Who started the Delta blues myth?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Sep 16 - 08:28 AM

>I think the idea that blues is ...

Couldn't agree more with this whole paragraph.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 31 Aug 16 - 10:17 PM

Ironically, Alan Lomax's own copy of _Father Of The Blues_ reportedly has "Got No More Home Than A Dog" (AAA blues from Indiana, before the AAA blues from Tutwiler) marked in pencil as of particular interest to him!

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 26 Jun 15 - 01:39 PM

"the blues scale"

"The Negro... expressed his musical scale 1-2-3-5-6." -- John Work Jr. (born about 1872), _Folk Song Of The American Negro_, 1915.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 08 Jun 15 - 01:15 PM

"The best thing about music is playing it." Not the way I play it.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jun 15 - 06:03 PM

The best thing about music is playing it.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 04 Jun 15 - 12:32 PM

And if you listen to e.g. Henry Thomas's quills playing, using similar to 1b345b7 as a scale rather than similar to 12356 as a scale wasn't considered essential to blues music by the earliest-born blues musicians anyway.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 04 Jun 15 - 12:29 PM

Singing a flatted third over an accompanying major I, for instance, was common among black and white folk musicians in the South, and I've heard examples of it from Europe and Africa. Suppose you think similar to 1b345b7 is a "normal" scale, among a lot of people you know, and a lot of those people are learning major chords as they learn to play instruments, and are combining a scale similar to that with accompaniment with major chords. Then that sounds normal to you.

Handy was proud that some people thought it was interesting when he threw flatted thirds into his scores in places an Abbe Niles wouldn't expect. But that was because Niles lived in Connecticut. When Richard M. Jones (born near Baton Rouge, LA) wrote about a tune with the same chord progression as "Bucket's Got A Hole In It" as "the oldest blues in the world," he was speaking from personal experience that Abbe Niles didn't have.

Blues notes only sounded like wrong notes to _some_ people.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 06:14 PM

Another contributing factor to "blue" notes may have been the discordant sound of some traditional open banjo chords. While not strictly speaking "blue notes," that kind of "lonesome" banjo frailing would undoubtedly have accustomed people - white and black - to discords as a normal component of music.

Of course, maybe they developed the tunings because they already liked discords.

I've been looking for pre-1920s references to the sound of melancholy tunes (like "Texas Rangers") which, played on the fiddle, may have encouraged glissandos and blue notes, but such descriptions have eluded me. The practice is possibly post-1900 as well.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 06:04 PM

I may have been wrong about "nobody" mentioning field hollers in the 19th century. There is at least one mention of something like them, in Northerner Frederick Law Olmsted's "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States" (1856). Several blues historians quote it:

"At midnight I was awakened by loud laughter, and, looking out [of my railroad car], saw that the loading gang of negroes had made a fire, and were enjoying a right merry repast. Suddenly, one raised such a sound as I never heard before; a long, loud, musical shout, rising, and falling, and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle-call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then, another, and then, by several in chorus."

Olmsted describes the practice as "Negro jodling." He mentions hearing it in South Carolina in 1853. If he heard it anywhere else, he says nothing about it.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 05:55 PM

"You're assuming that Marion uses the word 'blues' to mean what you mean by it." Nope.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 05:53 PM

Getting back to "Who started the Delta blues myth," from this

https://ia801007.us.archive.org/31/items/78QuarterlyNo3/78%20Quarterly%20No%203_djvu.txt

it looks like as of roughly 1952 James McKune was into a variety of blues singers, such as Jimmy Witherspoon, but also agreeing with a friend that they both valued "rough" singing (and also lyrics that seemed original, and lyrics that told a narrative, and singers who sounded unlike other singers, all which runs kind of contrary to the idea that they thought they were about knowing what "folk" blues was).

