Blue To The Bone: The History Of The Blues & The Relevance Of The Blues Today With Racism & Its Impact On Modern Music
“I’m an old Blues man, I think you’ll understand, been singin’ the Blues ever since the world began” — Jim Morrison
If you’ve lost your job or you’re broke or heartbroken, it’s safe to say you’ve got the Blues. If you’re down and out, or just low, or sad or in trouble, you most definitely have the Blues.
You’ve got the pain and melancholy in the lyrics mixed with smooth grooves and captivating riffs and licks on the acoustic guitar whether played fingerstyle or on slide; combined with the howls and moans and groans and references to a life of strife, describing the adverse predicament of those forgotten times like many Blues artists that emerged since the inception of the genre reflected in their music.
The Blues can be deeply and profoundly emotional, yet cathartic and meaningful. They fluctuate from intense sadness to happiness and hope, and an easy time, expunging the rather cruel treatment of the black community in early American history.
The Blues echo adversity and pain, but as a musical art form they are the very roots and foundations of Rock and Roll and the offshoots of Rock in modern music we know today.
The African-Americans of the 19th and later early 20th century would set the base, rather unknowingly, for the gradual development of modern music that grew as a natural progression from the Blues.
The Blues artists of the past set the ball rolling for most of the genres of music we know today. Whether Jazz, or Folk, Funk, or Country or Rock or the sub-genres that emerged from Rock such as Metal and later Punk, Grunge, and Alternative Rock, and right up to the birth of Hip-Hop; all these genres had their foundations and roots that originated from the cotton fields of 19th century America, and inadvertently, they all sprung to life from the Blues.
Simply put, if there wasn’t the Blues there wouldn’t be a lot of the music we know today.
The History Of The Blues
The actual origins of the Blues is rather unknown, loosely recorded, and lost amidst the myriad backdrop and stories of black Americans in the history of African-American culture in early American history.
The genre emerged from the shadows of the melting-pot of early America, mirroring the conflation of the poor treatment, oppression and adversity faced by African-Americans in the cotton fields and plantations of Southern America in the early 19th century.
At that stage of history, the African-Americans were predominantly treated as slaves and the music that began then was a way for the black population to get together and express their emotions, predicament, voice their views, and to celebrate in whatever way they could. That’s perhaps why the Blues is so deeply impassioned and poignant.
According to some accounts and myths, the name and term ‘Blues’ was perhaps given to the music because of the use of blue-indigo, which was used at death and mourning ceremonies by black people at the time, where all the mourners clothes were dyed blue.
As written in an article on Santa Fe it reads:
(The Blues began as)…..a fascinating mixture of African-American spirituals, traditional songs, work songs of the slaves, field hollers, shouts and chants, folk ballads, European hymns, contemporary dance music and rhymed simple narrative ballads. During their back-breaking toil in the fields of the Southern plantations, black slaves developed a “call and response” way of singing to give rhythm to the drudgery of their work.
The Blues began in the Mississippi Delta close to New Orleans and then began to spread slowly to other parts of America like Chicago and the mid-West by the early 20th century. However, it remained by and large a form of music made by black American musicians in the South.
In an account by composer W.C. Handy in his autobiography in 1903 while traveling South on a train running through Mississippi, he wrote:
… a lean, loose-jointed Negro who had commenced plucking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. … The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly… The singer repeated the line (“Going’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog”) three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard
It remained predominantly in those formative years, the music of the South.
As it reads on the website All About Jazz:
…..the legacy of these earliest blues pioneers can still be heard in 1920s and ’30s recordings from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and other Southern states. This music is not very far removed from the field hollers and work songs of the slaves and sharecroppers. Many of the earliest blues musicians incorporated the blues into a wider repertoire that included traditional folk songs, vaudeville music, and minstrel tunes.
The Earliest Blues Recordings & Pioneering Musicians
The earliest recordings of the Blues were in the early 1920’s where musicians such as Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Charlie Patton, and other contemporary and obscure musicians recorded studio albums that would form the basis of the music of the future.
In another older article of mine I wrote about the story of the song “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson, which you can read here.
All those early recordings had the aforementioned musicians singing and playing on only an acoustic guitar with no other accompanying instruments.
As those recordings began to spread across America and be heard by both the black and white population of the country, the Blues became a movement and a widely loved form of music and art form of 20th century America.
By the time of the 1930’s musicians such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, Big Bill Broonzy, Bukka White, and others were popular live Blues performers in Chicago.
While in Detroit, and Atlanta, Memphis and St.Louis, other musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Robert Wilkins and others would head on to Chicago to perform along with other contemporaries as they then began to popularize the Blues gradually over the United States.
Electrifying The Blues & The Birth Of Folk, Jazz & Rock & Roll
By the end of WWII, a new generation of Blues musicians would take up the mantle of the genre with their own take on the Blues of the past.
