Singing the blues

The history of the blues

Few musical genres convey the heart of the human condition better than blues. The soulful melodies and expressive vocals communicate hardship, emotion, and the courage that people can find within themselves in order to rise above their condition in life. Blues music has a rich, cultural history that finds its earliest roots in African music and rhythmic dances.

Africans enslaved on American plantations sang spirituals and call and response songs known as field hollars. After the Civil War, early blues music began developing from these slave songs in the Northern Mississippi Delta. The earliest pieces used a simple call and response format with a voice and a guitar. The vocal would lead and the guitar would respond. There is little documented history of the first few decades of blues music, but these early forms were to influence the later development of the genre.

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Historians speculate that the development of blues music reflected a shift from group thinking to individualization as African Americans gained their freedom and begin establishing a place for themselves in American society. The nature of blues also echoed a country that was increasingly focusing on the importance of the individual.

Around the turn of the 20th century reports of blues music came from the Deep South as well as certain areas in Texas. Blues began gaining attention in more professional musical circles until Hart Ward’s “Dallas Blues,” published in 1912, became the first piece of published blue’s sheet music. Soon after, composer W. C. Handy released his own blues sheet music and worked to bring blues into the popular eye from 1911-1914.

In the 20s blues music enjoyed a time of extreme popularity in the Southern United States. The decade began with Mamie Smith becoming the first African American to record a blues song with “Crazy Blues.” Additional instrumentation including harmonicas were added to the traditional guitar accompaniment and musicians like Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Charlie Patton introduced their own variations on classic blues.

Despite this period of blues popularity, the genre did not spread to the Midwest or the North until the 40s and 50s when blues musicians migrated into cities like Detroit and Chicago, bringing their craft with them. Muddy Walters and Elmore James were especially influential in this movement. Both artists popularized a style of blues backed by bass, drums, piano, and harmonica, which resulted in a fuller sound. It was in Chicago that electrical instruments were first added to blues music, creating a new subgenre.

Jazz and blues have always been interconnected, each style influencing the other throughout their development. However, the conscious application of jazz techniques to blues music primarily came through BB King of Memphis and T Bone Walker of Houston. These two musicians combined established instruments and rhythms of jazz to explore the limits of blues music.

Today blues music takes on a countless number of variations as different genres have borrowed and adapted blues techniques. However, the original spirit of the music remains the same.

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