Blues

“ But among mountains, in addition to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and purples passing into rose colour of otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. ”

“ Greens and blues, purples and whites, melt into one another, fade, and come again, and change with the changing sun. Sometimes they are as richly diaphanous as a precious stone, and glow from within with a deep, inexplicable light. ”

“ Observed in the works of others, the blues retain some of this elusive nature—they are equivocal between simplicity, sadness, irony, and something approaching frenzy. The original negro spiritual has had more respect, but the elements have been sparsely used, and one fancies that even in looking at these our serious composers have felt the presence of a regrettable vulgarity in syncopation and in melodic line. ”

“ Half unearthly seem to me sometimes the faint veils of tinted blues, greys, and silvers that lie caught upon those{256} leagues of upper snow; half hidden in the cuplike hollows, nestling just beneath the curved lip of some big drift, or sifted like transparent coloured powder over half a hill when the sun is getting low. Under boulders, often, they lie so deep and thick that one might pick them up with the hands—rich, dark blues that seem almost to hold substance. ”

“ There is nothing in his hues to provoke deep passion or to stimulate the yearnings of the soul: the pure blushes of the dawn and the crimson pyres of sunset are nowhere in the world that he has painted. But that chord of jocund colour which may fitly be married to the smiles of light, the blues which are found in laughing eyes, the pinks that tinge the cheeks of early youth, and the warm yet silvery tones of healthy flesh, mingle as in a marvellous pearl-shell on his pictures. ”

“ In the first place, blues are characterized by a tone of plaintiveness. Both words and music give the impression of loneliness and melancholy. In fact, it was this quality, combined with the Negro’s peculiar use of the word “blues,” which gave the songs their name. In the second place, the theme of most blues is that of the love relation between man and woman. There are many blues built around homesickness and hard luck in general, but the love theme is the principal one. ”

“ In a society that defined “secular” pleasures of the flesh as sinful, the blues often reveled in the pleasures of this world, in terms of its lyrics, the lives of blues musicians, and the sensuous atmosphere of the juke joints. ”

“ Who else could blend greens and blues so felicitously, or place the different reds in riotous juxtaposition, or combine the whole gamut of browns with the entire octave of yellows? They play with colors as a musician plays with the keys of an instrument. ”

“ Colored Blues Singer
Some weep to find the Golden Pear
Feeds maggots at the core,
And some grow cold as ice, and bear
Them prouder than before.
But you go singing like the sea
Whose lover turns to land ”

“ But there is still another feature of the blues which is probably responsible more than any other one thing for their appeal and fascination, and that is their lack of conventionality, their naïveté of expression. The Negro wastes no time in roundabout or stilted modes of speech. His tale is brief, his metaphor striking, his imagery perfect, his humor plaintive. Expressions like the following have made the blues famous. ”

“ Perhaps this explains why the influence of the formal blues is encountered so frequently in the kind of songs with which this chapter is concerned. At any rate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a song of woman on the man theme which does not show the influence of the popular blues. ”

“ Behind the popular blues songs of today lie the more spontaneous and naïve songs of the uncultured Negro. Long before the blues were formally introduced to the public, the Negro was creating them by expressing his gloomy moods in song. To be sure, the present use of the term “blues” to designate a particular kind of popular song is of recent origin, but the use of the term in Negro song goes much further back, and the blue or melancholy type of Negro secular song is as old as the spirituals themselves. ”

“ One may have the Poor Man Blues, Red Hot Blues, Through Train Blues, Railroad Blues, Crazy Blues, Stranger Blues, Don’t Care Blues, Goin’ ’Way Blues, Bleedin’ Hearted Blues, Cryin’ Blues, Salt Water Blues, Mountain Top Blues, Thunderstorm Blues, Sinful Blues, Basement Blues, House Rent Blues, Reckless Blues, and even the A to Z Blues. Here again however, titles are misleading, for practically all songs bearing such titles really deal with the man-woman theme. ”

“ Blues played on every stage
In churches too, the world's gone blue
Grand Opera soon will be a has been
I mean it's style, not melodies nor minor keys
For they're always a hit
If you jazz them up a bit, Lawd-ee! ”

“ Among the blues singers who have gained a more or less national recognition there is scarcely a man’s name to be found.
It is doubtful whether the history of song affords a parallel to the American situation with regard to the blues. Here we have the phenomenon of a type of folk song becoming a great fad and being exploited in every conceivable form; of hundreds of blues, some of which are based directly upon folk productions, being distributed literally by the million among the American people; and the Negro’s assimilation of these blues into his everyday song life. ”

“ The places that knew them will know them no more. The same disappearing process is going on now, only more rapidly than formerly because of the multitude of blues, jazz songs, and others being distributed throughout the land in millions of phonographic records. One of the first tasks of this volume is, therefore, to take cognizance of these formal blues, both in their relation to the workaday native creations and as an important segment of the Negro’s music and his contribution to the American scene. ”

“ In the early 20th century, performers like Ida Cox and Tommy Johnson gave life to the improvised performances and style of the blues. As artists migrated to cities, the blues developed into an urban phenomenon and evolved into a major force in contemporary music. ”

“ It will be noticed that woman’s song conforms quite closely to the blues type as it is popularly known today. In Chapter I examples of the “mama” blues titles were given and in Chapter II it was pointed out that the majority of the formal blues of today deal with the sex theme. Furthermore, most of these blues are sung from the point of view of woman. Consequently, as songs that may be remembered and sung from day to day, they appear more acceptable to woman than to man. ”

