BLUES

The blues or the saying "having the blues" can be traced back to the 16th Century. When someone felt sad they were said to have "blue devils" attacking them. The sadness that American slaves felt during the 1870s-90's from over work, abandonment, discrimination, betrayal and sometimes lost love was relieved by singing about that sadness. This singing (and later accompanying with banjo or guitar) was an attempt to overcome these blues by creating a musical form and delivering it with a certain sound and spirit we know today as the blues.

WORK SONGS

Even after the end of slavery Black-Americans worked in less than ideal conditions either picking cotton, hammering railroad ties or chopping trees. During this work a pace was kept up by singing a kind of work song called a "field holler." A field holler was a song that featured a leader calling out the beginning of a musical phase and having the other workers responding by joining in shortly thereafter. This type of singing is called "call and response." When blues first started the early blues pieces were patterned after these work songs but performed and heard after work hours at the end of the day. The lyrics were very personal and close to the feelings of each singer. Certain blues numbers were eventually even danced to.

BLUES FORM

There is some variety within blues forms but the standard and most common sequence consists of a series of three-line stanzas in which the first two lines are the same. For example:

I went to the cross road, fell down on my knees
I went to the cross road, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, "Have mercy, save poor Bob, if you please."

Each line is set to four measures, or bars, of music. Each verse is set to 12 bars of music. These twelve bars divide the three lines into four bars stanzas each.
The pattern is known as 12-bar blues.

MEASURE 1 MEASURE 2 MEASURE 3 MEASURE 4 Line 1 I I I I Line 2   IV IV I I Line 3   V IV I I

The roman numeral format above is the harmonic progression that most blues follows. Notice that it is only three chords; the tonic (I), the subdominant (IV) and the dominant (V). The numbers refer to the steps of the scale the chord is built on.

The meter of blues is usually duple but in the rhythmic back ground there is a suggested triplet or three pattern (a subtle compound meter). The danceable blues are faster in tempo and the personal type blues numbers are slow and melancholy. The melodies used in blues are drawn from the "blues scale" which features a downward bending (sighing or crying affect) of the third, fifth and seventh scale steps. The texture of blues is usually homophonic in that a single melodic line is accompanied by a guitar or later a band. The most important instrument besides the voice is the guitar (originally acoustic then electric). Sometimes a blues player will use a "slide" on the left hand. The slide allows the guitarist to slide between notes adding a cry or sigh to the melody.

COUNTRY BLUES

From 1900 until 1930 African-Americans came from miles away to the Mississippi Delta (The delta area from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi) to work clearing land for farming, building levees to discourage the Mississippi river from escaping its banks and clearing forests. Within the life of the delta was the black musician singing the blues. These blues singers were either traveling workers who sang the blues as they moved from job to job or professionals who sang at parties, established places such as clubs or cafes, or simply played at docks or street corners.

These early country blues singers used their voice, with guitar accompaniment and sometimes harmonica to tell stories (called ballads or talking blues), sing work songs and write dance tunes.

Listen to Robert Johnson perform his Mississippi blues, Crossroads:

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) was born in Hazlehurst, a small town just southeast of the Mississippi delta. He began his life as a sharecropper at a large plantation but in 1930 he decided to leave and make a career as a professional musician. The subject of the song Crossroads is how Robert Johnson as a young man walks out to a crossroads at midnight with his guitar, and a mysterious large black man appears out of nowhere and strikes a deal that if Robert Johnson sells his soul to the devil he will be learn to play the blues just fine.

Robert Johnson (1911-1938)

CHICAGO BLUES

Due to increased industrial demand North of where rural blues was thriving many black workers and their families left the South for work in the North. Chicago was home to large steel mills and meatpacking factories. As black workers moved north so did musicians. Since bars and clubs were nosier in Chicago most blues musicians had to be amplified in order to be heard well. The electric guitar was invented by Les Paul in the 1930's and this instrument became the defining sound of amplified blues. When white folks began to listen to this new amplified music and when they listened (sometimes secretly) to recordings over the radio the audience for the blues started to grow. By the 1950s this led inevitably to rock and roll.

Listen to the Hoochie Coochie Man, Chicago Blues of Muddy Waters:

CONTEMPORARY BLUES

Today a new breed of blues guitarists and blues musicians are playing the blues by not only reviving the tradition of their "grandparents" but also keeping alive the art form. Black musicians have not stopped singing the blues and as other styles such as Jazz, R&B, rock and rap have borrowed from the blues its purest form is still practiced.

Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)

Listen to Red House blues by Jimi Hendrix: