unfortunately, i'm gonna have to take a mental health day today and pick it up again next week. i'll leave last weeks post up for perusing.
June 25th...
as promised, here is my second old-time music post.
you can check out the first one, on Eddie Lang HERE.
Before the pounding, ripping and rocking of the R&B and Soul music we all love, it was simply known as the Blues. This normally slow and dismal music was created at a time when America was still forming its character and when the social, racial and economical climates were all very tense. These dynamics all played major rolls in the creation of one of America's most unique musical forms, but the lineage does not begin there alone. Now that many years have passed, it has been well documented that traces of African, Gospel, Caribbean, and in some cases, even European musics, all helped in the molding of the backbone of American music, and for that matter, popular music around the globe.
Not unlike Jazz (probably the only other American music to be as influential as the Blues, and which happened to be birthed
simultaneously), it is hard to tell nowadays whether certain elements contributed in the creation of the Blues, or rather, if they were a product of the already birthed form. The lines are not clear and distinct. The country was rapidly adapting, changing, inventing and reinventing its style at an unprecedented rate. That gray area is the focus of my post, the music that is historically difficult to title "chicken" or "egg". In this particular case, that gray area would be the Southern Black work song.The work song is as old as history itself. The idea of singing to pass the time or ease the pain has been tried and true. It is found in the traditionals of nearly every cultural background. In turn-of-the-century America, predominately in the South, the work song took
a new form. In light off many civil injustices, this "new" work song became a form of secret communication, rebellion, and most important a social documentation of the country's climate at that time. This was most obvious in the work songs of prison gangs and indentured crop workers, just as it was in the slave songs that preceded them. These work songs spanned in subject, many were gospels, love songs, and songs about freedom.Even in the most tepid of subject matters, there were commonly strong references to the sensitive topics of oppression, class differences, racism, violence, sickness and adultery hidden amongst the lyrics. This also became/was the pattern of the Blues, to take the difficult and disguise it as the mundane. It was a way of venting from the troubling times without getting caught, and in some cases, punished.
Because recording technology was not very developed, the earliest documentation of this music doesn't appear until the late 20's. Most of what we have to rely on historically, are field recordings from the 30's-60's which tell the story of what it was like in earlier times. Here are some examples of work songs which tell such stories...
Tangle Eye & Group -
No More, My Lord
Tangle Eye -
Katie Left Memphis
Parchman State
Penitentiary Inmates -
Lazarus
This last song, I actually still do not own on record. This song was my introduction
to work song field recordings and also led to the discovery of one of my musical heroes, Alan Lomax. There is extensive documentation on Lomax's career. If you are not familiar with his works, I suggest starting HERE. Also, the most extensive collection of Lomax recorded material has been released through Rounder Records. Most of the American material is part of the Southern Journey series, which can be found HERE.
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