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America has produced many forms of
music that are genuinely American, but none have had such
far reaching appeal and influence then the blues. The blues
formed the basis for rock n' roll and is still a thriving
musical form in it's own right. The developed separately in
three different regions of the postbellum South: the
Mississippi Delta and eastern Texas at the turn of the
century, and in the Piedmont ten years later. These rural
blues were carried from the plantations and prison farms to
urban areas such as Chicago and St. Louis and eventually
became the blues of John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, B.B. King
and others. The blues also spawned rhythm and blues, which
in turn became rock n' roll. This paper will explain what
the blues is and how it developed into what we know now.
Rural
Blues
Structure
It is very difficult to nail down the exact origins of the
blues; the structure of the blues is very specific and very
unique. The twelve-bar, AAB pattern is not found in any
other music during the time the blues originated. The blues
uses only three chords, the I, IV and V chords. The I chord
is a chord built on the first tone of a scale, so if we were
in the key of F, the chord would be built on an F. The IV
chord, also called the subdominant, is a chord built on the
fourth tone of the scale, in our example, a B-flat. The V
chord, the dominant chord, is built on the fifth tone of the
scale, or a C. In twelve-bar blues, which is the most
common, there are three sets of four bars (or measures,
whichever term you prefer). The second four bars is a
repetition of the first four bars, with a slight variation,
and then the third bar is something new, which brings the
pattern full circle and the cycle repeats. Lyrics might look
like this:
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knee,
Went to the crossroad, fell down on my knee,
Asked the Lord above to have mercy, save poor Bob if you
please.2
Chord progression would be as follows:
|1 |2 |3 |4 |
|I |I |I |I |
|5 |6 |7 |8 |
|IV|IV|I |I |
|9 |10|11|12|
|V |IV|I |I |
This simple pattern is easily modified to eleven, thirteen
and fourteen bars. The simplicity is one of the reasons the
blues is so popular: it's simple to follow and to learn, and
there is a certain measure of predictability to it.
Origins
The blues first emerged as a distinct type of music in the
late-1800s.3
Spirituals, worksongs, seculars, field hollers and arhoolies
all had some form of influence on the blues. Early blues
were a curious amalgam of African cross-rhythms and vocal
techniques, Anglo-American melodies and thematic material
from fables and folktales, and tales of personal experience
on plantations and prison farms. After the war, blacks were
still slaves to King Cotton, and many found themselves
struggling to support themselves working on plantations well
into the mid-twentieth century, or struggling to support
themselves as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. The blues
developed into a distinct form of folkmusic as a direct
result of this. The emergence of the blues coincided with
the worsening of the social and economic conditions for
blacks in the South.
Griots And The
Oral Tradition
The blues follow the west African tradition of the "griots."
The griots were the libraries of their tribe. They held the
history and the culture of their tribe, often in songs, and
passed that knowledge on to their descendants.
The African-American songsters who synthesized the blues
from earlier genres of black folk music were descendants of
the griots, carrying forward the historical and cultural
legacy of their people even while they were setting a new
agenda for political discourse and
action.3,
p. 8
These new griots helped to continue the oral tradition.
Through their songs, they often expressed discontent with
their situation and their hope for change.
Spirituals
They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of
disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and
unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings
and hidden
ways.4
Spirituals are what Du Bois called "the Sorrow Songs."
They were one way the slaves expressed their discontent and
maintained hope in the face of hardship. They often used
biblical motifs and characters, and spoke of redemption and
hope of eventual triumph and freedom. They were one of the
most important parts of the black oral tradition. Many of
these sorrow songs contained a lyrical pattern very similar
to that of the blues: often an AAB or AAAB pattern:
No more driver call me
No more driver call
No more driver call me
Many thousand
die!3,
p. 10
Many of the spirituals also expressed some form of
hope for freedom or relief from tribulation, usually by the
hand of God. The slaves gained freedom from slavery, they
were given a new set of chains, in the form of racial
segregation, sharecropping and tenant farming. As times
changed, so did the music, and the blues was one of the
forms of music that emerged as the result of this.
Seculars
The big bee flies high,
The little bee makes the honey.
