Before There Was an Industry They built a billion dollar music industry that rarely paid them. But the story does not begin with record labels, contracts, or studios. It begins before the industry existed at all. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black musicians were already professional workers. Music was not branding or content. It was labor. It happened anywhere people gathered. Juke joints after long workdays. Churches on Sundays. Street corners in busy towns. Riverboats moving goods and people along the Mississippi. These musicians were not amateurs. They were trained by tradition. Passed down melodies. Learned rhythm...