The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #157325 Message #3712548
Posted By: Lighter
28-May-15 - 01:50 PM
Thread Name: Who started the Delta blues myth?
Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
Speaking of John Henry, it was long asserted as fact that he raced the stream drill at the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia in the 1870s.
Mudcatter John Garst has recently shown, on the basis of extensive new research and re-evaluation of the evidence, just how unlikely that claim really is.
Many songs, including "John Henry," can be called "blues" in the broadest sense if they include "blue notes."
But the "blues" proper also have the three-line stanza form that Joe describes.
Though rare elsewhere, the form is not unknown in Anglo-American folksong, particularly in the South. I'm thinking especially of Dillard Chandler's "The Sailor Being Tired":
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrVr5TpkfWE
Maybe he got it from Afro- rather than Anglo-American tradition, but the question of just how the form originated remains open.
Chandler's song, however, has no blue notes and is unlikely to be considered a "blues."