The black folks make the cotton
And the white folk gets the
money3,
p. 12
Seculars served many purposes for blacks before,
during and after the Civil War. They often glorified
exploits of the slaves in spite of their white masters; they
sang of chicken stealing and escape, often right under the
nose of the authorities. They also complained about the
status of the slaves as second class citizens and the
hardships they had to endure as slaves; this they shared
with many of the spirituals. Frederick Douglass recorded
this song in his autobiography:
We raise the wheat,
Dey gib us de corn.
We bake de bread,
Dey gib us de crust.
We sif' de meal,
Dey gib us de huss.
We peel de meat,
Dey gib us de skin
And dat's de way
Dey take us in.
We skim de pot,
Sey gib us de liquor
And say dat's good enough for nigger.
Walk over, walk over,
Your butter and fat.
Poor nigger, you can't git over dat,
Walk
over5
Field
Hollers And Arhoolies
I'll tell you where the blues began. Back there working on
them cotton farms, working hard and the man won't pay 'em,
so the started singin', "Ohhh, I'm leavin' he one of these
days and it won't be long." See, what's happenin' is givin'
them the blues. "You gonna look for me one of these mornings
and I'll be gone, ohhh yeah!" -- Sonny Terry
3,
p. 18
Field hollers and arhoolies began in the fields as
musical exclamations that expressed the mood of the singer,
and they eventually grew into longer phrases and verse. Few
recordings of these exist, so we have to accept the
testimony of the old bluesmen, such as Sonny Terry and Son
House, as to their nature:
All I can say is that when I was boy we was always singing
in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollering.
But we made up our songs about things that were happening to
us at the time, and I think that's where the blues started.
-- Son House 3,
p. 18
The vocal techniques of these were very unique and
they formed the basis for early blues vocals.
Worksongs
Born on a day when the sun didn't shine.
Picked up my shovel and I went to the mine.
Loaded sixteen tons o' number nine coal,
And the straw boss said well bless my soul.
Load sixteen tons, what do ya get,
Another day older and a deeper debt.
St. Peter don't you call me, cuz I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company sto'
(Traditional)
Another tradition that the slaves brought with them from
Africa was that of worksongs. Worksongs were used to
coordinate labor in the fields and homes in western Africa,
and this tradition was continued in America. The rhythms of
the songs necessarily reflected the rhythms of the
repetitive labor, and these cross-rhythms found their way
into the blues. Big Bill Broonzy and Huddie Ledbetter both
recorded versions of a song called "Take This Hammer," and
on one of his albums, Broonzy talks about where the song
came from:
This is one of the songs that a friend of mine wrote back in
the Twenties. "Course he recorded it in the Twenties but
we'd been singin' this thing all up and down the levee camps
and the street camps and the road camps and different
places. The guy was named Huddie Leadbelly...The title of
this is "Take This Old
Hammer."6
The lyrics go like this:
Take this old hammer, take it to the captain,
Take this old hammer, man take it to the captain,
Tell him I'm goin', tell him I'm gone.
If he asks you, was I runnin',
If he asks you, was I runnin',
Tell him I was flyin', man tell him I was flyin'.
Take this old hammer, take it to the captain,
Take this old hammer, man take it to the captain,
Tell him I'm goin', tell him I'm
gone.7
The form of the lyrics is the same as that of the
blues and the theme is one that is constant in early rural
blues: the man has become fed up with poor working
conditions and runs away.
The term, "the blues," is in itself interesting. "Blue
devils" were referred to as causing discontent and
restlessness3.
The idiom is apparently of English descent. It evolved into
term for a type of feeling (i.e. being blue, having the
blues), and it further evolved into the name for the type of
music.
Regional
Development
After the end of the Civil War, the South was forced to
abandon slavery, but did not abandon the plantation economy.
The plantations still existed, and blacks still provided the
labor, but now it was through a system of share-cropping and
tenant farming. Blacks gave up large shares of their crops
to the white landowners for use of field, tools and
clothing, and they often ended up owing more to the
landholders than they
produced.2,
p. 25.
After the Civil War, blacks were still in a feudal
economy with King Cotton at the top.
For the many blacks who found themselves in perpetual debt
to white landowners, the only way out was to move away. Most
black families moved every two to three years to escape
debt3.
The idea of personal mobility is a theme that runs through
many blues songs. Personal mobility was equated with
individual freedom and the hope of better working conditions
in new places.
Because of the intense poverty, these people were forced to
create their own entertainment, and the blues was one form
of that.
