World Music

However bad conditions still were for the black they at least now had the right to travel. Young footloose men began to get on the road to explore their country. They walked enormous distances, hitchhiked whenever they saw a black driver and, for the main part, hopped freight trains.

“When a woman gets the blues, she goes to her room and hides, (x2)
When a man gets the blues, he catches a freight train and rides.”
(Freight Train Blues, Trixie Smith)

The train had long been an important psychological symbol for blacks in the South as an escape route for runaway slaves to the North. Even after emancipation the train was the only way someone could travel to the North in search of work and a better life. No one had any money to buy tickets so they were reduced to hiding in the box cars or balancing on top of the brake rails – an incredibly dangerous manoeuvre that cost many their lives.

Spending days on the rails, dodging the engineers and railroad police the sounds of the trains entered their bones and many early blues songs attempt to recapture the wailing sounds of the train whistles and the rhythmic sound of the wheels.

Many of these men became musicians specialising in the guitar (a new instrument around the turn of the century) and the harmonica. Playing music was of the few sources of income open to these itinerants. They rolled into the black area of town and played on street corners or in bars, singing interpretations of social issues much like the medieval bards. For the most part these men were envied for their free, rolling life but they were often considered to be in league with the devil. Not least because they often left behind them a trail of drunken fights in bars and unwanted pregnancies.

The wailing field hollers, chain gang songs and train rhythms took root in their songs and they bent and perverted the musical scale until they found a sound of their own. A mournful, gutsy moan that expressed the sentiments of their generation.

Though it was almost entirely men who travelled and played the first blues songs to gain commercial success were sung by women; Bessie Smith and later Billie Holiday were loved even by white audiences and the term ‘blues’ entered the national psychology.

In the 20’s the first ‘hard’ blues was recorded by the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell and Charlie Patton. Then in the 30’s with the Great Depression Bukka White and Son House laid all the groundwork for one of the most influential bluesmen of all, Robert Johnson. These artists perfected the sound of the slide guitar using the end of a glass bottle on the strings to bend the tones.

The early bluesmen took classical instruments like the guitar (invented in Italy in 1780) and the harmonica (original models dating back to ancient China) and brought their own spirit to the instruments. They warped and modulated the sound until it became the sexy, soulful voice of the blues.

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