Of course Alan Lomax beats 1952 anyway, but others helped.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Etymologophile
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 05:42 PM

Joseph: You're assuming that Marion uses the word "blues" to mean what you mean by it. But the context shows that he doesn't mean that and isn't thinking of a type of sad music called blues. Seagrove and the bar-flies he quotes are confused about that, and trying to sound like they aren't, but Marion, being a musician, was familiar with term "blue note" (other references cited above confirm that it was common slang among musicians) and he knew that the not-at-all-sad music that excited them was full of such notes.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Etymologophile
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 05:32 PM

quote: I don't think a song lyric from 1879 has all that much to do with how black people talked to white people about black people in conversation in the North in 1915.

It shows that race was discussed in that era both casually and frankly and not necessarily in what we would consider polite terms. That song was still popular in 1915, and it shows that "darkie" was one of the more kindly words used, and it uses the term with respect and even affection. If you need more precisely concurrent examples, not necessarily as kindly, there are the "coon songs" or "coon shouts" that were still popular till 1920 and sung by both black and white performers (such as the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet's coon shout "Down on the Old Camp Ground"), and the pickaninny songs that were popular at least from Joplin's 1901 "Pickaninny Days" till Noble Sissle's 1921 "Pickaninny Shoes."

Do you have some evidence that a black person would not have described other black people as "darkies" in a conversation with a white person in 1915? I wouldn't be surprised if a black person today were to tell me that jazz was played originally by blacks in New Orleans, though 50 years from now "black" will probably have become a racist and insulting term. And in fact, about 25 years ago in Kansas City a black man I had just met told me the reason he doesn't like blues is because it's "nigger hillbilly music."

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 05:29 PM

"To someone who was asking about the blues, 'Jazz' Marion mentioned both the 'blue note' and the 'blues,' and talked about the 'blues' not being on the sheet music ('never written into music') [... if] the mellow-about-words Seagrove quoted him correctly" is not a misreading of

"At the next place a young woman was keeping 'Der Wacht Am Rhein' and 'Tipperary Mary' apart when the interrogator entered.
   'What are the blues?' he asked gently. 'Jazz!' The young woman's voice rose high to drown the piano.
   A tall young man with nimble fingers rose from the piano and came over. 'That's me,' he said. And then he unraveled the mystery of 'the blues.'
   'A blue note is a sour note,' he explained. 'It's a discord – a harmonic discord. The blues are never written into music, but are interpolated by the piano player or other players. They aren't new. They are just reborn into popularity. They started in the south half a century ago and are the interpolations of darkies originally. The trade name for them is 'jazz.'"

Whereas "... blue notes on sheet music, which is what Jazz Marion was talking about..." is a misreading of it.

We don't know what "Jazz" Marion was thinking, or even if he was quoted correctly. Seagrove acted in the piece as if being precise could be not as fun as being less precise.

"It would make no sense to say that 12-bar blues" Nothing was said about 12-bar strains in the article. As of 1915, 16-bar blues strains were considered blues strains, e.g. by the white composer Euday Bowman whose "Kansas City Blues" was published in 1915.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Etymologophile
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 04:28 PM

Joseph: You're misreading the article. Jazz Marion isn't talking about a genre of music called blues. It would make no sense to say that 12-bar blues isn't written and is just interpolated by the performer. He's saying that about blue notes, which are not only sour and discordant but also often involve bent strings so that the note can't be represented in a conventional score.

The columnist may be talking about a type of music called "the blues," though that isn't clear. He definitely thinks there is a type of music called "blue music," and "jazz blues," but what he means by "blues" isn't clear. However, when he asks Marion about the blues, the latter replies in accordance with what the term means to him. Marion doesn't call the style of music blues; he calls it jazz.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 04:27 PM

Found it.

One pianist was simply "dark-haired," the other "tall with nimble fingers." No one in 1915 would have assumed they were black, any more than they would the woman who was playing German and Irish songs.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 04:19 PM

> drawing identified the ethnicity

But if IIRC, not the pianist's. The link is down.

The sax players I took to be generic. But the pianist he was the one who did the explaining. Wasn't he working for a music publisher?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 03:44 PM

"blue notes on sheet music, which is what Jazz Marion was talking about" To someone who was asking about the blues, "Jazz" Marion mentioned both the "blue note" and the "blues," and talked about the "blues" not being on the sheet music ("never written into music"). If the mellow-about-words Seagrove quoted him correctly.

