Transcript Blues/Ragtime

Blues
The Blues
• Often misunderstood
• Can imply a mood, emotional state, a
chord progression, tonality by
embellishing a melodic line
• Used in songs that had nothing to do
with the blues
• Lyric tells the story of lost love,
persecution or troubles
Blues
• Originated as folk music with solo singers
who improvised the melodies and lyrics
• Accompanied themselves on guitar an piano
• High degree of spontaneity
• No consistent length, chord progression or
meter.
• Rhythm, accent and meter of lyrics
determined the beats to the measure and
number of measures in the chorus
Blues
• Vocal inflections such as bends,
shakes, scoops, shouts and varying
vibrato speed
Important aspect of the blues: emotion
Accompaniment could be a drone note
or a simple repeating blues melody,
from a pentatonic or blues scale
Blues
• Many Styles of blues: classic, country
urban,etc..
• No agreement on character or form until early
1920s with blues singers like Mamie Smith,
Ma Rainey “Mother of the Blues”, Bessie
Smith and Robert Johnson
• Collaboration between singers and
instrumentalists led to standardization of of
the blues form of today
Blues Form
• 12 bars and uses three chords I, IV and
V
• As jazz matured, it became a skeleton
for more complex progressions
• Minor or major key
• Not always down or melancholy
• Swing and bebop blues uplifting
Blues Form
• Sometimes 16 measures or 8 measures
• Sometimes a middle section or bridge
will be added (8 bars); extends to 32
bars in ABA form
• 12 bar in 3 four measure phrases
• 1st line repeated with the 3rd as contrast
or summary to 1st 2 lines
Blues from
• Each verse follows same form
• Lyrics 1st two measures; last 2 usually
instrumental solo or part
• Lyric: call; instrumental: response
Robert Johnson (1911-1938)
• King of the Delta blues
• Wrote about his own experiences as a
sharecropper and farm workers
• Work recognized world wide ,
influencing rock and roll and R&B styles
• Performed mostly at juke joints and
roadhouse catering to loggers
Robert Johnson
• Wasn’t until recording that he became
known
• Addicted to alcohol, women and
gambling
• Tried to find the right woman (led to his
death by poisoned whisky)
• 1st hit was Terraplane Blues
• Scheduled to be opening act for John
Hammond’s “From Spirituals to Swing”
Bessie Smith(1894-1937)
Empress of the Blues
Usually Performed with the musicians who
Were backed her
W.C.Handy (1873-1958)
• Father of the Blues
• Composer, cornet player
• “Memphis Blues” 1912 (some claim to
write in this style before this tune)
• Son of a preacher who was freed from
slavery
• Blues based on black folk songs, also
heard music sung on the streets of
St.Louis
W.C. Handy
• Minstrel Musician
• The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American
entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts,
dancing, and music, performed by white people in
blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black
people in blackface.
• Minstrel shows lampooned black people in mostly
disparaging ways: as ignorant, lazy, buffoonish,
superstitious, joyous, and musical.
W.C. Handy
• The minstrel show began with brief burlesques and
comic entr'actes in the early 1830s and emerged as a
full-fledged form in the next decade. By the turn of
the century, the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow
of its former popularity, having been replaced for the
most part by vaudeville. It survived as professional
entertainment until about 1910
W.C Handy
• Handy travel all over playing in
minstrels
• Travel to Havana Cuba, where he 1st
heard Afro-Latin rhythms that would be
a major influence on his compositions
W.C Handy
• Wrote “Memphis Blues”, 1912 but it was
“St. Louis Blues” in 1914 that earned
the title “father of the blues”
• St. Louis Blues was recorded in 1915
and became the most recorded song in
America
• By 1930, best selling song in all
mediums of the time