The Blues

The blues has been played and sung in every era of jazz and can be performed with many interpretations. Many titles of music have the word “blues” but are often not a blues song because they lack the blues harmonic construction.

The Origin

Early “blues” was a result of the slaves singing very sad songs about their suffering in unison. No distinct Western European harmonies were used. After the Civil War, the blues took on a special musical form—AAB (2-part form). Eventually, the blues incorporated European chords and harmonies. They supported the vocal line and became standardized.

Blue Notes

One characteristic associated with the blues is the blues tonalities. The expressive blue notes do not exist in the 12 tones of the Western music scale, but rather they exist between the tones. For example, in the key of C, they are located midway between the tone E-flat and E-natural and between B-flat and B-natural. Blue notes are heard in work songs, spirituals, and all styles of jazz.

Field and Prison Hollers

The work song sung collectively by plantation workers evolved into solo “hollers” or “cries.” Work songs were sung across the open field (plantation) and were very free in form. Prison hollers were songs sung by prison inmates. These practices contributed to the type of vocalizations now associated with blues singing.

Blues Lyrics

The meter of the blues lyrics is generally written in iambic pentameter. The lyrics include three lines, the first two being similar creating an AAB song form. Each line of the lyrics has five (penta) accented syllables that alternate with unaccented syllables (iambic). Here is an example of lyrics written in “iambic pentameter”:

I hate to see the ev’nin sun go down

In a typical twelve-bar (measure) blues, each of the three sections (AAB) is four bars long with lyrics sung over the first two bars of each section. The remaining two measures of the section are often completed by an instrumentalist—these brief improvised phrases are known as “fill-ins.”

Fill-ins were the first means to hear some of the jazz instrumentalists. Later, fill-ins were replaced by “breaks.” Breaks are places in the song were the entire ensemble stopped playing to feature a solo instrument fill-in.

Blues lyrics are usually concerned with unhappy situations. Their melancholy lyrics usually describe the blues emotion. However, blues can also be happy, swinging tunes.

One common misconception about the blues is that they originated with work songs. Work songs were functional; they were used to coordinate repetitive physical actions of slaves. By contrast, blues songs were emotional and had no specific function. The word “blue” has been associated with melancholia as far back as Elizabethan times.

Country and Urban Blues

In country blues, the singer—usually a man—was commonly accompanied by a guitar, harmonica, or both. Robert Johnson was the most important figure of late country blues.

Urban blues can be characterized as more rhythmic and crisp than country blues. A small group of musicians accompanied urban blues singers, usually women.

Two Blues Periods

The first blues period spans the latter part of the 19th Century to about 1930. This period featured artists like country blues singer Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) and urban blues singer Bessie Smith. B.B. King is a leading artist of the second blues period which spans 1930 to the present.

Blues Singers

Bessie Smith (1894–1937), born in Tennessee, made her first recording Downhearted Blues in 1923. She is the best-known blues singer of the 1920s. The “Empress of the Blues” reshaped any given song, embellishing the melodic line with her own special vocal style and feelings about the lyrics. Smith helped train singers on the minstrel circuits and set the standard for all future singing of the blues. Bessie Smith recorded 160 songs. At the time of her death, about ten million of her records had been sold (1927). In 1937, she died penniless in an automobile accident.

Ethel Waters (1896–1977) made a name for herself in the early 1920s. Her repertoire ranged from the blues to jazz styles of singing and then to pop. Waters recorded with the swing bands of such stars as Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers and starred in Broadway musicals, films and television shows. Her singing style influenced such singers as Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan and others. Unlike other blues singers, Ethel Waters was not a “shouter.” Her singing style was smoother, and her tones and vibrato unique.

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) crossed many musical lines while staying with her individual singing style influenced, in part, by Bessie Smith. A frustrating aspect of Holiday’s career must have been the unwillingness of the public to accept black and white musicians performing together on the same bandstand. Holiday was admired and influenced by Louis Armstrong and Lester Young. She developed a singing style deeply imbued with her feelings and life experience.

Contemporary Blues

The blues is a tradition all its own separate from that of jazz. The blues continues to export its influence on other music styles while maintaining its own identity. Contemporary blues singer B.B. King represents the vitality of the blues tradition.