The Blues Ain't Nothing But...

Now we come to a controversial subject: the blues. There is no genre in American music more degraded, misinterpreted, over-mystified and abused than that of the BLUES. Nowadays, the term "blues" has been used to describe everything from George Gershwin to the White Stripes. And is there any sight more vomit-inducing that seeing a bunch of middle-class art student sitting around in a coffee bar talking about how much they bloody love Robert Johnson and Son House and the sheer "darkness" and "suffering of the negro people" and whatnot...



Look, the main thing to understand about "blues" is that there are really two types of blues. One type of blues refers to folk songs being sung since the 19th century dealing with tragedy, world-weariness and sexual conquest and lots of other fun things - the other type of "blues" refers an actual musical structure involving an 8, 12 or 16 bar system of "blue notes" and flattened sevenths and so on, which was solidified around the beginning of the 20th century by musicians like W.C. Handy and Hart Wand. More often than not these two definitions overlap, of course.



W.C. Handy is most often referred to as the Father of the Blues. Now this is of course a fairly bollocks term - W.C. Handy neither invented the blues, which had been sung among negro communities for years, nor was even the first man to publish a blues song (That was Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" in 1912). He was, however, the man who did the most create the idea of the blues as a musical form and a respectable art form - he played a role in relation to the blues, that was similar to that played by Robert Burns in relation to Scottish folk music; he was a collecter and adapter of songs. His first published song was the "Memphis Blues" in 1914 - this song is not a blues song throughout; more like half-blues, half-ragtime. Here's a recording by pianist Jim Hession:



The blues first found its popularity in the vaudeville circuits - many of the songs sung in the 1910's with the label "blues" were not actually blues in the musical sense, even if they did often emulate some of the style. Perhaps the first blues hit recording was Marion Harris' 1920 version of W.C. Handy's 1916 "St. Louis Blues". The "St. Louis Blues" is W.C. Handy's masterpiece and one the truly great American songs. It was, for a long time, the most recorded song in the world and if W.C. Handy is remembered for nothing else, it will be this he is remembered for. The song IS a blues, but it opens with a habanera rhythm which repeated halfway through the song. And the lyrics are as iconic as it gets. I could play Marrion Harris' version of the song, but I don't think it really gets the power of the song across, even if it is quite a good version. The best version of the song is probably Louis Armstrong's 1954 recording - 8 minutes long and loud as feck, it is severely awesome:



The first recording of the blues by an African-American vocalist was Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" and it was perhaps the most influential recording in American history - after it became a hit, record companies realised they could make money from "race records" and so the floodgate was opened for every African-American muscian who has recorded up to this day. The song itself is very much vaudeville-styled blues and Mamie Smith was no genius, but still, it's interesting:



After Mamie Smith, came Ma Rainey, who had actually been singing blues since 1902 and was known as the Mother of the Blues and Bessie Smith, by far the most popular female blues singer of the era, known as the Empress of the Blues. Here's her 1927 recording of "After You've Gone":



Another market soon opened up: country blues. Rural blues musicians, usually either pianists or guitarists, started getting recorded by the bucketload. The first country blues recording was "Guitar Blues" by Sylvester Weaver in 1923, but to be honest, it's shit - the B-side, "Guitar Rag" is much better, but its not blues, although it is the first recording of slide guitar on record. I can't seem to find it on YouTube (only the 1927 re-recording), though. He was followed by one Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1925 - the most popular country blues musician of his era. Listening today, it's hard to tell why Blind Lemon Jefferson was so popular. His music is atonal, amelodic, almost rhythm free and dark and depressing. Yet somehow he was the most popular. Another factor is that his records have been preserved terribly - they are worst-sounding quality of any music from the era. As such, his enjoyment is a bit tricky, but here's one of his more listenable recordings from 1927:



Yeah. Perhaps a less challenging, still awesome example of country blues can be found in Blind Willie McTell. Blues was just one of the many genres that Blind Willie McTell was proficient in - he could do ragtime, folk, gospel - but he could plays the blues like a bitch, too. His most famous song is "Statesboro Blues" because it was covered by the Allman Brothers *makes wanking motion with hand*, but here's another classic song - a 16 bar blues called "Searching the Desert for the Blues:



