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.