How to Appreciate Delta Blues

Many dedicated music fans probably don’t realize just how many bands, genres and styles of music are indebted to the early experimentation of blues artists, many of whom developed their craft within the delta area of the Mississippi river at the turn of the twentieth century. From classical music to rock and roll, there is not a song today that doesn’t owe something to innovative sounds of artists like Skip James, Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson. Here are some reasons why you should give this era in musical history some renewed focus.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Access to musical archives
• Open mind

1. One of the greatest things about delta blues artists are their mythic personal stories. For example, it has long been rumored that Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil at the crossroads to gain his tremendous guitar playing skills. Such a story would sound silly if you didn’t know that a few months before playing his first shows and being propositioned to record in Chicago, Johnson had never picked up a guitar. Add this to his mysterious and untimely death by the “poisoning” of a jealous husband. Another artist, Skip James, disappeared into the corn fields for 30 years before miraculously appearing on stage at the Newport Folk Festival.

2. Two of the musical techniques early blues musicians are best known for is their call-and-response song style and their ability to play both the rhythm and melody sections of songs on the same instrument. The call-and-response style can be heard in artists like Son House who pose lyrical questions to their responding instruments. In this way, the guitar becomes a personified figure in the songs. The section, more complex technique is evidenced very strongly by someone like Robert Johnson who made up for being the only person in his band by playing all the parts at once. This amounts to an elaborate combination between picking and strumming that had never before been done.

3. The lyrics of early blues singers are rich poems unto themselves. Take the couplet from Son House’s “Death Letter,” for example: “Looked like there was 10,000 people standin round the buryin ground / Didn’t know I loved her till they began to let her down.” When listening to blues lyrics, you find the same kind of lyrical phrasing that has been adopted by many rock bands today.

4. The last thing you have to remember when listening to a lot of these old recordings is that they were done with imperfect technology and often very little means on the part of the artists. Only some blues musicians were lucky enough to come to Chicago and print records with established recording studios. Some of the best early recordings were actually done in the field by ethnomusicographers like Alan Lomax. When listening to these recordings, listen for the spirit of the music and not just the clarity. The granularity and roughness is all part of the warmth of this early musical phenomenon.

[PhDrSeuss]

on 12/19/2008 Great article!!!! I am tempted 2 now turn on my blues station (my satellite radio) after readin this.