The main reason we have so much information about the Delta blues and artists from that era goes back to a man named Alan Lomax and other archivists like him who created field recordings. Basically, the Library of Congress sent historians down to the South to record artists in an effort to investigate and document American culture. That's how we transported this music to the North, and it’s also how the message got a little muddled. The white archivists who brought black music to the North painted a picture of the music being sung and played by slaves just getting off work, but that wasn't the real story.
In fact, all of these artists in the Delta wanted to move on. The Delta basically functioned as a middle ground for black families who wanted to get out of the South. You hear it when Robert Johnson sings Sweet Home Chicago. He wasn't singing Sweet Home Delta. He wanted to get out of the Delta. Everyone did. This group of people came together to take advantage of this fertile soil for new jobs, for a chance to go further North to Chicago. It was purely coincidental that, at the same time, they created this musical subculture of folk music.
The Mississippi Delta is the region where we see the first seeds of rock and roll. We can listen to Led Zeppelin and say, That's the first form of metal, but it started in the Delta. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were obsessed with Delta blues artists, and that inspired them.
Buddy Holly - Think It Over
- Released on: May 27, 1958
- Recorded in: February 1958
- Produced by: Norman Petty
"Buddy Holly left behind dozens of unfinished recordings, solo transcriptions of his new compositions, informal jam sessions with bandmates, or tapes demonstrating songs intended for other artists."
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