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This has been characterized as part of a process of the appropriation of credit for innovation of the then new music by a white establishment. There was a series of attempts to find (and a number of claimants to be) the "King of Rock 'n' Roll", a title that became most associated with Elvis Presley. These patterns of naming were transferred to rock and roll when it emerged in the 1950s. In the 1930s and 1940s, as jazz and swing music were gaining popularity, it was the more commercially successful white artists Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman who became known as "the King of Jazz" and "the King of Swing" respectively, despite there being more highly regarded contemporary African-American artists.
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culture, despite its republican constitution and ideology, honorific nicknames have been used to describe leading figures in various areas of activity, such as industry, commerce, sports, and the media father or mother have been used for innovators, and royal titles such as king and queen for dominant figures in a field.
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They were also particularly prominent in African-American culture in the post- Civil War era, perhaps as a means of conferring status that had been negated by slavery, and as a result entered early jazz and blues music, including figures such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Honorific nicknames were used in classical music in Europe even in the early nineteenth century, with figures such as Mozart being called "The father of modern music" and Bach "The father of modern piano music". Honorific nicknames in popular music are terms used, most often in the media or by fans, to indicate the significance of an artist, and are often religious, familial, or (most frequently) royal and aristocratic titles, used metaphorically. For other uses, see King of Rock and Roll (disambiguation), Queen of Pop (disambiguation) and King of Pop (disambiguation).
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