The blues underwent a major transition in the 1940s as many African Americans migrated from the rural South to northern cities, bringing their music with them. As Robert Palmer discusses in Chapters 5 and 6 of Deep Blues, this urban migration led to new styles and innovations in blues music. Several of the songs for this week showcase this evolution.
“Take a Little Walk with Me” by Robert Lockwood Jr. shows blues musicians longing to leave the Mississippi Delta for better opportunities in Memphis (Palmer, n.d.). As the lyrics state, Memphis offered a thriving music scene and nightlife – a temporary escape and dream of something better. Bukka White’s “Special Streamline” points toward the electrification that will soon come with using a percussive washboard – a precursor to drums (Palmer, n.d.). It also demonstrates White’s talking blues style, an early rap form.
The harmonica, a signature blues instrument, still took center stage during this era, as shown in “Harmonica Stomp” by Blind Boy Fuller and Sonny Terry (Palmer, n.d.). Sonny Boy Williamson was incredibly influential with the harmonica, landing a groundbreaking live blues radio show in Helena, Arkansas, that foreshadowed blues radio programs to come. His song “Eyesight to the Blind” is a classic blues love song, demonstrating his confident bravado, while “Nine Below Zero” offers a twist on the classic blues theme of abandonment, this time with the added suffering of being left homeless in winter’s bitter cold (Palmer, n.d.).
Blues at this time was also merging with other genres. Sister O.M. Terrell’s gospel-blues song “Swing Low Chariot” puts a new upbeat swing style to a traditional Negro spiritual. Bill Monroe’s bluegrass tune “Muleskinner Blues” combines bluesy field hollers and yodels, finding common ground between rural southern musical forms (Palmer, n.d.). Hank Williams scored a major country hit with “Lovesick Blues,” directly borrowing its structure from the blues. Jazz innovators like Charlie Parker used blues scales and chord changes as the basis for improvisation and solos, as heard in his “Cool Blues.”
The electrification of blues is apparent in T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday,” which became a hugely influential blues standard. Walker is considered an early electric guitar pioneer (Palmer, n.d.). The lyrics tell of lost love using a weather metaphor (a standard blues device), and his smooth, urbane blues style helped shape jazz-influenced jump blues. B.B. King also points to Walker as an inspiration for playing electric guitar, heard clearly in his classic “Three O’Clock Blues.” King became arguably the most recognizable bluesman ever (Palmer, n.d.). And finally, Elmore James’ raw, electric slide guitar playing in “Dust My Broom” powered the Chicago blues sound that would soon emerge, with lyrics portraying a poor worker finally escaping his oppressive life.
Many of these songs lyrically envision escape and hopeful change, matching the desire of many southern blacks fleeing sharecropping and hard rural lives for better opportunities in the city. The amplification and electrification of the blues itself also echo this hopefulness for something bigger and better. As Palmer shows, when rural acoustic blues collided with the urban landscape, it would soon power a nationwide craze for rhythm, blues, and rock and roll. But in its transitory state captured here, blues was branching out, impacting other genres, and on the cusp of explosive change.
Reference
Robert Palmer, Deep Blues: Ch. 5, pp. 173-198 and Ch. 6, pp. 199-216. (Note: We’ll come back to pick up Chapter 4 next week
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