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Blues



Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, MS and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern Soul," the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work this vein of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease and Peggy Scott-Adams.

Texas blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan
Texas blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan

During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1982, the album Strong Persuader revealed Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Texas Flood was released in 1983, and the Texas based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. 1989 saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity with the album The Healer. Eric Clapton known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar.

In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and[40] more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged.[41]

In the 1990s, blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W. C. Handy Awards[42] or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, NorthernBlues Music, and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for their rediscovering and remastering of blues rarities such as Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records) and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).[43]

Young blues artists today are exploring all aspects of the blues, from classic delta to more rock-oriented blues, artists born after 1970 like Sean Costello,John Mayer, Anthony Gomes, Shemekia Copeland, Jonny Lang, Corey Harris, Susan Tedeschi,Joe Bonamassa,The White Stripes, North Mississippi Allstars, The Black Keys, Bob Log III, Jose P and Hillstomp developing their own styles.[44]

In another cotton-producing community, Memphis, Texas, not Memphis, Tennessee, William Daniel McFalls, or Blues Boy Willie, is attempting to revive the past popularity of blues to contemporary society.

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Musical impact

Cover of the original sheet music of the two piano version of Rhapsody in Blue.
Cover of the original sheet music of the two piano version of Rhapsody in Blue.

Blues musical styles, forms (12-bar blues), melodies, and the blues scale have influenced many other genres of music, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Prominent jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and the White Stripes have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale is often used in popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", and even in orchestral works such as George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F".

The blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds used in rock music (e.g., in "A Hard Day's Night"). Blues forms are used in the theme to the televised Batman, teen idol Fabian's hit, "Turn Me Loose", country music star Jimmie Rodgers' music, and guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason".

R&B music can be traced back to spirituals and blues. Musically, spirituals were a descendant of New England choral traditions, and in particular of Isaac Watts's hymns, mixed with African rhythms and call-and-response forms. Spirituals or religious chants in the African-American community are much better documented than the "low-down" blues. Spiritual singing developed because African-American communities could gather for mass or worship gatherings, which were called camp meetings.

Early country bluesmen such as Skip James, Charley Patton, Georgia Tom Dorsey played country and urban blues and had influences from spiritual singing. Dorsey helped to popularize Gospel music. Gospel music developed in the 1930s, with the Golden Gate Quartet. In the 1950s, soul music by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown used gospel and blues music elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues were these merged in soul blues music. Funk music of the 1970s was influenced by soul; funk can be seen as an antecedent of hip-hop and contemporary R&B.

Duke Ellington straddled the big band and bebop genres. Though Ellington was a jazz artist, he used the blues form extensively.
Duke Ellington straddled the big band and bebop genres. Though Ellington was a jazz artist, he used the blues form extensively.

Before World War II, the boundaries between blues and jazz were less clear. Usually jazz had harmonic structures stemming from brass bands, whereas blues had blues forms such as the 12-bar blues. However, the jump blues of the 1940s mixed both styles. After WWII, blues had a substantial influence on jazz. Bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time", used the blues form with the pentatonic scale and blue notes.

Bebop marked a major shift in the role of jazz, from a popular style of music for dancing, to a "high-art," less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music". The audience for both blues and jazz split, and the border between blues and jazz became more defined. Artists straddling the boundary between jazz and blues are categorized into the jazz-blues sub-genre.

The blues' twelve-bar structure and the blues scale was a major influence on rock-and-roll music. Rock-and-roll has been called "blues with a back beat". Carl Perkins called rockabilly "blues with a country beat". Rockabillies were also said to be twelve-bar blues played with a bluegrass beat. "Hound Dog", with its unmodified twelve-bar structure (in both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on flatted third of the tonic (and flatted seventh of the subdominant), is a blues song transformed into a rock-and-roll song. Jerry Lee Lewis's style of rock 'n' roll was heavily influenced by the blues and its derivative boogie woogie. His style of music was not exactly rockabilly but it has been often called real rock 'n' roll (this is a label he shares with several African American rock 'n' roll singers).

Early country music has also been blues-soaked. Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams have all described themselves as blues singers and their music has a blues feel that is different to the country pop of say Eddy Arnold. A lot of the later outlaw country music by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings also borrowed from the blues. When Jerry Lee Lewis returned to country after the decline of 1950s style rock 'n' roll, he sang his country with a blues feel and often included blues standards on his albums.Many early rock-and-roll songs are based on blues: "That's All Right Mama", "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the sexual themes and innuendos of blues music: "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" ("Tutti Frutti", Little Richard) or "See the girl with the red dress on, She can do the Birdland all night long" ("What'd I Say", Ray Charles). Even the subject matter of "Hound Dog" contains well-hidden sexual double entendres.

More sanitized early "white" rock borrowed the structure and harmonics of blues, although there was less harmonic creativity and sexual frankness (e.g., Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"). Many white musicians who performed black songs changed the words; Pat Boone's performance of "Tutti Frutti" changed the original lyrics ("Tutti frutti, loose booty . . . a wop bop a lu bop, a good Goddamn") to a tamer version.

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In popular culture

The music of Taj Mahal for the 1972 movie Sounder marked a revival of interest in acoustic blues.
The music of Taj Mahal for the 1972 movie Sounder marked a revival of interest in acoustic blues.

Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal music, hip hop music, reggae, country music, and pop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior.[45] In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s.[29] In the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy was the first to popularize blues-influenced music among non-black Americans.

