Blues: An Introduction

At the start there was Blues – see below for further clarification.

Artists to take advantage of the Blues scene (gaining both themselves and it popularity) were The Rolling Stones; The Yardbirds etc etc

Most of these bands were categorised as Rock n Roll, an extension of the form of music Elvis Presley had popularised. Two powerhouses of the Rock n Roll movement were Clapton and John Lennon.

Rock n Roll was more of an attitude, rather than being about the music as Blues strictly was.  To refer to Elvis again, his ‘moves’ added to the craze. Even his hip movements were considered ‘horrific’ and vulgar by public masses then.

Rock’n’roll also profited from the popularity of horror movies in the 1950s. Whatever the deeper intentions of the films however, these rock’n’roll records were by and large made by producers and session musicians under punning pseudonyms to capitalise both on the popularity of rock’n’roll and horror movies among the young. These were picked up in the late 1970s by bands like the Cramps.

The Myth of Robert Johnson

The use of the Devil as lyrical content stems from Robert Johnson who played the Blues.

The Blues in the late 19th/early 20th c. from various sources – folk narrative songs, field chants, and the new ragtime jazz music, by about 1910 these had fermented into Blues, a mainly Afro-American music. The moaning vocal style comes from the laments of plantation workers (Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music (ed. Allan Moore – Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press, 2002)

There are many variations on the legend of Robert Johnson. The most widely told is that Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in return for his guitar playing skill.

Among Johnson’s song titles (he recorded 29 songs) are Hellhound on my Trail, Me and the Devil Blues, Preaching the Blues (Up Jumped the Devil) and If I Had Possession over Judgement Day.

Johnson’s lyrical themes dealing with such issues as hoodoo can be found here

Some of Johnson’s collected recordings were released as an album called ‘King of the Delta Blues Singers’ in 1961 at a time when not a lot was known about Johnson.

The Blues boom of the early-mid 60s (Stones, John Mayall, Yardbirds, Downliners Sect etc.) picked up on it and Johnson became beatified and turned into a popular cult figure with trendy white British musicians, not just known amongst hardcore blues and jazz scholars in the US or people who’d known him.