Elijah Wald and 16-bar blues
Joseph Scott
the Invention of the Blues_ last night and couldn't put it down until
2:30 a.m. The vast majority of the book strikes me as brilliant.
Everyone makes errors, and those that I noticed in the book suggest
that Wald is less familiar with pre-1920-style blues and with '40s
jump blues than he is with the blues that sold well during the late
'20s and '30s. For example, contrary to what Wald says, the
very-early-'20s "Blues" recordings by the Norfolk Jazz Quartet are of
considerable interest as blues recordings, more so I'd say than for
instance Cecil Gant's 32-bar ballad "I Wonder" is (compare the "Every
Mail Day"-type lining-out-type songs, for instance, which are
apparently pre-1920, to the NJQ's sound, or try to find other
recordings from 1920-1922 that sound as "deep blues" as their 12-bar
"Jelly Roll Blues" and others), and Louis Jordan made many records and
appearances with exactly five guys. Which eras Wald discusses more
accurately than others shouldn't be surprising, since he mentions that
if he had a time machine he'd go back to 1930 to hear blues (as
opposed to say 1915 or 1945).
Most of the book is absolutely wonderful, including his rejection of
the "songster"/"bluesman" divide, his placing of the blues singer and
the blues guitarist in their proper perspective, his ability to talk
authoritatively about the differences in tastes between "black" and
"white" blues-recording consumers, his information about the overlap
between "white" non-blues old-time music and "black" non-blues
old-time music, and too many other wise observations to count. So I
was very surprised (but less surprised after I thought about how much
he seems to have researched pre-1920 blues, compared to 1920s and
1930s blues) to find him claiming on p. 33, "There were certainly
black rural guitarists before there was a blues boom, but there is no
reason to think that they were playing anything much like [Lemon]
Jefferson's repertoire before Ma Rainey and her followers made blues
one of the most popular styles in black America." There is every
reason to think they were. Here is a small bit of the evidence, _only_
evidence relating to the 16-bar blues form in particular.
A popular form of so-called "Blues" among "black" musicians born
before 1905 (including some born before 1880) was the 16-bar form with
a chord progression of I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-V-I-I or similar,
and repetitive lyrics, often AAAB lyrics, sometimes ABBC or ABBB or
AAAA. We know for a fact that so-called "Blues" of the
16-bar-progession kind predate 1920 (e.g. Euday Bowman), and we know
for a fact that the 12-bar ones do too (e.g. Antonio Maggio). The
16-bar form can be linked to 19th-century U.S. "black" music much more
easily than 12-bar AAB can -- 16-bar songs with similarly repeated
lines can be found in much pre-blues "black" music. The similarity of
some of the earliest 16-bar "Blues" to old non-"blues" songs such as
the "Going Round The World"-type songs also suggests that 16-bar blues
were around very early in the history of people talking about
so-called "blues songs." The 16-bar blues are very often played in a
parlor-guitar-influenced style that Wald himself points out was
popular among both "blacks" and "whites" during the 1890s.
Now if you go and look at all the 16-bar repetitive-lyric "Blues"
tunes you can find, here are some of the correlations:
They tend to be played by musicians born before 1905, not younger
musicians (with the exception of a handful of tunes that became
standards and kept getting played a long time, such as "Lonesome Road
Blues" and "One Dime Blues").
They tend to be played in a ragtime style, not a jazz style -- note
that ragtime came to national popularity one whole generation before
jazz did; ragtime was extremely popular during the 1900s and 1910s,
whereas jazz was extremely popular during the 1920s and 1930s.
They are relatively little-known to jazz musicians no matter how old.
They tend to be played by musicians who also know simple ruralish
major-chord tunes that they call "rags," but bear relatively little
resemblance to Scott Joplin or to most published (i.e. urban, mostly)
music of the '00s and '10s.
Those by "black" musicians tend to be by more folk-style performers
rather than by more urban-style performers.
Those by "white" musicians (many of whom explicitly said they learned
tunes from "black" musicians when they were young) tend to be by more
folk-style performers than by more urban-style performers.
They tend to be by men.
They tend to be in "black" slang of the 1900s-1910s, and their lyrics
overwhelmingly relate to the concerns of very poor "blacks," not
relatively wealthy "blacks," which of course on average were more
urban "blacks."
