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MUSICIANS

CHARLIE PATTON

Charlie Patton summarized in many ways the musical and social models that comprise the Delta blues of the time.
 His role as a precursor of Delta blues is fundamental. Of European descent, was a small and friendly man with a strong voice.By 1905, Charlie's father, Bill Patton, took his family to the Dockery plantation huge Delta.
They were devoted to farming and timber business.He tried to preach to achieve social status and greater freedom of movement in a situation of rampant racism in the Delta. He devoted himself to this intermittently throughout his life.Was shot for unknown reasons and soon left Dockery (though still their main home).
Toured the Delta for about twenty years performing in all conceivable places and for all audiences of all kinds. He won a lot of money, married at least eight times, had countless girlfriends and usually lived quite well.
Between 1929 and 1934, Patton recorded over fifty songs among which include spiritual, traditional ballads, dance tunes ...His style was formed by listening to blues singers aged around Dockery, probably belonged to the first generation of blues musicians.
Went beyond the usual blues themes on love relationships and he sang about events they had witnessed or in which he had participatedFor some years a partner Charlie Patton tube called Willie Brown, one of his disciples, with whom he made one of his best recordings, "Moon Going Down.
"Patton's growing fame led many bluesmen of the time would come to listen and learn to Dockery, this issue stands out above all its main successor, with whom he performed and recorded on several occasions, Son House.
The demand for their music services and the hard pace of your hectic lifestyle, along with a chronic heart condition and subsequent sequelae of rheumatic fever he suffered in his childhood, h is life ended at age forty-three years .

GERTRUDE MA RAINEY


 If Bessie Smith became the empress of the blues, the title of the mother of the blues belongs to Gertrude MaRainey.
 In fact, MaRainey was also a mother figure to Bessie Smith to ten years younger than her-as it was she who introduced her to the office and taught him the intricacies of blues.
MaRainey began to climb to the stage when he was only 14 years and began his career as an actress, dancer and singer in vaudeville shows were small stories involving numbers, acrobatics, juggling, comedy shows and songs.
The type of blues singers who interpreted these had little to do with the rural blues guitar, it was a blues with piano accompaniment and wind instruments more typical of jazz that made up a model of urban blues.
In 1904 she married William Ma PaRainey, actor and dance with which form the duo dancing and singing "Pa & MaRainey." Participated in several successful vaudeville as FootMinstrel or Tolliver'sCircusMaRaineyy Rabbit.



BESSIE SMITH

Bessie was the most popular blues singer of the 20 and 30 and the most influential singers who followed. Singers like Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson and Janis Joplin acknowledged his influence.
In 1923, when the blues begins to sell records, signed with Columbia Records, and quickly grew. His biggest hit was "Down Hearted Blues," a song written and previously recorded by Alberta Hunter.
Working hard in the theater during the winter months and traveling the rest of the year (he had his own railroad car), Smith became the highest paid black actress of her time. He made recordings with the most important artists of the moment, as Louis Armstrong, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, Charlie Green and Fletcher Henderson. Smith's career was short due to a combination of alcoholism, the Great Depression (crak 29) and the birth of vaudeville.
While the days of shows produced were fashionable, she continued traveling and spending time occasionally singing in clubs. John Hammond convinced her to record four songs for the Okeh house in 1933, after seeing her perform at the nightclub in Philadelphia.
 These were her final recordings of great interest as the backing band included musicians of the Swing Era of the category of Frankie Newton and Chuck Berry  Hammond was not satisfied with the result, preferring to put on the B side of old blues, but "Take Me For A Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot" are among his most popular recordings.
The September 26, 1937 suffered a serious car accident while traveling to a concert in Clarksdale, Memphis. You would never regain consciousness and died that morning.


ROBERT JOHNSON



Robert LeRoy Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, south of the state of Mississippi, was designed because of a casual encounter, and Robert took years to learn his real name.
He was the eleventh brother of a black family in a very complicated time and place for someone of color.The music began to attract him at an early age and began playing the harp and harmonica and miss school, and a vision problem was an excuse to abandon classes and definitely focus on the music, which was more mediocre.
In adolescence he began playing the guitar But in 1929 found stability with Virginia Travis, with whom he married. She became pregnant and first appeared happiness in your life, but in April 1930, Virginia died in childbirth with the baby. She was 16.
Robert's life turned around and hid her sadness in the blues, and began traveling along the great blues and playing without any success, until he decided to return to his hometown where a wealthy widow, Esther Lockwood, welcomed him and with her had a son
It is in this period of time when they begin to suspect his known as Robert, who had never been good musician, he began playing with flawless execution own admiration of the great figures of the time, they believe that touching and suddenly can not be anything other than the result of a pact with the devil.
Robert played throughout the southern United States. He never stayed in one place, as if fleeing constantly. The public claimed to have some magic that captivated
 Surprised the audience with his music and his guitar that sounded like two, his voice who could change forms, his eyes that looked as if possessed, could not stay in one place.
The lyrics of the songs dealt with religious despair and inner demons, and two of his biggest hits were related to his alleged pact. "Crossroad Blues ..In one of these concerts was discovered by a music promoter, and between November 1936 and June 1937, he recorded 29 songs.One story is that Robert made the recordings with his Gibson guitar half destroyed and not separated ever, and facing the wall
                                     