Artists such as B.B. King, Howling Wolf(Chester Burnett), Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Lightnin’ Hopkins, J.B. Lenoir, Otis Rush, Albert King, Elmore James, Little Walter Jacobs and others started to experiment and electrify the Blues by adapting the music to being played on the electric guitar.
As the ’40s gave way to the ’50s the Blues exploded all over America and the electric guitar would enable this new style of Blues music to become widely heard, appreciated and enjoyed.
The ’50s Blues musicians began to also incorporate the drums and other instruments into their live performances which was the next phase in the evolution of the genre.
Jazz also began as an offshoot of the Blues for the more classically inclined musicians of the time, and for the black musicians who were more proficient on the piano and brass instruments, especially those who had their musical roots in Gospel.
Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Otis Spann, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and several others emerged with their spin on the Blues with the more technical and brass driven instrumental genre i.e. Jazz; while the ’50s saw white musicians like Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, and others also join in playing along with the black musicians on stage, something that was previously contentious.
As the records of the ’50s Blues musicians made their way to the U.K. and other parts of Europe, the musicians from Britain instantly gravitated to the music and were hooked.
The early British musicians were enamored with this new kind of music and commenced playing and adapting the Blues on the electric guitar which gave birth to early Brit-Blues.
Meanwhile in America, musicians such as Woodie Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan adapted the Blues into protest songs and love songs giving birth to early American Folk music.
In Britain, British Folk also began to grow and develop slowly. Artists like Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, Donovan, John Martyn, and later Nick Drake and others would also adapt and evolve the Blues into British Folk music which was played fingerstyle and with more exploratory and happier themes and lyrics.
By the time the ’60s hit, Rock & Roll began in its infancy as a result of Brit-Blues and American Blues of the ’50s.
In America there was of course Elvis in the ’50s, but as the ’60s began, smaller obscure bands like The Allman Brothers Band, and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and several others began the next phase of electric-rooted American Blues.
While across the Atlantic, Brit bands like The Animals, Cream, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and musicians like Peter Green and Eric Clapton began performing and recording electric renditions of the Blues songs of the past.
What followed was bands like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and American artists and bands like Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, CSNY, The Doors, and many others who came to the forefront of American music and pioneered Rock & Roll and the counterculture movement worldwide, and the rest, as they say, is history.
(Note*: You can read about one of my favourite underrated musicians from the ’60s & ’70s i.e. J.J. Cale in this previous article)
In this short 7 minute video, this YouTuber recounts the impact of the Blues and its history:
The Relevance Of The Blues Today With Racism & Its Impact On Modern Music
What started in the Mississippi Delta, and earlier in the cotton and share cropping fields of the South as an emotional outcry of black oppression became a worldwide phenomenon as the years progressed.
It’s important to note that perhaps the Blues, in its own pervading way, helped the African-American people break the shackles of suppression and ill-treatment of the past to become more widely revered, accepted and considered equal(and rightfully so) as time went on.
You could argue that the music helped the civil rights movement of the black community and contributed to the eradication of racial discrimination in America.
It further highlights just how powerful an art form music is, and how it can transcend boundaries and divides to unite and congregate people.
In an old article of mine, I recounted on how we must re-think the value of music and the arts because of how it can rekindle hope in the most dire times and circumstances (you can read that here): Carrying The Light In Humanity’s Darkest Hours: Why We Must Re-Think The Value Of Music & The Arts
It further goes to show how music can touch people’s lives and help usher progress and unite people because music is transcendental by nature (like I’ve briefly touched upon in an old piece called ‘What Is The Point Of Music’ ).
Modern music as we know it today, all emerged from and had its roots in the Blues.
Today’s music is by and large a culmination of black musicians’ culture, life stories, voice, and art. It has African-American origins that stemmed from the black community of the past and is the focal point and predecessor of the music of the 20th and 21st century.
It’s sad to see racism still prevalent around the world, and that’s why sports like football(soccer) in the Premier League in England sees players ‘take the knee’ before each game, because there is ‘no room for racism’ — A campaign started by the league in the UK.
Black people today need to be more aware of how not just Hip-Hop (in the modern era) but nearly every genre of music today was the brainchild and byproduct of black musicians and black people of the past.
Black people can hold their head up high knowing that modern music today was all conceived a result of black society with humble beginnings in black heritage and traditions.
Every kind of music we enjoy today has its beginnings and foundations firmly rooted in black African-American culture.
Black people all over the world today need to be more aware about the Blues and its origins and its history and how it gave birth to nearly every genre of music we know in this day and age.
The Blues holds its rightful place in the history of the world and the history of music. It’s safe to say, without being circumspect, that the Blues has slowly shaped and paved the way for a society that is more equal and egalitarian .
It will certainly go down in history as the genre that was conceived in the past but one that firmly built the future.
Here are some of my Blues playlists on Spotify:
1. Blues Run The Game
2. Blues Train
3. Ambition Blue
The Blues Are Alive & Well………