Now, if there's quote "no evidence" that Lemon Jefferson-style music,
such as his own 16-bar blues, was around before the national blues
craze, and instead they were inspired by the more urban performers of
the '10s-'20s, ***why are there so relatively few examples of 16-bar
repetitive-lyric blues among the "black" female vaudeville recording
artists of the '20s and '30s, of whatever age, or in the published
urban blues of the late '10s and early '20s?*** Where did the "black"
men who recorded those songs with lyrics from a "black" poor male
perspective learn that 16-bar approach -- which was apparently already
dying off in popularity compared to 12-bar blues during about
1916-1925, from what I can tell -- if not largely from other poor
"black" men?
Here is a very incomplete list of some 16-bar blues recordings with
repetitive lyrics (or partly 16-bar -- it was common to mix 16-bar and
12-bar in the same recording) by "black" and "white" artists -- I am
deliberately emphasizing songs that have the word "blues" in the
lyrics or the title or clearly are about having the blues:
"Stove Pipe Blues" by Daddy Stovepipe, b. late 1860s (poor street
performer)
"K.C. Railroad Blues" by Andrew and Jim Baxter, b. c. 1872 and 1900
respectively (GA rural-style musicians)
"Worried Blues" by Samantha Bumgarner, b. 1878 ("white" rural-style
musician who recorded in early '20s)
"C.C. & O. Blues" by Simmie Dooley (with Pink Anderson), b. 1881
(blind and poor)
"Sadie Lee Blues" and others by Peg Leg Howell, b. 1888 (poor rural
background, GA street singer)
"Blues I Got Make A New Born Baby Cry" and others by Lead Belly, b.
1888
"Dollar Bill Blues" by Charley Jordan, b. circa early 1890s
several blues by Tom Darby, b. c. 1891 ("white" rural-style musician)
the 1931 "Pussy Cat Blues" by Bo Carter, b. 1893
"Lonesome Road Blues" by Henry Whitter, b. 1893 ("white" rural-style
musician who recorded in early '20s)
"One Way Gal" by Bill Moore, b. 1893 (incl. "sometimes I'm broke and
blue as I can be" and "she takes the blues away")
"Wartime Blues" and others by Lemon Jefferson, b. 1894
"Farewell Blues" by Mance Lipscomb, b. 1895
"Nobody Cares For Me" by Gary Davis, b. 1896
"That's No Way To Get Along" by Robert Wilkins, b. 1896 (AAAB but with
the first A altered with repeats)
several blues by Bill Broonzy, b. 1898, with his use of old-time
folkish style e.g. folk fiddle correlated with his use of the 16-bar
progression (and he stated during a performance that the 16-bar "See
See Rider," not the 12-bar "See See Rider," was the old way of singing
it)
"Going Away Blues" and most versions of "Judge ___ Blues" by Furry
Lewis, b. 1899 (b. rural, moved to Memphis, remained poor and heavily
folkish)
"If You Want A Good Woman..." by Wiley Barner, b. 1899 or 1900, AL
(incl. "Waked up this morning blues all around my bed")
"Original Blues" by Bayless Rose (lyrics more similar to other "black"
singers than "white"; both "Bayles Rose"'s in KY who may possibly be
him, one "black" and the other "white," were b. in 1890s -- the
"black" Bayles Rose was a coal miner and family man in Hazard)
"Sabine River Blues" by Texas Alexander, b. 1900 ("as raw a blues
singer as ever recorded," in Wald's opinion)
"Cincinnati Blues" and others by Jesse Fuller, prob. b. 1900 as his
draft card said (began hoboing young because of child abuse)
I would say that everything above is "like" Lemon Jefferson's
repertoire.
I agree with a comment Wald makes elsewhere in the book that it seems
reasonable that people generally were very interested in learning
songs when they were teenagers. The above people were between 20 and
52 years old the year Mamie Smith recorded "Crazy Blues." Supposing
hypothetically that they learned this 16-bar-repetitive-lyric approach
during the 1910s in person from "blues queens," how much evidence is
there that 16-bar repetitive lyrics were well-known to the "blues
queens" as of the 1910s, or that rural "black" men frequently learned
songs from "blues queens" during the 1910s and went to the trouble to
switch genders in the lyrics?
The wording "Inventing The Blues" in the title, which obviously can
mean many things, worries me. I think that, if this book sells as many
copies as in most respects it deserves to, many people will come away
from this book believing, roughly, that the "folk blues" style was
largely invented during the 1920s to sell records or as an alternative
to vaudeville blues (a belief that Wald seems to lapse into or point
towards in some of his wording in various parts of the book), and
that's way, way off.
Joseph Scott
David Sanderson
> I bought Elijah Wald's book _Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson and
> the Invention of the Blues_ last night and couldn't put it down until
> 2:30 a.m. The vast majority of the book strikes me as brilliant.