                            
 THE LEGEND OF ROBERT JOHNSON


Legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of the current Highway 61, in exchange for playing the blues better than anyone.
He waited at the crossroads until midnight, with guitar in hand, until the devil it back, and hands of Robert only had to slide down the neck to play the best blues history. .
His legend grew by leaps and bounds, and people flocked to ensure attracted by music and by the curiosity of his personality His life was frantically from one place to another.
 He was looking for a woman in every city he played in a room and disappeared, until the August 13, 1938, in Greenwood, South Carolina, the devil claimed his alleged debt.Robert was the mistake of seducing the wife of the owner of the premises where he played that night, "ThreeForks" and gave him a bottle of scotch open.
Before Robert could drink, a musician who accompanied him took it off and broke warning that never drink from an open bottle, but Robert was angry and he also brought another bottle when you had open.
In half of the concert, Robert stopped singing, he left his guitar aside and went out.
Three days after he was delirious until he died poisoned by strychnine containing the bottle of whiskey on August 16, at 27, they had to die strangely other great music legends like Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain ..Robert is best bluesman of music and is among the five best guitarists in history.




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HISTORY


What does Blues means?
  à folkloric genre of the black inhabitants        of the American country
XVII century: EEUU
EEUU: England colony which brought slaves from Africa who lived above the south of the country

Africa
Tobacco, polyester and rice plantations
Religions and Family
Axis rhythm of their music

Messages
Religious ambit à GOSPEL à vocal work
  evangelic music with African rituals

INSTRUMENTS: rythmic. The the banjo and the acoustic guitar started being used.
STRUCTURE:Firstly: MONOTONOUS
Secondly: HARMONIC

note out of tune à PENTA TONIC

sub-style that more influenced in the white music of the USA.

[ B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Ottis Redding ]

Blues  à a lot of  acceptance inside the world of the guitar
Blues was born in an environment of
Misery
diseases
Scarcity.
[ The only exits were the emigration in the northern part or the alcoholism. ]
the black people were in major difficulties.
Vexations, contempts and violence were the favorable environment for the creation of a new music: the blues

IMMENSE mixture of people:
Native American
 Irish and Scotch
 English                        
  Spanish
 Indians
 Africans
  bought along the whole western  coast of Africa were the etnas in                               contact

The spiritual songs, the prays, the songs of work, the English heaps, Scotch and Irish ballads and the field shouts were the favorable environment and the origin of the blues.
plantation turned into the musical crucible of an endless number of oral traditions, singings and dances
The segregation brought songsters to create specific lyrics for the community



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INSTRUMENTS

BANJO:
African instument exported to USA by eslaved.
Its name cames from a Senegambian instrument called Bamboo
Three type of banjos.



COMUN INSTRUMENTS:
Guitar
Piano
Trumpet
Clarinet
Drums
Saxophone







HARMONICA:
Wind instrument
Originally this instrument is from Asia, in XIX century it comes to Europe and USA.




WASHBOARD:
It’s a very peculiar instrument used at the finals of XVIII century by poor people.
It’s a important instrument in traditional blues.
Actually nobody use it frecuentlly.





WASHTUB BASS:
Originally from African-American eslaves in 1900.
Stringed instrument.
It was exported to Europe and there are a lot of different types around the world.








JEW’S HARP:
Is one of the acients mussical instruments.
Wind instrument.
Is used by many cultures.
It’s origens are unknowed.

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20 BEST BLUES SONGS

  1. Memphis Blues - W.C. Handy
  
"Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. It is a distinct song from Handy's variety of songs

2. Crazy Blues - Mamie Smith
Crazy Blues is a song written by AJ Bower. It was recorded on August 10, 1920, by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds. Within a month of release, it had sold 75,000 copies.  
  
3. Pine Top Boogie - Pine Top Smith

12-29-1928 Chicago, Illinois
  

4. Dust My Broom - Elmore James
"Dust My Broom" is a blues standard originally recorded as "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" by Robert Johnson, the Mississippi Delta blues singer and guitarist, on November 23, 1936 in San Antonio, Texas.  In posteriority interpreted by Elmore James.

  5. Boogie Chillun - John Lee Hooker
"Boogie Chillen'" (also sometimes listed as "Boogie Chillun'") is an electric blues song written by John Lee Hooker.

  6. Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters
"Mannish Boy" is a blues standard by Muddy Waters first recorded in 1955. It is an "answer song" to Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man", which was in turn inspired by Waters' and Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man". "

 7. Stormy Monday - T-Bone Walker

is a blues song written by T-Bone Walker and first recorded in 1947. Confusingly, it is also sometimes referred to as "Stormy Monday Blues.

  
 8. Hellhound On My Trail - Robert Johnson
"Hellhound on My Trail" is a blues song recorded by Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson in 1937. Inspired by earlier blues songs,  it is considered one of Johnson's "best known and most admired performances—many would say it is his greatest".
  

