The Blues

The original sound of the Blues started in the 19th Century possibly from a mix of slave or share cropping “field holler” work songs, country ballads, European folk songs and spirituals, among other sources. Some scholars say it started before the Civil War, some say it started just after and then others claim it came about at the end of the Century in the 1890s. Whichever may be the case, W.C Handy (known as the “Father of the Blues”) was amazed one night while waiting for a train in a “Delta” town in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1903, to hear an anonymous bluesman. He was playing a strange kind of music, forever after to be known as the Blues. There were, however, accounts by other blues musicians and singers first hearing the Blues in other southern and mid-western states such as in Missouri (accounted by Ma Rainey) or New Orleans (as suggested by Jelly Roll Morton).

For the most part of the first half of the 20th century, the Blues was an acoustic type of music played on guitar and, a little bit later on the piano. It was mostly a rural or folk kind of music that was played by traveling minstrels, vagabonds and train hoppers. The first Blues recordings started showing up during the 1920s, like Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds “Crazy Blues” in 1920, selling over 75,000 copies when initially released. Although “Crazy Blues” was not a true Blues song it was the first song with the word Blues in its title that was recorded by a black singer.

W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” was somewhat in the Blues style (the standard twelve bar Blues but with a tango rhythm and more closely related to Ragtime) was a huge hit. “St. Louis Blues” was first published in 1914 by Handy and then crossed over as a #1 pop song for Mamie Smith and the Jazz “Father” Louis Armstrong. It became a huge seller right after the rise of “Crazy Blues”.

It wasn’t until later, when Muddy Waters (aka McKinley Morganfield) took the train out of the Delta to Chicago in 1943, that the Blues became a recorded electric form of music. He was only one of several other bluesmen who helped the transition of Blues from rural (acoustic/folk) to urban (electric/amplified). Please see the upcoming articles on “The Blues”.