Abbe Niles encountered the sheet music of Handy's "Memphis Blues" in 1913.

I don't think a song lyric from 1879 has all that much to do with how black people talked to white people about black people in conversation in the North in 1915.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Etymologophile
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 01:53 PM

quote: If we take "Jazz" Marion, for instance, him pointing out that blue notes were used by "darkies originally" suggests that he wasn't black.
Then do the lyrics of "In the Evening by the Moonlight" suggest that James A. Bland wasn't black? Does the frequent use of the "N-word" by many singers and comedians today suggest that they aren't black?

quote: Abbe Niles lived in Connecticut and he first encountered blues on sheet music in 1913.
Do you mean that Abbe Niles encountered blue notes on sheet music, which is what Jazz Marion was talking about, or do you mean that he encountered compositions in the blues genre?

Lighter: The accompanying drawing identified the ethnicity of the musicians, if that was really necessary in a night club report by Seagrove as opposed to a news story.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 01:34 PM

In those days, moreover, the journalist would certainly have said if they were black. The practice was to identify the ethnicity of anyone who wasn't a WASP, which was the default category.

One reason was to make the story more interesting. There was also the mainstream WASP assumption that anybody not a WASP was intrinsically either amusing or threatening, and readers expected to be told who was who.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 01:24 PM

P.S. "Jazz" Marion claiming that "the blues are never written into music" (if he did and Seagrove wasn't just playing fast and loose) shows how much Marion had been keeping up with sheet music during 1912-1915. Abbe Niles lived in Connecticut and he first encountered blues on sheet music in 1913.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 01:20 PM

"Phil, how do you know that?" If we take "Jazz" Marion, for instance, him pointing out that blue notes were used by "darkies originally" suggests that he wasn't black.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jun 15 - 01:05 PM

quote: Note: Seagrove and everybody referenced in the Trib article were white.

Phil, how do you know that? One of the drawings published with the article showed a black saxophonist. I was assuming that the two pianists quoted in the article were very likely to have been black.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 08:08 PM

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 07:40 PM

Black folk (or heavily folk-influenced) blues as packaged with white audiences directly in mind has been one thing.

Blues in general as packaged for music fans in general has included the likes of Wilbur Sweatman whom whites and blacks liked, Bessie Smith whom whites and blacks liked, Cab Calloway whom whites and blacks liked, Jimmie Rodgers whom whites and blacks liked, Woody Herman whom whites and blacks liked, Louis Jordan whom whites and blacks liked, etc.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 06:21 PM

Nice thread Dread.

I read what Armstrong and Bechet were talking about in rag-v-jazz-v-blues as "(re)packaging." It's been the standard process in American entertainment for centuries. Everybody, and I mean everybody, from John Durang & John Bill Ricketts to Mitch Miller did it.

So, at the risk of drifting back on topic... one more chimp who isn't here... Moe Asche. In packaging terms the "Sad Bluesman" is descendant of the abolitionist's "Sad Mulatto" and minstrelsy's "Sad Darkie."

The history of the "blue note" may go back centuries. But American variety artist and audience awareness of history will be limited to a few decades at best (as Lomax observed, liking it or not.)

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 01:26 PM

Maybe this example will help explain my take on "could have been": my belief that "Poor Boy Long Ways From Home" predates 1909 doesn't come from thinking about what sorts of lyrics I can best imagine as plausibly sung before 1909 (seems to me the imagination is largely the enemy of the fact), it comes from having encountered claims made by Emmet Kennedy, Gus Cannon, and Roy Carew.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 01:05 PM

The idea that there is "the blues scale" is something that is taught to beginning guitarists so they will sound relatively funky quickly and their parents will keep paying. In early blues a lot of different scales were used.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 01:04 PM

"Remember, I'm *not* saying that the blues scale developed only around 1910, only that there's no evidence for it before then. That's pretty much the established view among blues scholars." Which scale are you referring to? Even individual artists such as Lemon Jefferson didn't stick to the same scale in all their blues songs.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 01:02 PM

Without detailed and specific contemporary accounts, "could have been" is the best we can do. That is in the nature of most historical investigations of folk music.

