Blues From The Delta

by William R. Ferris

William Ferris, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, has written a book as deep as the blues: rich in conversation, reference, history, and firsthand experience with blues musicians and the culture that informs the music. The poetry, games, house parties, religious and secular traditions of black life in the Delta are explored in living prose that is also a work of immense scholarship.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Folklore

250 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1970

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"BLUES: Short for 'blue devils.' 1. Colloquial: Low spirits; a fit of melancholy. 2. A type of song written in a characteristic key with melancholy words and syncopated rhythms." (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary)

"Blues consists of a (three-line) twelve-bar pattern. Each line of the verse corresponds to four measures of the music. To express it in another way, there are two complete melodic statements (corresponding to the verse statement and its repetition), each ending on the tonic (or the third or fifth of the tonic chord), followed by the 'melodic' response (corresponding to the third line of the verse), which also ends on the tonic." (Gilbert Chase, America's Music.)

"Blues is actually around you every day. That's just a feeling with a person, you know. You have a hard time and things happen. Hardships between you and your wife, or maybe you and your girlfriend. Downheartedness, that's all it is, hardship. You express it through your song." (Arthur Lee Williams, Blues harmonica player, Birdie, Mississippi)

I always thought the Mississippi Delta was in New Orleans, but it is actually Northeast Mississippi. It was once rich in alluvial soil. Blacks faced another kind of slavery when they had to become sharecroppers, always in debt to their bosses, white landowners. They left by following highways 51 and 61 to St. Louis and Chicago. Many families moved back and forth between the North and the South.

A "shotgun house" is a long home with three rooms in a straight row: front room, bedroom, and kitchen, in that order.

Poppa Jazz: "In those days it was 'Kill a mule, buy another. Kill a nigger, hire another.' They had to have a license to kill anything but a nigger. We was always in season."

Poppa Jazz had a special "blues room" for evening entertainment.

B.B. King: "If you've been singing the blues as long as I have, it's kind of like being black twice."

B.B. King called his guitar "Lucille." Male-female sessions could be done with the player referring to his guitar as a woman. Blues singers were usually males. When James Thomas was asked where the blues came from, he responded, "Where they come from? They come from mens, all I know."

Blues are often associated with the devil. The singers feel the music describes life like it is, with an honesty not found in the church. Their secular service is consecrated with wine and dance for the entire week.

Blues probably developed after the Civil War. Work songs were used to coordinate laborers. They were also sung by prison gangs. Well-known blues players known as "sweet back papas" prided themselves in making a living from their music and the gifts of women admirers. Some of them had three or four women.

Many Mississippi blues singers began to play music with a homemade instrument known by some as a "one-strand on the wall." Children who could not afford a guitar took a wire from a handle of a broom and stretched it on the wall of their home. A hard object such as a stone raised and stretched the wire at each end to its proper tone, and as one hand plucked a beat, the other slid a bottle along its surface to change the tone. Such instruments are common in West Africa and Brazil. As a child, B. B. King played a one-strand.

Dances have names like "hook it to the mule."

People can "talk the blues."

Spontaneously created verses are called "make-ups."

Some of the blues artists the author was indebted to:

Shelby "Poppa Jazz" Brown
Wallace "Pine Top" Johnson
Lee Kizart
Jasper Love
Maudie Shirley
James "Son" Thomas

Here are some others:

The Aces
Carey Bell
Ishman Bracey
Jim Brewer
Big Bill Broonzy
Eddie Burn
Mississippi Joe Callicott
Bo Carter
Cat Iron
Sam Chatmon
Sam Collins
Sam Cooke
James Cotton
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup
Jimmy Davis
Walter Davis
Bo Diddley (E. McDaniel)
K. C. Douglas
Scott Dunbar
Johnny Fuller
Shirley Griffith
Slim Guitar
Roosevelt Holts
John Lee Hooker
Big Walter Horton
Son House
Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett)
Mississippi John Hurt
Elmore James
Skip James
Robert Johnson
Tommy Johnson
Albert King
B. B. King
Little Freddy King
J. B. Lenoir
Furry Lewis
Little Milton (Milton Campbell)
John Littlejohn
Tommy McClennan
Fred McDowell
Shortstuff Macon
Magic Sam (Samuel Maghett)
Mississippi Sheiks
Robert Nighthawk
Charley Patton
Snooky Pryor
Jimmy Reed
Fenton Robinson
Jimmy Rogers
Isaiah "Doctor" Ross
Otis Rush
J. D. Short
Robert Curtis Smith
Otis Spann
Houston Stackhouse
Babe Stovall
Slim Sunnyland
Eddie Taylor
Hound Dog Taylor
Henry Townsend
Ike Turner
Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield)
Bukka White
Robert Wilkins
Big Joe Williams
Sonny Boy Williamson
Johnny Young

[Curtis Anthony Bozif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads sometimes like 19th century ethnography. Ferris even describes what he calls "blues speak." Most of the book consists of the author listing off the many observations he made after parachuting into a handful of poor black communities in Mississippi in the 1960s. He befriends a handful of musicians and goes so far as to provide floor plans of the humble shotgun houses and to transcribe word for word recordings of house parties he was present for. He seems particularly fascinated by the interaction between the audience and the musicians, the audiences in Ferris's book usually consists of a small group of close friends of the musicians. Overall, an interesting example of a 1960s attempt to document blues history in Mississippi.

[Alex Kearney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun.

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to the approach of Ferris' more recent title, "Give My Poor Heart Ease", there are many verbatim recordings of conversations and performances. Also includes observations of the physical environment and social structures of the African American community in the Delta.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reread this a lot. It's wonderful.

[Brandon Cavanaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a WWII Dad, I'm an old timey music Dad. It's way cooler.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a gift to me from Dr. Ferris.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great introduction to the early roots of the blues and it's travels.

[Carol Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting stories (and diagrams) about Blues singers and their houses and jook joints, based on Mr. Ferris' visit.

[Slate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides an interesting first-hand account of the Blues culture surrounding Clarksdale in the northern Mississippi Delta in the late 20th century. Lots of lyrics printed in the book as well as an extended transcript of a performance.