African Rhythm

Classic Blues

During the period of 1890-1910, new sounds began to appear in African-American music. Spirituals, work songs, field hollers, banjo tunes, folk ballads and folk blues blended into the creation of a new genre, the Classic Blues.

Recognisable forms of the Blues started to be published in the first decade of the century. Handy's 'Memphis Blues' was long considered the first in 1912. But the debate over which was the first blues work was a heated one among music historians. However, the first Blues was probably Hughie Canon's 'Frankie and Johnny' in 1904 under the title 'He Done Me Wrong'. Then in 1908, Antonio Maggio's instrumental 'I got the blues' was published. In 1909, Robert Hoffman's 'The Alabama Bound' was published as a 'Ragtime Two Step', becoming the first such song published by a white man. 'Baby Seal Blues' by H Franklin Seals also appeared in 1912 and was performed as a Blues number in a vaudevillian act in Memphis. 'Dallas Blues' by Hart Wand was another song that claimed to be published in 1912. Lastly, the song which aroused much debate as to when it was published is 'The Negro Blues' by Leroy 'Lasses' White.

These were all inspired by the black street singers rooted in the rural folk blues.

W C Handy (1873-1958) - Handy was a keen student and collector as well as a publisher of the Blues, and perhaps correctly described as 'the father of the Blues'. He was from Alabama, the son of freed slaves, his father was a Methodist minister, but W C became a cornet player and bandsman. After setting in Memphis he wrote a campaign song for a local politician 'Mr Crump'. The song was a blues much loved by the dancers and eventually published as 'The Memphis Blues'. It was a hit with Irene and Vernon Castle using the tune to demonstrate their 'fox trot' routine. In 1914, his famous 'St. Louis Blues' was published. 'St. Louis Blues' is a type of ragtime blues that was popular with the 'ragtime' bands and the Blues and ragtime format were mixed in the same way as the very first Blues, 'I Got the Blues', it was likely the most complex form of blues at the time. Some do not consider such songs as the Blues, 'it's a pretty tune, and it has a kind of bluesy tone, but it's not the blues, you can't dress up the blues'. Clearly such a view was rooted in folk Blues and Handy was moving on to a Classic Blues form. More debate continues on whether Handy actually created the piece. 'Mr. Handy cannot prove that he has created any music. He has possibly taken advantage of some unprotected material that sometimes floats around'. Handy himself admitted that he had not created the blues, but merely transcribed and arranged the haunting sounds he first heard in rural Mississippi.

Pain and strength, the essence of the blues. An AABC pattern with an innovative method of writing blue note effects. The 12 bar form crystallised, with a recognisable structure, the 'traditional' repetition of the folk blues was retained but only twice with an obviously contrasting release. Plenty of 'space' enabling call and response. And also a Spanish tinge! A ragtime interlude.

'Yellow Dog Blues', 'Joe Turner Blues', 'Hesitating Blues', 'Ole Miss', 'The House of the Blues', 'Beale Street Blues' but nobody was singing his blues ... hard times and 'Aunt Hagar's Blues' was sold ... then Perry Bradford and Mamie ... Harry Pace moved to Black Swan Records and recruited Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter ... but Handy went to 'folk blues' ...
'Loveless Love' embraced the traditional 'Careless Love'.
'John Henry Blues' embraced the traditional 'John Henry'.
'Harlem Blues' embraced the traditional 'Gotta Travel On'.
'Atlanta Blues' embraced the traditional 'Make Me a Pallet on the Floor'.

Perry Bradford (1893 - 1970) - he jump started the careers of the blues girls with a 'black' sound that became the rage and led to a whole genre of race records.
1916 'Lonesome Blues', 1918 'Broken Hearted Blues', 'Harlem Blues' sung by Mamie Smith was a hit in the show 'Made in Harlem'. Then 'Crazy Blues' ...
1922 'Wicked Blues', Unexpectedly'. 1925 Perry Bradford's Jazz Phools with Louis, 'I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle' and 'Lucy Long'. And writing and publishing for James P Johnson, 'Keep Shufflin'', 'Messin' Around'. Finally Louis Jordan, 'Keep a Knockin''. But his tunes never became standards.

Mamie Smith (1890-1946) - 'Crazy Blues' signalled the start of the Classic Blues craze. Although there's a question as to which song was truly the first blues song published, there is no dispute as to which was the first to be recorded. In 1920, the first vocal blues by a black singer was released on a phonograph - 'Crazy Blues' by Mamie Smith. Smith recorded the song originally written by Perry Bradford, with her Jazz Hounds for Okeh Records on August 10, 1920. Some experts believe this to be an example of 'titular' Blues, common with the vaudeville shows of the time. ABC type, 16 bars 12 bars 16 bars. With the success of the recording, Smith opened the door not only for other female blues singers, but for all blues musicians as record companies began to see the black market as a profitable prospect. The Jazz Hounds were the first black band to record, 'That Thing Called Love' and 'Old Time Blues.

