Blues: A musical genre a country folk like solo song that existed in black communities of the Deep SouthMississippi Delta to east Texas around the end o

Blues: A musical genre—a country folk like solo song that existed in black communities of the Deep South—Mississippi Delta to east Texas around the end of the 19th century. Its lyrics addressed every aspect of life—accompanied themselves on guitar or banjo. Emancipated Blacks found their lives difficult in the first wave of freedom. Poor, seeking jobs and money to survive away they launch building railroads jobs or, falling in unrequited love–being often lonely and desperate—they sing blues.

Emotional state: philosophic perception of life; difficult, blues music is usually not happy!

1/Country Blues (originally first/home blues): rural musicians played in a style closer to the roots of the tradition; not recorded until the mid-1920s ("folk” blues) were sung in forms of eight-bar and sixteen-bar blues, often with repeated melodic and rhythmic pattern (riff)

• Folk Blues first emerged in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the most intensive cotton farming in the 19th century (also the largest populations of slaves in North America), after the Civil War many former slaves were still tied to the land owned by white farmers and lived in extremely poor conditions
• Blues was the music of black workforce—songs based on short, repeated phrases that were often used as accompaniment for dancing
• African American story songs such as “Frankie and Johnny,” were influenced by work songs, field hollers of English Ballad tradition
• Dissemination of blues songs was based on oral tradition, only from one generation to another because it was very personal music
• In 1920s rural blues singes began to be recorded—melodies and words were spread on phonograph records to preserve the authentic “deep blues," the sound of the Deep South for the national audience

Charley Patton (ca. 1881‒1934): one of the earliest artists of the Mississippi Delta Blues, he was a master on guitar

• Patton was singing/improvising and pounding/beating a rhythm on the body of his guitar, swinging the instrument over his head and throwing it into the air
• Powerful, rasping voice; strong, danceable rhythms; broad range of styles
• Recorded nearly 70 songs: not only blues but also African American ballads, ragtime and Tin Pan Alley top songs

Example 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSiFRKFb67ALinks to an external site.

“Tom Rushen Blues—” written and performed by Charley Patton

• rough and heavy voice of Delta blues 
• recorded 1929
• twelve-bar form
• three chords
• AAB text—the critique of white privileges (everyday life experiences like drinking moonshine and being thrown into jail/hidden meanings within the text lines—like work songs, slave songs, prison songs

Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893-1929)

• a traveler from Texas: street musician of popular ragtime songs, church music and blues songs
• the 1st Blues STAR
• first records appear in 1926 (Paramount Records)

Example 2

"That Black Snake Moan"

https://youtu.be/xzdJtsv1bqo?si=o0cIBbisaWBqELD4Links to an external site.

• nasal timbre (more clear); different than Patton)
• accompaniment less steady rhythmically
• his guitar functions as an extension of his voice
• call-and-respond
• Six 3- line stanzas set to essentially the same music
• 1926: first records released— “real old-fashioned blues by a real old-fashioned blues singer”

Robert Johnson (1911-1938)—a representative of Mississippi Delta Country Blues “in league with the devil.”

Example 3

“Cross Road Blues” written and performed by Robert Johnson

https://youtu.be/GtDlZdhHRCI?si=MBEBhiBurPGUvwZ-Links to an external site.

• Recorded 1936
• Most famous, Mississippi Delta blues
• Influenced by Charley Patton
• Married Virginia Travis in 1929 who died 1930 in childbirth; after his wife died, many say he became a better musician (no family, more time to practice); he buried himself into his music
• Left Mississippi, became amazing guitarist and singer
• Myth: made pact with the devil
• Johnson *Bluesmen: a bad men, bad cloak, appeal to women; same reputation as rap
• Drank whiskey at a performance that was poisoned; died 3 days later, “devil called in his chips”

*Bluesman was a traveler singing on streets, moving from town to town, and entertaining for any occasions—in such instances then he was paid. This angle of folklike blues was set apart from other African American folk styles (work songs and spirituals because they had sung together not solo.

