| Music History | Sections: Home, Blues, Funk, Hiphop, Jazz, Reggae |
| Blues | - compiled by DJ Asha
& DJ Creed, site design by Mr. Cupcake - an iconscious production> |
Blues is a Native American musical and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we know. In other words, it is a blending of both traditions. Something special and entirely different from either of its parent traditions.
The word 'blue' has been associated with the idea of melancholia or depression since the Elizabethan era. The American writer, Washington Irving is credited with coining the term 'the blues,' as it is now defined, in 1807. The earlier (almost entirely Negro) history of the blues musical tradition is traced through oral tradition as far back as the 1860s.
When African and European music first began to merge to create what eventually became the blues, the slaves sang songs filled with words telling of their extreme suffering and privation. One of the many responses to their oppressive environment resulted in the field holler. The field holler gave rise to the spiritual, and the blues, they gave voice to the mood of alienation and anomie that prevailed in the construction camps of the South, for it was in the Mississippi Delta that blacks were often forcibly conscripted to work on the levee and land-clearing crews, where they were often abused and then tossed aside or worked to death.
Following the Civil War, the blues arose as "a distillate of the African music brought over by slaves. Field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. He would sing a line, and the guitar would answer it." By the 1890s the blues were sung in many of the rural areas of the South. And by 1910, the word 'blues' as applied to the musical tradition was in fairly common use.
In the early nineteen-sixties, the urban bluesmen were "discovered" by young white American and European musicians. Many of these blues-based bands like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Canned Heat, and Fleetwood Mac, brought the blues to young white audiences, something the black blues artists had been unable to do in America except through the purloined white cross-over covers of black rhythm and blues songs.
Since the sixties, rock has undergone several blues revivals. Some rock guitarists, such as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Van Halen have used the blues as a foundation for offshoot styles. While the originators like John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins and B.B. King - and their heirs Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and later Eric Clapton and the late Roy Buchanan, among many others, continued to make fantastic music in the blues tradition. The latest generation of blues players like Robert Cray and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others, as well as gracing the blues tradition with their incredible technicality, have drawn a new generation listeners to the blues.
What is Blues? Three blues aint's:
Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf are blues. Big Bill Broonzy is blues. Robert Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, and probably any other guitar-playing "Johnson" is blues. The same statement can be made of any black man playing guitar named "King" -- B.B. King, Albert King, and Freddie King are all blues. Don King is not blues, but he doesn't play guitar, so the rule still holds.
Buddy Guy is blues. Phil Guy is blues. Phil Collins is not blues. Albert Collins was blues. Fat Albert is not blues, but could be with a name like that. Big Mama Thornton was blues. Li'l Ed Williams is blues, but Robin Williams is not blues. Charles Brown is blues, but Charlie Brown and James Brown are not blues, which is why there is not a "Brown" rule like the "Johnson" and "King" rules. Rufus Thomas is blues, but Dave Thomas is not blues. Anybody with an album on Arhoolie, Alligator, or Yazoo Records is blues. Some people with an album on Atlantic Records are blues, but they may not be getting royalties for it.
Anybody using a stage name with any of the following keywords are blues: "Blind," "Magic," "Guitar," "Sonny," "Junior," "Little," "Big," "Screaming," "Lightning," or the name of a city. This makes "Detroit Junior" doubly-blues and "Luther 'Guitar Jr.' Johnson" triply-blues. Having the word "Blue" in your name doesn't necessarily make you blues, although "Sugar Blue," "Bobby 'Blue' Bland," and B.B. King ("Blues Boy" if you didn't know) are three notable exceptions. People with animal nicknames, like Hound Dog Taylor and Howlin' Wolf, are usually blues, but the Animals and Animal of the Muppets are not blues (though Animal did jam once with Koko Taylor's Blues Machine).
Having "blue" in your album name or your song title does not make you blues, period. Eric Clapton is blues sometimes. Some say he's blues, but that he's not very good at it. Stevie Ray Vaughan was blues. Sometimes he played rock and sometimes he played other stuff, but he was still blues. The same can be said of Duane Allman and Johnny Winter, except Johnny Winter isn't dead yet.
From the previous 2 paragraphs, we see that being black does not make you blues, and being white does not make you not blues. Tim Kaihatsu is blues, proving that it's possible to be Asian and blues.