> I agree with a comment Wald makes elsewhere in the book that it seems
> reasonable that people generally were very interested in learning
> songs when they were teenagers. The above people were between 20 and
> 52 years old the year Mamie Smith recorded "Crazy Blues." Supposing
> hypothetically that they learned this 16-bar-repetitive-lyric approach
> during the 1910s in person from "blues queens," how much evidence is
> there that 16-bar repetitive lyrics were well-known to the "blues
> queens" as of the 1910s, or that rural "black" men frequently learned
> songs from "blues queens" during the 1910s and went to the trouble to
> switch genders in the lyrics?
>
> Joseph Scott
I am inclined to add one additional comment to what is a truly fine
discussion (and one which I think Mr. Wald should be interested in
seeing). And that is that the "folkish" performers almost certainly had
an impetus to learn new material continually, because as street
performers and casual dance players (not to be specific, but to describe
the general sorts of playing I think they were doing) their repertoire
would have been driven in part by the tastes and requests of the
audience, who would naturally want to hear currently popular material.
We listen to Robert Johnson's recordings, which pretty much fall into
one genre; but we read that he could and did play everything people
asked for, an important ability for a street performer who wants to be
successful.
There is also the point that traditional performers are almost always
far less genre-bound than outsiders who come to the music with
conceptual frameworks in place. Musical traditions are always more
complicated than people want to think they are, and often very hard to
impose structure on. Being a blues musician, Robert Johnson shouldn't
have played current Benny Goodman hits; but I'll bet if someone asked
for it he'd give it a heck of a try.
--
David Sanderson
East Waterford, Maine
Joseph Scott
Wald's wording "before there was a blues boom" in that quote is
important. When a "boom" can be said to have begun is of course
relative -- reasonable people could say "the blues boom" was underway
(e.g. sheet music) starting in anywhere from let's say 1915 to 1923.
But whenever we say it began, before it began, the period he's making
a claim about, blues would have made up only a relatively small
fraction of the repertoire of "black" female stage performers, and
listeners expecting "black" folk musicians to play hits would have had
relatively few hits to request that happened to be blues.
Let me quote another sentence from the same paragraph on p. 33: "...
[I]t is often assumed that the styles played by Jefferson and the
other guitarists were the roots of Handy's and Rainey's music, despite
the lack of any recorded evidence to support such an assumption."
There is a ton of recorded evidence to support it. Wald seems to be
confusing being open minded about two possibilities, which is good, to
for some reason claiming there is _no_ evidence in favor of one of the
possibilities, which isn't a sensible claim to make just because he
personally doesn't know about it.
Joseph Scott
Cleoma
[I]t is often assumed that the styles played by Jefferson and the
other guitarists were the roots of Handy's and Rainey's music, despite
the lack of any recorded evidence to support such an assumption."
There is a ton of recorded evidence to support it. Wald seems to be
confusing being open minded about two possibilities, which is good, to
for some reason claiming there is _no_ evidence in favor of one of the
possibilities, which isn't a sensible claim to make just because he
personally doesn't know about it.
Joseph Scott
>><BR><BR>
What is the recorded evidence that you're referring to?
Suzy T.
To reply to this posting, remove "nojunk" from my email address. Visit Suzy on
the web: http://www.bluegrassintentions.com/suzy.htm
Joseph Scott
> Suzy T.
The recordings I listed in the first post, for instance.
Here's a way to look at it: Consider Southern-born rural-style
musicians born in the 1880s and 1890s who recorded blues as compared
to Southern-born urban-style musicians born in the 1880s and 1890s who
recorded blues -- we have many, many examples to look at. The great
majority of those people would have been playing blues before say
1922, that is, by the time they were in their early 20s to early 40s.
We know blues music is at least as old as 1908. In those recordings,
certain approaches to blues crop up much more often among the
rural-style musicians than among the urban-style musicians, and these
approaches, based on other evidence, predate the blues boom -- so
that's evidence against Wald's suggested possibility that, roughly
speaking, "folk blues" mostly grew out of stage blues rather than the
other way around.
It's the repertoire of the stage blues performers -- Bessie Smith, for
example -- that seems to be considerably newer than the repertoire of
the folk blues musicians (how many jazz bands knew "White House
Blues," for example?), and my understanding is that that's because
stage blues was largely based, largely from 1917 on, on what blues
already sounded like among a large number of Southern folk musicians.
Most people in the South lived in rural areas, the songwriters with
the power to create and develop a blues boom were generally urbanites,
urban areas were more about modernity than rural areas, including
repertoire, and the oldest blues lyrics that can be traced are
overwhelmingly about the concerns of poor "black" Southern men.