Mississippi
Delta Blues
Development
Lord, that 61 highway, is the longest road I know,
61 highway, baby longest road I know,
It run from New York City, to the Gulf of Mexico.
I started school one Monday morning, Lord I throw'd my books
away.
I started school one Monday morning, Lord I throw'd my books
away.
Wrote a note to my teacher, Lord I'm gonna try 61
today.8
The homeland of the Delta blues stretched from
Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south to Memphis, Tennessee in
the north and from central Mississippi in the east to the
Ozark plateau of Arkansas in the west. This land was
previously uninhabited, but in the 1840s, white planters
began to move into the Delta, and they brought their slaves
with them. Cotton grew well in the fertile soil of the
Delta, and the lumber industry boomed as well. After the
slaves were freed, blacks continued to move into the region
to work on the plantations, and this influx continued until
World War I, when blacks outnumbered whites four to
one3.
The early Delta blues were closely
akin to work songs and field hollers. The labor was hard,
and workers sang the blues to make themselves feel better
and to work their brain as they worked their bodies.
The first notation of Delta blues lyrics was made in 1903 by
Charles Peabody, a white archaeologist who had hired a team
of blacks as diggers at a site near Stovall,
Mississippi3,
p. 27. Peabody wrote
down some of the lyrics of the songs he heard, many of which
were improvised on the spot. Howard Odum, a folklorist,
traveled throughout the Delta on a field trip at the same
time. More than half of the songs he heard and noted were
blues.
The blues began in the fields, but when instruments were
added, it quickly moved to recreational gatherings, such as
picnics, barbecues and saturday night
dances9.
The guitar, harmonica and sometimes the piano began to
replace the banjo and fiddle as the instruments of choice
among black musicians. The rhythms of the blues made it
excellent for dancing, and the music was easily followed.
Square dancing became outmoded, in lieu of couple dancing
and other forms.
The tradition of the saturday night dances originated during
slavery. The slaves worked six days a week, and the only
time allotted for recreation was Saturday
nights9,
p. 20. Many
slaveholders allowed their slaves to hold dances on the
plantation or attend them at nearby plantations. After
emancipation, this tradition continued.
The bluesmen who taught themselves to play their own
instruments were the most musically innovative. They brought
new music and new techniques to old instruments like the
guitar. Many of these early bluesmen started out on
homemade, one-stringed instruments that were made by
attaching a taut wire to a house or barn9.
The player then plucked out a rhythmic pattern with one hand
while sliding a glass bottle along the wire to control
tone.
This slider technique was easily transferred to the
guitar.
The slider technique has become synonymous with early Delta
blues. Guitarists would slide a rock, a bottle-neck or a
knife along the strings. Using a slider, the guitar could
approximate the tones of the human voice; it also allowed
the guitarist to pluck out the rhythm on the bass strings
while playing a melody on the treble strings.
Delta blues strike the ear as being stripped down to the
essentials. There is very little ornamentation and the
vocals are often harsh and raspy, like field hollers. The
songs are generally very serious in nature. The instruments
often have a powerful, driving rhythm that accelerates as
the song progresses.
Culmination
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knee,
Went to the crossroad, fell down on my knee,
Asked the Lord above to have mercy, save poor Bob if you
please.10
The first blues artists in the Delta were part-time
musicians. They worked as field hands on cotton farms in the
daytime, and played the blues for tips and drinks at
parties, picnics and dances. The moonlighting that these men
did kept the blues closely tied to the farm community and
the hardships that went with it. As artists' followings
grew, many of them recorded their songs for money and
managed to be come independent from farm
salary3.
In addition to cotton plantations, Delta had a large and
notorious contract levee labor system. Levees were the sole
defense from flooding in the river valley, and the blacks
provided the labor for building and maintaining of them.
Labor contractors hired a labor force, predominantly black,
and the laborers lived on the levee site3.
The laborers found themselves in a situation much like that
of the sharecroppers and tenant farmers. All food, clothing
and entertainment was provided by the contractor at
exorbitant prices. They often ended up owing the contractor
money. The labor contractors hired bluesmen to perform on
the weekends. Many performers who later gained fame outside
of the Delta worked as weekend entertainers for levee
workers.
