Claim OwnershipUncensored History of the Blues
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Mike Rugel and the Delta Blues Museum take a raw look at the early history of blues music. Each show includes a series of pre-war blues tracks along with context and exposition. Visit www.deltabluesmuseum.org or Uncensored History of the Blues blog at www.purplebeech.com/blues.
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This time we’ll revisit songs about disease. There have been a lot of comparisons to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. The epidemic was still fairly recent when Blind Willie Johnson recorded this song in 1928 and surely remembered well by Johnson who would have been 21 years old in 1918. The song is pure
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Robert Johnson was both a consumer and creator of records. We look at what he listened to and how it led to two of his songs,
Robert Johnson - Phonograph Blues
Mississippi Sheiks - Sitting On Top of the World
Tampa Red - Things about Comin' My Way
Skip James - Devil Got My Woman
Robert Johnson - Come on
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We’ll take a look at the Mississippi John Lee Hooker, his roots and influences, the music that impacted him when he was young. John Lee Hooker’s music has an undeniable urban grit that came from his detroit surroundings, but Mississippi was at his core and you could hear it in every song he ever recorded.
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Songs about the tight-haired woman, short-haired and bald-headed woman are a type of insult song. Many include one of the classic floating verses: "Babe you know I did more for you than the good Lord ever done. You know I bought you some hair because he sure didn't give you none."
Charley Jordan
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"They call me a back biter, I’ll bite any man in the back." There’s nothing unusual about cheating songs in the blues. Stepping put on your man or woman could be considered one of the cornerstones of the genre. Today we’ll take a look at a specific subset of those songs: men who stole their friend’s
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The New York Times ran a fascinating story about Elvie Thomas where the author uncovered a lot of new biographical details and interviewed folks that knew her decades after she’d made blues records in 1930 or 1931. Elvie Thomas was found to be a Texan who’d left the blues for the church and who lived until
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A few years back, the Stop Snitching movement received a lot of attention in the media with high profile rappers and athletes using songs and films to urge people not to cooperate with police investigating crimes. Of course, disdain for snitchers was nothing new and there have always songs about the
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I think I'm going back down South where the weather suits my clothes. Variations on that line appear in a lot of blues songs. In the context of the great African-American migration to the North, leaving Chicago or Detroit to return South for the better weather can be a metaphor for a few things. The
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Some blues singers were clearly paid to advertise products. In later years, b.b. king sang songs to famously sold peptikon and sonny boy williamson king biscuit flour. Were gonna take a look at some early songs that may be ads or may just be folks singing about products they enjoy.
J.T "Funny Paper"
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Many blues songs feature real historical figures. Some are figures who operate on both side of the law, sometimes straddling that divide. These are all folks from Memphis, North Mississippi and Arkansas. We'll start with a song about a man Jim Kinane, the man who ran the Memphis underworld including
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As frequently as the blues was called the devil's music, it's no surprise that blues singers had a little something to say about preachers as well. There are plenty of songs about the hypocrite that says one thing from the pulpit, while he's stealing your crops or your woman. Hi Henry Brown sang about
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With the gun control debate raging in the U.S., I thought it seemed like a good time to look at some songs about guns. The first gun control law was passed right in the middle of the period we focus on here in 1934. The National Firearms Act was a response to the shootings occurring as part of the
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Prostitution
was illegal almost everywhere in the United States by the blues era.
But, of course it was everywhere. Most blues songs on the subject
address women walking in the street trying to find a trick. There’s no
sign of the brothels that are often thought to be a higher class form of
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I
recently finished reading Elijah Wald’s book called The Dozens: A
History of Rap’s Mama. The dozens is a game of trading insult wordplay,
sometimes it rhymes, sometimes it doesn’t, it often involves talking
about your opponent’s mama. The book covers the pre-blues period to
recent hip-hop and a
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These songs are all from men singing about women, specifically young women. And more specifically songs where those young women show up in metaphors about horses and cows. There’s no better place to start than with Charley Patton who recorded several songs with this type of comparison. Here’s the earliest, from 1929, Pony Blues:
Hitch up my
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In the pre-war period, people were dependent on delivery men coming to their doors with the necessities of life: coal to keep warm, ice to keep food fresh, and that food itself was often delivered. There were also plumbers and other repairmen showing up at your home. These men were necessary, but the way a
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Most blues songs tend to focus on the local. Songs often address issues at home. But like everyone else, blues singers live in the world and are aware of the world beyond their hometowns. So I thought we’d take a look at some songs that talk about what’s going on overseas and news from around the world.
Maybe the best song of this type is
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In the spring of 1930, a horrible drought began in nearly every Southern state. It was particular tough for those dependent on agricultural work. As supply of crops dwindled, prices dropped with the Depression. People were starving. Mississippi and Arkansas were particular hard hit, so it’s no surprise that there are a few great blues songs
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Cars had become one of the centers of American life by the 1920s and plenty of blues musicians we’re singing about them. It’s interesting that Blind Lemon Jefferson sang in several songs about driving cars, something he could never do as a blind man. Booger Rooger Blues starts out about driving and ends up talking about the problems cars cause
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Transportation is one of the most common themes in the blues. These were men and women who like to get around. Walking and trains come up often, but by the 1920s when recording blues became common, it was the car that was dominating American culture. Blues musicians sang about all kinds of makes and modes, but this time we’re gonna look at
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