Blues And Country Music Research Paper

A single source of blues music cannot be traced, but Ma Rainey is rightfully credited with introducing it to the world. Hence the reason she was dubbed as “The Mother of the Blues”. During an interview in the 1930s, Ma told musicologist John Work, that she heard what would be called blues, for the first time around 1902. She was in a small town in Missouri working a show at the time, and one morning a local girl came into the tent singing about a man whom had left her. This new style of soulful music drew in Ma Rainey so much she later had the girl teach her the song. Rainey performed the song as an encore in a show soon after, earning a special place in the show, and marking the start of her career (Jas Obrecht Archive).

Southern music is now called country music and is popular in many different places. It is for people from all walks of life. But, when we look at country music today and from years ago is it the same? , When did it become popular? and , How has the music changed over the years?

How did Blues Influence Rock and Roll? When we think of rock and roll, we think electric guitars, amplified sounds. Blues music is one of the most influential characteristics that gave birth to rock and roll. Beginning in the Mississippi region with African slave work songs and expanding to areas of Chicago and Dallas, blues went on to inspire rock legends such as: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix.

Mississippi history is a sad history of slavery and oppression. It is a history of racism and refusal to let go of segregationist ideals. Mississippi history is enough to give many the blues. In fact, the Blues style music originated in Mississippi and gravitated outward from there. .Mississippi history and Blues history are intertwined. Delta Blues is a blues style that originated in the Mississippi Delta and influenced many musicians. Another musical art form, Jazz may be considered an offspring from the Blues and also started in the South. There are many Blues musicians and singers that come from Mississippi or have become linked to Mississippi for various reasons. Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and Cassandra Wilson have

always been what we recognize it as today. Country music began in the 1920’s in a town in Tennessee called Bristol and was recognized for its hillbilly and folk format. Country music artists like Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis are each responsible for creating this music format that was written mostly about everyday life. Today country music is recognized as a more modern contemporary version of music. Today’s country artists have started to change their sound in order to appeal to the mainstream audience in order to make more money. Miranda Lambert said “there’s been a shift: country music is popular now. Every other genre wants to come over to our land.”

The Blues also became a hit in the 1920s after Mamie Smith recorded “Crazy Blues” and it grew into a huge part of the Jazz Industry. African Americans were given credit for the creation of the Blues industry of music as well. Bessie Smith was known as the “most famous of the 1920s Blues singers.”

Country music originated in the 1920s in Tennessee. The genre was influenced by folk music from the Appalachian Mountains and revolved around themes of love, faith,

This week we learned about many genres of music, some similar some different. The two genres I want to compare and contrast are Rock and Blues. When you hear rock music, you picture electric guitars, amplified sounds, and complex styles of play. But if you take a deeper look you would probably be surprised to learn that rock would not even have existed without simple 12-bar forms, antiphonal textures, or “walking bass lines” used in much blues music. Though Rock and Blues are distinctly different they have a lot of similarities that most likely go unnoticed. Rock and Blues were developed at almost the same exact time around the late 19th century. Blues originated from African American folk music and like Blues, rock music style can also be

►This website briefly explains Blues and Gospel music in the early 19th and early 10th century. The essay discusses when these two forms of music first emerged, as well as its history and influence. The essay also discusses how music was used to describe the social struggles of American history.

“When first entering in America, British folk music was distinguished by three-chord tunes, sparse instrumentation (with some fiddlers), mostly male performers, improvisation, the singers’ sporadic shouts (Scottish “yips”), Christian themes served up in hundreds of hymns, and a secular collection of songs that told stories, generally about love and lost love, using metaphor and symbol to tell those stories” (Allen 101). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British music changed and became Americanized. Vocal harmonizing slowly evolved, and fiddlers were accompanied by those who played banjo, an African American opening. “Tambourines and “bones” (tapping out rhythms using pork rib bones) were a minstrel show contribution” (Allen 102). When African Americans were forced into slavery and brought to North America in the 1600s, they brought their own musical traditions and sounds. Slaves who were on the Mississippi River Valley delta soil developed what will later be introduced as blues music. On the plantations, slaves greatly changed British American hymn singing. They took non-religious British American songs and turned it into their own forms of music that followed their culture and taste of music. Blues emerged in the early twentieth century at the same time country music became settled from its folk roots. Blues music talked about the indifferences African American slaves were going through at that time. “The blues voiced human

Though the blues were developed in the rural southern United States, toward the end of the 19th century, and found a wider audience in the 1940s as blacks migrated to urban areas. Jazz music has dozens of variations and also utilizes elements from other genres. Albeit the fact that it is

Wilson once said, “I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we’ve been here, and it’s a lot of philosophical ideas. I call it our sacred book” (Dyson). This genre of music was created in the south of the United States by African Americans in the late 1800’s. “The blues give lyrical shape to the hurts and affections that stymie and transform black life. The blues tap comedy to temper tragedy – and to tame the absurd” (Dyson). The blues music was popular among slaves living in the deep south.

Different from other forms of music, blues was only recorded by memory and passed down through generations through live performances. The blues began in the North Mississippi Delta post Civil War times. It was heavily influenced by African roots, field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups. This eventually developed into music that was set up in a call-and- response way so that the singer would sing a line and he would then respond with his guitar.

Ragtime and Blues are two different styles of music that came together to make what is known as jazz music. Ragtime was more about freedom, fun, and giving the listener an elated feeling while Blue’s intent was to appeal to the listeners emotions and make them feel better about the troubles in their life. The way Jazz came about was the collaboration of these 2 very different styles of music. Due to very influential people in the music world like Jelly Role Morton, Joe Oliver, Louis armstrong, just to name a few, Jazz has flourished into the music known all over the world. Although Jazz and Ragtime have many differences, they also had many similarities and each style is significant to the amercement of jazz.

2.      The blues first emerged as a distinct type of music in the late-1800s. Spirituals, work songs, seculars, field hollers and arhoolies all had some form of influence on the blues. Early blues were a curious mixture of African cross-rhythms and vocal techniques, Anglo-American melodies and thematic material from fables and folktales, and tales of personal experience on