Lists of Billboard number-one rhythm and blues hits
Open-knowledge reference entry
Linked here are Billboard magazine's number-one rhythm and blues hits. The Billboard R&B chart is today known as the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
History
From May 22, 1948 to October 13, 1958, multiple charts were published, which explains the overlap in the dates of the charts. Previously, Harlem Hit Parade, created in 1942, had listed the “most popular records in Harlem" and another chart, "Race Records Juke Box", was created in 1945; in 1948, a parallel chart was added: "Race Record Best Sellers". (The term "race music" originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.) All of these were renamed as R&B charts in 1949. A third, "Jockeys" chart, based on radio airplay, was introduced in 1955, and a unified chart was only introduced in 1958. Because of the existence of multiple charts, some dates had more than one number-one song during the week.
Gap in the chart
From November 30, 1963 to January 23, 1965 there was no Billboard R&B singles chart. Some publications have used Cashbox magazine's stats in their place. No specific reason has ever been given as to why Billboard ceased releasing R&B charts, but the prevailing wisdom is that the chart methodology used was being questioned, since more and more white acts were reaching number-one on the R&B chart.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3662884. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1958, 1942 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lists of Billboard number-one rhythm and blues hits” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.