We don’t know what kind of music, exactly, was first called blues. Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were singing slow, sad songs about their troubles in love and life by 1910 or thereabouts, but no one seems to have called them blues singers until the late teens, and by that time blues had already come and gone as a hot dance craze, played by brass bands and ragtime orchestras, and been supplanted by jazz. In 1915, the first newspaper article to mention jazz as a musical style was headlined Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues, which makes perfect sense if you look at how many early jazz bands relied on the basic 12 bar blues form. But there was also a lot of blues that was not jazz, and some jazz that was not blues.
A century later, it is even harder to sort out what blues means, or more to the point, what it doesn’t mean. We often hear that blues is the root of all American music, from country to rock to rap, and it doesn’t stop there, the haunting music of northern Mali is frequently described as African blues, rembetika, fado, and flamenco are described as Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish blues, respectively, and enka is described as Japanese blues. For many people, blues continues to denote emotion and is a catch all term for any music that feels soulful. That might serve as a good general definition, except that the most popular blues style in the United States is a rowdy, bar band sound featuring fast tempos and screaming electric guitar solos.
A century later, it is even harder to sort out what blues means, or more to the point, what it doesn’t mean. We often hear that blues is the root of all American music, from country to rock to rap, and it doesn’t stop there, the haunting music of northern Mali is frequently described as African blues, rembetika, fado, and flamenco are described as Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish blues, respectively, and enka is described as Japanese blues. For many people, blues continues to denote emotion and is a catch all term for any music that feels soulful. That might serve as a good general definition, except that the most popular blues style in the United States is a rowdy, bar band sound featuring fast tempos and screaming electric guitar solos.
- Released on: April 2, 1971
- Written by: Leon Russell
- Genre: Soul
"Donny Hathaway was considered an eccentric by many. He cultivated many unusual interests, and was a devotee of mid-20th century French classical composers. Several anecdotes about Hathaway are contained in Jerry Wexler's book Rhythm And The Blues."
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