Blues and Gospel - what is the relation

Subject: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Maryrrf
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 09:25 PM

This may seem elementary to blues fans, but I really don't know that much about the blues. I was talking with someone about the relationship between blues and gospel, and thinking that black gospel music must have come first, and the blues were an offshoot. Is this the case, or would anybody like to comment on the very early roots of the blues?

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: GUEST,Scoville at Dad's
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 09:37 PM

Without doing some major research for you, I'd agree that gospel in some form certainly came first since blues in a recognizable form seems to be a post-1900 development, but I would venture to guess that blues had roots more in field hollers and prison songs than in gospel. There were plenty of musicians such as Thomas Dorsey and Son House who went back and forth but many church-going people, to put it mildly, frowned on blues. Later--1930's, 1940's--when blues had become more accepted among "respectable" people, the musical conventions were applied to gospel.

There is a very interesting CD available from Folkways called Black Texicans: Balladeers and Songsters of the Texas Frontier. It was a Lomax project and is mostly later recordings, but I imagine that the music could be similar to what might have been sung by slaves and Reconstruction-era sharecroppers and laborers (many of the singers on here were prisoners). Actually, there are a lot of very familiar titles and probably borrowed at least in part from European tradition--St. James Hospital, Little Liza Jane, Buffalo Skinners, Old Joe Clark--but in versions that are utterly different from the "white" ones we're used to.

Also, there are some blues artists like Mance Lipscomb who were sort of intermediary between field and dance songs and blues. Might want to look up a few of those as well.

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 10:39 PM

I thought the blues came from African traditions brought over by slaves? Here's some on that, from this site:

The Blues originated in the Southern states of the U.S.A. as sung by working-class African Americans. The term 'blues' was first applied to a style of music in the closing de­cades of the 19th. Century, but older blues singers 'rediscovered' in the 1960s claimed the blues has been going "for centuries an' centuries".

Certainly, before the American Civil War (1861-1865) slaves were reported as singing 'sorrowful songs' which the plantation own­ers/overseers immediately banned. These slaves were abducted from their home­lands in West Africa from the early 17th. Century onwards. Indeed, in the latter part of the 18th. Century, Lancaster was the 4th. largest English seaport involved in the slave trade, with vessels laden down with cotton leaving St. George's Quay and down the River Lune for the open sea. On exchanging cotton and other goods for slaves on the African coast, they headed for the West Indies and the American colonies. Suffering degradation, violence, sickness, and death, during the "Middle Passage" across the Atlantic in the hellish slave ships: the slaves main occupation on arrival on U.S. soil (as it became later), was to work in the rice plantations. sugar canebrakes, and later on, predominantly, the cotton fields.

On the larger plantations, slaves were domestic servants (house slaves) or agricultural labourers (field slaves). It was the latter group that created the Blues. Incorporating work songs, spirituals, childrens' game songs, English and Scottish ballads, ring shouts, and field hollers. The latter were literally a drawn-out cry and sung by one field hand to another, some distance away in the next field. As the great Mississippi Bluesman, Johnny Shines, once said: "They sung in broken English an' you could stand on Marster's feet an' sing about 'im - he wouldn't know what the heck. He called 'em 'field hollers'," (1).

But these were sung by people at work. In the few hours of leisure at weekends, some slaves were encouraged to play the banjo and fiddle for white dances at the 'Big House' . The antecedents of the ban­jo came from Africa and called various names including 'hansa' and 'banja'. While the fiddle, or violin, was a European instrument.

Copyright © 2000 Max Haymes. All rights reserved.

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 10:49 PM

Thomas Dorsey is considered the "Father of gospel music." He certainly was instrumental in bringing early gospel music to national attention. Before he wrote such classic gospel songs as Precious Lord Take My Hand, he went by the name of Georgia Tom, and recorded acoustic, finger-picked blues... some of it quite bawdy. As to which came first, that's more of an academic (though entertaining) excercise. Many blues guitarist also did gospel. My friend Frankie makes the distinction. Saturday night at the juke joint, they played blues and you shook your hips to the rhythm. Sunday morning they sang gospel and you jumped up and down.

It's all in the hips.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 11:26 PM

If you listen to early examples of both, you will find they are entwined past (I suspect) anyone's ability to delineate their relationship. Suffice to say-- we weren't there, so what can we really know?

