>>King started as a so-called hillbilly label in 1943; moved into “race music”<<
“I wish EVERY day was Negro day!”
I get a kick out of the movie Hairspray.
On a related note, I have just about every Mom and Dads album made. I thought (pretty much still do) that they really sucked until I listened to them one day and realized how much they sounded like Guy Lumbardo. IOW, for their day, they were not bad. Which means that ANYTHING from that period that still comes off as entertaining and good was absolutely spectacular at the time!
The same guy who called some music “race music” was also the guy who called another music “hillbilly”. Only “hillbilly” never appears in quotes and is not explained as “so-called hillbilly music”.
It was Atlantic Records that reclassified such music as “Rhythm and Blues”. I don’t know who finally changed the term from the pejorative hillbilly to country-western.
Note too that while it seems offensive to call them “race music” and “hillbilly music”, BMI was willing to publish their songs whereas ASCAP practiced open discrimination against both classifications of music.
This is why when rockabilly and jump blues crashed together in rock and roll, ASCAP alleged a conspiracy to deny them the hit songs (that they REFUSED TO PUBLISH). They wanted to know why BMI had all the hits.