The Blues

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John Lee Hooker

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RM Radio

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!

Sweet Home Chicago

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

According to popular theory, the Blues was the language of the slaves reflecting their

misery and their lives. It is thought that in the late 19th century after slavery was

abolished, and in the early Twentieth Century, the early Blues singers and musicians

were largely itinerant and Blues was part of an oral tradition that developed in

different areas of the South.

By the early 1900s, the Blues were widespread. Thousands of Black Americans were

internally migrating all over the US looking for work and trying to escape from racism

seemingly prevalent everywhere. The Blues singers were often workers following work

where they could find it harvesting crops, working in lumber camps and boom towns.

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.

So many were fleeing brutal racism, often whipped up by the Ku Kux Klan, especially

in the Southern rural areas.

A Klu Klux Klan Ceremony

The Lynching Of Black Americans In The South

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.

It was the internal migration of Black Americans that saw The Blues spread around

America. After the Civil war, blacks were faced with either hard labour in the fields or

becoming a travelling minstrel. Many chose the latter and traveled around playing

rowdy all-night country dances, fish-frys, and juke joints.

These musicians mainly relied on their Blues songs heritage, the lyrics of many of

which were soulful and melancholy, but also 'powerful, emotive and rhythmic

celebrating the life of black Americans. The lyrics of the songs reflected daily themes

of their lives including: sex, drinking, railroads, jail, murder, poverty, hard labor and

love lost.'

Especially during and just after the Second World War years, and of course events in

the 1950s, the Blues crossed over into the White Music charts. It was the realism of

the music, that made it popular.

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.

Although the Blues drew from the early religious music of both African and Western

cultures, the Church often considered it sinful music and many Blues singers were

often ostracised as their music was sometimes considered 'backsliding' or even the

'devils music'. But this was not everywhere though.

As Historian Larry Levine points out, 'the Blues blended the sacred and the secular.

Like the spirituals and folktales of the nineteenth century, the Blues was a plea for

release, a mix of despair, hope, and humour that had a cathartic effect upon the

listener. The Blues singer had an expressive role that mirrored the power of the

preacher, and because of this power, Blues was both embraced and rejected by the

black community and the church.'

The American Folk Blues Festival 1982

In Texas, Blues musician Lil Son Jackson explained,...'that it was, in effect, the spiritual

power of the Blues that made the music sinful....If a man hurt within and he sing a

church song than he’s askin’ God for help ... if a man sing the Blues it’s more or less

out of himself...He’s not askin no-one for help. And he’s really not clingin to someone

and that fact makes it a sin, you know... you’re tryin’ to get your feelin’s over to the

next person through the Blues, and that’s what makes it a sin.”

But we know the Blues was never 'sinful' music! It was good music and it soon spread

right across the US and then the world.

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.

But it was the Blues just the same. The cross over to the white community started at

different times and at different rates, as the Blues was spread through country dances,

minstrel shows and itinerate workers in the fields, road gangs, railways, riverboats and

elsewhere.

Muddy Waters - Hoochie Coochie Man

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 Kingston Trio

Festival reintroduced Folk and Blues music to a mainstream White American audience.

But after this time, the Blues was increasingly merged with Rock music to form the

Rock Blues bands of the 1960s and 1970s.

But it was really the 'British Rock Invasion of the US' in the early 1960s that saw The

Blues re-popularised in the United States, and become a major ingredient in modern

Western Popular music from then on. The world owes a lot to not just The Beatles, but

the Rolling Stones, John Mayal, the Yardbirds, the Animals, Led Zepplin and so many

others!