Ragtime can be seen as the “Rhythm” part of “Rhythm and Blues” (R&B), evolving from the Ring Shout’s Stick Man, and of course “Blues” is the “Blues” part. Like Ragtime, Blues developed in the African-American community in the southern states and while I’ve read that it originated during the last third of the 19th century, it seems to me that its roots could go back to 1619, the date of the first African-American community in the American British Colonies and even further back to Africa itself.
The use of the, word “blue” to denote saddest may have come from the West African use of blue indigo in “death and mourning ceremonies where the mourner’s clothes were dyed blue to indicate misfortune and suffering” (see here
https://santafe.com/a-history-of-blues-music/). My feeling is that red is associated with excitement, activity, liveliness and something one must be alert to and because of this blue being near the opposite end of the rainbow could have become associated with depression, sadness and inactivity.
In any case “The Blues” is predominantly about heartbreak and sorrow, but according to the BBC Music magazine website “blues has since developed to address other subjects and emotions, adopting a wider purpose of ‘chasing the blues away’ with music.” “The main features of blues include specific chord progressions, a walking bass, call and response, dissonant harmonies, syncopation, melisma and flattened ‘blue’ notes. Blues is known for being microtonal, using pitches between the semitones defined by a piano keyboard.” (See here:
https://www.classical-music.com/features/articles/blues-music/). Further, according to this webpage (
https://www.leadguitarlessons.com/guitar-lessons/scales/the-blues-scale.htm) “The blues scale is a 6 note scale that comes from the minor pentatonic [five note] scale. The reason the blues scale is different from other scales is that the note that’s added to the minor pentatonic scale to create the blues scale does not naturally occur in the key it’s being played in.”
Twelve Bar Blues are blue songs that I particularly like. This is a lyrical form where the second four bars are for the most part a repeat of the first four and where the last four bars are in effect an answer to the first eight.
As in Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McKoy’s
When the Levee Break (1929):
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay
This 12 Bar Blues song was inspired by the tragic Mississippi flood of 1927.
Christopher “W.C,” Handy was born in Florence, Alabama on November 16, 1873. He was an early, influential figure in the evolution of the Blues genre. Interestingly Handy was born just 5 or 6 years after Scott Joplin, both to parents who had been enslaved and the birth places of each, Texarkana for Joplin and Florence for Handy, (approximately 400 miles apart) that is East Texas and Alabama, can be seen as the western and eastern edges of where modern music was being incubated during the later part of the 19th century, with Saint Louis and New Orleans being the northern and southern points and Memphis, Tennessee being more or less the center.
This link goes to a recording (3 minutes) of W.C. Handy’s 1914
Memphis Blues. The music, an instrumental, was recorded in 1914. I assume that Handy is playing along with the Victor Military Band, but that is not certain from the information given:
.
A second major, early figure in the Blues genre was Bessie Smith. She was born on April 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. At age 11 or so she was singing on street corners for money. Later, she performed in tent shows, traveling minstrel shows and in vaudeville. Her first recording Down Hearted Blues was in 1923. In the following, 3 minute video, she sings
Saint Louis Blues with Louis Armstorn on cornet
. It is not clear if the recording was made in 1925 or 1935. I like 12 Bar Blues.
By the way the picture at the beginning of the last video is by the artist Tamara de Lempicka (b. 1898 in Poland).
Tom,