The rage had started, first successful popular record releases of the Blues were in the early twenties by female vocalists, often accompanied by a pianist or small band. Records were becoming more important than sheet music. These blues women of the twenties were all associated with vaudeville, as were most of their contemporaries.

Sara Martin (1884 - 1955)

Ma Rainey (1886 - 1939) - with 'See See Rider' was the original role model for a spate of girl Blues shouters.

Ida Cox (1889-1967) - stood flat foot and sang, Any Woman's Blues', ''Bama Bound Blues', 'Lovin' is the Thing', 'Death Letter Blues', 'Wild Women'.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937) and Ethel Waters led the way. 'Gulf Coast Blues', 'Downhearted Blues', Bessie had the largest soul, and it showed.
When Louis was with Fletcher in New York he was recording Blues with Bessie and Clarence Williams.
Clara Smith (1894 - 1935)
Eva Taylor (1895 - 1977) married Clarence Williams.
Alberta Hunter (1895 - 1984) from Vaudeville.
Trixie Smith (1895 - 1943) 'You Missed a Good Woman when You Picked over Me', Clarence Williams' first song.

Ethel Waters (1896 -1977) started in 'Tillies Chicken Grill'. A great shimmy dancer from Vaudeville. A rape baby singing 'bawdy blues' - 'Organ Grinder Blues', 'My Handy Man', 'Do What You did Last Night'.
A light clear voice contrasting with Bessie. She did the white Vaudeville circuit and migrated to blues influenced 'popular' songs. They loved her. 'Stormy Weather', 'Am I Blue?', the mother of all popular black girl singers.

Bessie was the greatest of them all, but there were other girls -
Edith Wilson (1896 - 1981)
Rosa Henderson (1896 - 1968)
Chippie Hill and girls not exclusively singing the blues.
Sophie Tucker (1888-1966) - the last of the red hot mamas, an imitation 'coon shouter'. The queen of Vaudeville - 'Some of These Days'
Josephine Baker teenage 'Charleston' sensation in 'Revue Negre'.
Mildred Bailey - 'St Louis Blues', 'Dinah', 'Stormy Weather', 'Heat Wave'.

Armand J Piron (1888 - 1943) violin, he took over from Freddie Keppard as leader of the Olympia Band in 1913 and brought in Joe Oliver. Clarence Williams was his pianist and they started publishing songs in 1915.

Clarence Williams (1893 - 1965) dominated the Blues in the 1920s. He published 400 song sheets and he wrote 200 of them. He recorded 700 sides. 'Brown Skin', 'Wild Flower'. 1918 Chicago branch.

Spencer Williams (-) took over from Piron as Williams' partner in 1919. 'I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of this Jelly Roll', 'Yama Yama Blues', 'Royal Garden Blues', 'Sugar Blues'. 1921 to New York to get in on the Blues craze. 'Sister Kate' was published a smash in 1922.
Eva Taylor married Clarence Williams in 1921, a pretty singer/dancer. 'Baby won't You Please Come Home', 'I Ain't got Nobody', ''Tain't Nobody's Business if I Do'. Then in 1923 Bessie Smith recorded with Clarence Williams. After a bust up with Bessie Clarence recorded endlessly for Okeh also with Eva and Sara Martin and Mamie Smith. The Blue Fives, Bechet, Tim Brymn, Eddie Heywood were collaborators. He publish Piron's songs, 'New Orleans Wiggle', 'Kiss Me Sweet', 'Mama's Gone Goodbye', 'Bouncing Around'. Then 1924 'Cake Walkin' Babies' and 'Everybody Loves My Baby' and James P and Willie The Lion and Fats. 1927 'Bottom Land'. 1928 Joe Oliver. By the end of the 1920s the Blues craze was dead, a desperate last fling produced smut. He tried radio and remained prosperous selling his catalogue to Decca in 1943 for $50,000. But really the Big Bands saw him off.

J Mayo Williams (1894 - 19) the only black recording executive during the 'race' records craze (Blues, jazz and girl singers). Harry Pace and Black Swan were first, but in 1922 Paramount started a 'race' series and absorbed Black Swan. By 1919 there were 2 1/4 million homes with phonographs. The big 3 recording companies were Edison, Columbia, Victor, with Gennett in Richmond in 1925, Brunswick and Emerson in 1916 and Paramount in 1917. Mayo was head of the Chicago branch recruiting Georgia Tom Dorsey (1899-1993) in 1923. Alberta Hunter was a mainstay but Ida Cox was Mayo's first 'find'. Lovie Austin was used as accompanist. Jimmy Blythe (1901-1931). 1923 Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. Freddie Keppard 1926. Ma Rainey was the biggest. Papa Charlie Jackson 'Shake that Thing'.

Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897-1929), 'Long Lonesome Blues', 'Matchbox Blues' was Paramount's biggest but Mayo was sidelined and lost status! After Charlie Patton, Son House and Skip James Paramount's 'race' records stopped in 1932 but Mayo had left in 1928.
Brunswick snapped him up, and their subsidiary Vocalion issued 'race' records. Georgia Tom and Tampa Red 'It's Tight Like That' a hokum jug band. Then Clarence Pinetop Smith (1904-1929), 'Pinetop's Boogie Woogie'. Then Chippie Hill (1905-1950) and Memphis Minnie (1897-1973) and Leroy Carr (1905-1935). Mayo claimed 'Corrine Corrina'. Radio made inroads into the recording business, Victor merged with RCA in1929. Vocalion survived but Mayo did not, he left in 1931. Brunswick was bought by Warner. Columbia (Okeh absorbed in 1926) was bought by a radio company.

Then British Decca signed Crosby in 1934 and wanted a 'race' series and Mayo was recruited. Clarence Williams, Willie the Lion produced respectable sales. Then Decca got the big bands, Fletcher, Lunceford, Chick Webb ... Mayo Williams gave Decca the 'Harlem Hamfats', the first 'Jump Band' in 1936. Then Louis Jordan in 1938. And 'Rock 'n' Roll was on its way!

The Ink Spots in 1939. Getting too big for Decca Milt Gabler was brought in in 1941 to 'supervise'.

The Blues -

Memphis was an important centre with W C Handy pioneering instrumental blues on Beale Street
Memphis Jug Band and Will Shade, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded 26 sides 1927 - 30
Mahalia Jackson, gospel, 'Move on up a Little Higher'
the city blues were very different, a branch line which went to Chicago and Sun records and rockabilly
The Blues was a continuing golden thread throughout popular music, continuing to grow and develop in its different forms in the Deep South, mainly the three categories: urban blues (Chicago), rural blues (Mississippi Delta), and the titular blues (vaudeville). Each of these three types of blues would rise to their primes leading to the success of another, creating an evolution in the music that would turn from raw, individual performance to electric powered blues bands.

Although the existence of the Depression as well as a general perception by many of the blues as "devil" music, the blues continued to endure these adversities to remain as a popular genre in today's world. The individuals who brought up this genre were the children of freed slaves who were born into freedom, but the passing of the Jim Crow laws and increased number of lynchings led them to express their emotions through music. This is the defining characteristic of the blues, expressing one's "blues" through rhythms and pitches. Sam Lightnin' Hopkins expresses this best saying, "The blues is a lot like church? when a preacher's up there preachin' the Bible, he's honest to God tryin' to get you to understand these things. Well, singin' the blues is the same thing."

Technical - The 12 bar Blues -

Origins - the emotional haunting music of the blues originated in USA in the last century from the early work songs and church songs. These 'riveting laments of the rural South' were from field hollers and Baptist jubilees. Blues are not always sad, they encompass all emotions, but they do have a characteristic sound.

The sound probably emerged from banjo strumming with agreeable C G7 C chords alternated. The easily fingered Eb C G C also took the music the other way. Finger picking repetitive patterns, jumping a 5th and slowly descending were typical.

The music was essentially rhythmic not harmonic and crystallised into the standard 3 chord, 3 stanza, 12 bar form. The tonic and dominant were the big chords, both with flattened 3rds, with a less dramatic subdominant in the second stanza.

Development - there has been more jazz played around the blues sequence over the years, than all other sequences put together. The blues fathered all legitimate jazz. Whatever you listen to, wherever you go you are bound to hear the blues played......in varying styles, in varying forms but still basically the blues.

Normally a composer first constructs a melody and afterwards he fits an appropriate, correct sounding chord sequence to that melody. The usual pattern establishes the key sound and then moves away before returning to the original key to finish. The way the chords move from and to the tonic must sound right and the generally accepted 'rules' are now well understood and represent the germ from which all music is derived with its immense variety.
Blues are different. Although the music moves from and then back to the key sound it does so within a fixed sequence of chords. The same traditional set of chords have been handed down from the very early start of jazz. Styles have changed but jazzers have remained loyal to the blues vehicle. It is the sequence which distinguishes the blues from other toons. Chords first, the melody is created afterwards.

