From the Spiritual to Rural Blues

Toward the Blues
The Spiritual and sorrow song spiritual were the essential first step towards the development of the blues. The spiritual saw the marriage of European harmony and concepts of form to African American melodies. “Gang” and other types of worksongs were adapted to the stanza concept and harmonic progressions of the hymn in the Spiritual. A second stage of adaptation occurred that gave rise to two common forms in use today, the "twelve-bar" Blues and the stanza-refrain scheme. Stanza-refrain is sometimes incorrectly called "verse-chorus" form. The refrain can embrace the Blues punch-line layout though, in this case, it is usually pared down from twelve measures to six, four, or eight.

The twelve-bar blues stays closer to the stanza form of the Spiritual except in that it evolved into a three-line, twelve measure format instead of the usual four-line, eight-measure stanza of the hymn and its variants that informs the remainder of American popular songs. The twelve-bar Blues also retains the "punch line" function of the third and final line of text. Neither the twelve-bar Blues pattern nor the stanza-refrain schemes have remained the exclusive property of African American music, and are found today in nearly all styles of popular song.

The Spiritual incorporated a feature the work song lacked: simple harmonic progression. In the Spiritual, regardless of stanza form, simple I-IV-V chord progressions were used to form a superstructure over which the melody could be sung and a homophonic texture. The chord progression of the stanza or refrain was repeated literally in each subsequent one. In this regard, the Spiritual came to resemble closely the white English ballad, sea chanty, and fiddle-tune dance music. Even the choice of scale of the Spiritual, the major pentatonic, was a major-key scale found in folk music of the British Isles and was probably transmitted to the slaves by their white masters and the later Evangelists.

Not all spirituals, however, used the major pentatonic scale. Sorrow songs, or minor-key Spirituals, do not constitute a numerically significcant portion of the nineteenth-century Spiritual literature, but they are probably the wellspring for the use of the minor pentatonic scale in some Blues. The rise of the minor pentatonic might have two toher explanations. First, prior to the emansipation, slaves were discouraged from singing in the minor key because work slowed and moods darkened. Once free, the former slave sang what he pleased, and the minor key better reflected his harsh reality. Second, there is an increase in the use of minor keys and alteration of sorrow-song text in the late nineteenth century from sacred to secular in the music of southern prison populations. The origin of musical characteristics of the Blues is still such to debate and specualtion.

A nineteenth-century Spiritual that might furnish clues to the evolution of Blues is “Walking Jerusalem.” Textually, it is a Spiritual, but its music anomalous to the mainstream. In “Walking Jerusalem,” one finds a musical texture more akin to the polyrhythmic drumming of Place Congo and the “shout” than to the Spiritual. There are no harmonic changes, just an insistent repeated drone bass that marks every beat and furnishes the point of comparision for the syncopation seen in the "Jingle-Bells"/"Death Don't Have No Mercy" graph. The function of the bass is harmonic, it is rhythmic. The stanza form, relfected in its melody, is irregular at five measures for each or the two phrases instead of following the usual tidy even-numbered formats of European music (4, 6, or 8) or the later twelve-bar progression. Since there are no chord changes, the melodic structure can be additive, as in drumming. The form, shape, and even duration here can be determined improvisationally even as the music unfolds, if the metronomically regular back beat or underlying pulse does not waiver. The effect of all these characteristics is one in which the music unfolds without points defining beginning or end. Instead, the music contains the same hypnotic elements as the music of the drum ensemble!

In “Walking Jerusalem,” one also finds the use of the" inflected third," the note that would emerge in later Blues, jazz, and other styles of popular music as one of the principal "blue" notes. The inflected third is the singing or playing of the third note of the minor scale (or the second note of the minor pentatonic scale) where normally one would sing the third note of the major or major pentatonic scale. Here the minor scale is essentially forced over the chords in the major key, and the result is not only the "blue" note but a melodic vacillation between major and minor keys, even as the other voices of the music remain in major. The third of the minor scale is often called the "minor," "lowered" or "flat" third.

