The Big Guys

For the first half of Delta Blues, Ted Gioia focuses on very obscure characters in the Blues World, who nonetheless, had a very large impact on the future direction of the blues. Examples of these people include Son House, Charlie Patton, and Robert Johnson. These men had a very good grasp of how to make really blue blues, but had almost no formal training. Despite this they had a huge impact on future Blues musicians who gained great fame, like BB King, Howlin Wolf, and John Lee Hooker. These better known men, while they seem to have made it farther, cannot be said to have been as important to the development of the blues, except for its development from a little known entity to that of a national favorite. They had less influence on the actual music and are responsible for less of the sound and feel of the Blues than their lesser known predesessors.
Examples of this the influence that the first guys had on the blues are plenty. For example, these men were the ones who were "lean loose-jointed guitarists playing the blues with a knife at Tutwiler train station" (Gioia 234) in the early 1900s. They are also the ones who have a sound so distinct and blue that it is unreplicable by modern day pros. "'Pony Blues' includes many of the elements that are most endearing - and maddening - about the country blues. The piece sounds deceptively simle, but many highly trained musicians would struggle to imitate Patton's rendition" (Gioia 68) The new pros like king and Wolf used much of their predecessors material for inspiration. "Johnson would never record these songs, or any Patton composition for that matter, but attentive ears will hear hints in his music that seem to point back to the older bluesman." (Gioia 106) This shows how much of the later blues was less original. Becasue of this, I don't feel like it can be given the same level of respect. While I do like listening to more modern blues, I think that what modern performers do is less impressive than the more original works of older bluesman.

Talent vs. Education

Early 20th century blues performers with nearly no education are featured often throughout Delta Blues. Gioia writes often of men who came from plantations or prisons and had no exposure to any music theory, or music education. For example, he talks of Son House whose only education came from church, and definitely not an education in the blues. "I was mostly churchified....that's all I could see into" is the way that he described his childhood. Then there's Charlie Patton, who grew up on Dockery's Plantation. He too had very little formal musical education. His family was musical, but he had not been taught extensive theory. "Patton was ostensibly the son of William Patton and Sara Garrett....[both of whom] were well to do by Delta standards, eventually owning land, running a store, and managing his own sharecroppers." (Gioia 49)
From these men, however, some of the most influencial music was born; music that would shape that of future generations. The question arises then, if an education in music is neccessary, or if musical ability is just a natural skill that some people have and some don't, regardless of education. The example of Charlie Patton is used, "'Pony Blues' includes many of the elements that are most endearing - and maddening - about the country blues. The piece sounds deceptively simle, but many highly trained musicians would struggle to imitate Patton's rendition" (Gioia 68) This shows that music education really isn't everything. There is also the example of Louis Armstrong, who grew up in New Orleans and never had an education in music, yet got very far simply by being good. Maybe a music education is a good investment, or maybe not, but the blues greats were able to get by without it, and at the same time be very musically influencial.

Themes of The Blues

Time and time again, Ted Gioia recounts the disappearance of a great blues musicians back into obscurity. These are men (and a few women) who, for the most part, grew up in the harsh oppressive climate of the white-controlled antebellum American South. They had seen harsh times and not much else. In this excerpt Gioia tells of Kid Bailey, a bluesman who disappeared after the creation of a few, now cherished, recordings. "Wardlow felt that Bailey might still be alive in the 1950s - and what a find that would have been! - yet the bluesman proved devilishly hard to track down." (103) Gioia talks again of the sketchy history of many famed blues artists. He writes, "Yet the disputes and uncertainties surrouding the name Willie Brown hardly stop there. Some have tried to use his enigmatic story in order to solve another Delta Blues mystery, drawing a connection between the Willie Brown recordings on Paramount with the work of the obscure musician known simply as Kid Bailey." These two examples of how blues artists have very sketchy, elusive histories, causes one to come to the conclusion that when faced with an opportunity to gain fame and wealth, some choose to sink back into obsurity to stay where they feel safe and familiar.
This conclusion is not true for most cases, which usually show the opposite approach on the behalf of the person whose future is in question. Gioia gives the example of Louis Armstrong, jazz great of the early 20th century, who made a fortune from small beginnings as the son of a New Orleans prostitute. Gioia also recounts the blues musicians who chose fame and wealth over their previous hard labor. He gives the example of B. B. King. Gioia says, "Yet no one could dispute King's popularity. The success of his records made it possible for him to tour anywhere in the country, and King's determination transformed the road life into a personal prerogative." (331) This recount of King's history shows that, just like so many others, when wealth and a future came knocking, he answered by leaving his sharecropping past and becoming a well known, well traveled success.

Blue Business

This week in Delta Blues, Ted Gioia again proceeds with stories instead of the initial textbook style. He starts out talking about how businesspeople were now eying the blues as a possible commercial opportunity. These people, Henry Speirs, the foremost were responsible for taking almost all of the profits from black performers' music, and paying them very little in comparison. They did, however serve an important role; they supplied people with the blues, not allowing it die, and saving a spot for it in the musical spotlight. "Speir's preeminent talent, in his own mind, was that he knew what the market wanted," (52) writes Gioia. This kept him selling a lot of recordings, mostly to black people, of black artist. He writes, "At his Jackson store, he would sell between three hundred adn six hundred records on a good saturday, and almost 80 percent were by black musicians. And the percentage of black purchasers was even higher." (52)
Speir was in charge of making his own records, and was very attentive to detail. He would supply black musicians with better instruments to make their music better, and more sellable. Gioia describes him, "He paid close attention to the instruments his musicians used for recordings, and if necessary provided them with something better." This is interesting because on the outside this appeared as altruism, but for those who knew his intentions, he was just trying increase his profits, anything but an altruistic measure for a man who was already very wealthy.