Category Archives: 3 – Urban Blues

Electric blues, in Chicago. BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker “Boogie Chillen”

3 - Urban Blues

Urban Blues #1

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Urban Blues

Origins

Urban Blues was a development growing out of traditional rural blues or folk blues. Scholars disagree as to the exact origin or source of the music. Some scholars say the source of the Blues was from the Mississippi “Delta”, some have said Texas, others say New Orleans and still others say from states like Georgia, Florida or Alabama. Suffice it to say, the blues seems to have simultaneously manifested itself throughout the aforementioned southern states of America. This stands to reason since the music was played by travelers and vagabonds in its early stages.

In any event the music was brought to cities in the north of the United States during what was known as the great migrations (at least two waves). This consisted of mostly African Americans and other people of color like Hispanics, Creoles (people of mixed races) and American Indians who moved from the rural south to the urban north. By the 1970s, 80% of all black people living in America resided in these cities and urban areas.

The first wave of the great migration started in the 1910s, continuing up to about the early 1930s, which saw some 1.6 million African Americans move from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Georgia, north to northern industrial cities like New York, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis and other smaller northern cities. The people were in search of jobs and social/economic opportunities and were trying to escape the Jim Crow south, poverty, racism and bigotry.

 

Early Urban Blues Hits

Scholars often disagree as to what were the first Urban Blues hits. However, author Francis Davis in his book “The History of the Blues” suggests that Tampa Red, although not fully Urban Blues was an artist who was “midway’ between Folk Blues and Urban Blues with his 1928 hit “It’s Tight Like That”. The song was written and also co-performed by Georgia Tom Dorsey (no relation to the Dorsey Brothers in Jazz), who was famous for writing the songs “Peace in the Valley and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.

Also in 1928, Nashville bluesmen Leroy Carr, along with guitarist Francis “Scrapper” Blackwell released “How Long, How Long Blues”, considered by many to be the first authentic Urban Blues song. The song was recorded in Indianapolis and became a hit in Chicago.

Around this time, there was a wide range of authentic, original music being recorded by many of the record labels in the north and to a limited extent in the South. There was Klezmer music, cantors, Irish (jigs) music, Italian operas, hillbilly music, many factions of country music, Ozark folk music, vaudeville humorous comedy bits and music, spirituals (pre-cursor to Gospel) as well as the pop music of the day, which was Broadway show tunes, Ragtime and Jazz.

The blues was also one of the many genres being recorded and sold to a specific crowd, depending on where you lived and the accessibility of the recorded music. Some scholars claim that, never again in America would there be such a wide range of music recorded and sold as there were in the first few decades of the 20th century. The Great Depression changed all of this and brought about a stifling effect to the music industry and distribution.

The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 saved many record companies from Chapter 11 and bankruptcy. Also the invention of the “Jukebox” helped revive the recorded music industry by supplying accessible music to bars, clubs, malt shops, candy stores, diners, variety stores, markets and almost any place where people commercially congregated. By 1939 there were over a quarter of a million jukeboxes being maintained and accessed all throughout America.

3 - Urban Blues

Urban Blues #2

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The Second Wave

The second wave occurred after the great depression and during World War II, where at least 5 million black people moved north to the aforementioned cities as well as west to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix, and Seattle.  With them came the blues, ragtime, jazz, and other folk music which went through some changes as the people adjusted to urban life from country life.

Rural or folk blues was predominantly played on acoustic guitar and piano in the rural south. But in the cities of the north, blues artists started in the 1940s to play electric guitar, to use microphones and started to incorporate small band combos to play the blues. Many of the combos would also use harmonicas (with microphone) along with bass, drums, horns (trumpets, coronets and trombones) and saxophones. This is what constituted what was called “small combos” (up to 5, 6 or 7 players) as opposed to the big bands of swing and popular “sweet” bands which were much bigger. They incorporated 8 to 40+ players. In the late 1940s it was more economical to have a small yet amplified combo.

 

The Beginning of Rhythm & Blues in the Jazz Big Bands Era

Throughout most of the big band era there were many territory bands like Bennie Moten, Jay McShann and Count Basie’s Big bands (mostly operating out of Kansas City) that incorporated the blues into their Big Band sounds. Also, “Blues Shouters” like Jimmy Rushing, Walter Brown, Duke Henderson, Big Joe Williams, Jimmy Witherspoon, and of course, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson became popular in northern cities from Chicago to New York in the late 1930s through the 1940s.

Simultaneously, “Boogie Woogie” was taking off in urban America as well, which was very blues based and was easily played in crowded urban “rent parties”. Later on, coming out of the Boogie Woogie craze, was “Jump Blues”, which would take the mainstream by storm with artists like Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway and the genre definers Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner. The genres of (Rural) Blues, Boogie Woogie, Jump Blues, Gospel and Electric Blues would all combine to be what would be coined, in 1948, as Rhythm and Blues or R&B replacing the term “race records”. These genres would coalesce to mix with Country & Western genres that would give birth to what would be called “Rock & Roll” in the mid fifties.

 

Amplification

In the late 1940s, the electric guitar would become a pivotal instrument in R&B in general and later on in Rock & Roll. Guitarists like Charlie Christian in jazz and T-Bone Walker in the blues were the pioneers of the use of the electric guitar in these new genres.  The music was becoming louder due to guitar amplification and the microphone jacked PA systems (Public Address or Announcement microphones, speakers and amplifiers).

The drum beats would become louder and more driven. The rhythm in Jump Blues was referred to as “8 to the bar”, a faster shuffle or straight beat, where the bass drums and the snare drums would become more prominent and generalized. In Urban Blues, the beat was more straight forward and insistent rather than the old swing beats that were lighter with use of cymbals and Hi-Hats in the 1920s and 1930s and during the Swing Era. This “eight to the bar” method would become stronger to produce the back-beat later on in the early 1950s.

Electric Blues/Urban Blues was being heard in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and Detroit in the last days of the Depression Era and then throughout World War II and really took off in the last half of the 40s decade. Urban, Electric and most definitely Jump Blues would crossover to the mainstream and would begin to slowly usurp the older Swing Jazz genre, though this would take some time. R&B would overtake Swing after 1955 under the label “Rock & Roll” (which is, again, simply R&B targeted to white audiences) and mainstream would then be dominated by the new beat for the rest of the century.