BLUES
W.C. Handy |
Joseph Machlis says that the blues is a native American musical
and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which
we know. In other words, it is a blending of both traditions. Something
special and entirely different from either of its parent traditions. (Although
Alan Lomax cites some examples of very similar songs having been found
in Northwest Africa, particularly among the Wolof and Watusi).
The word 'blue' has been associated with the idea of melancholia or depression
since the Elizabethan era. The American writer Washington Irving
is credited with coining the term 'the blues', as it is now defined,
in 1807. The earlier (almost entirely Negro) history of the blues
musical tradition is traced through oral tradition as far back as the
1860s. When African and European music first began to merge to create
what eventually became the blues, the slaves sang songs filled with words
telling of their extreme suffering and privation. One of the many responses
to their oppressive environment resulted in the field holler. The field
holler gave rise to the spiritual, and the blues, notable among all human
works of art for their profound despair . . .
Willie Dixon |
They gave voice to the mood of alienation and anomie that prevailed in
the construction camps of the South, for it was in the Mississippi
Delta that blacks were often forcibly conscripted to work on
the levee and land-clearing crews, where they were often abused and then
tossed aside or worked to death. Alan Lomax states that the blues
tradition was considered to be a masculine discipline (although some of
the first blues songs heard by whites were sung by 'lady' blues singers
like Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith) and not many black women
were to be found singing the blues in the juke-joints. The Southern
prisons also contributed considerably to the blues tradition through
work songs and the songs of death row and murder, prostitutes, the warden,
the hot sun, and a hundred other privations. (Lomax) The prison road crews
and work gangs where were many bluesmen found their songs, and where many
other blacks simply became familiar with the same songs. Following the
Civil War the blues arose as a distillate of the African music brought
over by slaves. Field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance
tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage
in call-and-response with his guitar. He would sing a line, and the guitar
would answer it. By the 1890s the blues were sung in many of the rural
areas of the South. And by 1910, the word 'blues' as applied to
the musical tradition was in fairly common use.
B.B.King |
Some 'bluesologists' claim (rather dubiously), that the first
blues song that was ever written down was 'Dallas
Blues,' published in 1912 by Hart Wand, a white violinist
from Oklahoma City. The blues form was first popularized about 1911-14
by the black composer WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER HANDY (1873-1958). However,
the poetic and musical form of the blues first crystallized around 1910
and gained popularity through the publication of W.C. Handy's 'Memphis
Blues' (1912) and 'St. Louis Blues'
(1914). Instrumental blues had been recorded as early as 1913. Mamie Smith
recorded the first vocal blues song, 'Crazy Blues'
in 1920. Priestly claims that while the widespread popularity of the blues
had a vital influence on subsequent jazz,
it was the initial popularity of jazz which had made possible the recording
of blues in the first place, and thus made possible the absorption of
blues into both jazz as well as the mainstream of pop music. American
troops brought the blues home with them following the First World War.
John Mayall |
They did not, of course, learn them from Europeans, but from Southern
whites who had been exposed to the blues. At this time, the U.S. Army
was still segregated. During the twenties, the blues became a national
craze. Records by leading blues singers like BESSIE SMITH and later,
in the thirties, BILLIE HOLIDAY, sold in the millions. The twenties
also saw the blues become a musical form more widely used by jazz
instrumentalists as well as blues singers. During the decades of the thirties
and forties, the blues spread northward with the migration of many blacks
from the South and entered into the repertoire of big-band jazz. The blues
also became electrified with the introduction of the amplified guitar.
Robert Cray |
In some Northern cities like Chicago and Detroit, during the later forties
and early fifties, MUDDY WATERS, WILLIE DIXON, JOHN LEE
HOOKER, HOWLIN' WOLF, and ELMORE JAMES among others,
played what was basically Mississippi Delta blues, backed by bass, drums,
piano and occasionally harmonica, and began scoring national hits with
blues songs. At about the same time, T-BONE WALKER in Houston and
B.B. KING in Memphis were pioneering a style of guitar playing
that combined jazz technique with
the blues tonality and repertoire. (RSR&RE 53) In the early nineteen-sixties,
the urban bluesmen were 'discovered' by young white American and European
musicians. Many of these blues-based bands like the PAUL BUTTERFIELD
BLUES BAND, the ROLLING STONES, the YARDBIRDS, JOHN
MAYALL's BLUESBREAKERS, CREAM, CANNED HEAT, and FLEETWOOD
MAC, brought the blues to young white audiences, something the black
blues artists had been unable to do in America except through the purloined
white cross-over covers of black rhythm and blues songs. Since the sixties,
rock has undergone several blues revivals. Some rock guitarists, such
as ERIC CLAPTON, JOHNNY WINTER, Jimmy Page, Jimi
Hendrix, and Eddie Van Halen have used the blues as a foundation
for offshoot styles. While the originators like John Lee Hooker, ALBERT
COLLINS and B.B. King - and their heirs BUDDY GUY, OTIS
RUSH, and later Eric Clapton and the late Roy Buchanan,
among many others, continued to make fantastic music in the blues tradition.
The latest generation of blues players like ROBERT CRAY and the
late STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN, among others, as well as gracing the blues
tradition with their incredible technicality, have drawn a new generation
listeners to the blues.
Lead Belly |
B.L.Jefferson |
Elmore James |
L.Hopkins |
J.Lee Hooker |
Muddy Waters |
Howlin Wolf |
Buddy Guy |
S.R Vaughan |
J. Winter |
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