The born of the Blues

The blues was born at the turn of the century in the Mississippi Delta and other
regions of the south. It would become the cornerstone of all popular American
music. This music was a reminder of the hard times, the depression, slavery and
just being black. From 1500s to mid 1800s Millions of Africans were enslaved and
brought from West Africa to America bringing with them musical and cultural
traditions. It was on the plantations throughout the American South that these
musical and cultural traditions would lay the foundations for early blues music.
During the work days they started to sing the work songs, a simple form of music
that consist in a call and a response, sometimes with a pulse with the tools that
they were working on to make the day pass long. This call and response bring the
essence of the later blues, this africanisms show the simple and natural way of
making music.In 1865, after abolishing slavery throughout the United States, the
blues emerge in the deep south, black americans needed to forje a new language.
The blues was the new language, the only way to express, it spoked in the first
person, talking about moving on and leaving your troubles behind. The guitar
was the main instrument, summed up with the voice with that call and response
pattern, this was the blues, and this was exactly what the Father of the Blues
heard in a train station.

Early Blues Figures

W.C Handy , the father of the blues, recall that was the weirdst sound that he ever
heard along with a string blues band that he also heard in mississipi and realized
that he could make money with this. He translated the weird sounds that he heard
in to a publisher empire. Handy was an educated musician who used elements of
folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of
his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.
The musician, composer and publisher, wrote St. Louis Blues and Memphis Blues
that became sheet music hits. He really got to make money of this music and the
blues that initially was folk music started to be commercialized. New York was the
capital of the new recording industry, that made blues a driving force in popular
music. Initially the record business ignore the black musicians but it was the
competitor of Handy, Perry Bradford, that in 20s got a hit with Crazy Blues sung by
Mamie Smith and launched blues as popular music.

The recording companies began to release race records, from black musicians to
black audience and Mamie was the first blues singer, her timbre and the delivery
of her voice was amazing, in a era of pre microphone he really could project and
despite of various threats the record was a commercial success and opened the
door for more black musicians to record. One of the most important artist of the
20s that enter through this door was Bessie Smith, the blues first super star. A
strong, independent woman and a powerful vocalist who could sing in both jazz
and blues styles, Smith was the most commercially successful of this era's singers.
Her records sold tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of copies, an
unheard of level for those days. She sung about domestic violence and defende to
fight it back and also spicy the music with some sexual songs.

A street musician from Texas, was the new sound that the records companies was
looking for, he sounded like another world from the Vaundeville women that
dominated the blues recordings. Defined with a structure of 12 bars with a form
AAB that consistes one sentence, repeat it and a response, Blind Lemon Jefferson
joined a crowd that called the attention of the J. Mayo Williams, the new
Paramount producer of the race division, that despite of didn't like him, he record
him and suprisingly sold all over the country. This new style, used a jazz-like
improvisation and single string accompaniment on a guitar and had major
influence on younger players including Lightnin' Hopkins and T-Bone Walker.
Arguably the founding father of Texas blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson was one of the
most commercially successful artists of the 1920s.

In the Delta, a blues center was created, Will Dockery Farm became one of the
biggest cotton plantation in the Delta, early on, more than 2000 workers were
living there. This was the perfect place for blues singers to come for the saturday
night entertainment and the greatest was Charlie Patton, the father of the delta
blues. Patton lived a high-flying lifestyle full of liquor and women, and his
performances at house parties, juke joints, and plantation dances became the
stuff of legend. His loud voice, coupled with a rhythmic, percussive guitar style,
was groundbreaking and designed to entertain a raucous audience. Patton began
recording late in his career but made up for lost time by laying down 60 songs in
less than five years. A charismatic performer with a flashy style, talented fretwork,
and flamboyant showmanship, he inspired a legion of bluesmen and rockers, from
Son House and Robert Johnson to Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

