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At a train station in Mississippi, musician W.C. Handy witnesses a bluesman playing guitar with a knife. -
The earliest blues songs, such as W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues," are released in the form of sheet music. -
The United States enters World War I, and military and economic mobilization speeds up the ongoing internal migration of African Americans. -
Mamie Smith records for Okeh Records, and her song "Crazy Blues" becomes the first blues hit, launching the era of "race" recordings. -
Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, iconic figures of classic blues, make their first recordings. -
Recordings by Papa Charlie Jackson and Daddy Stovepipe become the first male folk blues records to be released. -
Blind Lemon Jefferson makes his first recording and goes on to become the leading blues figure of the late 1920s and the first star of folk blues. -
Charley Patton, an early Delta bluesman, makes his first recording. -
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 starts on Black Thursday, marking the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States. As the economy collapses, record and phonograph sales greatly decline, devastating the record industry. -
Legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson starts his brief recording career. -
Eddie Durham records the first music featuring the electric guitar, a modern instrument developed in the early 1930s by musician George Beauchamp and engineer Adolph Rickenbacher, which will go on to transform the sound of blues.
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Alan Lomax records McKinley Morganfield, also known as Muddy Waters, for the Library of Congress at Stovall's Farm in Mississippi.
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Muddy Waters records in Chicago for the first time, starting his role as the leading figure in Chicago blues and an important connection between the Mississippi Delta and urban blues styles.
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Jerry Wexler, an editor at Billboard magazine, replaces the term "race records" with the new label "rhythm and blues."
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The Rolling Stones' first U.S. tour signals the beginning of the British blues rock invasion.
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Congress designates 2003 as the "Year of the Blues" to honor the 100th anniversary of W.C. Handy's encounter with an unknown early bluesman at a Mississippi train station.