Robert Gale Ongley

Tag: Blues history

  • A TASTE OF THE BLUES (PART TWO)

    In Part One of this series, we took a look a the origins and early history of the blues. This time around, I want to deepen our understanding of the different styles of this music. There are many more branches on the blues tree than I would have guessed.

    Although its roots were widespread around the deep South, there were a few places where it evolved into a style unique to those areas. In fact, it evolved for many decades and many sub-genres were created. I mentioned one (Memphis Blues) in the previous post. Let’s expand on that one first, then move on to the others.

    Memphis Blues

    This one is important mainly because the first recordings of blues songs were done there. The actual style that came out of Memphis in the 1920s was part blues, part vaudeville and part jug music. It was largely about broader entertainment, not just pure blues. One key innovation, however, was the use of the rhythm and lead guitars to have each playing their own specific parts.

    In the early 1950s, the Memphis style took a turn, featuring heavier electric guitar and drums. Led by such blues players as B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf, the genre was transformed into a more modern version that still holds up to this day.

    Delta Blues

    If you were to make an attempt at pinning down a birthplace of the blues as a music form, the Mississippi Delta would be the most likely choice. It’s said that it spread from there to Louisiana and Texas, then north to Memphis and other cities we’ll come to later.

    Delta blues has been described as “rough, intensely emotional” in an article from Saturday Review in 1968. It’s mainly about Son House, who’s been called Father of the Delta Blues. If nothing else, he was a contemporary of early blues legends such as Charley Patton, also considered by some to be the Father of the Delta Blues.

    So, what does this style sound like. It’s raw, often played with one guitar and sung with one gravelly voice. The Saturday Review piece describes House as “an artist of almost incredible forcefulness and stature. His is a ferocious, almost violent, instrumental attack on one of the fingers of his fretting hand, along the strings of his steel-bodied National guitar.” Patton was a bit more melodic, from what I can tell, with a somewhat softer sound, making it clear there was room for some variation. Nonetheless, the early blues structure is there and the subject matter reveals this unvarnished look at life.

    Country Blues

    Some of Patton’s songs fit into this category, which has roots in folk, gospel, ragtime and hillbilly music. It’s known by other nicknames such as downhome blues, rural blues, folk blues and backwoods blues. Texan Blind Lemon Jefferson was one famous Country blues pioneer.

    This style was one of the earliest forms of the blues. It featured a solo vocal most of the time, often with guitar fingerpicking and harmonica. The music has a light-hearted, feel-good sound. An example of an adaptation that many would know of is Canned Heat’s Going Up the Country. Even the flute heard on their recording mimics the panpipes in the original, which was called Bull Doze Blues.

    Pick Your City Blues

    Just kidding. The point is that there are a slew of cities that have a blues style named after them. Those I know of are Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans and Detroit. Oh–and Memphis, of course. This happened due to a migration of blues players who took their stylings to these cities and became famous for their particular take which caught on and was imitated by others in the area.

    This general sub-genre became known as urban blues. It was adapted for city folk to make it more sophisticated, adding more instrumentation and eventually amplification. Lyrics addressed more urban themes. Smoother presentation was another characteristic. A few examples of urban blues songs are Walking to New Orleans, Match Box Blues and Stormy Monday.

    British Blues

    The blues have spread all over the world, but they took a particular foothold in Great Britain. So many bands counted the blues among their early influences. I’m going to hold back names of these groups until Part Three, though many could guess who some of them are.

    The young British bands of the 1960s took the American blues and pumped new life into them with powerful guitar arrangements and voices that perhaps only youth can bring. Same songs, entirely new takes that quickly caught on with the kids starved for something other than crooners and balladeers.

    More to Come

    Next, we’ll take a closer look at select blues musicians and what they brought to the table over the last hundred years.

