Rhythm
& Blues has become one of the most identifiable art-forms of the
C20th, with an enormous influence on the development of both the
sound and attitude of modern music. But it wasn't always that
way. The History of Rhythm and Blues investigatesthe accidental
synthesis of jazz, gospel, blues, ragtime, country and pop into a
definable form of black music, which in turn would influence pretty
well all popular music from the 1950s to the present.
The end of
the 19th century was a period of major social upheaval for the black
population in America. Musicians who had previously been maintained on
plantations were no longer required, and took to the road begging, as
the abolition of slavery led to huge numbers of itinerant workers. The
hardships of segregation caused by the ensuing Jim Crow laws caused a
cultural revolution within Afro-American society. New forms of music
arose: spirituals, ragtime, barrelhouse, jazz, black ballad form.
Over the years, these distinctive sounds would come to merge into a
recognisably “new” musical style.
From its humble rural beginnings in the early 1900s as a method of
self-expression in the southern states, the blues gradually became a
form of public entertainment, initially for workers and drinkers, in
lumber camps, barbeques and juke joints, picking up dance rhythms along
the way. The blues, originally a slow dance, only evolved into the form
we know today after the introduction of sound recording - the first
blues record, Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues, was released in 1921.
Between 1910 and 1970, nearly five million African Americans left the
South, looking for higher wages, better homes and political rights. The
route they took was determined largely by the price of the cheapest
rail ticket. Chicago was the favoured destination from Mississippi,
while those from the Eastern Seaboard left for New York. Attracted by
the expansion of industrial production during and after World War II,
they moved to California from states like Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
and Oklahoma.
It was the move to the city, which brought the increase in popularity
for the blues, and it was the technology of sound recording, which
helped to define its structure. Wider dissemination came with the
development of radio and the jukebox, but also through touring bands
playing the new network of dance halls and ballrooms that were
springing up throughout the States in the 1930s. It was in these
‘territory’ bands that the first major fusion of jazz, blues and
boogie-woogie is to be found.
Over the course of 4 thematically arranged CDs, The History of Rhythm
and Blues illustrates how these dramatic social and economic upheavals
were reflected in the congruence of different musical styles into a
form that became recognisable both in terms of sound and marketing. Old
songs were turned into new. Cow Cow Blues mutated into Ray Charles’
Mess Around. Little Richard appropriated Keep a Knockin’ from an old
hillbilly tune via Louis Jordan. A new form of commercial dance music
was born from these many disparate sources, few of which survived in
its original form.
The History of Rhythm and Blues Part One takes the story up to the eve
of the American entry into the Second World War. It will appeal to
anyone interested in the evolution of the blues, or simply curious as
to how the sounds of today continue to be shaped and forged by the
aural fusions and experiments of the early decades of the C20th.