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It has been thirty or forty years since the Blues finally achieved the artistic acceptance it so long deserved, and it is by now generally considered to be the major American contribution to the world's High Arts.But even though the Blues is currently enjoying an enormous national and international popularity, the people who play the Blues for a living remain the least supported of all musicians. While no longer limited to playing the Blues at rent parties, passing the hat on street corners, or playing inner city Blues rooms, they are, for the most part, not playing major music halls or television specials either. And for all its considerable influence on many of the other arts, the Blues is still regularly played only on a few, mostly urban, American radio stations. This American art form may be better regarded and supported in Europe than here in America.
The Blues is a separate and distinct form of Jazz, and is actually the music from which Jazz emerged near the end of the last century. From listening to old recordings, it is clear that instrumental Blues evolved from vocal Blues, which in turn either developed from the call-and-response form of field hollers and other early Negro work songs (commonly sung in many parts of Africa), or developed along with work songs from other African music and rituals.
In traditional Slow Blues Lyrics the stanzas consist of three lines, usually a rhyming couplet with the first line repeated. Each line occupies four bars, with each line usually ending in the middle of the third bar, and the accompaniment filling out the remaining bar and a half, continuing the call-and-response pattern. The first two lines create drama by repetition, and the third line delivers the resolution,or punch:
When I think about my baby, I got evil on my mind,
When I think about my baby, I got evil on my mind,
It brings teardrops to my eyes,
and send chills up and down my spine.
Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the Blues knows it is not necessarily "down" or "depressing" or sad. It is soulful, without a doubt, and the lyrics are frequently concerned with misfortune and loss, but the Blues is really a complex combination of misery and high spirits. Often the musical accompaniment is joyous and arrogant, in apparent contradiction to the unhappiness of the lyrics. This fascinating ambiguity has more than anything else to do with the universal appeal of the Blues.
Stephen Green
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