In the early days of genres we now know as folk and blues, much of the difference between the genres lay not in the themes of the songs or the way singers used songs to express their struggles, but in the race of the singer. The first recordings of American folk and blues music became widely available in the 1920s — enjoy the Mamie Smith hit, “Crazy Blues.” Folk records essentially fell into two camps: “race recordings,” which was the term for records featuring African-American musicians, marketed primarily to African-Americans (though musically-aware whites did seek them out), and “hillbilly music,” which was music performed by Appalachian whites, and marketed to a mainly white audience.