During the blues revival of the 1960s and '70s, acoustic blues artist Taj Mahal and legendary Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins wrote and performed music that figured prominently in the popularly and critically acclaimed film Sounder (1972). The film earned Mahal a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a BAFTA nomination.[46] Almost 30 years later, Mahal wrote blues for, and performed a banjo composition, claw-hammer style, in, the 2001 movie release "Song Catcher," which focused on the story of the preservation of the roots music of Appalachia.

In 2003, Martin Scorsese made significant efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of documentary films for PBS called The Blues.[47] He also participated in the rendition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high-quality CDs.

Grammy-winning blues guitarist and vocalist Keb' Mo' performed his blues rendition of "America, the Beautiful" in 2006 to close out the final season of the popular television series "The West Wing."

See also: List of films based on blues music

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References

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Further reading

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Notes

  1. ^ The "Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé" provides this etymology to the word blues and George Colman's farce as the first appearance of this term in the English language, see http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/fast.exe?mot=blues
  2. ^ Davis, Francis. The History of the Blues. New York: Hyperion, 1995.
  3. ^ Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2002, Routledge (UK), ISBN 0-415-29189-5
  4. ^ Tony Bolden, Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture, 2004, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-02874-0
  5. ^ Southern, pg. 333
  6. ^ Garofalo, pg. 44
  7. ^ Ferris, pg. 229
  8. ^ Morales, pg. 276 Morales attributes this claim to John Storm Roberts in Black Music of Two Worlds, beginning his discussion with a quote from Roberts There does not seem to be the same African quality in blues forms as there clearly is in much Caribbean music.
  9. ^ Garofalo, pg. 44 Gradually, instrumental and harmonic accompaniment were added, reflecting increasing cross-cultural contact. Garofalo cites other authors that also mention the "Ethiopian airs" and "Negro spirituals".
  10. ^ Schuller, cited in Garofalo, pg. 27
  11. ^ Garofalo, pgs. 46–47
  12. ^ Ferris, pg. 230
  13. ^ Ewen, pgs. 142–143
  14. ^ a b Morales, pg. 277
  15. ^ Ellen Fullman, "The Long String Instrument", MusicWorks, Issue #37 Fall 1987.
  16. ^ A Jazz Improvisation Almanac, Outside Shore Music Online School.
  17. ^ Ewen, pg. 143
  18. ^ Grace notes were common in the Baroque and Classical periods, but they acted as ornamentation rather than as part of the harmonic structure. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 has a flatted fifth in the dominant. However, this was a technique for building tension for resolution into the perfect fifth, while a blues melody uses the flatted fifth as part of the scale.
  19. ^ David Hamburger, Acoustic Guitar Slide Basics, 2001, ISBN 1-890490-38-5.
  20. ^ Lesson 72: Basic Blues Shuffle by Jim Burger. Retrieved on November 25, 2005.
  21. ^ Wilbur M. Savidge, Randy L. Vradenburg, Everything About Playing the Blues, 2002, Music Sales Distributed, ISBN 1-884848-09-5, pg. 35
  22. ^ The rough guide to African Blues CD booklet
  23. ^ Blues imported from West-Africa
  24. ^ Garofalo, pgs. 44–47 As marketing categories, designations like race and hillbilly intentionally separated artists along racial lines and conveyed the impression that their music came from mutually exclusive sources. Nothing could have been further from the truth... In cultural terms, blues and country were more equal than they were separate. Garofalo claims that artists were sometimes listed in the wrong racial category in record company catalogues.
  25. ^ Philip V. Bohlman, "Immigrant, folk, and regional music in the twentieth century", in The Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls, 1999, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-45429-8, pg. 285
  26. ^ Oliver, Paul (1984). Blues Off the Record:Thirty Years of Blues Commentary. New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 45–47. ISBN 0-306-80321-6. 
  27. ^ Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Oxford University Press, 1977, ISBN 0-19-502374-9, pg. 223
  28. ^ Garofalo, pg. 27; Garofalo cites Barlow in Handy's sudden success demonstrated [the] commercial potential of [the blues], which in turn made the genre attractive to the Tin Pan Alley acks, who wasted little time in turning out a deluge of imitations. {parentheticals in Garofalo)
  29. ^ a b Garofalo, pg. 27
  30. ^ a b Clarke, pg. 138
  31. ^ Clarke, pg. 141
  32. ^ Clarke, pg. 139
  33. ^ a b Garofalo, pg. 47
  34. ^ Hawkeye Herman, General background on African American Music, Blues Foundation, Essays: What is the blues?http://www.blues.org/blues/essays.php4?Id=3
  35. ^ Clarke, pg. 137
  36. ^ Garofalo, pg. 76
  37. ^ Dicaire (1999), p. 79
  38. ^ Lars Bjorn, Before Motown, 2001, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0-472-06765-6, pg. 175
  39. ^ Garofalo, pgs. 224–225
  40. ^ A directory of the most significant blues festivals can be found at http://blues.about.com/od/bluesfestivals/
  41. ^ A list of important blues venues in the U.S. can be found at http://blues.about.com/cs/venues/
  42. ^ Blues Music Awards information. Retrieved on November 25, 2005.
  43. ^ A complete directory of contemporary blues labels can be found at http://blues.about.com/cs/recordlabels/
  44. ^ Blues Babies.741.com
  45. ^ SFGate
  46. ^ "Sounder"Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 11-02-2007.
  47. ^ "The Blues" (2003) (mini) at the Internet Movie Database

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See also

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External links

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