This Week's Show: April 29-May 2

"Sweet Home, Chicago...Detroit...Los Angeles...!"
The Blues Moves to the City: Part II

Most of us are familiar with the classic poster of Rosie the Riveter, the iconic portrayal of women moving into the workforce of America during World War Two.  Fewer folks are aware that beginning in 1941 an estimated 5 million African Americans left the South and emigrated to the industrial cites of the Midwest and West in what some historians call "the Second Great Migration", an exodus that lasted for the next three decades.

Leaving the overt discrimination of the South for good paying jobs, first in the defense industry, then in the burgeoning automobile industry, this migration continued the urbanization of the African American culture as Detroit and Los Angeles joined Chicago in hosting vibrant blues scenes.  With the introduction of the electric guitar, Little Walter's creative use of amplified distortion to recreate the blues harmonica, and the continued development of combos including piano, saxophone and trap drums, country blues

This Week's Show: April 22-25

"Sweet Home, Chicago!"
The Blues Moves to the City

Between 1910 and 1930, two million African Americans left the economic deprivation and Jim Crow laws of the South and migrated to the cities of the Northeast and Midwest.  In this era, known as the Great Migration,  Black America was transformed from a predominantly rural society to an urban culture--and the Blues reflected this transition.  What had been a music relying on individual performers sharing sometimes quite idiosyncratic rhythms and songs having to do with country life more and more began to rely groups of musicians, more regular rhythms, and songs about the themes of "modern life" in the city.

This Week's Show: April 15-18

Beale Street and Beyond:
Jug Band Music, the Blues --and All That Jazz!

Although the prominence of the the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon's Jug Stompers, and Jed Davenport's Beale Street Jug Band brings Memphis to mind when a lot of us think of jug band music, it appears that the first jug band actually appeared further north in another river town, Louiseville, Ky.   In fact, anecdotal tales have it that Gus Cannon, who had already recorded as "Banjo Joe" (backed by Blind Blake) decided to rig up a jug on a homemade rack so he could play it with his banjo and gather a couple of other musicians to play jug band music "like they did upriver".  Already, the use of a jug (or jugs) to cover a percussive bass line and the use of several instruments to provide texture and tone to the blues was opening up other musical possibilites in a rich and fertile time for musicians in the African American community.

This Week's Show April 8-11

Blowing the Blues:

The Magicians of the Blues Harp 

Although a variety of free reed instruments were common throughout Asia, the harmonica didn't make its appearance until the 1820's in Vienna.  When a German clockmaker named Mattias Hohner (yes, that Hohner) began mass producing the harmonica in 1857, shipping some to his relatives in the United States, I wonder if he could have imagined that it would become enormously popular in this country, that it would provide solace to both the Union and Confederate armies in the Civil War--and eventually gain it's greatest popularity in the hands of African American blues players?  Could this 19th century German businessman even conceive of the haunting wails, the percussive rhythm chops, and the stirring human sounding moans and groans that emerged from this instrument as the magicians of the blues harp made it their own?