It's all there to enjoy, immerse oneself in, be moved by, learn from.....

The rest? I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, any more than I would try to describe "what is folk music".

~Susan

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: GUEST,Reggie Miles
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 12:06 AM

There a wonderful lp recording by Willie McTell on Atlantic Records called Atlanta Twelve String. One whole side contains great blues and dance songs (the Devil's music) and the other side has all gospel songs. It's a great example of how this singer managed to go both ways.

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 02:27 AM

Here's a summary of and selected quotes from the essay "The Impact of Gospel Music on The Secular Music Industry {1992} by Portia K. Maulstby as found in "Signifyin{g}, Sanctifyin', & Slam Duncking: A Reader In African American Expressive Culture", editor: Gena Dagel Caponi {1999, the University of Massachusetts Press, pp.172-190"

"...The vocal stylings and timbral variations of gospel singers echo those of gospel preachers and join "infectious rhythms, meliometic melodies, complex harmonies, call-response structures' to define an approach to music-making that permeates both sacred and secular African American music."

**

"The seeds for the commercialization of gospel music were planted in the 1930s when its performers were showcased in a variery of nonreligious settings. Gospel quartets were the first to garner a secular following by performing at local community events, on radio broadcasts, and on commercial records. Evolving out of jubilee quartets in the 1930s, they expanded their repertoire of Negro spirituals to include secular songs and a new body of religious music known as gospel. By the 1940s, the song of pioneering gospel composers Thomas A. Dorsey, Theodore Frye, William Herbert Brewster, Kenneth Morris, Lucie E, Campbell, and Roberta Martin had become standard repertoire in jubilee-gospel quartet performances..."

**

The gospel sound encompasses many vocal styles and timbres. It ranges from the lyrical, semiclassical, and tempered sounds of Roberta Martin, Alex Bradford, Inez Andrews, and Sara Jordan Powell, to the percussive and shouting approach if Sallie martin, Archie Brownlee, Albertina Walker, Clara Ward, and Norsalus McKissisck, Many singers, including Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams, and the Barrett Sisters, employ components from both styles in their performances...Regardless if vocal style employed, singers of popular idioms use a wide range of aesthetic devices in interpreting songs: melismas, slides, bends, moans, grunts, hollers, screams, melodic and textual repetition, extreme registers, call-response structures, and so on. Dinah Washington, a protegee of Roberta Martin, was a master in the subtle manipulation of timbre, shading, time, pitch and text. Her trademark sound echoes the vocal control, timing {"lagging behind the beat",} and phrasing of Roberta Martin. Dinah's style was imitated by a host of singers,including Lavern Baker, Etta James, Nancy Wilson, Dionne Warwick, and Dinah Ross".

**

"Vocal techniques, timbres, and delivery style were not the only components of gospel appropriated by rhythm and blues. Gospel rhythms and instrumental stylings, which originated in secular contexts, became integral to this sound...In Screanubg Jay Hawkin's I Put A Spell On You" {1956} snd Lavern Baker's "See See Rider" {1962}, for example, he [David "Panama" Francis, studio drummer for many Black artists] employed the 12/8 meter {known as the common meter in the Church of God In Christ} and hte triplet note pattern associated with this meter. These structures as well as the rhtyhms that accompany the "shout" {religious dance} provide the rhtyhmic foundation for many contemporary popular songs."

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 02:43 AM

If you have a broadband Internet connection, and can get YouTube, you may be interested in checking out the links to gospel videos that I've posted on a page of my website: http://www.cocojams.com/gospel.htm

Links to gospel videos on that page include performances by Rev. Cleophus Robinson & Loving Sisters; Sister Rosetta Tharpe; Albertina Walker with Shirley Caesar, Dorothy Norwood & Inez Andrews; and Clara Ward.

There are also a couple of links on that page to excerpts of the televised series "The Story Of Gospel Music".

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 02:47 AM

Correction:

The author of the 1992 article on "The Impact of Gospel Music On The Secular Music Industry" is Portia K. Maultsby. Maultsby is listed as a "professor of Afro-American studies and adjunct professor of music and ethnomusicology at Indiana University".

