Birth of the Blues:

While researching the ragtime material for this website I came across part of the story of the birth of the Blues which I am seeking to illustrate on this page with some examples of early blues arranged on percussion. People like Jelly Roll Morton whose compositions include several sophisticated blues claimed to have first heard the Blues is around 1905.  And the clue is in the verb heard. The Blues came from an aural tradition in the fields and on the railway tracks, in the African American community and not the polite parlour piano penetrated by rag time sheet music. Most of the Blues have  a 12 bar frame work and the same basic cord structure with a characteristic descending cadenza towards the end. Memphis Blues published by WC Handy in 1912 when Ragtime was in it’s mature hayday and decades after the folk form had evolved in the country side. Handy was a travelling musician and band leader who added to the published Blues repertoire  with St Louis Blues  in 1914. Crazy Blues was published in 1920 by Perry Bradford in New York. It doesn’t conform to the regular Blues structure but has enough similarities to get away with it. Bradford is also credited on the 1927 recording of Snowy Morning Blues with famous Harlem stride pianist James P Johnson. Limehouse Blues on  the other hand shows how fast the form traveled because it refers a district in London that was notable at the time for the resident Chinese community. It was published in 1922 by Philip Braham as part of a revue staring Gertrude Lawrence.  But our arrangement probably owes more to Jango Rienhardt’s performance some years later. Basin Street Blues refers to a road in the New Orleans red light district of Storyville and was published in 1926 by Spencer Williams. The lyrics were added later by Louis Armstrong. Gambler’s Blues is based on the anonymous American folk song St James Infirmary which in turn refers to a London Hospital. It is said that the folk song is based on a traditional English song entitled The Unfortunate Rake. I’d say that the arrangement presented here owes a lot to performances by the late great BB King. In 1928 Pine Top Smith published his Pine Tops’s Boogie Woogie which introduced a new piano playing style including a walking bass line which remained popular for several years and often associated with the Blues. Tack Head Blues by Alex Hill in 1929 has been included to illustrate another another development where tacks were added to the padded hammers on the piano to give a metallic jangling element to the sound. Wang Wang Blues from a piano roll recording by Eubie Blake is another example of an early blues. It is described as a 1920 jazz composition written by Henry Busse, Gus Mueller, and Theron E. "Buster" Johnson. It was recorded by the Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra also in 1920 and listed as a Fox Trot. This illustrates just how soon the blues were being explicitly incorporated into the Jazz mainstream.

Donationware - How it works

Copyright: we retain the copy right on our arrangements for public performance or any other commercial application but grant you the right to download it free of charge for your own personal use.  Donation: If you enjoy the music I would be grateful if you would make a donation to the charitable Trust Fund run by Croydon Whitgift Rotary Club.