3. TODAY… 1. Give an overview of blues
history and style,
2. Explore the work of key
artists, and
3. Look at the legacy of this
genre,
But before we start this story…
4. AUSTRALIAN MUSIC…
• 40 to 60, 000 years of Aboriginal Australian music, the through-lines of
which do not stop with white invasion in 1788.
• Settler music strongly influenced by UK and American music.
• ‘Popular music’ (our topic) largely considered post-WW2.We’ll only cover
2 forms as a ‘pre-history’ of this: Blues and Country.
• But what are Australian genres of popular music?
• “…to look for “the Australian” element is to look for an inflection, the
distinctive modification of an already internationally established musical
style.” (Turner, 1992. p.13)
6. IT’S 1920 IN AMERICA…
• The emancipation of slavery is living memory
• Millions of people from rural communities across the
country are moving into cities such as NY, Chicago, Detroit,
Atlanta and Nashville
• Open segregation is rampant & the civil rights movement is
still 30 years off.
• Mainstream American music sounds like this.
7. IT’S 1920 IN AMERICA…
• The American record industry is killing it but the arrival of a
new, cheap-to-buy streaming service disrupts sales
growth…
• Commercial Radio!
• The industry is on the hunt for new markets to serve…
8. I can't sleep at night
I can't eat a bite
'Cause the man I love
He don't treat me right
He makes me feel so
blue
I don't know what to
do
Sometime I sit and sigh
And then begin to cry
'Cause my best friend
Said his last goodbye
9. “CRAZY BLUES” BY MAMIE SMITH
• Okeh Record Company (Independent) sells 75,000 in
a month and is very profitable (recouping after 5K of
sales).
• ‘Race music’ category arrives and includes a diversity
of black music: blues, jazz, gospel, vocal quartets, etc.
• Paramount and Columbia records enter the market,
amongst others…
10. FROMYOUR READINGS
“We will see this same process – in which small
independent record labels develop new musical trends
and markets, while big record companies wait several
years before moving in to capitalize on them –
repeated in the 1950s with rock’n’roll, in the 1970s
with reggae and punk, in the 1980s with rap and in the
1990s with alternative rock”
(Starr and Waterman, 2013, p. 128)
11.
12. CLASSIC BLUES
• Written by professional songwriters eager to cash in; black
artists but often middle-class.
• “These songwriters viewed the folk traditions of the Deep
South from a distance…” (p.130)
• Despite this, it’s still ushers in pop music more deeply
informed by the African American experience than
previous music.
• Key artists: WC Handy, Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith
13. COUNTRY BLUES
•Had existed for decades – as oral tradition --
before Classic Blues but didn’t make it to record
until mid-1920s
•Associated with the Mississippi Delta and is the
sound of the impoverished black workforce
from the area (predominantly, farm work).
• Key artists: Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson & Robert Johnson
14. I went to the crossroad, fell
down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell
down on my knees
Asked the Lord above "have
mercy, now save poor Bob, if
you please"
Ooh, standin' at the
crossroad, tried to flag a ride
Ooh-ee, I tried to flag a ride
Didn't nobody seem to know
me, babe, everybody pass me
by
15. THE MUSICAL STRUCTURE OFTHE BLUES
• 12 Bar Blues
• Usually built on a unit of 12 measures which is divided into 3 sections of 4
measures each, with each measure having 4 beats.
1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 | 2 2 2 2 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1
3 3 3 3 | 2 2 2 2 | 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1
(OR version for musicians; C major):
C C C C | C C C C | C C C C | C C C C
F F F F | F F F F | C C C C | C C C C
G G G G | F F F F | C C C C | C C C C )
16. LYRIC STRUCTURETHAT MIRRORSTHE
MUSICAL STRUCTURE
• AAB form
First line (A) = a line of verse
Second line (A) = the same line repeated
Third Line (B) = a new line that rhymes with the first 2 lines
Example:
Got my mojo working, but it just won't work on you
Got my mojo working, but it just won't work on you
I want to love you so bad, I don't know what to do
17. VOCAL PATTERNS CALL AND RESPONSE
• Informed by African tribal music
• Informed by American gospel traditions
• ‘Call and response’
• “A lyric was sung and a guitar would answer the
call.” (Brabazon 2012, p. 137)
18. LYRICS: FOUR KEY
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BLUES
1. Frank lyrics expressing a personal worldview
2. An emphasis on deep emotions and feelings
rather than telling a story
3. ‘Realistic’, non-sentimental, and serious lyrics
4. Subject matter is drawn from ‘real life’
19.
20. CASE STUDY: LEADBELLY (1888-1949)
• HuddieWilliam Ledbetter (Leadbelly)
• Gaol time
• Alan and John Lomax (folklorists/
ethnomusicologists)
• Post gaol
• Later, folk scene: Pete Seeger etc
21.
22. DEMISE OF FIRST BLUES ERA
• The great Depression ended vaudeville —AND, consequently, theVaudeville Blues
style
• Great Depression:
—began in 1929 with the Stock Market crash
—people lost their life savings
—businesses closed; factories shut down
—approx 1 in 4 Americans were out of work
—people were queuing in the streets to buy bread (food was scarce)
• Record sales slumped and blues recordings dried up.
24. IT’S 1940S AMERICA…
• The country is back on it’s feet but remains racially and economically
divided.
• Cotton picking industrialises and manual labourers head north to the
city (Chicago, Detroit) dockyards, steel mills and factories.
• “This scene wasn’t about the good ol’ days. Modern black audiences
required a modern black music.And a generation of forward-thinking
blues artists were emerging, eager to leave the past behind.” (Blues
America, doco)
• A la rhythm and blues R&B
25. RHYTHM AND BLUES
• Primary an industry category for urban black music
• Electrified, released on Sun and Chess Records
• Key artists: Howlin’Wolf, MuddyWaters begat BB King, John Lee
Hooker andT-BoneWalker
• R&B moves the blues:
Ø closer to pop song structures
Ø focused heavily on romance/love/sex
Ø Tough music
Ø Vocals performance influenced by gospel music (growling, screaming, falsetto etc)
Ø New levels of performance (pyrotechnics; gimmicks etc; see Screaming Jay Hawkins)
26.
27.
28. FINALTHOUGHTS (MOSTLY MARCUS, 1975)
• There’s a painful tension in the blues: Specific trauma elevated by music into something
that speaks to all of us in different ways.
• The blues turns pain into beauty; it “made the terrors of the world easier to endure, but
blues also made the terrors more real.”
• “The promise of American life” is so potent that, ”…we hardly know how to talk about
the resentment and fear that lie beneath the promise.”
• Blues is the music of mobility: restlessness, diaspora, travel, movement
• Blues bounces of American puritanism / How to live when doomed to reality
• It’s very modern, very ‘new media’ from the outset. It’s ‘authenticity’ masks the beauty of
it’s commercialism, agility, urban modernism and its use of ‘new media’ (the electric guitar)
