The Origin of Blues

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when blues had first started, largely because the origins of the blues are poorly documented. The style also evolved over a long period and existed in approaching its modern form before the term “blues” was coined and before the style was thoroughly documented. However, there are few characteristics present to all blues, especially since individual uniqueness during a performance is very prevalent. Some characteristics were present prior to the creation of the modern blues, and are common to most styles of African American music. The blues that we have discussed are secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South.

Blues took off in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–1865). It was influenced by and was largely played by Southern black men, most of whom came from the milieu of agricultural workers, laborers, and the field hollers and "shouts" of slaves. An important reason why there is a lack of knowledge about the origins of the blues is that the earliest blues musicians' had the tendency to wander through communities, leaving little or no record of precisely what sort of music they played or where it came from. In addition, blues was generally regarded as lower-class music, unfit for documentation, study or enjoyment by the upper and middle-classes. The earliest references to blues we know date back to the 1890s and early 1900s.

The rural blues developed in three principal regions, Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi. The blues could be traced back to northwestern Mississippi Delta in the late 1800’s. With the Great Migration of black workers, it was initially a folk music popular among former slaves living in the Mississippi Delta but it began to spread around the south and the rest of the United States. The blues of Georgia and the Carolinas is noted for its clarity of enunciation and regularity of rhythm. Influenced by ragtime and white folk music, it is more melodic than the Texas and Mississippi styles.

Blind Willie Mc Tell and Blind Boy Fuller were representatives of this style. The Texas blues is characterized by clear and vocal singing accompanied by the guitar. Blind Lemon Jefferson was by far the most influential Texas bluesman. Mississippi Delta blues is the most intense of the three styles and has been the most influential. Vocally, it is the most speech-like, and the guitar accompaniment is rhythmic and percussive where a slide or bottleneck is often used. The Mississippi style is represented by Charley Patton, Eddie “Son” House, and Robert Johnson, among others. The first blues recordings were made in the 1920s by black women such as Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith. These performers were primarily singers backed by jazz bands, and this style is otherwise known as classic jazz.

The Great Depression and the World Wars also caused the geographic dispersal of the blues as millions of blacks left the South for the cities of the North. The blues became adapted to the more sophisticated urban environment. Lyrics took up urban themes, and the blues ensemble developed as the solo bluesman was joined by a pianist or harmonica player and then by a rhythm section consisting of bass and drums. The electric guitar and the amplified harmonica created a driving sound of great rhythmic and emotional intensity. Among the cities in which the blues initially took root were Atlanta, Memphis, and St. Louis. John Lee Hooker settled in Detroit, and on the West Coast Aaron “T-Bone” Walker developed a style later adopted by Riley “B.B.” King. It was Chicago, however, that played the greatest role in the development of urban blues. In the 1920s and ’30s Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, and John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson were popular Chicago performers. After World War II they were supplanted by a new generation of bluesmen that included Muddy Waters, Chester Arthur Burnett “Howlin’ Wolf”, Buddy Guy, Little Walter Jacobs, and Koko Taylor. The simple but expressive forms of the blues became by the 1960s one of the most important influences on the development of popular music throughout the United States. Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music of poor black laborers into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States where modern music is heavily influenced by.