It is impossible to say with any certainty when the
blues became a complete musical form, recognisably different from its antecedents—the songs of the farms and
levee camps, the
work songs, axe songs,
arwhoolies,
hollers and
rags. It is equally difficult to ascertain in which of the
southern states of the
USA it originated. Many of the early singers were migratory labourers or
blind men who travelled widely to beg and earn money by singing, so it seems probable that it was a concurrent development over large areas of the
Deep South. What is quite certain is that the blues was not a creation of any one man (
W. C. Handy’s self-inflating claim to be Father of the Blues has always seemed more than a little ludicrous to blues enthusiasts). Neither was it a product of city life.
Bessie Smith, for example, is frequently held to be the finest blues singer ever to record but she recorded
Classic city jazz-blues, which were a descendant, rather than a close relation, of the
rural blues, although they found their way onto record earlier. Her style is most often praised by
jazz critics, which correctly indicates her position as the creator of jazz-blues, rather than a blues singer
per se.
Although the precise geographical, historical and musical origins of the blues are uncertain, the social conditions which produced it are well-recorded, not least of all in the blues itself. In the
white supremacist society of the south the
negro was in a situation of terrifying paradox:
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isolated by race and colour, yet forced to conform to the
mores of a society in which he was denied a voice and from which he was rigorously excluded. It is, incidentally, one of the most bitter ironies of the history of America’s negroes that they should have practised their own form of
racialism—that of distinction based on
Creole blood, “yellow-skins”, “brown-skins” and “black-skins”. Despite these conditions being a primary factor in the creation and evolution of the blues, it is not usually a music of direct social protest and the few magnificent protest blues are far outnumbered by blues on women, men, cars, and rent, on the everyday life of an oppressed minority.
The blues has influenced jazz, “pop” music and even “serious” music, yet its structure is extremely simple. In its developed form it amounts to a three line stanza, with one line repeated and a third line, rhymed or unrhymed, in the form of call and response, a heritage from work songs. Sleepy John Estes, one of the finest living rural singers, sings:
- Now I was sittin’ in jail wi’ my eyes all full of tears (repeat)
- Y’know, I’m glad didn’t get lifetime, boys, that I ’scaped th’ ’lectric chair
and Jaydee Short sang bitterly:
- So dark was the night now, people; cold, cold was the ground (repeat)
- Me ’n’ my buddies in two foxholes, had to keep our heads on down
Earlier singers drew more on the entire tradition of negro folk-song and less on a still incomplete blues tradition, and there was less fixed form. Bukka White, in a haunting blues, sings:
- I’m lookin’ far in min’, believe I’m fixin’ to die,
- I believe I’m fixin’ to die,
- I’m lookin’ far in min’,
- I believe I’m fixin’ to die.
- I know I was born to die, but I hate to leave my chillen cryin’
- Mother, take my chillen back, before they let me down,
- ’Fore they let me down,
- Mother, take my chillen back,
- ’Fore they let me down,
- And don’ leave them standin’ and cryin’ on the graveyar’ groun’
Another early singer, Skip James, sings in two line verses:
- Hard time here, everywhere y’ go
- Time’s harder than they ever been before.
- If you certain y’ had money, you better be sure,
- ’Cause these hard times will drive y’ from do’ to do’.
Like
Son House, the
doyen of the
Delta singers, and the superb
Charlie Patton, the “father” of the
Mississippi Blues, White and James were from Mississippi, and played their guitars in the peculiar regional “
bottleneck” style. This involved the use of a knife, a steel ring or a smoothed down bottleneck which was usually placed on the thumb or little finger, and used as a
drone on the strings of the guitar. It gave their instruments a high-pitched whining sound which they were able to utilise for lyric passages, for simple rhythmic or melodic accompaniment or as a highly dramatic form of punctuation. Any blues looks rather bleak in print, because it is literally only half there. In the case of the
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early Delta singers it gives a more than usually hollow effect.
Although Mississippi takes pride of place in any discussion of blues, there were fine singers from other areas. Jay Bird Coleman, a superbly ferocious harmonica player came from Bessemer, Alabama, and was so successful that the local Ku Klux Klan took over his management. Blind Boy Fuller came from