Joseph Scott
Joseph Scott
"Stopping for coffee at a Midtown hotel during his recent book tour,
Mr. Wald
explained that 'the blues was pop music - it simply wasn't folk
music.'
He continued: 'It was invented retroactively as black folk music,
which
brought a new set of standards to bear on it and created a whole new
pantheon of heroes.'"
That's an absurd belief. The bathwater he is trying to throw out is
the assumptions of c. '60s, mostly "white" blues fans that a "black"
man playing folky guitar is automatically more "authentic" than anyone
else accompanied by anything else. That's good, as far as it goes. The
baby he's throwing out (without presenting evidence in favor of doing
so) is that there is tons of evidence that "black" men playing folky
guitar does represent much of the _oldest_ blues music, much of the
way blues sounded in the South before the blues boom.
Joseph Scott
Allin Cottrell
I'd have to agree. I too enjoyed Wald's book, but this particular
thesis struck me as fishy and it's disappointing if he's presenting
it as the "take home" message of the book.
Allin Cottrell
Joseph Scott
blues, here is some info on a non-scientific rough tally I did going
through most of the AAAB blues stanzas in my collection ("black" and
white, male and female, rural and urban) -- excluding recordings that
were apparently learned from other people's recorded versions (e.g. it
wouldn't be informative to have "road" added to the tally every time
someone did "Lonesome Road Blues" again) -- looking for particular
words:
One person having "hate" for or "kill"ing another, or "cut"ting or
"shoot"ing someone, or reference to "knife," "pistol," or "gun": 8.
One person having "love" for another, or "leaving" or "losing" a
person, or "cry"ing or "worry"ing: 74.
"Black," "white," or "yellow" (referring to people), or "papa"
(referring to lover, nor parent), or "monkey man," "monkey woman,"
"Negro," "nigger," "coon," or "colored": 3.
"Brown," "brownie," "fair," or "fairie" (referring to people), or
"mama" (referring to lover, not parent): 31.
"Dollar": 6.
"Nickel" or "penny": 0.
"Town," "city," "street," "car," "automobile," or "telephone"/"phone":
13.
"Country," "road," "horse," "mule," or "farm": 23.
"Steamboat": 4.
"River": 10.
"Train": 9.
"Walk"ing: 11.
"Please": 6.
"Sorry" or "my fault" or "apologize": 0.
"Work": 3.
"Steal" or "stole" (except in "stole my gal"): 0.
"Dice": 0.
"Razor": 0.
"Chicken": 0.
"Lord": 19.
"Devil" or "demon": 0.
Joseph Scott
Tony Russell
----------
In article <a2d52481.04090...@posting.google.com>,
j_ns...@msn.com (Joseph Scott) wrote:
I read Wald's remark, and others like it in his book (which, like
Joseph, I admire immensely), rather differently. I suspect that
what he is trying to do here is banish the idea that because blues
operates in many respects as a folk - or, better, a traditional -
music, it is *just* that: an orally/aurally transmitted form,
uncontaminated by outside influences; a kind of Edenic music
existing only within a specific musical/social community. Despite
much writing aimed to dispel such notions, many people still
subscribe to them; in particular, the idea that early blues
musicians were nobly impervious to, or simply ignorant of, the
ways of the commercial music business. It is part of Wald's thesis
that they were in fact much more savvy; that even rural musicians
acted, and were aware that they were acting, in a commercial
arena, and that recordings reveal to us in considerable detail how
they operated there.
I am inclined to agree, though, that in making this important
point he sometimes seems to overlook the aspects of blues which
*do* characterise it as a traditional music.
TR
Joseph Scott
Hi Tony,
There's early blues and then there's early blues. For me the main
issue here is chronology: the way blues sounded during the '00s to
(let's say) early '20s vs. the way blues sounded during the early '20s
to the early '50s. I don't have any problem with Wald saying that
during the later period, Bessie Smith, Tampa Red, Robert Johnson,
Smokey Hogg, and the like were all working in the field of "black"
popular music and were trying to have hits. I think it's unfortunate
that he then gets carried away with his "blues is pop" platitude and
applies it to the '00s to early '20s period of blues music, a period
he apparently isn't terribly interested in, a period when blues was
still largely folk music, on all evidence I've ever encountered.
