How were the earliest blues songs sung?

It is said that the genre evolved from traditional African music comprised of work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and simple narrative ballads. Early blues songs were sung by slaves, ex-slaves, and their descendants. The blues form is characterized by a call-and-response pattern.

Who recorded the first vocal blues song?

Mamie Smith
They were about to play a song written by Perry Bradford, and to sing it with them was Mamie Smith. Called “Crazy Blues,” it is the first blues record.

What is the most recorded blues tune of all time?

1. The Thrill is Gone – B.B. King. This slow, 12-bar blues song was actually originally recorded by Roy Hawkins in 1951. However, it was B.B. King’s 1969 version that took it mainstream and cemented it as one of the most famous blues songs of all time.

What did early blues music sound like?

Blues music is characterised by sad melodies and even today the expression ‘having the blues’ means you are feeling gloomy. Early blues music was very slow and emotional using simple harmonies with a vocalist accompanied by a guitar.

What served as a major inspiration for early blues music?

African and European influence (slaves). The Blues are a direct result of African American work songs, protest songs and social songs that came before them.

What year was the first blues song transcribed?

The first recorded blues song In 1912, WC Handy published “Memphis Blues,” which, ironically, is not a blues song, but an instrumental cakewalk; Handy’s tune was the third to use the word in the title.

What is the song form of Crazy blues?

As the name of Smith’s band suggests, the instrumentation (cornet, trombone, violin, piano) is much more commonly as- sociated with jazz, and the style of simultaneous improvisation employed by the players gives the piece a “ragtime” feel that places the piece squarely in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

What came before blues?

The most important American antecedent of the blues was the spiritual, a form of religious song with its roots in the camp meetings of the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Spirituals were a passionate song form, that “convey(ed) to listeners the same feeling of rootlessness and misery” as the blues.