In the twenties, the terrible living and working conditions
caused the beginnings of a migration from the Delta. In the
forefront of this migration were many of Mississippi's
finest blues musicians, whose music often encouraged the
exodus. Henry Sloan, Joe Hicks, Frank Stokes, Furry Lewis,
Gus Cannon, Jim Jackson, J.D. Short, Big Joe Williams, and
Big Bill Broonzy all had abandoned the state for points
north by the 1920s. 3,
p. 54
East
Texas Blues
If you ever go to Memphis,
Man, you better walk right,
Cause the police'll arrest you,
And he'll carry you down.
Take you down to the station,
With a gun in his hand,
And the judge will tell you,
You been a naughty man.
Let the Midnight Special
Shine her light on me,
Let the Midnight Special
Shine her everlovin' light on
me.11
The cotton belt in Texas has an area of about 300
square miles. It is rimmed by Houston, Austin and Dallas,
and is cut by the Trinity and Brazos rivers. Slaves were
moved into this area during the war to avoid the
Emancipation Proclamation3,
p. 56. After the
war, Texas also maintained its plantation economy, and in
addition, Texas had a large and infamous prison farm system.
Gangs of prisoners, predominantly black, were leased to
white landowners. This system helped to keep the tradition
of the worksong alive.
Worksongs were the largest influence on East Texas blues,
both on the repertoire of early bluesmen and the vocal
styles. The vocals are much breathier than Delta blues, they
are less raspy. The songs are also less dependant on
traditional lyrics. The guitar or piano is often played
percussively. Many artists feature a steady, thumping
groundbeat in the lower strings. The treble strings play an
insistent short phrase after each vocal line, that is
responsorial, and often rhythmically free.
Gates Thomas was the first to note a blues song in Texas. In
1890, he wrote down the lyrics to a song called "Nobody
There," which features lyrics similar to the traditional AAB
pattern:
That you nigger man, knockin, at my door?
Hear me tell you nigger man,
Nobody there no more.3,
p. 64
After the turn of the century, Thomas noted the lyrics
to several other songs that are now recognized as being
blues classics.
Texas was rather isolated from the entertainment industry,
so styles and repertoires were able to mature without
commercial influences. In 1925, Blind Lemon Jefferson became
"the first southern self-accompanied folk blues artist to
succeed commercially on records, and his success can be said
to have opened the door to all the others who followed in
the next few
years."12
Jefferson sold albums throughout the south. He was born
blind, and turned to the blues as the only means of
self-sufficience for a black man in the south.
East Coast
Piedmont Blues
The Piedmont stretches from Atlanta, Georgia to Richmond,
Virginia. It is bordered on the east and west by the
Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coastal lowlands.
Tobacco and Cotton were the key crops of this region.
Many blues artists from this region sang of "pickin' low
cotton"3.
Because the Piedmont was one of the first areas to be
settled and cultivated, the soil had become depleted by the
early twentieth century. The economies of this area were
based on either cotton or tobacco, and this one-crop economy
led to further depletion of the soil.
Crops grown in this depleted soil were much smaller than
those grown in the fertile soil to the west.
Because of the drop in crop production, a move was made to
create a "New South" through industrialization. White
farmers, whose farms were failing, were taking the jobs in
the factories, and the blacks were left out. The blues were
a collective response to the racism and oppression felt in
the region.
The Blues arose as a distinct form of folk music much later
in the Piedmont than in the rest of the South. One
hypothesis for this slow development sites the strong
anglican folk tradition. Because of the rigid segregation in
the region, this hypothesis is suspect. Samuel Charters
suggests a different reason3,
81. He believes that
the rigid African folk tradition slowed the emergence of the
blues. The folk tradition was very well established in the
black community, and it simply would not change. Heavy
racial antagonism served to strengthen resistance.
When the blues did begin to emerge it was based on the folk
tradition. Techniques that had been used on the banjo were
transferred to the guitar. The Piedmont was much less
isolated than the Delta or Texas because of the proximity to
the population centers of the North. Musicians took folk
traditions and fused them with other types of popular music.
One of these new types of music was ragtime, which put
African-style crossrhytms underneath European melodies,
creating a new type of music. Ragtime became a large part of
Piedmont blues.
Another part of the spread of the blues were medicine shows.
Many black musicians found employment as entertainers to
draw people to medicine shows, where men tried to sell
"medicine" to the crowds. These shows helped to disseminate
the new music styles much more quickly.