A friend and colleague of Charley Patton, The great Son House was a six-string
innovator, haunting vocalist, and powerful performer who set the Delta on fire
during the 1920s and '30s with scorched-earth performances and timeless
recordings. Patton introduced House to his contacts at Paramount Records and
remain among the most highly collectible early blues recordings.They caught the
ear of Library of Congress musicologist. Alan Lomax, who traveled to Mississippi in
1941 to record House and friends. After Alan Lomax research for the roots
material he came along with a spectacular discover in a prison. Leadbelly, was
commited for killing a man beacuse of his temper. Leadbelly's music and
tumultuous life had a profound effect on blues and folk musicians alike. Like most
performers of his era, Leadbelly's musical repertoire extended beyond the blues
to incorporate ragtime, country, folk, pop standards, and gospel. When he got out
of jail, became cleary how the media like to write about bad black man, "Sweet
Singer of the Swanplands here to do a few tunes between homicides" but despite
of that, Lomax toke him to a mansion where he constructed him jorney from
singing condemned to greatfull performer.

The blues singers started to get more sophisticated and with electric recording,
this singers didn't need to shout no more. It means that singers now can be more
intimate and a young man from Mississipi called Robert Johnson was the voice of
this new style. As a songwriter, Johnson brought brilliant imagery and emotion to
his lyrics, and many of his songs, including "Love in Vain" and "Sweet Home
Chicago," have become blues standards. But Johnson was also a powerful singer
and a skilled guitarist and in his short life time we record 29 songs, and was
claimed king of the delta blues singers. Thanks to the reretelling of the story over
the decades, many fans know the tale of Robert Johnson allegedly making a deal
with the devil at the crossroads outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, to acquire his
incredible talents. Although we'll never know the truth of the matter, one fact
remains: Johnson is the cornerstone artist of the blues. The turn that make blues a
folk art was made by John Hammond, a record producer that further numerous
musical careers. He put a concert in Carnigie Hall, the most prestigous classic
music veneu, called "From Spirituals to Swing" and suggested that this was serious
art. Robert Johnson was going to be the big suprise of the evening but he died just
before that, and Big Bill Broonzy replace him. Broonzy represent the rural blues,
despite of not being that guy and that advantage of that and took him to Europe.
Broonzy's influences included the folk music, spirituals, work songs, ragtime music
and country blues he heard growing up and the styles of his contemporaries,
including Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Broonzy combined all these
influences into his own style of the blues, which foreshadowed the postwar
Chicago blues, later refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and
Willie Dixon.

Blues music was being redefine and was no longer just black pop music, it was
now folk art. Its mid class white audicience saw the blues was endangerous by the
modern world. Lomax son, was heading back in to the field to collect music in the
mississipi delta, and recorded one man that would became a blues legend, Muddy
Waters. He was the single most important artist to emerge in post-war American
blues. A peerless singer, a gifted songwriter, an able guitarist, and leader of one of
the strongest bands. Waters absorbed the influences of rural blues from the Deep
South and moved them uptown, injecting his music with a fierce, electric energy
and helping pioneer the Chicago Blues style. While in mississipi he was performing
on his own and with a local string band and he also opened a juke joint on the
Stovall grounds. Lomax was strongly impressed with Waters, and recorded several
sides of him performing in his juke joint and when Waters received two copies of
the single and $20 from Lomax, it encouraged him to seriously consider a
professional career. Thats when Waters decided to pull up stakes and relocate to
Chicago, Illinois in hopes of making a living off his music and switched to electric
guitar to be better heard in noisy clubs, which added a new power to his cutting
slide work. Muddy Waters' influence is incalculable, on blues as well as other
American idioms such as Rock and roll and Rock music and his music changed
chicago.

The blues stayed and stay loyal to his original artform, we can feel his essence still
today in diferent styles of music. His roots consititue the basic formula of almost
all of the american music and beyond. Started from the african slaves to british
white boys, it influenced various generations and changed the world of music
forever. His powerful messages made the blues more than music, it was a form of
expression, and the great figures of this style only made it visible for a worldwide
audience with their unique styles.