Rhythm and Blues Foundation
organization
The Rhythm and Blues Foundation is an independent American nonprofit organization dedicated to the historical and cultural preservation of rhythm and blues music.
The idea for the foundation came in 1987 during discussions about royalties with entertainer Ruth Brown, entertainment attorney Howell Begle, and Ahmet Ertegun, the head of Atlantic Records. Ertegun provided a $1.5 million donation, and the foundation was officially established in 1988 in Washington, D.C., and in 2005 moved its offices to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The foundation provides financial support, medical assistance and educational outreach through various grants and programs to support R&B and Motown artists from the 1940s through the 1970s.
The Rhythm and Blues Foundation has also produced their Annual event the Pioneer Awards since the 1980s, then under the Direction of Suzan Jenkins, Executive Director. It also administered the Doc Pomus Financial Assistance Program, The Motown/Universal Music Group Fund, and the Gwendolyn B. Gordy Fuqua Fund providing emergency assistance to legendary aging artists.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rhythm and Blues Foundation” is organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rhythm, Blues and Foundation, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q835728. VIAF identifies the subject as 152882929. The Library of Congress control number is nr94007667. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1988 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rhythm and Blues Foundation” 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.