It is important to mention that the articulation of the third or any “blue” note may occur in a variety of ways. The third note of the major or major pentatonic scale may simply be sung or played as the third of the minor pentatonic scale. This type of articulation is heard in both “Froggy Went a Courtin’” and “Walking Jerusalem.” In “Froggy,” lowering the third note occurs near the end of the stanza, adding a “blue” touch. In “Walking,” it occurs in the first measure, exemplifying one relationship between the major third and the minor third that later came to be set in stone—the minor third may ascend to the major third, but not vice-versa. Another method of articulating the third or any “blue” note is described below in with regard to the quarter-tone and exemplified in “Come on in My Kitchen.”

A feature of most African American singing that is also a critical component of Blues singing and guitar solo is the use of quarter-tones. From their arrival in the seventeenth century, African musicians inflected notes using pitches not recognized in Western scales. Unlike Western musicians who work from a palette of notes separated by half-steps, African musicians, like Arab musicians, recognize smaller intervals called quarter-tones. The most frequently articulated notes (notes sung in quarter-tones) are the third and fourth notes of the minor pentatonic scale. The quarter-tones here are sung slightly sharp, but not sharp enough to become the next note of the European scale. Instead the quarter-tone note falls somewhere in between. On the guitar, this is called "bending" or "slurring." One of the great curiousities of much of American popular music, and especially jazz, is that music that is intended to include quarter-tones is played on instruments that are not constructed to produce them!

Given here to exemplify both vacillation between the third notes of the major and minor pentatonic scales and the quarter-tone articulation of the third is an early twentieth-century rural blues tune. Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen" exemplifies the borrowing between scales. The examples may be seen in the C natural from the minor pentatonic scale and C# from the major pentatonic scale at the end of the opening measure as the fifth and sixth notes. It is seen again in the second measure at the point marked slide." The last note of the measure is D#, and it is the articulated fourth note of the minor pentatonic scale. The articulation of the fourth also occurs at the start of the next measure in the notes that are slightly "out of tune." The quarter-tone articulation of the third is heard as the bend on the last note of the second measure. The quarter-tone bending of the third is heard again as the last notes of the fourth measure. The harmonic progression is limited to only one chord change, and the function of the bass is the same as in “Walking Jerusalem,” that is, as drum beat.

Reduction of Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen"

In addition to the intermixing of major and minor pentatonic scales and bending, the African American musician modified the European scales in ways other than those described earlier in the formulation of the major and minor pentatonic scales. The modifications are less evident in the nineteenth-century Spiritual, but come to the fore in early twentieth-century jazz. The alterations could occur in the melody, the chords that supported it, or both.

In the later use of the European major scale, the African American musician sometimes retained the fourth or the seventh note, but if he sang the seventh, he flatted it. Similar musical practices are found today in Africa. Later blues and jazz players called the scale the “Mixolydian mode.” Another alteration is the lowering of the third note of the Mixolydian mode to create, in modern jazz terminology, the "Dorian mode." Flatting the third in the Dorian mode effectively turns the Mixolydian from a variant of the major scale to a variant of the minor scale! Both the Dorian and Mixolydian modes are not new to Western music. They are two of the four Church modes that underpinned Western sacred music from the inception of chant until being phased out in Baroque music of the mid-seventeenth century!

Complete List of Major and Minor Scale Types

The application of the Mixolydian and Dorian modes also represents an expansion of the palette of available notes beyond just blending major and minor features. These modes are found more often in jazz and jazz-inflected Blues than in rural Blues or early urban Blues.

Elements of Musical Style in Rural Blues
Rural Blues, of course, began in the South in the opening decades of the twentieth century. The music was primarily the art of a single singer who accompanied himself on the guitar. Blues styles often reflected regional musical preferences such as favored melodic motives from local arhoolies, but as often styles intermingled. Bluesmen were often migratory, and some of the most important ones can be placed historically in a geographical as wide as Florida to St.Louis, Chicago, and even New York City. In all Blues of this period, the guitar occupied a place in the music equal to that of the singer. Melodic fragments were played as "answers" at places in the music where, in an earlier day, a group of laborers would have responded to the leader, and the low notes were used to keep time and identify the harmony.