9. Spoonful - Willie Dixon
"Spoonful" is a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and first recorded in 1960.


10. The Thrill Is Gone - B.B. King
"The Thrill Is Gone" written by Roy Hawkins and Rick Darnell in 1951. In 1970, "The Thrill Is Gone" became a major hit for B.B. King. Subsequently, many blues and other artists have recorded their interpretations of the song.

11. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl - Sonny Boy Williamson I
"Good Morning, School Girl" or "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" is a blues standard that has been "covered countless times across the decades". First recorded by John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, later it was a R&B chart success for Smokey Hogg and has been recorded by a variety of artists.


12. Born Under A Bad Sign - Albert King
"Born Under a Bad Sign" is a song written by Booker T. Jones (music) and William Bell (lyrics) originally recorded by Albert King as the title track for the album Born Under a Bad Sign released in 1967. Several cover versions of the song exist, most notably by Chicago blues band Paul Butterfield Blues Band, British rock group Cream, Paul Rodgers, Canadian guitarist Pat Travers, and American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

13. Forty Four Blues - Roosevelt Sykes
"Forty-Four" or "44 Blues" is a blues standard whose origins have been traced back to early 1920s Louisiana. However, it was Roosevelt Sykes, who provided the lyrics and first recorded it in 1929, that helped popularize the song. "Forty-Four," through numerous adaptations and recordings, remains in the blues lexicon eighty years later.

14. Smokestack Lightnin' - Howlin' Wolf
"Smokestack Lightning" (or "Smoke Stack Lightning" as listed on the original single) is a classic of the blues. In 1956, Howlin' Wolf recorded the song and it became one of his most popular and influential songs. It is based on earlier blues songs and numerous artists later interpreted it.

15. Statesboro Blues - Taj Mahal
"Statesboro Blues" is a blues song in the key of D written by Blind Willie McTell; the title refers to the town of Statesboro, Georgia. Covered by many artists, the version by The Allman Brothers Band is especially notable and was ranked #9 by Rolling Stone in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. In 2005, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ranked "Statesboro Blues" number 57 on its list of 100 Songs of the South.

Taj Mahal (1968)

Taj Mahal made a "wonderful modernized version" on his eponymous, 1968 debut album. The song (and Taj Mahal himself, who had yet to acquire fame) reached a wide audience through being featured on the best-selling Columbia/CBS sampler album The Rock Machine Turns You On. His arrangement is credited with inspiring The Allman Brothers Band. Mahal had recorded Stateboro Blues prior to the aforementioned rendition, in 1965 or 1966, as a member of the group Rising Sons; this recording was not released until 1992.

16. Hoochie Coochie Man - Muddy Waters
"Hoochie Coochie Man" (sometimes referred to as "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man") is a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and first performed by Muddy Waters in 1954. The song was a major hit upon its release, reaching #8 on Billboard magazine's Black Singles chart. The intro and verse to Muddy Water's version feature stop-time while the chorus features a refrain. According to an account by Dave Van Ronk, Muddy Waters stated that the song is supposed to have a comic effect.



17. Juke - Little Walter
"Juke" is a harmonica instrumental recorded by then 22-year-old Chicago bluesman Little Walter Jacobs in 1952. Although Little Walter had been recording sporadically for small Chicago labels over the previous five years, and had appeared on Muddy Waters' records for the Chess label since 1950, Juke was Little Walter's first hit, and it was the most important of his career. Due to the influence of Little Walter on blues harmonica, Juke is now considered a blues harmonica standard.

19. Come In My Kitchen - Robert Johnson
"Come On in My Kitchen" is a blues song by Robert Johnson. Johnson recorded the song on Monday, November 23rd, 1936 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas - his first recording session. The melody is based on the song cycle by the string band the Mississippi Sheiks.

20. I'm a King Bee - Slim Harpo
"I'm a King Bee" is a swamp blues song that has been performed and recorded by numerous blues and other artists. In 2008, Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee" received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which "honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance".




20 EXTRA SONGS:


SONG
ARTIST
21. The Things That I Used To Do
Guitar Slim
22. Back Door Man
Willie Dixon
23. It's My Own Fault
B.B. King
24. I'm Tore Down
Freddie King
25. T-Bone Blues
T-Bone Walker
26. Sweet Home Chicago
Robert Johnson
27. Preaching The Blues
Son House
28. Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out
Bessie Smith
29. I Can't Be Satisfied
Muddy Waters
30. Shake Your Moneymaker
Elmore James
31. Matchbox Blues
Blind Lemon Jefferson
32. Hideaway
Freddie King
33. How Long, How Long Blues
Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell
34. Five Long Years
B.B. King
35. Red House
Jimi Hendrix
36. Cross Road Blues
Robert Johnson
37. All Your Love
Magic Sam
38. Give Me Back My Wig
Hound Dog Taylor
39. Reconsider Baby
Lowell Fulson
40. Worried Life Blues
Sleepy John Estes


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