James Ingram

USA for Africa was the name under which forty-seven predominantly U.S. artists, led by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, recorded the hit single... "We Are the World" in 1985. The song was a US and UK Number One for the collective in April of that year. This super group was inspired by Bob Geldof's Band Aid. The considerable profits from the enterprise went to the USA for Africa Foundation, which used them for the relief of famine and disease in Africa and specifically to 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia; critics, however, claim that this money went directly to the governments of the affected countries rather than the people. USA for Africa also held a benefit event, Hands Across America, in which approximately seven million people held hands in a human chain for fifteen minutes along a path across the continental United States. Participants paid ten dollars to stand in line and the money raised was used to fight hunger and homelessness in Africa. The combined revenues raised from the sales of "We Are the World" and Hands Across America was almost $100 million.
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Qwest Records is the American record label started by Quincy Jones in 1980 as a joint venture with Warner Bros. Records, and owned by Warner Music Group. although Jones was still under contract with A&M records through 1981. George Benson's 1980 Give Me the Night LP was the first release on... Qwest, although this release was shared with Warner Bros. Records, where George was under contract. One of the first artists signed to Qwest was goddaughter Patti Austin, producing Every Home Should Have One in 1981. Although it focused on the R&B market primarily, its most notable signings were Frank Sinatra , Tevin Campbell, Radiance, and British post-punk groups New Order and Joy Division. Quincy Jones - NME - May 1990 The label also ventured into hip hop music during the 1990s. Qwest also discovered R&B artist Tamia, who enjoyed a long career. The gospel group the Winans signed with the label in 1985. Tata Vega was also signed and released Now I See through Qwest. The joint venture was shut down in 2000, with Warner Bros. Records acquiring the remainder. The then-current roster was either absorbed by Warner Bros., dropped, or left in limbo.
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally... used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B". Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.
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