2/Classic Blues (without a rough voice timbre)

Functioning as an entertainment (performed in theaters/clubs—) recorded and distributed for commercial purposes. Popular among white and black audience; often accompanied by a band with piano and addressing love subjects in their texts.

Gertrude “ma" Rainey—blues singer and composer and mother of Blues.

Example 4

https://youtu.be/yRyaUcVfhak?si=3a731uWgdwcT4KnXLinks to an external site.

Mamie Smith: was the first to sing blues on a disc in 1920— “Crazy Blues—” a year in which commercial radio began with one station and vastly moved forward.

Example 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaz4Ziw_CfQLinks to an external site.

• Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” called classic blues written by professional writers to catch the “authentic Negro music,” performed in night clubs

Example 6

Bessie Smith—Queen of Blues and  who represents very emotional and personal style (famous for bent notes). She worked with Columbia Records and recorded in 1925 “St. Louis Blues.”

https://youtu.be/3rd9IaA_uJI?si=a1C2Md7dI88vDld_Links to an external site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bo3f_9hLkQLinks to an external site.

At that point the blues was part of the popular music stream. Both artists sang their songs in so-called black vaudeville tours and places they could be paid for.

3/Urban Blues

Blues began to be published as sheet music and “race records” (performed by black performers for African American audience) by recording companies 1920 massively. Now blues composers collaborated with professional musicians/bands giving the blues form a more complex and sophisticated sound.

FORM: 12-Bar Blues (adapted by Urban Blues)

• Three-line poetic stanza (1 line twice and 3rd with a different response: AAB)
• 4-bar statements (then repeated)
• 4 counts per bar/measure
• Expressive *“blue notes—” bent, and/or worried notes
• *Glissando/slide

A phrase/line    A phrase/line      B phrase/line  (B resolution of two A Lines)

    4 bars                   4 bars                    4 bars

Chords: Tonic    Subdominant/Tonic       Dominant/Tonic

Blues Harmony:

• 3 major chords: tonic-subdominant-dominant-and return to tonic
• Line 1: tonic (I)
• Line 2: subdominant-tonic (IV to I)
• Line 3: dominant-subdominant-tonic (V-IV-I)—this line included so called nonsense syllables (half-spoken/half -sung) called *scatting or scat singing

*blue notes (“bluesy” Expressive) bent, and/or worried notes

*glissando: slide

William Christopher Handy: “Father of the Blues,”

• African American trumpeter and bandleader from Alabama
• He formed his own band in Memphis (“Memphis Blues,” 1912)
• Moved to Chicago and New York, where he began writing and publishing Urban Blues.

Example 7

"Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWfMKFQjonYLinks to an external site.

• This is the most frequently recorded song in the first half of the 20th Century:)

Example 8

https://youtu.be/ZGqBmlZR3dc?si=WnQ8JrvKcZnhfFGtLinks to an external site.

Example 9

W.C. Handy "St. Louis Blues" On The Ed Sullivan Show

https://youtu.be/cSuTTSOctGw?si=o14htCKD47mFOFD9Links to an external site.

Example 9

“St. Louis Blues”

https://youtu.be/0r81aNCYi0A?si=IkNLCCkv2N_hq11vLinks to an external site.

• Bridge between black and white communities
• Prince’s orchestra did first hit recording in 1916
• First vocal version with white singer Marion Harris
• 1925 with Bessie Smith, a recording which introduced much of white America and black America to African American classic blues
• Performed by Bessie Smith accompanied by Louis Armstrong, cornet
• Lyrics: lament over love gone wrong and projection of desire to escape scene of unhappiness
• Slow tempo
• Form AABA model in Tin Pan Alley songs
• Final section really a C
• Twelve-bar blues within a rhythmic pattern of 12 four-beat measures
• Strophic folk blues
• Blue notes: “bent” or “flattened” notes that lie outside traditional European-based scale structures and reflect particular African American melodic characteristics
• Rhythmic syncopation