  • A TASTE OF THE BLUES (PART ONE)

    The global phenomenon that is music takes many forms. The origins stem from multiple cultures across the planet. Their evolution is never-ending with new variations limited only by imagination, which never seems exhausted. The genres remain, though, their boundaries mostly honored by those composers and musicians who love the tradition in which they have trained.

    A few of these musical styles have come into existence in America. Jazz is a prime example, but before jazz the blues were created, bursting out of the hearts and souls of men and women who were giving expression to their distress in a way never known before on earth.

    From Seeds of Discontent

    In Sheila Davis’ book, The Craft of Lyric Writing, she states, “The blues began as an Afro-American work song which originated with the newly freed Southern slaves, largely unskilled laborers. The lyrics concerned the singer’s miseries–economic, sexual, and political. Unlike spirituals, which are choral in nature, the blues are a one-man (or one-woman) affair.

    ” ‘Sorrow-songs’ were often sung out-of-doors, the improvised complaints of exploited workers in cotton fields and ‘the sunless depths’ of mines. These melancholy moanings were also the ‘trial and tribulation music,’ as Mahalia Jackson put it (in Time magazine), ‘of the men on the railroad track layin’ crossties; everytime they hit the hammer, it was with a sad feelin’, but with a beat. Or it was the sound made by the men sellin’ watermelons and vegetables on a wagon drawn by a mule, hollerin’ ‘watermellllon!’ with a cry in their voices.’ Other lyrics told of double-crossing women, deserting men, whiskey, morphine, and chain gangs.”

    Early Tunes

    Ms. Davis goes on to tell us about “Joe Turner,” the main character of an early composition. While the first “sorrow-songs” were created as much as 50 years earlier, she says this one was prototype of all blues when published as Joe Turner Blues by W.C. Handy, who became known as “The Father of the Blues.” Handy wrote his song in 1915, but said he based it on a folk song he first heard in 1895.

    Handy at 19 years old

    This makes total sense, since the old Joe Turner song came about because of a man actually named Joe Turney, brother of Tennessee governor Pete Turney, who held that office from 1892 to 1896. Perhaps because of his connection to the governor, he gained a fearsome reputation for gathering up groups of convicts in Memphis, putting them in long chains, and leading them to the Nashville penitentiary. It was during those years that the song developed into a folk song with the basic blues shape Handy used. The name Turney had been mistakenly altered in the likely verbal passing along of the lyrics, but there’s no doubt the story is the same about this “bad” sheriff who transported great numbers of convicts in chains.

    The tune for Joe Turner Blues was carried over to numerous sets of lyrics that fit the mold of blues lamentations. It was widely used across the region by singers with fresh emotional wounds who loved the blues structure made popular by Handy.

    Before that iconic tune was composed, the guitar had gained popularity with black musicians. That change occurred in the 1890s, so by the time Joe Turner Blues came along, there was a lot of blues style music merging with the sounds of the guitar.

    The first blues song ever published, though, was called I Got the Blues, in 1908. It wasn’t in the pure structure of the prototype, but a man by the name of Anthony Maggio wrote it as a ragtime blues tune. In 1912, the blues gained momentum in the publishing world. Dallas Blues by Hart Wand, Baby Seals Blues by Baby F. Seals, and Memphis Blues by Mr. Handy were all released within that same year.

    Recordings

    Handy’s Memphis Blues was first known as Mr. Crump, named for a Memphis mayoral candidate running for office. The song was hugely popular and became the first blues recording, done by a band known as the Victor Military Band. Within a month, Prince’s Band and a vaudeville singer named Morton Harvey recorded new versions. So, Handy’s hit accounted for the first three recordings of the blues!

    Another milestone was the recording by Mamie Smith of Crazy Blues, written by Perry Bradford. This was the first record of a vocal blues song by a black woman. It sold a million copies in its first six months.

    Blues Forever

    The blues were here to stay. The American public was hooked and record companies were on the bandwagon. But things were just getting started. Be sure to check with me next time for another taste of those sweet blues.