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The Blues.Who has ever been able to define it? It's one definition that got away from Webster's Dictionary. The only way to truly understand the blues is to play it . . . sing it . . . live it . . . and feel it. The origins of traditional Delta Blues music, like Jazz and Dixieland, are rooted deep in the great muddy Mississippi River. And, Delta Blues comes from the Mississippi Delta. This stretch of low-laying flood plain is located on the eastern and western banks of the Mississippi River. Its northern border starts at Memphis (legend has it that it originates in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel) and runs two hundred miles south to Vicksburg. Annually the river overflows its banks and the most fertile soil in the world. William Faulkner called it, "the most fertile soil this side of the River Nile." Perfect for growing cotton. This area has become known as the Mississippi Delta (not to be confused with the Mississippi River Delta at the mouth of the river in Louisiana). During the period just before the Civil War, the Mississippi Delta was, for a large part, one of the centers of southern power and was infuential in southern culture and commerce. But, since its cultivation in the 1830s, it was a difficult place for landless, working people to live. These people expressed life in their music . . . The Blues. In this case, the Delta Blues. Whether the pace of the music slow and sad or quick and happy, it communicates the hard life of those who sang it and those who lived it. In the 1930s, northern cities promised manufacturing job opportunities for those who were living in the deep south in areas like the Mississippi Delta. By the 1940s and 1950s, millions were in full migration to St. Louis, Chicago and other northern cities where jobs could be had. To some, the opportunities were achieved. However, the uneducated often found this escape to be an urban interpretation of their poor rural life. The Blues and the Delta Blues came with them. It flourished and, in some cases, the music and its players crossed-over to the mass audience of the late 1950s and 1960s. Today, the Delta Blues and its traditions are kept alive by the members of the Wesley Jefferson Band and other musicians like them. It's also being nourished at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Here, the legendary greats such as Son House, Muddy Waters, Charlie Patton, Big Joe Williams, John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, are enshrined and their music and histories are preserved for all to hear and see.   Wesley "Mississippi Junebug" Jefferson"When I was a boy chopping cotton, picking cotton and sharecropping, I didn't know what the blues was, I was just singing. Life was hard enough to make you sing. That's where the blues comes from - from the hard work you were doing. I've been playing professionally now for thirty years and the blues is just something pleasing. It makes me feel good." 
James "Super Chikan" Johnson"When you say 'blues' you call me by name. Blues is my Mama and Daddy. It raised me. Blues is my heritage. I grew up the life that most blues singers are talkin' about. I lived the blues life. I grew up as a poor boy, and I'm still a poor boy. I was supporting my Mama and siblings and now I'm married and have my own kids. I got a lot of visions. I got a lot of dreams. But, I don't have time to fulfill them because I'm too busy working to make ends meet." 
John "River Rat" Ruskey"John Lee Hooker turned my whole world around when I was in high school. I didn't have any place to turn to or go to, and he started spinning on my record player, and he hasn't stopped spinning for me since. It was then that I decided not to got to college, but built a raft and floated down the Mississippi River and got the mud in my blood, and my blood in the mud. He made me pick up the guitar. I didn't know what I was playing or doing, but it sure made me feel good." 
Michael "Dr. Mike" James"A lot of times you're so down and out, you feel like crying - and I make my guitar say the words for me. You got so much stress. You got so much pressure. You gew up and you lost someone in your family, or a friend, or someone close to you is sick. And you want to go somewhere and let it off, but then you go somewhere and there's someone else and you can't let it off. So that's when you sing the blues because it relieves all that pressure and stress. Jessie "Jessie James" Holmes "To me, blues is the heritage of my ancestors. It means the hard feelings that different people, not black or white, but any color feel. Blues is how you feel. So, as of me being the drummer of a blues band, to me, the blues is my life." 
Willie "Rip" Butler"My life is the blues. Forty years I've been singin' the blues. The blues is coming back into it. And it means a whole lot to me. Blues has spirit, like a spiritual, but it isn't the same thing. Blues tells the truth and the facts, and then it makes you feel a whole lot better." |