For Wald to let less experienced readers believe that the average
Southern guitarist born, say, 1887-1896 who recorded blues (during the
'20s to '70s) wasn't recording in a folk style he learned when s/he
was young, just because the "blues is pop" platitude is ammunition
that will help him put a guitarist born in 1911 in his place, is
irresponsible. Lemon Jefferson was old enough to be Robert Johnson's
father, and the sudden popularity of records aimed at the Southern
poor and radio during the 1920s changed "black" music rapidly. When
they were learning music, Lemon and his peers lived in a different
musical world from Robert and his peers, and they deserve to be
researched separately from them, not lumped together with them. (The
"blues was pop" thing all makes about as much sense as heavily
researching the Chuck Berry era, concluding that the great majority of
electric guitarists of that era were playing in a rock, non-jazz
style, and then suggesting that the electric guitarists of the 1940s
such as Charlie Christian didn't play jazz either, because electric
guitar is rock, not jazz.)
If Wald wanted to talk about folk music that was "contaminated"
somewhat by outside influences, fine -- it always is, e.g. we have a
nationwide ragtime craze among rich and poor to thank for the
existence of guitar rags -- but claiming "blues... simply wasn't folk
music" is simply wrong.
Tony, consider for example the "white" musicians such as Acuff (many,
really) who knew some of the apparently oldest blues songs such as the
"steamboat when she blowed"-type songs, the "chilly winds" songs, the
"blues" songs structurally similar to "White House Blues" and "Boll
Weevil," and the IV-IV-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-V-I-I songs. Where and when did
they probably learn them and from whom, we can ask ourselves. I know
of tons of evidence that those kinds of songs were popular among
Southern poor "blacks" and some Southern poor "whites" during the
1910s. I know of no evidence that "black" T.O.B.A.-type acts were
popularizing those types of songs before the blues boom. (The oldest
"black" musicians with the greatest ties to stage performance
generally didn't do many blues compared to the oldest rural "black"
musicians. Ma Rainey's "blues" repertoire, all recorded when record
companies were in love with "blues" because it sold, is similar to
that of Northern-born vaudevillians 10-15 years younger than her.)
Before Mamie Smith, blues was very largely the folk music of poor
"black" Southerners -- adapted and published or recorded sometimes by
wealthy people such as W.C. Handy and Billy Murray, particularly
during 1915-1919 (and we know blues is at least seven years older than
1915). If Furry Lewis, Lead Belly, Peg Leg Howell, Gary Davis, and so
on weren't folk artists, where is the sheet music or earlier
recordings their blues songs were adapted from? For someone to call
Carl Perkins, e.g., a non-folk artist because he got "Honey Don't,"
"Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby," and others off other people's
records seems appropriate to me, and I think Wald is right to apply
those same standards to Robert Johnson who also listened to and
closely emulated specific blues records, but that isn't how blues was
operating when Furry, Huddie, Peg Leg, Gary, etc. were young.
For everyone's reference, here are some guitarists, with their age in
1908 and their age in 1920:
Tom Ashley: 13, 25.
Bo Carter: 15, 27.
"Cat-Iron": 12, 24.
Sam Collins: 21, 33.
Elizabeth Cotten: prob. 13, 25.
Tom Darby: prob. 17, 29.
Gary Davis: 12, 24.
Simmie Dooley: 27, 39.
Clarence Greene: 14, 26.
Stick Horse Hammond: 12, 24.
Roy Harvey: 16, 28.
Peg Leg Howell: 20, 32.
John Hurt: about 15, 27.
Lemon Jefferson: 14, 26.
Tommy Johnson: about 12, 24.
Dallas Jones: 19, 31.
Luke Jordan: 16, 28.
Huddie Leadbetter: 20, 32.
Sam McGee: 14, 26.
Davey Miller: 15, 27.
Bill Moore: 15, 27.
Isaiah Nettles: 16, 28.
Marshall Owens: 18, 30.
Charlie Patton: 17, 29.
Miles Pratcher: 12 or 13, 24 or 25.
Riley Puckett: 14, 26.
Homer Robertson: 18, 30.
Allen Shaw: prob. 16 or 17, 28 or 29.
Shell Smith: 13, 25.
Freddie Spruell: prob. 20, 32.
Frank Stokes: 20, 32.
Ernest Stoneman: 15, 27.
Blind Joe Taggart: 16, 28.
Jimmie Tarlton: 16, 28.
Henry Thomas: 34, 46.
Ashley Thompson: 12, 24.
Willie Walker: 12, 24.
Guitar Welch: 12, 24.
"Whistler": 15, 27.
Henry Whitter: 16, 28.
Robert Wilkins: 12, 24.
Norman Woodlief: 14, 26.
Hosea Woods: prob. 20 or 21, 32 or 33.
Joseph Scott