Two main stylistic threads seem to run through rural Blues. One is the "Delta" style. The music is characterized in part by the use of the slide on the guitar. The slide was originally a glass tube, most often made from the neck of a whiskey bottle, that was worn on one of the fingers of the left hand. Present ones are made of metal. Rather than stop the strings by squeezing them with the left-hand fingers, the pitch was controlled by resting the the slide on the strings and moving it when new notes were required. The advantage of the slide is that its note production was not defined by the fret, which yields the same pitch each time, but by placement along the string. Hence the slide admitted quarter-tones and other vocal devices, such as swoops, to the guitar's sound. Equally important to the style is the use of the drone bass as a rhythmic device rather than the defining element of harmonic change, and the use of snarls and growls. The style remained somewhat closer to African elements than other contemporary music, a phenomenon that we will study with regard to New Orleans jazz. Twelve-bar progressions are not common in Delta Blues, though they are in the other rural styles. Instead, chord changes, though still among the primary chords, were determined by the reguirements of the song rather than adhere to a formula. In many cases, Delta Blues, like "Walking Jersualem," remains throughout on a single chord.

The principal practitioners of the first generation of the Delta style were Charlie Patton and Son House. Both mildly abused their prodigy and now best-remembered younger member, Robert Johnson. Johnson was significantly younger but bold enough to want to play with Patton and House and others. Since Johnson was a beginner, the older musicians customarily chased him away. After extended absence from the jam sessions, Johnson re-emerged as a master. It is now known that he spent the time at a neighboring plantation, where he set about not only mastering the guitar but also developing the initial sketches of some of his later music.

The improvement in his playing was so marked and the imagery of his songs so rich, that both served as the source of many of today's rock most important ideas and myths, including the ideas of "crossroads" and of "selling one's soul to the devil" in order to play like a demon.
Johnson is not important, however, for just his playing and singing; the quality of his lyrics far overshadows those of his mentors and contemporaries.

There is an aspect to Johnson's life that contributes to his legend. He made five sets of preliminary demonstration tapes for Columbia Records "race" division. When Columbia representatives went in search of him to sign him to a lucrative contract, they discovered that he had been murdered a few weeks earlier. Johnson was ever the ladies' man, and a cuckold husband felt that poisoning him was appropriate recompense. The demonstration tapes are the entirety of Johnson's legacy.

One of the two known photographs of Robert Johnson as it appears on a current reissue of those demonstration tapes. Note the slide on third finger of his left hand.


The other known photo offers a more intimate encounter.

A second style, one which shows greater evidence of stylistic cross-pollination, simply includes the music of everyone else. The list is quite inclusive, but Blind Blake, Blind Lemmon Jefferson, and Blind Willie McTell come immediately to mind. A significant point is that the high incidence of blind musicians has practical origins. The lack of sight made other work, including field work, impossible. Similarly, the guitar became a favored instrument because it was musically more supple than the banjo (able to accompany and play melody) and portable, but even more so because it was affordable even to the poor.

This second style more strongly reflects the influences of other contemporary styles, notably ragtime. It also does not make extensive use of the slide guitar but does include melodic fragments used to "answer" and arpeggios. Although other primary-chord progressions were frequently used, the simple form of the twelve-bar format is common. The simple twelve-bar progression is:

Line 1: I-I-I-I
Line 2: IV-IV-I-I
Line 3: V-V(or IV)-I-V

Each number represents the chord that is built upon the scale degree indentified by the number. For example, the "I" chord in the key of C major is the C chord. The "IV" chord is built on the fourth note of the major scale of C and is the F chord. Similarly, the "V" chord is the G chord.

The most important feature of much of this music, however, bespeaks its debt to rag music--the "two-step" metric organization. All subsequent American popular music in duple meter (four beats per measure), regardless of style, is informed by one of the two metric patterns defined in rural Blues. In the "four-beat" rhythmic pattern, as we hear in the music of the drum dance and Delta players, the beat is continually stated to permit more effective syncopation in the upper voices. In the "two-step," the rhythmic accents are placed upon the first and third beats of a four-beat count. The accent pattern is actually derived from marching band music. Since a musician who is playing and marching cannot step on each beat if he wishes to do both at once, he instead steps on every other beat. The music reflects this marching cadence, often by sounding the bass notes on the first and third beats rather than on all four.