A Little Blues Knowledge for the Memphis Visitor

National Civil Rights Museum

National Civil Rights Museum

Visit the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. when you come to the National Civil Rights Museum.

The blues is an amazing blend of European and African verse and form, that was created in the Mississippi Delta, and now resides in Memphis, making it purely an American born genre. 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. Over time, they began responding to their oppressive enviroment, by creating what is known as a "field holler". The field holler gave rise to the spiritual and the blues. They gave a voice to their depression and their tired bodies. 

The Southern prisons also contributed considerably to the blues tradition through work songs and the songs of death row and murder, the warden, the hot sun, and a hundred other privations. Prison road crews and other types of work gangs, were often where bluesmen found their songs. Following the Civil War, the blues continued on, but in a different form. No longer slaves, the bluesmen (and the occasional blueswoman) could be found singing their songs in juke-joints and small pubs.

Some believe the first blues song to ever been written down was "Dallas Blues", published in 1912 by Hart Wand, a white violinist from Oklahoma. The blues didn't have a large following, or receive much recognition until it fell into the hands of W.C. Handy, a Memphis native, in 1911-14. Instrumental blues bands have been recorded as early as 1913, and Mamie Smith recorded the first vocal blues song "Crazy Blues", in 1920.

American troops from all over the nation brought the blues home with them when they returned from World War I. They didn't pick it up from the Europeans, but from Southern whites, at the time the U.S. Army was still segregated, that had been exposed to the blues before they left the country to fight. During the 1920's the blues turned into a national craze and records sold in the millions.

During the 1930's and 1940's, the blues became even more widely spread as African-Americans moved northward. Shortly after, the blues became electrified with the invention of the amplified guitar. In some Northern cities like Chicago and Detroit, during the later forties and early fifties, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Elmore James among others, played what was basically Mississippi Delta blues, backed by bass, drums, piano, and occasionally harmonica, and began scoring national hits with blues songs. At about the same time, T-Bone Walker in Houston and B.B. King, who now owns B.B. King's Blues Club, in Memphis were pioneering a style of guitar playing that combined jazz technique with the blues tonality and repertoire.

In the early 1960's, the bluesmen were "discovered" by young white American and European musicians. Hence, the creation of bands of like the Rolling Stones, Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and many more. The birth of these bands, brought the blues back to white America, something the African-American blues artists had not been able to do, except when a blues song was covered by a white artist. The struggles and oppression faced by these African-American artists can be observed and remembered at The National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis.

It's difficult to really define the blues, because it's such a complex pile of different emotions, styles, and instruments. Maybe the blues should never really be "defined". It's American music in it's rawest form, and the lyrics contain some of the most fantastically penetrating, autobiographical, and revealing statements in the Western musical tradition. The vivid pictures the blues draw in our minds, of loneliness, chaos, and passion, is what gripped the general public decades ago and is what continues to grip us, today. You can experience some of the history that the blues has to offer while in Memphis by taking the Sun Studio Guided Tour. This studio is where many famous blues and rock 'n roll artists recorded in the mid 1900's. At the Hard Rock Cafe, you can look over memoribilia from people like Bo Diddley, Elvis, Janis Joplin, and more. Of course, there's also Graceland. Elvis may be the King of rock 'n roll, but he got his start in the blues. Even just a stroll down Beale Street can give you a quick lesson in the blues thanks to the street performers and famous night clubs.