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- Dan Stubbs
- SONG: Robert Johnson – Crossroad Blues (1937) What it did: Popularised Johnson’s great creation myth – that his fame was the result of a deal made with the Devil at a rural crossroads.
- SONG: Lead Belly/Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night (1944/1994) What it did: Lead Belly’s 1939 recording of this tragic blues song – which he frequently called ‘Black Girl’ – combined two traditional blues songs dating back to the 1870s, showing how blues itself is rooted in folk traditions.
- SONG: Elmore James – Dust My Broom (1951) What it did: Originally written by Robert Johnson (see ‘Cross Road Blues’, above) under the name ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’, Elmore James’s version (credited as Elmo James) added a boogie rhythm and slide guitar – and was a watershed moment in the electrification and amping up of the blues sound.
- ALBUM: Etta James – At Last! (1960) What it did: As you’ll see in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, women were at the centre of the ‘urban blues’ scene that stormed the cities in the 1920s and 30s.
Feb 21, 2024 · Like many forms of art, blues music started as a form of expression for people who were often left out of mainstream music. The originators of blues were the workers in southern fields who faced life’s hardships and newly freed slaves who used music to heal from the traumas of modern life.
- Musicnotes
The most important American antecedent of the blues was the spiritual, a form of religious song with its roots in the camp meetings of the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Spirituals were a passionate song form, that "convey (ed) to listeners the same feeling of rootlessness and misery" as the blues. [ 5]
Aug 1, 2024 · Blues, secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South. The simple but expressive forms of the blues became by the 1960s one of the most important influences on the development of popular music. Learn more about blues, including notable musicians.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The blues is a form of secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South. Although instrumental ac...
- In the 19th century the English phrase blue devils referred to the upsetting hallucinations brought on by severe alcohol withdrawal. This was later...
- The origins of the blues are poorly documented, but it is believed that after the American Civil War (1861–65), formerly enslaved African Americans...
- In the early 20th century the blues (among several other popular genres of music) was considered seductive and destructive by parents and clergy wh...
- The blues has a distinct melancholic and somber tone, which is achieved through vocal techniques such as melisma, rhythmic techniques such as synco...
Key Artists and Their Contributions. The 1920s saw the rise of several key blues artists who would leave an indelible mark on the genre. Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith recorded and popularized blues music, earning the titles “Mother” and “Empress” of the genre.
May 9, 2018 · Contrary to what some people believe, the blues is not "slave music." Although it was cultivated by the descendants of slaves, the blues was the expression of freed African Americans. The Great Migration directly influenced the blues’ many evolutions.
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Feb 22, 2007 · Paul Oliver, probably the world’s foremost scholar of the blues, first heard African-American vernacular music during World War II when a friend brought him to listen to black servicemen stationed in England singing work songs they had brought with them from the fields and lumber camps of the Deep South.