“ When the artist has had an intimate acquaintance with the life of his race and has grown up among the blues, so to speak, he is often able to produce a song which preserves faithfully the spirit of the folk blues. The folk productions of yesterday are likely to be found, albeit sometimes in versions scarcely recognizable, on the phonograph records of today. That this is the case is indicated by the following comparison of a few of the lines and titles of songs collected twenty years ago with lines and titles of recent popular blues songs. ”

“ WORKADAY SORROW SONGS
No story of the workaday song life of the Negro can proceed far without taking into account the kind of song known as the blues, for, next to the spirituals, the blues are probably the Negro’s most distinctive contribution to American art. They have not been taken seriously, because they have never been thoroughly understood. ”

“ By the way, it never does come except in the evening. In the sun-time, when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannot stay to sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voices of the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low-toned miserere in our ears. In the day we are angry, disappointed, or indignant, but never "in the blues," and never melancholy. When things go wrong at 10 o'clock in the morning, we—or rather you—swear and knock the furniture about ”

“ Blue includes all blues, from ultramarine, or violet, to the palest blue of a pale sky; and all greys down to the grey that is almost white. Our preference for this or that colour is supposed to depend on nothing but individual taste, or fancy, and association. I believe it is something more, but I do find that we are very apt to be swayed this way and that by the colour of the eyes of the people we meet in life, according as they (the people) attract or repel us. ”

“ Colored Artists. Certainly the popular notion among both whites and Negroes now is that practically every Negro song which is not classed as a spiritual is a blues. The term is now freely applied to instrumental pieces, especially to dance music of the jazz type, and to every vocal piece which, by any stretch of the imagination, can be thought of as having a bluish cast. ”

“ The folk blues will also undergo modification, but they will always reflect Negro life in its lower strata much more accurately than the formal blues can. For it must be remembered that these folk blues were the Negro’s melancholy song long before the phonograph was invented. Yet the formal songs are important. ”

“ Conflicts, disagreements, jealousies and disappointments in the love relation have ever been productive of song. They are the chief source of “hard luck” songs or blues, and the Negro’s naïve way of singing of his failure and disappointments in love is what has made the blues famous. Sometimes his songs portray vividly, often with a sort of martyr-like satisfaction, his difficulties with women. ”

“ The general tone of the work is warm;—the blues, greys and greens are used as a foil to give value to the warm colours, the shadows and middle tints: the greys are glazed warm, to preserve the richness of the general effect throughout. The reds and blues are combined of colours possessing the properties of each. The quantity of warm and cold colours are to be principally observed—the union of one part with another—preservation of the breadth, and the general harmony. ”

“ This has to do with her conception of tonality as including all the mechanisms of nineteenth century Westem art music. I do not think for a moment she intends to indicate that the blues as a musical style is atonal. ”

“ Now it is apparent to any one familiar with the folk songs of various peoples that the blues type, as it has been described above, is not peculiar to the Negro, but is more or less common to all races and peoples. ”

“ The blues (for blue devils) , a colloquial expression for depression of spirits.—To be a blue, to be chosen to represent Oxford or Cambridge at an inter-university contest in cricket, football, rowing, or athletics; An old blue, one once so chosen.—To drink till all's blue, until everything around one looks blue; To look blue, to be down-spirited.—True blue, faithful to the principles of the political party wearing blue as its colour, in many places identified with Conservative. ”

“ This resulted in an intense focus on rural, acoustic, male blues guitarists, to the detriment of the urban “Blues Queens” of the 1920s, commercial-minded composers like W.C. Handy, and urban musicians, who did not fit the revivalists’ interests in re-discovering a music which gave voice to an oppressed people. I fully recognize the diversity and breadth of styles and artists that contribute to the multi-faceted genre called “the blues”, and I do not wish to add to the perception that the history of the blues is the history of the rural bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta. ”

“ SONGS OF THE LONESOME ROAD
The blues par excellence are, of course, to be found in those songs of sorrow and disappointment and longing which center around the love relation. [22] But the song of the “po’ boy long ways from home” who wanders “down that lonesome road” is rich in pathos and plaintiveness. The wanderer is not unlike the old singer who sang ”

“ But to be transplanted abruptly and with a wrench from his native soil was too much. He went upstairs to pack, suffering from as severe an attack of the blues as any youth of eighteen had experienced since blues were first invented. ”

“ A variety of songs of home or home-folk, of surcease from work, will be found wherever Negroes sing. This fact is recognized by the publishers of blues when they advertise, “These blues will make every Negro want to hurry back home.” ”

“ Blues music developed as the music of Saturday night, performed in the free time and place when African Americans in the Jim Crow South could express themselves in ways discouraged or impossible in other spaces. ”

“ The brilliance of new musical expressions emerged with rhythm and blues in the 1940s and rock and roll in the 1950s. Songs from great artists performing today embody the enduring appeal of this music. ”

“ I agree that the Greens are the most popular company, most popular with all classes from the senators and nobles to the poorest, but I will never admit, as many claim, that the Blues have the second place in the affections of the people; the Blues, I maintain, come third and the Reds have second place with all classes. ”

“ This beautiful combination gives a wide range of color for selection. Blues, especially sapphire shades, dark reds, pale pink, blue grays, white, both cream and blue-white, and black, solid and transparent. For jewels, pearls, sapphires, opals, turquoise, diamonds. White flowers, also violets, pansies, etc.
The woman with blue eyes should always have some blue about her. It is really extremely interesting to notice how blue brought up close to the throat and then a bow of the same in her hair intensifies the blue in the eyes, making even the pale, wishy-washy orbs a deep violet. ”