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Overview

After the rise and disbandment of the original Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in 1878, many other copycat groups sprung up, using Fisk's business model for raising funds for Black universities. In 1904, Charles Williams from Holly Springs, Mississippi, formed the Williams Jubilee Singers, "The World's Greatest Harmonizing Octette." Previous jubilee companies had often had ten or a dozen members or an octet making a "double quartet." Still, the increasing tendency was to reduce the groups' size and feature, as did Williams, a popular quartet (or quartette) (Oliver 2012, n.p.). Publicity material for the Williams Jubilee Singers emphasized their musical training at universities and colleges as Rust, Drake, Livingston, and Oberlin. However, as more jubilee companies were formed trying to capitalize on the "Jubilee Singers" brand, it became common practice to emphasize the singers' formal training and musical credentials

Be ready to:

Describe the musical landscape in which blues-derived music developed.

Describe various aspects of the Jim Crow laws and their impact on African American society.

Describe the antecedent musical genres that impacted the development of the blues.

Define the term blues.

Explain why W.C. Handy is affectionately referred to as the "Father of the Blues."

Illustrate the textual and musical form-three-line structure-of the blues.

Name blues compositions/performers from the three broad stylistic categories-Country, Classic, and Urban blues-and their respective contributions.

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Early Forms That Influenced the Blues 1

Sidney Bechet

So, what is genre of music we call the blues? According to Herrick, "The blues grew from longstanding African American oral traditions shaped since the 1870s by working people, itinerant musicians, and urban migrants in Black social settings" (Herrick 2017, 3). The origins of the blues go back to the early folk songs of enslaved Africans. Those early songs "included African rhythms, field hollers, jump-ups, spirituals, and church music…that grew out of the hard lives of poor Black workers and sharecroppers" (Wormser n.d., n.p.).

According to Evans (Evans 2015, 122), "most blues singers throughout the twentieth century were exposed to both farm work and the church and had plenty of opportunities to listen to and participate in these vocal genres." The melodic, timbral, and rhythmic freedom of these early folk songs, together with their forceful delivery, had a considerable influence on the blues. To these, Evans adds "the more individualized and improvisatory forms of religious vocal expression such as moaning, chanted prayer, and preaching" (Evans 2015, 122).

Sidney Bechet (1897-1959), one of the great jazz musicians of all time, and one of the early members of Duke Ellington's band, considered the blues to be the secular side of Black music. "The blues, like spirituals, were prayers. One was praying to God, and the other was praying to man. They were both the same thing in a way; they were both my people's way of praying to be themselves, praying to be let alone so they could be human" (Bechet in Wormser n.d., n.p.). John W. Work's perspective, as quoted by James Cone, adds another dimension:

The blues differ radically from the spirituals…. The spirituals are intensely religious, and the blues are just as intensely worldly. The spirituals sing of heaven, and of the fervent hope that after death the singer may enjoy the celestial joys to be found there. The blues singer has no interest in heaven, not much hope in earth-a thoroughly disillusioned individual. The spirituals were created in the church; the blues spring from everyday life.

(Cone 1991, 99-100)

The blues like spirituals were prayers. One was praying to God; the other was praying to man.

Sidney Bechet

The blues like spirituals were prayers. One was praying to God; the other was praying to man.

Sterling Brown

You can't play the blues until you have paid your dues