"The big band broke up in 1948, and guys like myself, Roy Milton and Sonny Thompson, who had big band backgrounds, when we went into the rhythm and blues thing, we would have liked to take our big bands with us. So when we broke down our big bands, here's how R&B was created: I had then a baritone, a tenor, a trumpet and a trombone. So I had a brass section and a reed section -- it wasn't long before I began to really like the little R&B band sound." - Johnny Otis. 1950 was Otis's inaugural year on the Billboard national charts and he was to dominate them continuously for a full twelve months from "Double-Crossing Blues" (featured here) onwards.