Skip to main content

Mahalia Jackson - Jesus Is With Me

What the blues expresses, of course, is not just feelings, most blues songs, from Back Water Blues and Sweet Home Chicago to Sweet Rough Man and Mean Old World, spend considerable lyric energy representing the conditions, the challenging, despair and/or euphoria inducing situations, that give rise to the feelings. Blues songs often state a problem, let it simmer and intensify, then pose a provisional solution. What generates the solution, as often as not, is the blues ethos: the blues philosophy of life. The blues ethos, as a concept, is multipronged, not unitary. It is a handful of attitudes and strategies for coping gracefully with the worst that life can throw at you... How do you generate an elegance of earned self togetherness, so that you have a stick to it ness in the face of the catastrophic and the calamitous and the horrendous and the scandalous and the monstrous?

The blues condition undergirding the poem is failed or unrequited love, the you in the first line who does not, or no longer continues to, love the poem’s speaker. Superadded to that condition and reinforcing it in the speaker’s mind is a more general condition of unluckiness, one affirmed by the gypsy’s fortune telling... Blues expressiveness shows up in a range of ways, including the black vernacular language deployed by the speaker and the autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.


Mahalia Jackson - Jesus Is With Me
  • Written by: "Traditional song"
  • Genre: Gospel
  • Released on: Jesus Is With Me

"Mahalia Jackson became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer and civil rights activist. She recorded about 30 albums"

See Previous Song of the Day 

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jackson Browne - Kisses Sweeter than Wine

Europe has a rich history of embracing blues and jazz music. In the early 20th century, American jazz musicians began touring Europe, introducing the continent to a new sound that was unlike anything they had ever heard before. Jazz became an instant hit among European audiences, and many European musicians began incorporating jazz elements into their music. Today, jazz festivals are held all over Europe, attracting thousands of fans from all over the world. In addition, many European cities have thriving blues scenes, with local bands and musicians performing regularly. Blues and jazz have also made their way to Asia, where they have found a devoted fan base. Japan, in particular, has a thriving jazz scene, with many Japanese musicians achieving international recognition. In addition, China has also seen a rise in the popularity of jazz music in recent years. Jazz festivals are now held in major Asian cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, attracting jazz lovers from all over ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Roy Haynes - Satan's Mysterious Feeling

Sun Studio, located at 706 Union Avenue, was started by one of the fathers of rock ‘n roll, Sam Phillips, in 1950. It was the commingling of the Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records that formed Sun Studio, and until 1969... The studio’s claim to fame is that it is where the first rock ‘n roll record was produced, Rocket 88, in April 1951. Stax Records was born in 1957. The original Stax was named Satellite Records until it changed its name to Stax in 1961. The company brought to the forefront American and Memphis soul, as well as gospel, funk and the Delta blues. Its most famous act was Otis Redding, and after his death in 1967, the studio struggled to stay in competition with Detroit’s Motown. The music of Memphis has evolved from its long, rich history. The legends of the past have created a legacy that newer artists can only hope to imitate but never really duplicate. A walk along Beale Street should invoke the memory of the great musicians who have come to and played in Memphi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chuck Berry - Broken Arrow

The blues grew up in the Mississippi Delta just upriver from New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. Blues and jazz have always influenced each other, and they still interact in countless ways today. Following the end of the Civil War, black men had few options other than doing backbreaking manual work or something like becoming a traveling minstrel. Many chose to rely on their physical stamina and the soulful and melancholy lyrics of many blues songs to create a powerful, emotive and rhythmic music celebrating the life of black Americans. The lyrics they sang reflected their daily lives including sex, drinking, jail, murder, poverty, hard labor and lost love. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the M...
Post a Comment
Read more