Please cite your information just in case I have to go to that website and look up more on blues, but if you just know please back it up thank you maybe it's on 50's,MAYBE!!! It was big among blacks in the 40s and 50s, not until the mid to later 60s did it find an audiance with whites thanks to well known british musicians playing songs by black american artists. Which in turn brought notiriety to the musicians here in the states that actually wrote the music. All depends when you are talking about. Back in the slave days it was a fromof communication. Later in the 20's when records wear popular the blues records spread mostly in the black communites as they wear called race records. The mid 60's many bands like the rolling stones made remakes of the older blues songs in effort to spread the blues. This is when the white population started listening to the blues. Sadly enough, the biggest wave of blues popularity (among white folks, anyway) probably started around 1979 or 1980 with the release of Briefcase Full of Blues and the movie from The Blues Brothers. John Belushi's line "buy every blues record you can get your hands on" on the record was taken to heart by much of the white mainstream audience. Shortly thereafter, sales on R&B and Blues recordings soared, the House of Blues came about, Blues and barbeque joints opened and regular blues jams started in many major cities. House-Rockin' blues exploded on the scene during this time also and the young blues wannabes (Jonny and Kenny Wayne for example) started crawling out of the woodwork.
Of course, in the black community, it was much earlier. Most blues historians date the biggest rise of popularity in the 'Post-War' years, 1947 and thereafter. Blues was evolving into the popular mainstream with 'electric' blues, Chicago blues and of course R&B or Rhythm and Blues. It was in the late 40s that many of the older jazz swing bands started covering blues and R&B standards and were employing blues singers such as Bullmoose Jackson, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Rushing, Jimmy Witherspoon and Joe Williams.
It is ironic that much of what Americans called 'British Invasion' was music that originated right here in the USA and was imitated by British bands. Most British Invasion bands started off doing 'blues beat', an adaptation of urban, Delta and Chicago blues. These, of course, were The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Yardbirds, Fleetwood Mac, Spencer Davis, The Bluesbreakers and even the Moody Blues.
So, there are really 3 answers: The mid to late 40s for the black community, the early to mid-60s for the Brits and the 'big bang' for mainstream popular music circa 1979. In 1905 W.C. Handy published the first "blues" sheet music - St. Louis Blues. He said years earlier he had heard a guitar player at a train station playing witha bottleneck slide and that he tried to replicate that sound.
It stayed a small time vaudeville style for a time.
Now, what REALLY got blues moving was the invention of the radio. Not that they played much blues on the radio - but the radio became competition for the record companies! They could make good money off of standard stuff, but once the radio came along, they were afraid of that cutting into profits. Thus, they were ready to try any nutty thing that came along. A lot of blues and country music was discovered that way.
So, in 1920 - Mamie Smith became the first person to record a blues song with her rendition of "Crazy Blues" There was an explosion of blues artists - all women - recording things, Bessie Smith being one of the giants of her time. Quickly after that, the record companies went out to the prisons and work camps to find itenerate blues artists and many of the great early blues guitarists were discovered, like Robert Johnson.
This was the first Golden Age for the blues and made it popular among most black audiences, and even a few white musicians like Jimmy Rogers and Dick Justice recorded popular blues tunes.
After WWII - returning soldiers moved away from rural America and into the cities. Thus, the blues found a home in Chicago and the eletric sound of the artists of the day became the classic sound for the blues. Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, etc. What some might call the real classic age of blues.
Some poor white kids discovered the blues and re-did it as their own form of music and gave birth to Rock-n-Roll. Now, even though there were many black musicians playing the music and making both charts, it was when Elvis had a hit on the BLACK charts (still seperate then in segregated America) that Rock and Roll becaome popular among teens of all ages. But the blues was still mostly a black cultural form of music.
Then in the 1960's, rock n roll became 'safe' and produced. A lot like the boy bands of today. But in England, musicians were HUNGRY for these old Chicago sound and pre-WWII blues records. They reinvented them. Promoters LOOKED for these older blues musicians - nowe mostly forgotten about in the US - as American kids were prefectly happy with their safe surf music. They found these musicians and brought them to England where they started second careers for white English audiences. Then the Beatles and the Stones crossed the Atlantic and BOOM the blues revival came back to the US. Now the blues is for everybody. In the 60's when Bill Grahm began booking acts in his Fillmore Theatres along side Rock acts. Also, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and several other performers began doing versions of older Blues songs. The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by "Baby" F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and "Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy.
In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music and in particular on the development of rockabilly. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Diddley and Berry's approach to performance was one of the factors that influenced the transition from the blues to rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were more influenced by the jump blues and boogie-woogie styles. They popularized rock and roll within the white segment of the population. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and cajun arrangements of blues standards. As 'conchobor2' mentioned, radio came along, then Elvis & other popular white artists in the '50s incorporated it into their own style. Around that time it took off with broader audiences but until then radio stations didn't give black musicians much air play. In the 60's and 70's.
Musicians like Eric Clapton, John Mayall The Rolling Stones, Eric Burdon recorded music that blacks in the USA wrote during the days of slavery up until the 50's.
The Blues was not accepted till the white groups recorded these tracks. Depends on the genre.
I first started to listen to what was called Jump Blues in the late 40's with guys like Big Joe Turner and Amos Milburn. In the early 50's, it evolved into Race Music and included such variations as Doo Wop and R&B with such greats as Jessie Belvin and Hank Ballard.
Delta Blues had been around, of course, and guys like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf only got airplay on black radio stations located in Memphis and KC.
I think a great deal of credit has to be given to British stalwarts like Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones for popularizing the genre with a young, white audience. The Blues revival of the late 60's brought recognition to forgotten bluesmen like Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Lemon Jefferson thanks to Bonnie Raitt, among others.
Obviously, the evolution of the guitar and amplification changed the "soul" of the blues, but it re-introduced a large audience to the real deal. It also helped revive the careers of those guys who had been relegated to the obscurity of menial labor. |
