African American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 1800s with the popularity of the Cuban contradanza (known outside of Cuba as the habanera). The "habanera rhythm" can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat. For the more than a quarter-century in which the cakewalk, ragtime and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the Cuban genre "habanera" exerted a constant presence in African American popular music. Jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton considered the tresillo/habanera rhythm (which he called the Spanish tinge) to be an essential ingredient of jazz. There are examples of tresillo-like rhythms in some African American folk music such as the hand-clapping and foot-stomping patterns in ring shout, post-Civil War drum and fife music, and New Orleans second line music. Wynton Marsalis considers tresillo to be the New Orleans "clave" (although technically, the pattern is only half a clave). Tresillo is the most basic duple-pulse rhythmic cell in Sub-Saharan African music traditions, and its use in African American music is one of the clearest examples of African rhythmic retention in the United States. The use of tresillo was continuously reinforced by the consecutive waves of Cuban music, which were adopted into North American popular culture. In 1940 Bob Zurke released "Rhumboogie," a boogie-woogie with a tresillo bass line, and lyrics proudly declaring the adoption of Cuban rhythm:  Although originating in the metropolis at the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans blues, with its Afro-Caribbean rhythmic traits, is distinct from the sound of the Mississippi Delta blues. In the late 1940s, New Orleans musicians were especially receptive to Cuban influences precisely at the time when R&B was first forming. The first use of tresillo in R&B occurred in New Orleans. Robert Palmer recalls:  In a 1988 interview with Palmer, Bartholomew (who had the first R&B studio band), revealed how he initially superimposed tresillo over swing rhythm: Bartholomew referred to the Cuban son by the misnomer "rumba", a common practice of that time. Fats Domino's "Blue Monday," produced by Bartholomew, is another example of this now classic use of tresillo in R&B. Bartholomew's 1949 tresillo-based "Oh Cubanas" is an attempt to blend African American and Afro-Cuban music.