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay', the first posthumous Hot 100 No. 1, die?
A plane crash
A plane crash in a Wisconsin lake killed him three days after he taped the song; guitarist Steve Cropper finished the mix afterwards, dubbing in the sounds of gulls and waves.
Q 17Which Motown singer's 1971 album What's Going On let him break free of the label's production system?
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye had to fight for it: in the usual telling, Berry Gordy dismissed the title track and Gaye refused to record anything more until Motown released it.
Q 18The 'Prince of Motown' was shot dead in 1984 by whom, one day before his 45th birthday?
His father
His father shot him with a revolver that the singer himself had given him, after an argument between the two turned into a physical fight at the family home.
Q 19Soul star Al Green took up which role at a Memphis church in 1976?
Pastor
Pastor Green kept singing pop until 1979, when he fell from a stage during a concert, took it as a message from God and turned to his church and to gospel records.
Q 20Which Al Green song topped the Hot 100 in 1972?
Let's Stay Together
Let's Stay Together was cut for Memphis's Hi Records with producer Willie Mitchell, who had coached Green to stop copying other soul stars and find a voice of his own.
Teddy Pendergrass joined as the group's drummer in 1970; when Harold Melvin heard him sing along during a show, he moved him up front as lead singer.
Q 24Chaka Khan first found fame in the 1970s as lead vocalist of which funk band?
Rufus
Rufus grew out of the rock band the American Breed and broke through in 1974 with 'Tell Me Something Good', a song written by Stevie Wonder.
Q 25Chaka Khan's debut solo single 'I'm Every Woman' later became a pop hit for which singer?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston had sung backing vocals for Khan as a 16-year-old session singer, and near the end of her cover she calls out Khan's name in tribute.
Q 26Which single topped the Hot 100 in 1984 while Prince also had the US No. 1 film and album?
When Doves Cry
When Doves Cry has no bass line: Prince took it out before release, an unusual choice for a dance track, and it still finished as Billboard's number-one single of the year.
Q 27Which producer, leader of the group Guy and later Blackstreet, is called the inventor of new jack swing?
Teddy Riley
Teddy Riley's sound got its name from a 1987 Village Voice profile of him, in which the writer Barry Michael Cooper coined the phrase 'new jack swing'.
Q 28Which 1980s Janet Jackson albums with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis made her a global star?
Control and Rhythm Nation 1814
Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 were both made in Minneapolis after she severed business ties with her father, who had managed her; Control's lyrics tell that story.
Q 29Anita Baker rose to fame in 1986 with which platinum album, home to the Grammy-winning 'Sweet Love'?
Rapture
Rapture came after a setback: the label that dropped her band Chapter 8 doubted she had star potential, and Baker went home to Detroit to wait tables and work in a law office.
Q 30Sade, the band behind 'Smooth Operator', formed in 1982 in which city?
London
London's Latin soul band Pride was where it began: singer Sade Adu and three bandmates broke away to write their own songs, and played their first show as Pride's support act.