Please read all the information on the attachment files to find the answer to the questions. New Orleans to Chicago Worksheet 1. 1. In what ways did early jazz bands differ from their Ragtime, Br
Delta Blues Musician -Mississippi Fred McDowell City Blues vs. Delta Blues You might have noticed that a bunch of the song from the 1920s have “blues” in their titles. There was a blues mania going on in America at this time. It seemed that every recording artist put the word “blues” in their song whether or not there were any blues qualities in the tune or not! If the record had the word “blues” on it, people would buy it. This craze didn’t start out of nowhere. On August 10, 1920 a vaudeville singer and dancer named Mamie Smith (1890 -1937) recorded “Crazy Blues” at the Okeh stud io in New York. To the surprise of everyone, the little tune sold over a million copies in the first year! The “Classic” or “City” blues era was born. This wasn’t the public’s first exposure to the blues. The first wave of blues hits came in the form of s heet music. W.C. Handy (1873 -1958) was a college educated bandleader who heard the blues performed at a train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1903.Although he thought it was, “the weirdest music I had ever heard,” the tune stuck in his head. After yea rs of similar incidents throughout the South he decided to notate and publish some tunes in the style he kept hearing. The first official 12 -bar blues hit was “Memphis Blues” in 1912. The blues overtook ragtime in popularity. In 1914 he published “The St. Louis Blues” which became one of the most recorded and played songs of the early 20 th century. Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” started an incredible wave of blues recordings. Everyone was looking for the next “blues” singer to put out the next blues hit. The basic formula of a black female vocalist singing with a mournful and tragic delivery was copied hundreds of times. These “Classic” or “City” blues records fit into the category of “race” records. Many small independent and black owned record labels were fo rmed and all of the major labels had “race” subsidiaries. Labels like Black Swan, Okeh, Vocalion and Brunswick sold millions of albums, many of them to white consumers who knew a good thing when they heard it. The classic or city blues differs from the De lta blues in that it is almost always a female singer with a band. Generally these tunes were recorded in New York or Chicago. The Delta blues is usually just a man and his guitar singing a rough blues while sitting on the porch or at the train station etc . There were a number of classic blues singers that achieved varying degrees of success during the 1920s. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886 -1939), sometimes called “The Mother of the Blues,” Victoria Spivey (1908 -1976), Ida Cox (1896 -1967), Alberta Hunter (1895 -1984) and Chippie Hill (1905 -1950) all enjoyed some successes. The biggest success, “The Empress of the Blues” was Bessie Smith (1894 -1937). Bessie Smith was the epitome of the hard drinking, hot tempered, tough, even mean blues singer.
She was a bi g physical woman who was known to beat up her rivals and cuss at her audiences.
In 1923 she recorded her first record, “Downhearted Blues”. It sold 750,000 copies and established her as a star immediately. Her fans were so eager to see her that those who c ouldn’t get tickets often caused a riot. In 1925 she recorded “St. Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong and in 1929 she appeared in a short film singing the song. Bessie Smith sold well throughout the 1920s but, like all of the blues singers of the time , her career began to fade in the last few years of the decade. The Depression of 1929 killed record sales and brought the “classic” or “city” blues era to an end. Bessie died in an auto accident in 1937 on her way to a gig. The next page has a link to the record with Louis and a YouTube link to the film. Check out how different the two versions are!
