The Blues |
Just like Jazz, the Blues has many variants. It has its origins in early American slave culture, and all American music. But above all it is music based on life, and based on realism! |
The Blues, just like Jazz, its city cousin, has its origins in the songs and chants of the oppressed black slaves in Americas deep rural south. To quote some forgotten author: `The Blues is intensely personal; it identifies the feelings of its audience and reflects its regional origins.’ It comes from black slave - rural music. |
Negro Work Songs And Calls
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Some former slaves/Black Americans settled down and leased small farms from white landowners, others laboured as sharecroppers. Still others continued traveling all over America, working where they could, before settling down in the growing cities like Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and elsewhere, where they joined others of the Black immigrant population crowded into ghettoes and slums. |
A Klu Klux Klan Ceremony
The Lynching Of Black Americans In The South
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Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit
Despite the end of slavery, racism did not end. Blacks were persecuted, oppressed and sometimes even lynched by Southern racist elements. Even in other parts of the US racism continued and still continues. And it was this misery sung by the Black man that forged the spine of the Blues, along with every day songs about family, sex, love and hard times. |
While the Blacks had it extremely tough, it was sometimes at work, but also in the leisure they sometimes found that they sang about their lives - in the most meaningful of ways. As someone once said - 'Early Blues answered the need for a release from everyday life'. In short, the Blues is an intensely personal music. It could and can identify itself with the feelings of the audience as it speaks about suffering and hope, economic failure, the break up of the family, 'the desire to escape from reality through wandering, love and sex.' Above all, the early American Blues drew from the work chants- known as 'field hollers and shouts in answer', which later developed into ballads about life. |
Lil' Jackson - Blues Comes To Town
A History Of Blues Pt. 1.
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During the 1920s, with the growth of the
recording industry, including the 78 rpm, phonograph, there was a massive increase in popularity for the Blues across the country. The Blues were even recorded by some major recording companies (though segregated on radio). However, it soon developed a number of regional strains, different styles and different instruments were introduced. |
Muddy Waters - Hoochie Coochie Man
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Chicago During the Depression, Blacks migrated north to Chicago, bringing their Blues music with them. Soon they were playing in rowdy urban clubs. It is argued to compensate for the loud crowds and larger venues, the more inventive performers such as Muddy Waters switched to electric guitars and added drums. |
To quote one expert, 'This new electric Chicago Blues was more powerful than its predecessor. The Blues fell somewhat out of popular favour until the late 1950s, when Elvis and others presented Black music to mainstream White America and The Kingston Trio recorded the hit 'Tom Dooley', giving birth to a Folk/Blues revival. For the next seven years, from 1959-1966, the Newport Folk |
The Rolling Stones - Mona
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The Animals - House Of The Rising Sun
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