Family ties were also important. In areas such as
southwestern Virginia, many musicians learned from members
of their family. Families often played together in
bands.
Durham, North Carolina was one of the focal points of the
tobacco industry and became a focal point of the Piedmont
blues. The Duke family set up their tobacco factories in
Durham and employed black workers with higher wages. The
result was a great influx of black workers who brought the
blues with them. Many musicians worked in the factories in
the day and performed for tips on the streets at night. This
also aided the development and dissemination of the blues.
The large blues tradition is also the reason for the name of
the Duke University "Blue Devils."
The Piedmont blues is a very different form of music than
that of the Delta or Texas. Ragtime stylings form the basis
along with techniques transferred from the banjo. Musicians
used their thumb to strum down low while finger-picking the
melody higher up on the neck of the instrument.
Ultimately, the things that made the Piedmont blues so
unique are the same elements that caused it to die out. The
blues began to change when it was moved to the city. Delta
and Texas blues styles were easily transferred to the
electric guitar, and the blues took off from there.
Unfortunately, the Piedmont blues did not adapt well to the
electric guitar; the ragtime rhythms and finger picked runs
did not sound good when amplified. Also, blues began to fall
into a national pattern. The American Federation of
Musicians banned new commercial recordings from August of
1942 until September of
1943.13
Two of the larger record labels, Victor and Columbia, lost
their preeminence because they refused to pay royalties to
the AFM. The smaller labels that sprang up to fill the gap
focused more on gospels and rhythm and blues, which is very
different. Urban centers became the epositories of the
blues, and the Piedmont was left out. Eventually, Piedmont
blues fell into obscurity.
Conclusions
No food on my table, no shoes to go on my feet,
No food on my table and no shoes to go on my feet,
My children cry for mercy, Lord they ain't got no place to
call their
own.14
The blues arose both as a form of social protest and
as a means of expression. The music is very personal both to
the artists and the listeners. As blacks migrated to find
jobs in more tolerant northern factories, they took the
blues with them and began the process that gave us urban
blues, rock 'n roll and rap.
The blues is one of the few forms of American music that has
stayed with us since its inception a century ago. The blues
began in the south and moved to the cities of the north, and
today, the blues still come to mind when people speak of
Chicago and St. Louis. Every year, thousands of people
attend blues festivals all over the country. The blues is
still alive and well in America.
Endnotes
1. Big Bill
Broonzy, "I'm Goin' Down the Road," on Black Brown &
White, Storyville Records. [back]
2. Robert Johnson,
"Crossroad Blues," on Robert Johnson: King of the Delta
Blues, Columbia CL 30034. [back]
3. William Barlow,
"Looking Up at Down: the Emergence of Blue Culture,
Philadelphia: Temple University Press (1989).
[back]
4. W.E.B. Du Bois,
The Souls of Black Folk, New York: Bantam Books (1989), p.
179-180. [back]
5. Frederick
Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by
Himself, New York: Pathway (1941), pp. 146-147.
[back]
6. Big Bill
Broonzy, on Black, Brown & White. [back]
7. Big Bill
Broonzy, "Take This Hammer," ibid. [back]
8. Fred MacDowell,
"Highway 61," from Fred MacDowell: Mississippi Delta Blues,
Arhoolie CD 304. [back]
9. Samuel Charters,
"Workin' on the Building: Roots and Influences," from
Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians, Lawrence
Cohn ed., New York: Abbeville Press (1993), p. 16.
[back]
10. Robert
Johnson, "Crossroad Blues," from Robert Johnson: The
Complete Recordings, Sony/Legacy 46222. [back]
11. This is a
traditional work song. The Midnight Special was a train that
left Houston at midnight, bound for points west. The train
ran past the Sugarland prison farm, and the light at the
front of the train became a symbol for freedom and mobility
to blacks in East Texas. [back]
12. David Evans,
"Goin' Up the Country: Blues in Texas and the Deep South,"
from Nothing But the Blues, ibid. [back]
13. Bruce Basin,
"Trucking' My Blues Away: East Coast Piedmont Styles," from
Nothing But the Blues, ibid. [back]
14. John Lee
Hooker, "No Shoes," from Travelin', Vee Jay 81023.
[back]
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Blues
History
