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From Margins to Stardom

The Blues

Big Bill Blues (by William Broonzy)
MUSIC OF THE GHETTO AND THE BIBLE (by LAZARE SAMINSKY)
Blues People Negro Music in White Americ... (by Leroi Jones)

While the United States of America is relatively new nation (there are hundreds of societies that have enjoyed artistic, linguistic, and musical accomplishment centuries before America was established), the proliferation of American music across the globe is clear in the style, attitude, and culture seen and heard in international news, radio, and television.

History traces the sentiments evoked through music. The American counterculture revolution begat punk rock, subversive and aggressive. Jazz mimicked the self-actualized freedoms of its performers during America’s Roaring Twenties through the present day. The blues, with its simple, rhymed narratives, were initially lamentations set to the tune of European folk music. Its appeal lay in its expressions of mourning and wretchedness assuaged by blissful sounds of voices and chords.

To sing the blues, one must know the blues, a tradition steeped in misery recollected over a lifetime.

Big Bill Broonzy, a forefather of American blues, knew intimately a life of hardship and marginalization. While the date of his birth is disputed, he provided fantastic insight into his own life as a blues musician in Big Bill Blues, told to and transcribed by Yannick Bruynoghe and Stanley Dance. Big Bill began performing at ten years old, fashioning a fiddle from a cigar box and practicing spirituals and folk songs. Leaving his Pine Bluff, Arkansas home, Broonzy married and worked the long, arduous hours of a sharecropper. A drought destroyed his livestock. After working several local jobs, he entered the military and served two years in Europe during the First World War. Military services did not erase discrimination. Upon his return home he was ordered to trade in his uniform for overalls. Years of oppression, combined with his practiced talents, provided the catalyst for the 224 songs he recorded between 1927 and 1942.

Ma Rainey, billed as “the mother of blues,” was one of the earliest blues singers to record. Her birth, like that of many early African-American blues musicians, is shrouded in mystery. Born in Columbus, Georgia or in Russell County, Alabama, Rainey also began performing at an early age. Powerful vocal capabilities and dramatic stage presence characterized her performances. She started in minstrel shows, singing, dancing, and acting, donning blackface and exaggerating the characteristics of African-Americans after the Civil War. She was subjected to intense racial and gender discrimination. Through the blues, Ma Rainey redefined herself, channeling the morose experiences into soulful expression.

Both Boonzy and Rainey provided other musicians access to a world previously occluded. Legendary blues musicians Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Bessie Smith, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, and Eric Clapton all continued the traditions of the American blues, bringing it greater attention. For other titles about the historical and social relevance of the blues, check out Music of the Ghetto and the Bible by Lazare Saminsky and The Negro as Non American, Negro Music in White America, by Leroi Jones.

By Logan Williams