Blues

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Timothy Berg

Blues music emerged in the early twentieth century in the United States as one of the most distinctive and original of American musical forms. It is an African American creation and, like its distant relative jazz, blues music is one of the great contributions to American popular culture. Blues music encompasses a wide variety of styles, including unique regional and stylistic variations, and it lends itself well to both individual and group performance. As a cultural expression, blues music is often thought of as being sad music, a form to express the hardships endured by African Americans. And, while it certainly can be that, the blues is also a way to deal with that hardship and celebrate good times as well as bad. Thus, in its long history throughout the twentieth century, blues music has found resonance with a wide variety of people. Although it is still largely an African American art form, the style has had a good number of white performers as well. The audience for blues has also been wide, indicating the essential truths that often lie at the heart of this musical form.

The origins of blues music are not easily traced due to its largely aural tradition, which often lacks written sources, and because there are no blues recordings prior to about 1920. Thus, tracing its evolution out of the distant past is difficult. Still, some of the influences that make up blues music are known. Blues music originated within the African American community in the deep South. Elements of the blues singing style, and the use of primitive stringed instruments, can be traced to the griot singers of West Africa. Griot singers acted as storytellers for their communities, expressing the hopes and feelings of its members through song. African musical traditions undoubtedly came with the large numbers of African slaves brought to the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The mixture of African peoples who made up the slave population in the South allowed for a mixture of African song and musical styles as well. Those styles would eventually evolve into the blues as the hardships endured by the freed slaves and their descendants continued well into the twentieth century.

The style of music now known as the blues emerged in its mature form after the turn of the twentieth century. No one knows who the first singers or musicians were that put this style together into its now familiar form, as the music evolved before the invention of recording technology. As a musical style, the blues is centered around a 12-bar form with three lines of four bars each. And, while it does use standard chords and instrumentation, it is an innovative music known for the off-pitch "blue notes" which give the music its deeper feeling. These blue notes are produced by bending tones, and the need to produce these tones made certain instruments key to playing blues music: the guitar, the harmonica, and the human voice. It is a rather informal music, with plenty of room for singers and musicians to express themselves in unique ways. Thus, the music has given the world a wide variety of unique blues artists whose styles are not easily replicated.

Among the earliest blues recordings were those by black female singers in the 1920s. In fact, the entire decade of the 1920s, the first in which blues music was recorded for a commercial market, was dominated by women. Among the most significant were Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Lucille Bogan, Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, and Mamie Smith. Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues," recorded in 1920, is largely acknowledged as the first blues recording. These singers incorporated a more urban, jazz style into their singing, and they were often backed by some of the great early jazz musicians, including trumpeter Louis Armstrong. The greatest of these early female blues singers were Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Smith's version of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" and Ma Rainey's version of "See See Rider" are among the classics of blues music. Their styles were earthier than many of their contemporaries, and they sang songs about love, loss, and heartbreak, as well as strong statements about female sexuality and power the likes of which have not been seen since in the blues field. The era of the great female blues singers ended with the coming of the Depression in 1929, as record companies made fewer recordings, preferring to focus their attention on white popular singers. Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey were both dead by 1940, and most of the other popular female singers of the decade drifted off into obscurity, although some had brief revivals in the 1960s.

Other blues styles rose to prominence during the 1930s. The dominant form was Mississippi delta blues, a rural form that originated in the delta of northwest Mississippi. The style was dominated by male singers who accompanied themselves on acoustic guitars that could be carried easily from place to place, allowing these musicians to play for the many poor black farming communities in the area. A number of important bluesmen made their living, at least in part, following an itinerant lifestyle playing blues throughout the delta region. Among the most important innovators in the delta blues style were Tommy Johnson, Bukka White, Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson. All of these musicians made important recordings during the 1930s that have proven highly influential. Some, such as Robert Johnson, achieved almost mythic status. Johnson recorded only several dozen songs before his death in 1938. His apocryphal story of selling his soul to the devil in order to be the best blues musician (related in his song "Cross Road Blues") drew from an image with a long history in African American culture. Although details about Johnson's life are sketchy, stories of his being a poor guitar player, then disappearing for several months and reappearing as one of the best guitarists around, gave credence to the story of his deal with the devil; his murder in 1938 only added to his legend. The delta blues style practiced by Johnson and others became one of the most important blues forms, and one that proved highly adaptable to electric instruments and to blues-rock forms in later years.