Now if you could unearth such accounts, we'd know a lot more.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:59 PM

"1) More likely that anything else, 'The Blues' were called 'The Blues' because so many of the songs made reference to having the blues--" Yes, e.g. in what Howard Odum collected before 1909 and in the lyrics from 1909 that E.C. Perrow published. Rock and roll and hip hop also got their names from lyrics used in them.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:55 PM

"The twelve bar progression is what defines blues." No, 16-bar progressions were widely accepted in early blues.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:53 PM

"could have been" "could have been" "could have been" Reminiscent of Sam Charters.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:45 PM

"'blues' being short for phrases like 'blue-note compositions.'" When among whom? People were talking about "blues" music in 1909-1910 well before that 1913 publication associated blues music with the "blue note."

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:40 PM

"Bad OP question is my opinion." Only bad if anyone can show that "we have evidence that blues music originated in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta." We don't.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:37 PM

"Even after the blue=sad meaning was attached to blues music, some people ignored that meaning and continued creating joyful dance music and calling it blues" What evidence do you have supporting your idea that the concept of joyful dance music was attached to what you consider "blues music" before the concept of sadness was?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:34 PM

"And it was probably tacked on because most people didn't understand why it was called 'blues,' and so they guessed that it had some connection to feeling blue, and that guess became attached to the music." On all available evidence the vocal blues music of about 1908 was sung about having the blues which equalled being blue.

Dread

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:25 PM

"It sounds like the words 'blues' and 'jazz' were first used by people who didn't initially create the music they referred to by those terms, and the meanings were not initially clear and unanimous among the people who used the terms."

"Jass" or "jazz" was a name that caught on in Chicago to describe peppy music such as ragtime with collective improvisation by visiting bands from New Orleans.

What make you think there was relatively little consensus about what "blues music" meant as of about 1909-1911?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:18 PM

"Let's say guitarist Joe Blue invents the blues as we known them in Blue City in 1880. Blue becomes an itinerant musician and travels all over the South. If his music had caught on at home, why would it die out there?" In areas where people try particularly hard to be modernistic, one thing after another (such as use of banjo) can die out there before dying out other places. But of course the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta doesn't qualify as one of those places.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 12:16 PM

"Acc. to the Encyclopaedia Britannica: 'The rural blues developed in three principal regions, Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi."

Reminiscent of David Evans in its random "precision."

"The blues of Georgia and the Carolinas is noted for its clarity of enunciation and regularity of rhythm. Influenced by ragtime and white folk music, it is more melodic than the Texas and Mississippi styles.'" Sigh. Ragtime started nearer the Mississippi River than the East Coast, and ragtime playing was popular among guitarists about John Hurt's age _across the South_ as of e.g. 1907, which was e.g. about 15 years before Charlie Patton learned "Pony Blues." Blues songs that can be confirmed as really early tend to correlate, when played by early-born musicians, with roughly speaking the playing styles of Robert Wilkins and Jesse Fuller (as heard _across the South_).

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 08:09 AM

Yes, Stim, I do hear some blue notes, but Bessie Jones wasn't born till 1902. By the time the Singers were recorded by Alan Lomax, blue notes had evidently been characteristic of African-American singing for at least 25 years.

Remember, I'm *not* saying that the blues scale developed only around 1910, only that there's no evidence for it before then. That's pretty much the established view among blues scholars.

Blues fans are more likely to assume romantically that the scale goes way back in African-American (or West African) history.

There are many reasons why a sung melody might defy transcription: irregular timing and syncopation, for example, or ad lib harmonies. These seem to feature in much African-American traditional singing as well. Early writers said that Anglo-American chanteys were "wild" and defied transcription, yet they don't feature a blues scale.

I'm just surprised that if theoretically "off-key" notes were central to the songs Odum and Garrison heard that they didn't say anything more specific.

On the other hand, blue notes are so characteristic of AA song for as long as we have recordings of it, their use must go back before ca1900.

