Field hands working long hours in the sun sometimes let out a long, musical moan, known as a shout or holler. It became very popular, and thereafter many other Tin Pan Alley songs entitled blues began to appear. Among My Souvenirs 11. Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The effect was unforgettable. Morton Harvey’s recording of the song in 1915 was the first blues sung on record. Call and response is evident between Robert Johnson's vocal and guitar in "Cross Road Blues" (1936). The practice of creating spirituals and blues includes drawing upon phrases or verses that are common to multiple songs. So while I've only heard half of the tracks that are on this set, I can at least contribute a little info. In terms of functional (i.e., traditional European) harmony, the simplest blues harmonic progression is described as follows (I, IV, and V refer respectively to the first or tonic, fourth or subdominant, and fifth or dominant notes of the scale): African influences are apparent in the blues tonality, the call-and-response pattern of the repeated refrain structure of the blues stanza, the falsetto break in the vocal style, and the imitation of vocal idioms by instruments, especially the guitar and harmonica. Learn more about blues, including notable musicians. Miller, Karl Hagstrom. The song was so strange and poignant that it attracted much attention. Handy published his next blues, “The Saint Louis Blues,” in 1914. Through spirituals, enslaved African Americans applied call and response and other West African musical practices to Christian hymn singing. All the blues recordings of this period were performed by white vaudeville singers and dance orchestras with varied repertoires. Blues songs are lyrical rather than narrative; blues singers are expressing feelings rather than telling stories. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The Blues: A Very Short Introduction. In the example below, listen specifically to the chord changes that occur in bars 5, 7, 9, 10, and 11. Jones, Leroi. The earliest references to blues date back to the 1890s and early 1900s. Blues and early jazz were inextricably linked as they developed concurrently late in the nineteenth century. Prince's Orchestra: "St. Louis Blues" (1915). As Work told her story: A girl from town... came to the tent one morning and began to sing about the man who had left her. In addition to the lone songsters, troupes of performers toured professionally in minstrel shows and circuses, as well as smaller medicine shows. Black musicians gradually created new types of songs that differed from the interracial common stock. They did not view African Americans as potential customers, so they marketed records by black artists to white audiences. These techniques produce microtones and effects that standard musical notation is insufficient to represent. While emancipation meant new freedoms for African American people, it also brought challenges, hardships, isolation, and sorrow. The simple but expressive forms of the blues became by the 1960s one of the most important influences on the development of popular music. The first recording of "The Saint Louis Blues," by Prince's Orchestra, the house band at Columbia Records, includes this habanera section. These include melodies that build on a five-note pentatonic “blues scale.” The flatted 3rd and 7th pitches of these scales are commonly called “blue notes.” Europeans and Euro-Americans often describe songs built on these scales as having a mournful sound. The origins of the blues are poorly documented. The song elicited such a response from the audience that it won a special place in her act. For a general overview that follows the evolution of blues music from its origins through its contemporary forms, see Blues: About the Genre. The rural blues developed in three principal regions, Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi. The Birth of the Blues Lyrics: Writer(s): desylva/brown/henderson / Oh, they say some people long ago / Were searching for a different tune / One that they could croon / As only they can / … In West Africa, people sang group work songs as they carried out jobs and tasks. To express this musically, blues performers use vocal techniques such as melisma (sustaining a single syllable across several pitches), rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” or bending guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide or bottleneck to the guitar strings to create a whining voicelike sound. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta. The blues became adapted to the more sophisticated urban environment. San Antonio Rose 16. You watch this film for … A visitor to a plantation in the South described a holler in his observation of a man who “raised such a sound as I never heard before: a long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto.” Field hollers could be wordless, or they might include improvised phrases and pieces of existing songs. Two of the primary figures responsible for popularizing it are William Christopher “W.C.” Handy and Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. Banjo expert Bill Knopf plays his interpretation of the Ray Henderson jazz classic. "The Saint Louis Blues" was written with a chord structure that became very common in blues music. Handy was an African American bandleader, songwriter, and music teacher who became known as “Father of the Blues” for his role in making blues a popular music sensation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. The Birth of the Blues has apparently been released in a few versions: this 4-CD box set, a single disc CD that's also available here, and the 2-CD set that I just came across at a discount store. He had fallen asleep while waiting for a train and awoke to hear music. Blues became widely-known in the 1910s when it emerged as a modern trend in popular music. Blues emerged as an embodiment of and response to these unique circumstances. Among them were black musicians. Blues ballads were similar in structure to the narrative ballads that British colonists brought to the New World, but they told stories relevant to contemporary African American life. Ma Rainey may be the first singer to gain success as a blues specialist. Birth of the Blues was a labor of love for Bing Crosby and it showed. Corrections? It was Chicago, however, that played the greatest role in the development of urban blues. His song, too, struck me instantly. While African Americans had been singing on sound recordings since the start of the recording industry in 1890, they mainly performed self-deprecating “coon songs” (see Ragtime: About the Genre) and minstrel show material. Twelfth Street Rag 17. Updates? From world music to modern opera, sort fact from fiction in this study of musical origins. The Birth of the Blues 07. Were the first blues recordings made by women? Really funny and amazing! British rock musicians in the 1960s, especially the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall, were strongly influenced by the blues, as were such American rock musicians as Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and the Allman Brothers Band. She began performing as a teenager in the first decade of the twentieth century. Handy was living in Memphis, Tennessee in 1912 when he published the sheet music for his composition “The Memphis Blues.” It was one of the first published blues songs, and sales of the sheet music soared. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. “The Saint Louis Blues,” or “St. Gave birth to the blues! Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Watch: New Singing Lesson Videos Can Make Anyone A Great Singer Confused with the Blues 18. Emancipation brought new hope for African American people in the South. Southern, Eileen. However, it was a highly contentious time, as Southern whites did everything they could to preserve the power structure from which they had benefited for centuries. The blues of Georgia and the Carolinas is noted for its clarity of enunciation and regularity of rhythm. “Livery Stable Blues,” performed by the Original Dixieland Jass Band [1] was a best-selling record for Victor, but is a problematic “first” as it is a recording of a white band performing an African […] This show is at Kiel Opera House in St Louis in June 1965 when Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show. Their popularity increased dramatically during the 1890s when companies, including Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, started making inexpensive models available by mail order. White performers in blackface makeup dominated minstrelsy, but an increasing number of black minstrel troupes, also in blackface, toured after the Civil War. Blues derived from and was largely played by Southern Black men, most of whom came from the milieu of agricultural workers. Blue devils were evil spirits thought to cause depression. In 1908, New Orleans produced the first published blues composition - "I Got the Blues," written by an Italian American named Antonio Maggio. So while I've only heard half of the tracks that are on this set, I can at least contribute a little info. Personal statements by individuals superseded the communal music that was dominant during slavery. Birth of the Blues is a 1941 American musical film directed by Victor Schertzinger and starring Bing Crosby, Mary Martin and Brian Donlevy. Blues ballads include “John Henry,” “Frankie and Albert,” and “Stackolee.” Another type of song, the jump-up, strung together common phrases and verses, often unrelated, over simple guitar accompaniment of one or two chords. Coming up with Paul Whiteman, Bing met and worked with some of the greatest musicians in history. It resulted from the intermingling of many social factors and musical precursors. They were both professional entertainers who adapted music they heard in informal settings to the performance stage and published compositions. W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. It became integrated into the African American music of New Orleans, as musicians regularly ferried between the city and Havana. 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