Early Days of the Blues

The Musical Genre From WC Handy to the Ladies and Delta Blues

Mar 20, 2009

A chance encounter at a train station led to the birth of that most American of music genres, the Blues.

Music similar to the Blues had been around in the American South since the late 1800’s. However, it was not until a formally trained musician named WC Handy overheard a guitarist at a Mississippi train station that the Blues were born.

WC Handy and the Memphis Blues

Although the Blues were not created by any one musician, it was composer WC Handy who first popularized it. For this, he is known as “The Father of the Blues".

In 1912, Handy published “The Memphis Blues.” While not the first published Blues song (that would be “Dallas Blues,” by Hart Wand, also in 1912) “Memphis Blues” became very popular and influential once taken to New York for promotion.

WC Handy claims that he discovered the Blues in 1903 at a train station in the Mississippi Delta. A black man sat beside him playing guitar while Handy slept.

While he played, he pressed a knife against the strings with his fretting hand, creating a sound that we now associate with slide guitar. Handy was deeply influenced by this event, and began composing new music to try and capture that sound.

In 1914, WC Handy published “St. Louis Blues,” a Blues song that became an immensely popular crossover hit. “St. Louis Blues” became a Jazz and Pop standard, covered by such luminaries as:

Incidentally, the NHL hockey team, The St. Louis Blues, is named after the song.

The Lady Blues

The first vocal Blues recording in 1920 was “Crazy Blues,” by Mamie Smith, thus beginning the reign of the Lady Blues. The Lady Blues were popular through the 20’s, but especially from about 1923 to 1926.

Generally, woman Blues singers were backed by piano, drums and horns, rather than accompanied on guitar (as will become popular in the Mississippi Delta). This led to a diversification of styles based on region and instrumentation.

Though the Great Depression led to the demise of this sub-genre (as well as decimating the music industry), the image of a woman lounging across a piano, singing a torch song, still rests deep in our collective unconscious.

The Delta Blues and Slide Guitar

While female singers were becoming popular in the clubs and on record, a second sub-genre was developing in the Mississippi Delta. These Blues were a direct descendant of what WC Handy witnessed at that train station in 1903, the Delta Blues.

Delta Blues is often mislabeled as Country Blues, but Country Blues is a far larger sub-genre, encompassing many other styles such as:

as well as Delta Blues. The defining characteristics of the Delta Blues are the use of slide guitar and harmonica and the focus on simple rhythm rather than large, multi-instrument arrangements.

Slide guitar is especially important in the Delta Blues. Slide guitar is when instead of fretting the guitar normally, the guitarist uses a slide over the strings to create a plaintive sound evocative of a human voice. In the early days of guitar, the back of a knife or a sawed off bottle neck, giving rise to the term “bottleneck guitar.”

As mentioned above, the Great Depression brought an end to this first age of the Blues. Many of the musicians of this era would find themselves wandering from juke joint to juke joint, trying and failing to make a living on their music. Tragically, many would die before being rediscovered when the Blues went overseas to England, the next great era of the Blues.

For Further Reading on the Blues and Blues History

The copyright of the article Early Days of the Blues in Music History is owned by Craig Sanders. Permission to republish Early Days of the Blues in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.