(upbeat background music) - When I was a kid, all my cousins were musicians and I started picking up the guitar and then the terminology R&B became out.

(upbeat background music) And it just affected me, you know, it affected me a lot because I felt like is it some sort of magic, you know?

I mean, really, you know, is it some sort of magic that they got that they can do this?

And no, it's not magic, you're just around it all the time where it's just natural.

(upbeat background music) (audience cheering) - What grabbed me most about R&B is, I guess the feeling.

Everybody always said, "Well, it's the feeling, it's the feeling, it's the feeling."

I don't really know.

It's in my blood somehow.

My name is Cleveland Kurtz.

I'm the president of the Rhode Island Rhythm and Blues Preservation Society.

We are doing what we can to preserve the music, doing what we can to celebrate the music and to record the history of the music.

I think that rhythm and blues and Rhode Island go together, they belong together.

Rhode Island was the place where freedom of religion originated, one of the places, probably the most important place.

And what that did was that destroyed boundaries between people.

Rhythm and blues does the same thing, right?

And so that's why I think they belong together.

(upbeat background music) The thing that is very unique about rhythm and blues is it brings people together.

People who are not ordinarily going to hang out together, when you start piping out the music they will show up, they will sing, play and dance together.

An art form that destroys barriers like they don't even exist.

(upbeat background music) - It's not white music, per se, It's African-American music.

And it really, the rhythm and blues was a term that was coined, really, I think by the record industry.

It's two types of music, good and bad.

It was really good.

And then people heard it and didn't matter what color you were, you liked it.

- Rhythm and blues started in the forties according to most people.

(upbeat background music) - I guess one of the premier tunes was Louie Jordan singing "Jump Blues" with his seven piece band.

(upbeat background music) You had Little Richard.

Later on Elvis Presley showed up.

(upbeat background music) It snuck across the English channel and groups like The Beatles and the Rolling Stones started to practice on it.

In Rhode Island, we had a club called The Celebrity Club and that was the place where most people, I think, that the races started to mingle and people started to get along because the music lend itself to that.

People from everywhere came to see the club, came to the club, white and blacks and everybody else in between and the music was the heart of it.

People came there because they love hearing the music.

Nothing could suit that kind of thing better if we're gonna select a music for our state as rhythm and blues, because it's the one that people go to to hear the most, people play live the most.

We contacted Representative Bennett and told him that we thought it was a wonderful idea, and he agreed with us.

- The way I got into rhythm and blues was through Cleveland Kurts, and he called me and started talking to me about, you know, the history of rhythm and blues and how it brought people together.

You know, I guess somebody told him I was a musician at one time, you know, and he wanted me to run a bill to see if we could get this to be the state music.

And I said, sure, I'd do that because it makes sense.

You want to blend in what's gonna capture all of Rhode Island.

(upbeat background music) Rhythm and blues is the blend of cultures and a blend of styles.

You know, you have your jazz, you have your blues, you have your rock.

Well, there's all touches to that in rhythm and blues.

It's kind of a dance kind of music and it appeals.

You know, Spanish, you know, the blacks, the whites, they all like that kind of music.

(upbeat background music) Paul Philippe, he started the Celebrity Club back in the forties.

(upbeat background music) He had some great people play there.

Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald.

People would go there to listen to music and because it attracted the different races they would blend in and have a good time.

And you know, back in 1940, 1950 that wasn't too much heard of.

- I mean, you name it, he was bringing in rhythm and blue stuff that you, you wouldn't believe.

But Paul lives as a legend in the Rhode Island, especially in the colored community.

The colored community tends to see him as someone who actually integrated the clubs here.

- You have to thank Mr. Philippi for doing this for Rhode Island, bringing that kind of music into our state.

And that's why I feel it should be, you know, the state music, because it crosses so many genres.

(upbeat background music) You want to blend in what you're gonna capture all of Rhode Island - The story is that because of the music, people from everywhere came to see the club, came to the club.

White and blacks and everybody else in between.

And that was happened long before, that was a common thing in Rhode Island.

And so the music overcame the barriers and I think that that's the thing that is significant.

And I believe that you can credit rhythm and blues with doing that on a worldwide basis.

R&B is everywhere.

It's sneaky in the sense that right now one of the world's favorite rhythm and blues singers is Adele from England.

(upbeat background music) So it's everywhere and everybody is doing it.

(upbeat background music) So rhythm and blues is here to stay, it's always gonna sneak in there, it's always gonna tear down barriers, and it's always gonna sound good.

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