PART III
The Great Migration (early 1900s-1970s) had one important effect on ‘Da Blues – the southern African American population became urbanized -thereby expanding the blues music from south to north including New York and Chicago and west to California. As the blues moved throughout America, it evolved, creating many different styles of music.
Urbanization
The blues moved from poor rural areas in the South to modern cities of the North and West. From quiet fields of corn and cotton to places of noise, lights, and tall buildings. The modern environment of electricity, night clubs, factories, and inventions offered economic and social progress. The behavior and attitudes of blues performers were profoundly affected by this urban society.
Speakeasies and clubs gave musicians more opportunities to perform across the city while recording labels like Chess, Atlantic, and Specialty, increased the blues audience exponentially in spite of black churches condemning this music as “the Devil’s music.”
In 1920 a record cost $1-a full day’s pay! Sales topped a million! Blues music was about to grow in many different directions
Evolution of the Blues
What makes the blues sound like the blues is the use of “blue notes” or flatted notes (notes below an intended pitch) and is where this form of music gets its name. But changes in beats, tempo, rhythm, lyric structure and content, and types of instruments helped to create what we know as boogie-woogie, jazz, soul and rock and roll.
>Beats-The Beat (like those of the heart) is the regularly occurring pattern of rhythmic stresses in music, i.e. tapping or clapping to the music. For most adults, a normal resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm).
>Tempo-Tempo is how fast or slow the Beat occurs and is expressed in Beats Per Minute (BPM), i.e. with a slow 50 BPM there will be 50 beats in one minute; with a moderate 80 BPM there will be 80 beats in one minute; with a fast 140 BPM will be 140 beats in one minute. Tempo is ‘how’ the music feels overall; sad, exciting, relaxed, etc.
>Rhythm-combing notes of different duration, a pattern of music in time. Differences in rhythmic structure characterize different styles of music; blues, jazz, reggae, hip-hop, etc.
Lyric Structure:
The call and response pattern:
Call: All them pretty gals will be there,
Response: Shuck that corn before you eat;
Call: They will fix it for us rare,
Response: Shuck that corn before you eat.
Call: I know that supper will be big,
Response: Shuck that corn before you eat;
Call: I think I smell a fine roast pig,
Response: Shuck that corn before you eat.— Slaves in the Antebellum South
into various other patterns such as AAB:
You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time
You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine. (Big Momma Thornton, “Hound Dog”)
The following is an instrumental response to a vocalized phrase. The trombonist Charlie Green responds to Bessie Smith’s lyrics of, “Empty Bed Blues” (1928). This song is an example of the AAB blues lyric form:
A: Statement: I woke up this morning with a awful aching head
A: Statement: I woke up this morning with a awful aching head
B: Response: My new man had left me, just a room and a empty bed
Lyric Content
Memphis singer, Redd Velvet (born Crystal Tucker) said, “The blues is an antipsychotic to keep my people from losing their minds,”… “It started with the moans and groans of agony, the slave roots of it all.”
The rural blues lyrics of Big Bill Broonzy,
“Baby, they diggin’ my potatoes
Lord, they trampin’ on my vine
Now I’ve got a special plan now baby
Lord, that a-restin’ on my mind”(Diggin’ my potatoes, 1959)
and Charlie Patton,
“Sees a little boll weevil keeps movin’ in the, Lordie!
You can plant your cotton and you won’t get a half a bale, Lordie
Bo weevil, bo weevil, where’s your native home? Lordie
“A-Louisiana raised in Texas, least is where I was bred and born”, Lordie…”(Mississippi Bo Weevil Blues, c.1929)
came to be the urban blues lyrics of B.B. King,
“Please Love Me baby, You Upset Me Baby, Every Day I Have the Blues, Bad Luck, 3 O’Clock Blues…” (‘Singin’ the Blues 1956)
and Ray Charles,
“…So let the good times roll,
I said let the good times roll,
I don’t care if you’re young or old,
You oughtta get together and let the good times roll…” (Let the Good Times Roll, 1959)
The Blues Goes Electric
Before the advent of electricity for musical instruments, the harmonica or “mouth harp” was a convenient instrument to carry around even in the South. The German made Hohner harmonica (1857) was the main rural instrument played without accompaniment.
The next step up was electric guitars and amplifiers. The one string acoustic guitar( i.e. box guitar) became the six-string electric guitar with an amplifier. As early as 1931, the Rickenbacker, “Frying Pan” was produced:
Guitar Amplifiers:
Microphones greatly influenced the style of blues. Sound recording began with Thomas Edison’s 1877 ‘tinfoil’ recording requiring a singer to ‘shout’ into a horn:
In the mid-1920s, singers embraced the improved microphones that allowed them to simply ‘whisper’ rather than shout a song:
20th-century technology continued to flourish and influence the blues genre. Guitars, in particular, became more sophisticated and a vital signature of ‘Da Blues. Electric guitars could now compete with the big bands of the 20s in concert halls that had the power of drums and brass instruments.
The ‘acoustic’ slide guitar (use of a bottleneck to press across the strings of the guitar) could now become louder if played through a microphone or plugged into an amplifier.
Best exemplified by such artists as Robert Johnson (1911-1938)
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtDlZdhHRCI) Crossroad Blues (1936)
Mississippi Fred McDowell (1906-1972) Shake ‘Em On Down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64T6ugyWXAA&feature=youtu.be
TBC
PART IV INFLUENCE OF THE BLUES
Just Sayin' 