Now, the main problem that arose with country blues musicians - and one that still exists today - is that there was a lot of genre segregation. Basically, if they're black they're labelled as blues, if they're white they're labelled as country. The fact is, the repetoires of both black and white musicians was not radically different at all - blacks played country songs and whites played blues song. It's just that the recording companies found it easier to market artists through these simple labels. Take Mississippi John Hurt - he only recorded one genuine blues song in the 1920's and he's labelled as a "bluesman" when he's really a country singer. Listen to this:



He was also MUCH better recorded and preserved than Blind Lemon, too. I suppose this goes back to my first paragraph about the two kinds of blues - this is the kind of blues that existed before a musical structure was applied to it by various composers. Still, there are some cases where the labelling is simply idiotic - case in point, Jimmie Rogders. Jimmie Rodgers is known as the "Father of Country Music" which is utter bollocks, because, firstly, country music existed long before him and, secondly, 80% of his music is blues. His most famous song is "Blue Yodel No. 1" from 1927 and it's a genuine blues in both style and form:



Don't get wrong, I love Jimmie Rodgers, but the only reason he's labelled as country is because he's white. And the only reason Mississippi John Hurt is labelled blues is because he's black. That's still how it works today.

There's a LOT more to the blues than just what I've said here, but I'll need to go into various sub-categories and regional styles to describe it, which I'll do in future.

Rang juice, floods!

So, let's talk about Ragtime!

Let's talk about RAGTIME!!!



Ragtime is maybe the most misunderstood genre in American music. Arising in the 19th century in black urban communities, ragtime was one of the first truly indiginous music forms to arise in America - involving syncopation, seventh chords, back-beat and lots of other goodies that I'm not technically gifted enough to explain, it was essentially a form of very catchy dance music. Although popular for many years in vaudeville and medicine show circles, the first published form of ragtime was the, heh, Coon song.

Coon songs were basically songs written by both black and white ragtime composers which stereotyped, ridiculed and charicatured the lifestyles and society of black people. I suppose at the time a lot of people thought they were accurate representations of black society, but today they can only be percieved as bizarre and offensive. Still, you've got to allow for historical perspective - it's not as though they're white power songs, they're just hopelessly dated in their ideas.

One of the catchiest was Mary Irwin's (most famous as the first woman to kiss on film) "The Bully Song" from 1895. This song was later sanitised as the folk song "Bully of the Town, but here it is in it's original glory, recorded in 1907; you may shit yourself when you hear the lyrics...



At the turn of the century, however, a new form of ragtime arose now known as classic ragtime. The leading proponents of this were Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Tom Turpin and, most famously, Scott Joplin, who is maybe America's greatest composer. The main thing Scott Joplin and his ilk brought to the table was a classical influence - their rags are considerably more complex and harmonically interesting then coon songs or country rags. The first published rag by an African-American was Tom Turpin's Harlem Rag in 1897, but inarguably the quintessential ragtime composition, perhaps ever, is Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin from 1899. Joplin never lived long enough to record anything properly, but he did make piano rolls - programmed sheets of paper which record the pianist's playing for it then to played back on a player piano, motorised pianos like the ones you see in old Tom and Jerry cartoons. Anyway, here's him playing America's answer to Ode to Joy:



Scott Joplin is most famous to today's music lovers through the film, The Sting, where various compositions of his provided the soundtrack. Like most people in his position, Joplin caught syphilis, went mad and died in a mental hospital in 1917. The ragtime era produced few recording dues to both an inability to record it properly and the unwillingness for companies to record African-Americans but there are a few gems that made it through. Perhaps the greatest ragtime musician of the era was Vess L. Ossman, a virtuoso banjo player who, with his ragtime band, produced some surprisingly well recorded, extremely catchy and very intricate recordings. Here's a recording from 1909 of the classic St. Louis Tickle:



What happened to ragtime? One word: Jazz. Ragtime fell out of popularity and was almost completely replaced in public mind by jazz. Even old ragtime musicians dropped their original style in favour of jazzing it up. Jazz introduced improvisation, blues, energy and dispersed with the plantation associations that still plagued ragtime. By the mid 1920's, ragtime was all but gone in the public mind. However, ragtime compositions still popped up in the repetoire of jazz bands. Take Louis Armstrong's 1927 recording of the 1914 "12th Street Rag":



And ragtime also found its way into a new medium: the guitar. Blind Blake, arguably the greatest guitarist of all time, was known as the Kind of Ragtime Guitar and songs like "Southern Rag" from 1927 adapted the piano style to the 6-string:



So, that's ragtime for you!

Various recordings are available from this site:

http://www.archive.org/

Anyway, hang loose bloods!