 There are famous names in early American popular music. Scott Joplin is known as the King of Radtime, Bessie Smith as the Empress of the Blues, Duke Ellington, a master of jazz. But they're not who we're talking about today. Today, we're going to focus on some of the artists whose names you might not have heard of, but whose work was essential to the music industry in those early years, and by extension, to the work we hear today.