The particular attraction of the blues to jazz musicians is that they are free to create melody and rhythmic patterns around a familiar framework. Thousands of blues of with unimaginable diversity have been created over the years around the same basic framework. When improvising some sort of framework is essential to avoid chaos, and because jazz is essentially a rhythmic music the relative simplicity of the harmony is irrelevant. Nevertheless the basic sequence can be adapted and 'enhanced' in endless ways to avoid monotony, but the fundamental 'feeling' of the blues sequence is always intact.

The blues is a specific song form with a 12 bar structure and the ubiquitous 3 chord trick, the Chord Sequence -

C / / / / / / / / / / / C7 / / /
F / / / / / / / C / / / / / / /
G7 / / / / / / / C / / / G7 / / /

The pattern is always 3 groups of 4 bars, with fitting words. The words are usually stated in the first 4 bars, repeated in the 2nd 4 with a release to the dominant in the last 4.

The big change in the 9th bar and the lesser one in the 5th are always retained but the harmony can be 'enhanced' - with 7th chords (and 9ths), a move to the subdominant can be made early in the 2nd bar, the minor inserted in bar 6 and 'turnarounds' introduced in the 11th and 12th, and perhaps in the 7th and 8th. More recently the dominant resolving through the subdominant in the10th has become very common.

The blues Scale - in addition to the 'feel' of the sequence, the characteristic blues sound is generated by rhythmic interpretation of the blues scale. This is essentially the 3 chord notes with the addition of the 2 'blue' notes, the flattened 3rd and flattened 7th. These 5 notes are played as a pentatonic scale with the big advantage that they always seem right even though the harmony changes and if you stick to the 5 notes melodies emerge; it sounds great, and you hear it everywhere.

C blues scale C Eb F G Bb

Think of it as the Eb pentatonic scale played in C major!!
i.e. = the 3 BIG notes + the 2 BLUE notes! (In more recent times a flattened 5th is frequently added)

The Blues: a primer -

1. Most blues begin with the phrase, - 'woke up this mornin''

2. 'I got a good woman' is a bad way to begin the blues, you must stick something low-down in the next line - 'I got a good woman, with the meanest dog in town'

3. Blues are simple. After you have the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes -

Got a good woman with the meanest dog in town

He got teeth like Steve Buscemi and weighs 'bout 500 pounds

4. The blues are not about limitless choice. Deciding between the opera and the ballet are not part of the blues. You stuck in a ditch, you ain't got no way out; that is the blues.

5. Blues cars are Chevies and Cadillacs. A broke-down truck is also good. Other acceptable blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. The Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. A Bluesman don't jog.

6. Teenagers can't sing the blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the blues. Adulthood means old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. You can have the blues in New York City, but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Vermont or North Dakota are just a depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues.

8. The following colours do not belong in the blues:

a. violet

b. beige

c. mauve

9. You can't have the blues in an office or a shopping mall, the lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the
dumpster.

10. Location for the Blues
Good Places:

a. The highway

b. The jailhouse

c. The bottom of a whiskey glass

a. Weddings

b. Gallery openings

c. Wine Tastings

11. No one will believe it's the blues if you wear a suit, unless you happen to be an old man and you slept in it.

12. Do you have the right to sing the blues? Yes, if:

a. your first name is a southern state, like Georgia

b. you're blind

c. you shot a man in Memphis.

d. you can't be satisfied.

No, if:

a. you were once blind but now can see.

b. the Man in Memphis lived.

c. you have a trust fund.

13. Blues is not a matter of colour. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues. Richard Nixon could have sung the blues. Neither Julio Iglesias nor Barbara Streisand can sing the blues.

14. If you ask for water and baby gives you gasoline, it's the blues. Other blues beverages are:

a. cheap wine

b. whiskey or bourbon

c. muddy water

Blues beverages are NOT:

a. Any mixed drink

b. Champagne

c. Yoo Hoo (all flavours)

d. sparkling water

15. If it occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is a blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse, or dying lonely on a broken cot. It is not a blues death if you die during a liposuction treatment.

16. Some Blues names for Women:

a. Sadie

b. Big Mama

c. Bessie

17. Some Blues Names for Men:

a. Joe

b. Willie

c. Little Willie

d. Big Willie

Persons with names like Sierra, Sequoia, or Rainbow will not be permitted to sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

18. Other Blues Names (Starter Kit)

a. Name of Physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame; Asthmatic)

b. First name (see above) or name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi)

c. Last Name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)

For example: Blind Lemon Johnson, or Asthmatic Kiwi Jefferson. Some combinations work better for the blues than others.

19. I don't care how tragic your life is: if you own a computer with a high-speed Internet connection, you cannot sing the blues. You best destroy it. Spill a bottle of Mad Dog on it, take it out with your shot gun, or use it to kill a man in Memphis, I don't care. Just get rid of it.

20. Epitaph on a blues musician's tombstone: "I didn't wake up this morning."