The Beginning of the Blues III

Robert Johnson

We should really know that a lot of the early Blues artists were just pop artists. The image of a poor black man, drinking too much whiskey and traveling around playing the Blues is just not completely in sync with reality. For sure there were a lot of ramblers, gamblers and whiskey drinking Blues players, but almost all Blues greats were pop artists with flashy costumes and a huge repertoire of songs of all styles. Take a look at the picture of Robert Johnson, posing there with his flashy costume... he just doesn't look like he sold his soul to the devil, does he (ok, some people think he had :))? The reason why Robert Johnson became so popular long after his dead, is first of all his musical capabilities. When you listen carefully to his recordings and the recordings of that time period he kind of summarized the music of that time.. he created the best mix of all styles. Apart from that he fitted a certain image, a sort of mysterious guy playing great blues music sounding like he was on the run for something... This was ideal for the Blues and folk enthusiast of the 50s and the 60s, he was ready for mythification!

It was the white audience who discovered the "Race records" of the 1920s and 1930s who reshaped the music to fit their own tastes and desires, creating a rich mythology that often bears little resemblance to the reality of the musicians they admired.

Popular entertainers were reborn as primitive voices from the dark and demonic Delta, and a music notable for its professionalism and humor was recast as the heart-cry of a suffering people. The poverty and oppression of the world that created blues is undeniable, but it was the music's up-to-date power and promise, not its folkloric melancholy, that attracted black record buyers.

The music category "Blues" exists for several reasons: sometimes a marketing executive wants to make it easy for consumers to find a particular kind of product. Sometimes a performer wants to distinguish himself or herself from previous artists, or those with whom he or she disagrees about something. Again, there is nothing wrong with any of this, but there are always confusing examples that illustrate the limits of the taxonomy.

Like I said before, the Blues players of the first decades of the 19th century did play in a lot of different styles. A lot of us think the Blues players were feeling blue and playing blues and that's just not the fact. Although the Blues players of those times RECORDED a lot of Blues because there was a great record-buying audience interested in Blues, they didn't play that much Blues at giggs...

Again this question rises: What is the Blues musically speaking? Blues is a melting pot of a lot of different music styles. I think we can say the Blues is a product of the adaption of the Afro-Americans to America in combination with their surpressed underpriviliged situation. Blues is a combination of spirituals, work songs, hollers, minstril music, African traditions and rhythms and traditional American folk music and a lot more... Think of rock as a product of all music that existed before rock music. Blues is the same, but in another context in another time.

Blues is everyting we think what Blues is for us. Blues is the music, the stories, the myths but we just don't have to think everything that's said and being said about the blues is true. But the mythification IS fun and fascinating! I think this is a good starting point for our Blues journey.

The Beginning of the Blues II

First of all we all should ask ourselves: What is the blues? And perhaps everyone has another answer to this question.We all agree that there are at least two definitions of the blues: the feeling and the music. 

The blues been here since time began

Since the first lyin' woman met the first cheatin' man

W.C. Handy at the age of 19

This quote is 100% true, but in this case we're talking about the feeling Blues. The music is based on this feeling that existed years before the music emerged. In the beginning of the blues, around the late 19th century, few people heard of the blues as a music category even most of the musicians didn't know what  blues music was. It all started around the early teens of the 19th century. The first published blues was a song called "I Got the Blues" which appeared in New Orleans (not the Mississippi Delta!) in 1908. Its composer was, suprisingly,  an Italian American named Antonio Maggio. This song had a twelve-bar section using a melody that is a clear predecessor of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues". I hear some of you asking W.C. Who? W.C. Handy is also know as "The Father of the Blues". Being the son and grandson of African Methodist Episcopal ministers, his first exposure to music was inside the Greater St. Paul A.M.E. church. From spirituals and work songs, the young Handy was inspired by the music he heard and gleaned as much as he could from local musicians, at the dismay and disappointment of his family. He once saved enough money from picking berries and nuts and making lye soap to buy a guitar. His father made him return it in exchange for a dictionary.

Not easily discouraged, Handy acquired a small cornet (small trumpet). He would play it at the local barber shop during the Florence Concert Band practice sessions. At a very young age, Handy could easily be described as a musical prodigy. He could read, write and arrange music, and most importantly, he could inspire. He performed at the Chicago World’s Fair and eventually joined Mahara’s Colored Minstrels playing cornet. Handy traveled extensively with the band for the next several years, becoming the troupe leader. He spent two years teaching music at A&M College in Huntsville, Alabama before the age of 19. He discovered teaching to be less than lucrative and left it for a factory job.

In 1903, Handy found himself in Clarksdale, Mississippi where he formed the band “Knights of Pythias,” a marching/dance band that appealed to both white and black audiences. It was the day of his famous tale that set him on the path to becoming one of America's defining pop composers. He had fallen asleep while waiting for a train in the Mississippi Delta hamlet of Tutwiler, he woke up to hear music:

A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played , he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. 

His song, too, struck me instantly.

      

      Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog.

The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.

W.C. Handy was struck and began making Blues music which resulted in "Mr Crump" (1909).  This song was later changed and became “Memphis Blues.” He made a deal to get the song published in 1912, making it the first published commercial blues song. “Memphis Blues” became a big hit, but Handy didn’t get to reap the rewards of its success since he had sold the rights to it. To avoid this problem, he published his next successful song, “St. Louis Blues” (1914), using his own company which was later known Handy Brothers Music Company. Other Handy hit songs included Yellow Dog Blues (1914) and “Beale Street Blues” (1916).

We can say that this was some kind of turning point, from now on the term Blues was also associated with music. For a lot of people this is the 'official' start of the Blues. Through all the years, from the "beginning" until now, the word "Blues" was used to define and catagorize music. And musical categories are artificial constructs, useful for many purposes but meaningless and limiting for others. In all those years Ragtime, Hokum, Folk, Soul, Rock & Roll and so on was found in the Blues section of a record store. Is that wrong? No! It's just personal... I continue this discussion in part III of "The Beginning of the Blues"!

If you're interested in origins of the blues and an alternative view on the blues go out and buy 'Escaping the Delta' of Elijah Wald! (I borrowed some things of this well-written book!).

The beginning (of the Blues) I !

For me this is the beginning of my brand new blog: "The Blues Revival". The purpose of this blog, and I know this sounds a bit overambitious,  is to try to give the blues the attention it deserves in modern society! This blog will be about everything which relates to the blues... The old blues cats, the new blues kids and also the youtube blues generation (the people who broadcast themselves), Delta blues, Chicago blues.... The stories, the documentaries, the cd's, the lyrics... Whatever you can think of!!! I hope you all have a great time reading and participating in this blog!!!

To start off I think it's a good thing to try to define the blues and that's a hell of a job because CAN it be defined? Maybe not but one of the best definitions of the blues was from Willie Brown: "The blues ain't nothin' but a good man feelin' bad". 

There's some footage of Howlin' Wolf where he's talking about: What is the blues?