W. C. Handy-man
St. Louis Blues
Red Roses? NO! Blue Ladies!
Shades of Blues
The Blues Brothers
100
He's known as its Father
What is the blues?
100
Its 2 choruses are in this form
What is 12 bar blues form?
100
artist who sings the USAD listening selection, "St. Louis Blues"
Who is Billie Holiday?
100
Authentic rural blues sung by itirerant male singers with raspy voices playing bottle neck guitar
What is COUNTRY BLUES (downhome blues, folk blues)
100
Born and raised in the MS Delta, this snappy dresser lived wild and died young, having recorded only 30 songs in his raspy falsetto, influenced by Son House. But those recordings have had a tremendous impact on modern musicians like Eric Clapton.
Who is Robert Johnson?
200
W.C. heard it for the first time while he was stuck waiting for a train in the Mississippi Delta ...and then it was only because a local musician was "handy" enough to play it!
What is the blues?
200
Its what musical phrases like the 4 phrases of Sec. B do when they are in an antecedent-consequent relationship.
What is one phrase answers the other?
200
Black vaudeville singer who ushered in the blues craze with this song, which sold almost 75,000 copies in the first 2 mo., disproving the conventional wisdom about sales of blues recordings
Who is Mamie Smith (1883-1946), and what is the "Crazy Blues"?
200
It was 1. the first commercially viable form of the blues, 2. performed by professionals, 3. dominated by female singers, 4. a hybrid form also known as vaudeville or urban blues.
What is CLASSIC BLUES?
200
This blues "edifice" is noted for moans, shouts, falsettos, humming, & tremolos and bottleneck slides. He's one of the two most ARCHETYPAL blues men to emerge from the Mississippi Delta in the 1920s. (Double your credit by naming both.)
Who is Son House? Who is Charlie Patton?
300
Written in 1914, in 1920, this Handy hit made the transition from sheet music to record and went on to become one of the most popular blues songs of all time
What is "St. Louis Blues"?
300
In Sec. B, Handy decided to skip traditional blues harmonics and go with phrases in this "dance" style instead.
What is TANGO style?
300
A tour bus carried her "Black Bottom" over the country, and she recorded over 100 hundred songs between 1923-28 with her rough, tone & strong emotion
Who is Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, singer of "The Black Bottom Blues"?
300
Type of blues found in white pop.songs, it had blues idioms like 12-bar blues progressions, glissandos, and syncopation For example, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"
What is TIN PAN ALLEY BLUES
300
Both blind, the "fruity" one recorded at Paramount like Charlie Patton, and the other one was noted for elaborate finger picking in a bright, guitar style that sounded a little like ragtime.
Who are Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake?
400
State in which the midwife handed W.C. to his momma in 1873
What is Alabama?
400
The St. Louis Blues: 1. is notated, thus, less fluid than improvised blues 2. is performed by large ensemble instead of an individual 3. has a narrative flow with a distinct beginning, middle, and end
What are differences in the "ST. LOUIS BLUES" (which is an example of CLASSIC BLUES) and the COUNTRY BLUES?
400
Dubbed "Queen/Empress of the Blues," she traveled in a custom-built railcar, performed in a tent, sold souvenir memorabilia, & brought in $2000 a week for Columbia's "race division" with recordings like "Gulf Coast Blues" and "Downhome Blues."
Who is BESSIE SMITH (1894-1937)?
400
"Yellow Dog Blues," "Joe Turner Blues," Beale St. Blues," Memphis Blues"
What are examples of blues songs written by W.C. Handy?
400
MS-born, Texas-raised, Harvard-educated Curator of the Archive of American Folksong at the Library of Congress, this "LO"- man was ridin' HIGH when he discovered and recorded "Lead Belly" at Louisiana's Angola prison.
Who is John LOmax?
500
W.C. was "handy" with this instrument when he performed in a traveling minstrel show.
What is the cornet?
500
The song's key switches from G Major to this key, which is hard to play on traditional country blues instruments
What is the parallel minor or G Minor?
500
The white critic & intellectual Carl van Vechten remembered the "powerfully magnetic personality of this elemental conjure woman with her plangent African voice" which caused the audience to "burst into hysterical, semi-religious shrieks of sorrow and lamentations"
Who is BESSIE SMITH? (1894-1937)
500
written in 1909 and published in 1912, it was one of Handy's earliest attempts at blues
What is "Memphis Blues"?
500
Central figure in Chicago blues, Big Bill Broonzy helped create the "Southside Chicago" sound, known as "urban blues" & helped many younger artists like this one who became known as the Father of the Modern Chicago Blues
Who is Muddy Waters?
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