Before 'Crazy Blues': Commercial blues in America, 1850--1920 (Hughie Cannon, Mamie Smith)

Blues flourished in mainstream American culture in the second decade of the twentieth century. Between 1912 and 1920, more than 700 different blues compositions were registered for copyright, and over 1000 recordings (on disk, cylinder, and piano roll) made (all known compositions and recordings are listed in the appendices which conclude the study). The first part of the study examines the identity of early commercial blues. Roughly three-quarters of pre-1921 commercial blues are songs, the remainder instrumental compositions. The latter show the influence of both ragtime (later jazz) and the fox-trot. The songs vary considerably in range and style: some are scarcely distinguishable from regular pop songs of the day, while others are closely related to folk sources. A sample of 100 commercial blues is examined and musical and textual characteristics isolated. The sample is discussed in relation to parallel samples of contemporaneous popular music and folk blues. The second part of the study concerns commercial proto-blues, that is, compositions displaying blues characteristics published before the start-up of the commercial blues industry in 1912. The main focus is the twelve-bar form and its emergence into the cultural mainstream in coon songs of 1895–1905. In particular, the work of the composer Hughie Cannon and his associates is explored. The work of these individuals not only tells us much about the emergence of blues in commercial culture, but also offers insight into the development of the twelve-bar form in folk culture. In particular, commercial proto-blues strongly support the theory that the twelve-bar blues sequence evolved from blues ballads such as “Frankie and Johnnie” in the 1890s. In addition to the twelve-bar sequence, this study examines early commercial manifestations of the African-American folk proto-blues “I'm Alabamy Bound” and “Sweet Thing” and chronicles the appearance of the textual trope “I've got the blues” from its first known musical appearance in 1850. The study is preceded by an exploration of the reasons that pre-1921 commercial blues has been widely neglected in blues scholarship, which usually dates the start-up of the blues industry from Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of “Crazy Blues.”...