It may be that the notes first became "standardized" (if that's the word) in so-called "field hollers," which tended to be spontaneously expressive and unbound by standard musical practice. Perhaps such "hollering" really is centuries old. It's exactly the sort of thing that *nobody* would have bothered to describe in detail before the twentieth century.

At some point, presumably, the vocal freedom of the "holler" began to be applied to songs and guitar runs.

That could have happened anywhere, and undoubtedly in more than one place over a period of years. (This is called "polygenesis": a repeated rather than a one-time invention from which everything later flows.)

As for "accidentals" in other music, I think we're talking about two related but different things. The accidentals are mere ornaments. Modern "blues notes" are intrinsic to the scale.

But any accidentals heard repeatedly by slaves in religious hymns might also have accustomed many singers to use them more widely and insistently.

Both the emotional "blues" and the independently named "blue notes" clearly influenced the name of the genre. It would be wrong to single out one or the other as "the" origin.

I tend to agree that the name most likely came from "outside," and that the earliest blues singers might not have used it to describe the music. They were musicians, not theoreticians. What we call a blues scale would just have been another technique. Why should a folk musician bother to categorize it differently from any other way of playing?

Again, just thinking out loud.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 03:44 AM

Etymologophile (hope I spelt that right), I don't know what it is called in plainchant notation (neume), but I think in general it is just an accidental which lowers rather than raises the note. I only used Plainsong as an example because it is the oldest form of music which is written down as far as I know, and if you look up Plainsong on Wikipedia, at the top of the page is a Kyrie in neume notation which has flats as accidentals.

I don't know of a notation for lowering by a quarter tone though.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 31 May 15 - 11:57 PM

The Georgia Sea Island Singers link was from me.

A couple thoughts:

1) More likely that anything else, "The Blues" were called "The Blues" because so many of the songs made reference to having the blues--

Went to the river
The river was runnin' up and down
Went to the river
Had the blues so bad
Started to jump in and drown

2) It is true that many blues tunes use the 12 measure phrase--but a lot of blues, particularly early and folk blues, doesn't..

3) Though a lot of blues use a fairly standard I-IV-V chord changes, there are lot of others, and, in fact, there are blues that don't have any chord changes.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 May 15 - 11:31 PM

Actually, Lighter, I posted that quote from Lucy McKim Garrison because it indicated that she and her associates were very aware of the bent and altered notes--a couple places in her notes in "Slave Songs" she gives the caveat that they were not able to accurately represent what was sung--at any rate, what she heard was probably sounded a bit like this:
Georgia Sea Island Singers Listen and tell me if you hear any blue notes.

Note:The Georgia Sea Island Singers were formed in the early 20th century and performed, preserved, and propagated their music, which reflects the Gullah traditions, which are generally considered to incorporate a lot of fairly undiluted African musical elements.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Etymologophile
Date: 31 May 15 - 09:39 PM

Dave: Thanks for that info. In a previous thread on this subject some people said that what we call a blue note is used in many genres of western music and in much music from other cultures. I think the only thing that's new, or relatively new, is that name, i.e. the idea of calling it a blue note.

Did they have a name for it in medieval plainchant?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 31 May 15 - 02:49 PM

If, by a blue note you mean the practice or dropping notes by a semitone or quarter tone, this practice is not new, it is used in medieval plainchant, for instance in various forms of the Kyrie Eleison. The twelve bar progression is what defines blues.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Etymologophile
Date: 31 May 15 - 11:54 AM

The term "blue note" has a folksie or low-brow sound. Classically-trained musicians would have used something like "tierce d'Orléans," or at least something without the word "note" in it.

So I assume it was used either by itinerant musicians who didn't have a lot of technical vocabulary, or by trained musicians going for a folksy feeling, or both. Adding blue notes to any type of music, such as ragtime piano, or banjo tunes now being played on the new steel-stringed guitars that started to appear around 1900, would have given a visceral pleasure that might have prompted listeners or fellow jammers to exclaim "Ah... play those blues, man!" It could have been an exhortation to continue adding blue notes to the piece, and not a description of a type of music. The notes do seem to have been used with a variety of folk and popular musical styles.

