Alexx Dudas FAM123 - Final Jamie Sunshine May 8, 2016 The - PDF document

Alexx Dudas FAM123 - Final Jamie Sunshine May 8, 2016 The History of Blues Music Blues music has a colorful history in its culture, its style, its sound and its artists. The presentation that Amber Myers and I gave in class on Thursday May 5 th was a general overview of all of the above qualities plus additional pieces. Blues music is, and has always been, a genre of music that has a personality. From its origin, blues music was used by African American slaves on southern plantations as a way to pass the grueling hours of hard labor and also a way to tell their stories. These stories, as told through songs and hymns were passed down to generations as part of their culture. Through the years these songs that began as lyric and music eventually evolved into what we consider the roots of blues music. Blues music first got its hold in the early 1900’s. It’s hard to say the exact years that it happened but the post World War I years definitely helped spread the blues culture around the country. Artists and songs that were known almost exclusively in the south, specifically in and around the Mississippi Delta region, spread westward and northward to larger cities and toward westward expansion during the gold rush. As the music travels from city to city and then state to state the basic elements and instruments of blues music stayed the same. Some of the common traits such as call and response are still even used today. As blues music spread around the country, its style and sound started to vary at least slightly. Since its conception there was two distinct forms of blues music: Piedmont blues and Mississippi Delta blues. The Piedmont blues sound was mostly isolated to the east coast states and had been derived from the sounds of ragtime music. Mississippi Delta blues, which is most closely recognizable to what our ears consider contemporary blues, is found in the region that

bares its name. This music is highly personal and typically reflective of the hard life that slaves had to endure. The delta blues also exemplified the use of the harmonica and electric guitar. From these two forms of blues music came Chicago Blues and Country Blues. Chicago Blues, which sprang up during the World War II era, also occurred due to the migration influxes into the city centers as African Americans filled jobs vacated by white men who went off to war. Chicago blues features a full band and is reminiscent of jazz and big band. Country Blues is a regionally distinct form of blues music that is often referred to as folk music. It incorporates elements of ragtime, gospel, hillbilly and Dixieland jazz. With the rise of Chicago Blue also came the rise in variation of typical blue sound. As mentioned above, Chicago blues would usually include a full band. Up until then the most common instruments of blues music were vocals, percussive (clapping and other simple percussive included), acoustic guitar and sometimes the harmonica. With the inception of Chicago Blues we saw the addition of the drum set, the keyboard and incorporation of the piano, bass (either upright or electric), and other brass instruments. This is the evolution that mixes with the jazz and big band genres. For the majority of Blues’ history it consisted of almost exclusively of black artist and a largely black fan base. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that we started to see not only a more diverse audience but also a more diverse performing crowd. This is one of the most interesting trends that I saw during my research. There is no doubt that the black artists of early blues music had definite talent, but the civil rights struggles going on through out the nation combined with the income disparity among races, limited the mass scale attraction to blues music and the distribution thereof. The 1960’s were trivial to race relations in the nation but were also explosive for blues music. I personally attribute to this to artists such as Elvis Presley and Elton

John whose earliest works had a bluesy sound to them. It was because of such artists that blues music started to gain a rock and roll sound and began to become relatively more mainstream. The target audience started to become the wealthy and more affluent class of Americans as it took on a broader race appeal. As the music started to become more mainstream and mass- produced it also started to lose some of its tradition. The traditional messages of blues music, about the hard times on the plantation or about the family traditions, were lost in translation when produced for the general population; the traditional messages simply lost their appeal. During this time we also saw the transition toward the rhythm and blues genre with the regular use of piano and drum set. Overall the research for this project wasn’t all too challenging. Videos that exemplify the sounds of the blues were quite helpful in order to get the point across to the audience and they also made for a less boring presentation. There is much content available about blues music but the unfortunate part is that most of it is in blogs or other opinion based sources so you’ve got to be selective with what you use. Because “the history of blues music” is such a broad topic it was almost a challenge to tailor it down narrow enough in order to organize our thoughts and not have the presentation be too general. The flow of the information was sometimes hard to organize because of the many transition that blues music went through over the years. Nevertheless, the research and presentation, I’d say, went quite well.

Work Cited 1. About. "History: Styles of the Blues, a Blues Glossary, and the Eras of the Blues." 2. About.com Entertainment. 2016. Web. 3. Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation. "Piedmont Blues." 2007. Web. 04 May 2016. 4. Big Mama Thornton. Bio.com. Ed. Biography.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 5. Dahl, Bill. "Larry Garner - Biography." AllMusic.com. AllMusic. Web. 6. Deming, Mark. "Artist Biography." All Music. Web. 7. John, Elton. "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues." YouTube. VEVO, 01 Apr. 2010. Web. 2016. 8. Kopp, Ed. "A brief history of the blues." All about jazz. All about jazz, 16 Aug. 2009. Web. 3 May 2016. 9. Novonine. "Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Trust No Man." YouTube. YouTube, 07 Nov. 2010. Web. 2016. 10. PBS. "HISTORY DETECTIVES | Slave Songbook | PBS." YouTube. YouTube, 04 Mar. 2009. Web. 2016.