Wednesday 15 August, 2001
Blues: Highway 61
Highway 61 runs like an artery through the US. It covers 1,300 miles, from New Orleans in the south to St Paul, Minnesota, and on to the Great Lakes and the Canadian border.
But in its lower section, from New Orleans to Chicago, it is something more than a road. Throughout the last century, it was a lifeline for black Americans, an escape route from the rural south to new lives in cities like Memphis, Chicago and St Louis.
In the first of a three-part series, The Music Mix charts the sound and evolution of this region's music.
America is full of famous roads, such as Broadway and Sunset Boulevard, to name a couple, but Highway 61 conjures an image that has little to do with the glamour of theatre plays and the lifestyles of rich and famous actors.
In the 1920s, the highway was a lifeline. It was the route taken by hundreds of thousands of southern black people as they headed north in search of better lives. As they made that journey, they took their music with them – blues.
As blues travelled, it too evolved. The Highway was the road to new places and new musical possibilities.
Term
The term 'blues' has been associated with melancholia, despair, suffering and longing. Musicologists have been hard-pressed to define it.
Many describe it as a native American musical form, born out of slavery and inspired by European and African traditions to become a unique and soulful genre in its own right.
In A Brief History of the Blues, Robert Baker states:
'When African and European music first began to merge to create what eventually became the blues, the slaves sang songs filled with words telling of their extreme suffering and privation.'
Privations
The blues gave voice to the privations suffered in the construction camps, railroad works, and cotton and tobacco plantations of the south, where labourers were often abused and worked to death.
In The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass described conditions in the field.
| 'When their day's work in the field is done, most of them have their washing, mending and cooking to do, and having few or none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day.' | |
'And when this is done…they drop down side by side on one common bed - the cold damp floor…'
Officially Blues
The form itself was popularised in 1911 when black composer WC Handy published his books Memphis Blues and St Louis Blues.
During the '20s, the blues became the craze in the US. Bessie Smith and later Billie Holiday made it accessible. Then in the '30s, the blues spread northward with the migration of blacks from the south.
Vicksburg
Between New Orleans and southern Mississippi, there are cotton fields and humid lowlands. The steamy swamps of Louisiana are followed by the Mississippi River and the town of Vicksburg. The history of Vicksburg is intertwined with the American Civil War and its aftermath.
In 1863, as the Civil War accelerated, Abraham Lincoln recognised that the army defending the town of Vicksburg, located by the Mississippi River, controlled passage on the entire river. In the spring of 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant was ordered to capture the town, thereby effectively cutting the Confederacy in half. It was a brilliant military success, paving the way for the future Union.
Vicksburg also has a place in blues history. The pianist Little Brother Montgomery composed a song, now a classic, called The Vicksburg Blues.
Cradle of Blues
The great plain of northwestern Mississippi, also called the Delta, was once the heart of the US cotton business. Some say that this land is where blues originated. At the very least, the Delta was a hothouse where the early blues bloomed, nurtured by men like Son House, Booker White and Charlie Patton.
Patton was born on a Mississippi plantation in the closing years of the nineteenth century. He spent most of his life in the towns of Drew, Cleveland and Clarksdale. His recordings offer a detailed picture of the Delta with its roosters and roadhouses, policemen, cotton and corn whiskey.
After his death in 1934, Patton was succeeded by a new generation of musicians, men like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and BB King. This trio had been inspired by Patton, Robert Johnson and Honeyboy Edwards, who still performs today at the age of 86.
Anything Makes A Sound
While most people today associate blues with the guitar, in its earliest times blues was played on everything and anything that could make a sound.
Gourds were hollowed out to become banjos and rattles, jaw bones of asses were played upon and painted with beautiful colours, and combs became either wind or percussion instruments.
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| The Blues Highway |
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The Blues Highway is a journey through the history of American music.
The three-part series follows the US Highway 61, from New Orleans through the Mississippi Delta.
In the 1920s and '30s, this route was a cradle of the blues and the landscape of singer-guitarists like Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton.
In Chicago, the blues took on urban sounds and was remoulded by Muddy Waters and BB King.
Along the journey, The Blues Highway meets up with artists Buddy Guy, Rufus Thomas, Little Milton, Honeyboy Edwards and record-producer Sam Phillips.
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