But exclamations such as that might have confused the layman, who might have assumed that "those blues" was a reference to a name for whatever type of music was being played at the time, particularly if it sounded like it might be a new type of music for which the layman didn't already have a name. That would account for the people Seagrove quoted confusing or equating jazz with blues, and using both terms to describe what most people today would probably think of as ragtime.

If it was the other way around, i.e. the note taking its name from the musical genre, it should have been initially, or at least occasionally, called a "blues note."

Thanks, Phil, for evoking the happy memory of Arthur Bryant's and Gates & Sons' barbecued mutton.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 31 May 15 - 08:19 AM

> the practice would have been around as artifice/humour since at least the days of Nicolò Amati. Lute players Like John Dowland would have known the technique, but how to notate it in tablature?

A significant point. Any lutenist, guitarist, violinist, etc., could have bent a note. But because they could have done it doesn't mean they *did* do it. And surely if they did in actual performance, a tablature would have appeared to indicate it. Or if not, references to the practice should be findable.

There are many instances of seemingly simple, even obvious, innovations, that have taken forever to be discovered. This is especially true in language.

Example: Large numbers of people have been saying "Whatever!" dismissively for only about 30 years. (Short for a sarcastic, "Whatever you say, idiot!") What took them so long? In theory nothing prevented George Washington or Elizabeth I from saying"Whatever!", but if lexical evidence is of any value, they clearly did not. But if in fact they did, informally, once or twice in their lives, no one would have noticed. It was not part of "the language," any more than blue notes were part of musical language before the 20th century.

Then there are blends like the gossip columnists' "Brangelina" referring to Bard Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a couple. It took the English language 1600 years to come up with that kind of a blend (abbrev. celeb name + abbrev. celeb name = name for both together). No single reason; it just did. And most potential examples of the same process still don't exist. (So far as I know, the Brits don't have an "Elizaphil" or a "Willikate" )

Of course, any clever coinage nowadays is likely to sweep the world in a way that would have been impossible two hundred years ago; but with note-bending and blues scales we're not talking about just an individual's musical eccentricity, we're talking about a widespread practice.

Stim, I can't help but be struck by Garrison's silence on bent notes, blue notes, seemingly off-key notes, odd scales, etc. It's hard to imagine why eloquent observers like her and Odum would not have drawn attention to the phenomenon if it was at all typical of the music they discussed.

Unless some new evidence turns up, one has to conclude that intentional "blue notes" were rarely used before about 1910.

Ety, what evidence we have (particularly that 1913 "'blue' note melody" suggests that it was the notes more than anything else that led to the names, "blues" being short for phrases like "blue-note compositions."

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Mr Red
Date: 31 May 15 - 07:06 AM

it has already been said
the OP doesn't ask if the whole thing is a myth, it askes who started it.
Have we yet established that it is a myth?

Bad OP question is my opinion.

And as for bent notes, the violin has been around long enough for violinist to easily bend/glissando notes so the practice would have been around as artifice/humour since at least the days of Nicolò Amati. Lute players Like John Dowland would have known the technique, but how to notate it in tablature?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 31 May 15 - 03:16 AM

"Similarly, after the introduction of nylon fabric rendered obsolete the duck that was such a big part of WWII soldiers' lives, most people didn't understand the term and concluded that the tape made for those soldiers by coating duck with rubber and adhesive must have been created for sealing ductwork."

"Worm and parcel with the lay, turn and serve the other way!" We sailors and sparky's used linseed-cautchouc-duck tape (and varnish-cambric for the aero-nutcases) way before that WWII landlubber stuff came along. Posted a 'parcel' lately anyone? I hoped you 'wrapped' it well!

PS: I was in KC (renov on the Pershing Street P.O.) about same time as you. The five "W" of blues-jazz are pretty tame compared to the subject of best BBQ in those parts.

The impression one gets reading Lomax, et al is what they recorded "...had sustained and entertained generations of Americans." Yet his own life experience shows it to be blurry snapshot of transcience. Methinks if Lomax had recorded twenty years on either side we'd hear the exact same complaint about whomever's generation of music came after.