Blues
The effects and history of an African American pastime…
General description
• American Blues
o Originated in colonies of former African American slaves
o Based upon spirituals, field hollers and chants often
heard on plantations.
• Characteristics
o Used to convey emotions and often used “call and response”
o Often about personal woe, a lost love, the cruelty of police
officers, oppression at the hands of white folk.
o An early form of blues known as "gut-bucket" blues is named
after a homemade bass instrument made from a metal bucket
used to clean pig intestines for chitterlings, a dish associated
with slavery.
• Musical Style
o 12 bar blues became standard in the 1930’s, later 8 and 16
o based the pentatonic scale and a prominent form of the
minor penetonic scale
Evolution of Blues
Busy with ragtime, American sheet music publishers wasted no time in pursuing
similar commercial success with the blues …
• W.C. Handy
• In 1912 transcribed and then orchestrate blues in a symphonic style,
with bands and singers-exposed to a white crowd.
• Father of the Blues
• After WWII
• In the 1950’s urbanization and amplification technologies led to new
styles and audiences
• In the 1960’s African American music like soul and Rock were
exposed to large white audiences and popularized by white
performers.
Musical Impact
From the batman theme song to a beatles tune, blues has affected popular music in a
big way…
• After WWII Blues and Jazz led to Bebop and rock, shaping both white
collared music and baby boomer rock.
• White musicians adopted rock/blues style but with clean lyrics
• An example is “hound dog” which adopted both the structure and
harmonics of blues.
Blues clips
• Performed by Leadbelly, a folk singer and guitarist; this Southern Appalachian song
dates to the 1870s
• Janis Joplin's try shows the evolution of blues and its changing message