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 03:02 AM

More Corrections:

"Screanubg Jay Hawkins" is of course Screaming Jay Hawkins

"Jalacy Hawkins, best known as Screamin' Jay Hawkins (July 18, 1929 –February 12, 2000) was an African-American singer famed for his wildly theatrical performances of songs like "I Put a Spell on You" and "Constipation Blues".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamin'_Jay_Hawkins

and "rhtyhms" is of course "rhythms".

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Leadfingers
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 07:54 AM

What we now call 'blues' of whatever shade - Delta , Kansas City , Piedmont , etc , is an amalgam of various earlier music . The Field Hollers and Prison Work Songs , the early Church Music ,probably even the Shanties the slaves heard as the came from Africa , the Minstrel Shows , ALL had an influence on what became Blues , AND Gospel .

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 08:32 AM

Leadfingers, I agree that all of the musical genres you mentioned influenced early Blues & there are more genres besides these that can be listed as influences on that musical genre. For instance, dance songs composed and played by enslaved African Americans is another type of music that influenced Blues. After all, early Blues [and later Blues] was dance music.

It's the names for the music [blues, jubilees, gospel, R&B, soul] that changed, not the approach to the music, the aesthetics, or even so much the structure and way of delivering and responding to the music.

However, Leadfingers, I'd like to make one friendly ammendment to your 11 Jan 07 - 07:54 AM post in which you wrote that "probably even the Shanties the slaves heard as the came from Africa" [influenced blues music].

I'd like to change this to say "shanties probably also had an influence to blues music".

As written, your sentence could easily be interpreted to mean that shanties were sung [only] by White sailors & heard by enslaved African who were being transported on these hellish ships to slavery in the Americas.

However in the Mudcat thread Black Jacks: History & Shanties and other Mudcat threads on shanties, I learned that 19th century and earlier Black sailors were creators of shanties separately and along with White sailors.

Indeed, I've learned through reading other Mudcat threads whose links are posted on that Black Jacks thread, that because of the call & response structure of shanties, some people believe that Black people started that song genre and were avid composers of shanty songs.

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 08:37 AM

Hmmm. another here's still another correction I'd like to make to one of my post on this thread:

Indeed, I've learned through reading other Mudcat threads whose links are posted on that Black Jacks thread, that because of the call & response structure of shanties, some people believe that Black people started that song genre as well as being avid composers of shanty songs.

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Leadfingers
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 08:42 AM

Azizi - Apologies for not phrasing that correctly ! I know that there are a lot of shanties that originated from Kanakas and other 'native' sailors , My thought was that the slaves on the ships would have heard the crew singing shanties AS work songs , which could have been an influence on their use of work songs .

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Azizi
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 09:02 AM

Hey, Leadfingers, I'm not the correct police here-political or otherwise. I just wanted to pass on some information and correct an assumption that I think others-including me-had believed {that shanties were only sung by White sailors. That's the impression given in the Alex Haley Roots tv series.

Fwiw, my comment to your last post is that perhaps when enslaved Africans heard White sailors sing shanties some of them were influenced by this and later composed shanties. But who influenced the White singers in the first place? Perhaps it was some Black sailors...

And perhaps these enslaved Africans also may have created shanties because they remembered & passed on the African tradition of singing songs while they worked-to help coordinate movements, for the aesthtic pleasure of doing so, etc. etc. etc.

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 09:52 AM

This is a great subject for discussion, because it is an important question, and there aren't very many people who have examined it--

I have a couple thoughts, first, that it is important to recognize that a lot of what we recognize as gospel and blues/rhythm and blues is commercial music, which doesn't mean that it is bad, or even that it is somehow less valid than non-commercial stuff, but it does mean that it was created to satisfy a demand--

Second, that the commercial music replaced a variety of local traditional music traditions, and was also adopted in a lot of places where there had been no musical traditions--mainstream black congregations, before the introduction of the Thomas Dorsey style gospel music, tended to use the same music and the same singing styles as their parent denominations, and, it is worth noting that even now, "Gospel" is only a part of the worship of certain denominations--

Third--there seems to be a performance/creative mechanism/technique that underlies the seeminlgy unconnected religious music, secular dance/entertainent music, and work music traditions, and there is a lot of back and forth between the three areas--

Fourth, even though the outward forms seem to have radically changed over time, the underlying techique(and it's component elements) seems to be unchanged--

Subject: RE: Blues and Gospel - what is the relation
From: Maryrrf
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 01:25 PM

Thanks for all the responses - some good information and interesting ideas set forth!