The primary sources for blues vocalization is the work song and the field holler. Work songs are always of the call-and-response type where a crew leader sang out a line and the rest of the men responded by either repeating the line or with a standard line sung in response to each line sung by the leader. Sea shanties are also constructed this way (many of which are also of African-American descent such as “Rollin’ the Woodpile Down,” “Mail Day,” and “Whoop Jamboree”). These Southern work songs were sung in the cotton fields, the prison yards and chain gangs. Many church songs and hymns were also sung as call-and-response and likely descended from field work songs (this same phenomenon is noted in old coastal towns of England and New England where shanties were adapted as church hymns).
Hollers were sung by an individual and served various purposes. Hollers were long and drawn out. The record label called “Arhoolie” is called that because it is a phonetic rendering of a field holler: “Aaaaaaaarrrrrhooooooooooooliiiiiiiieeeeee!” where the pitch wavers, rises and falls in complex patterns. A man might do a field holler while working by himself but since it was so individualized, he often used it to identify himself and people in the area would know he was approaching without seeing him because they knew his holler.
Arhoolie Records ad.
The original blues lyrics were simply four identical lines such as:
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
But as blues evolved, the four identical lines began to get stale in a hurry. 12-bar blues worked better with three lines. Rather than repeat the same line three times, 12-bar blues had a repeating line followed by a third that rhymed or what is called AAB lyrics. So the above lyrics would be modified to something like:
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Lawdy, why won’t my troubles let me be
A typical example of blues lyrics is Charlie Patton’s “Down the Dirt Road Blues” which rock fans may recognize due to its similarity to Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again”:
Down the Dirt Road Blues
I'm going away to where I’m known (2X)
I'm worried now but I won’t be worried long
My rider got somethin’ she try to keep it hid (2X)
Lord, I got somethin’ find that somethin’ with
I feel like chopping, chips flying everywhere (2X)
I've been to the Nation, lord, but I couldn’t stay there
Some people tell me, oversea blues ain’t bad (2X)
It must not been the oversea blues I had
Everyday seem like murder here (2X)
(My god, I'm no sheriff)
I'm going to leave tomorrow, I know you don’t bid my care
I ain’t going down no dirt road by myself (2X)
If I don’t carry my rider, going to carry someone else
Charlie Patton - Down The Dirt Road Blues - YouTube
(The line “I’ve been to the Nation” refers to the Territo which was the Cherokee territory prior to its being made part of Oklahoma in 1907. Quite a number of blacks had Cherokee forebears and references to the Nation or Territo turn up in a number of old Mississippi blues songs such as Skip James’s “Hard Luck Child.” Whether James had a Cherokee forebear is not known by me but we shouldn’t be surprised if he did. Patton definitely had a full Cherokee grandmother.)
Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie often performed AABA lyrics where the first line was repeated after the rhyming line:
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
Lawdy, why won’t my troubles let me be
Don’t that ol’ moon look lonesome shining through the trees
John Lee Hooker’s “Dimples” is a modification of the original style of blues lyrics. The first verse, for example, goes:
Well, I love the way you walk (5X)
You’re my babe, I got my eyes on you.
Note the first line repeats five times but a tag is added at the end and all the verses are structured this way giving us a clue to how the oldest blues may have sounded.
What we are really listening to lyrically in blues are prayers. Blues lyrics are founded on prayers which is ironic since so many black congregations were dead set against blues, calling it the Devil’s music. But the Devil had little to do with it. The repeating line sung in a variety of blues styles is a holdover of the African American church experience.
In the 19th century, many black congregations formed a “ring shout” also known as a “ring dance” or “ring play.” A line from a spiritual, for example, would be sung out by someone and everyone else would pick it up and the ring began to rotate slowly at first but would pick up pace and move faster and faster with the same line being repeated for hours until the participants eventually collapse in a state of ecstasy. But this form of religious expression was replaced by the type heard here:
Rev. E.D. Campbell
Reverend E. D. Campbell from the late 1920s with his congregation.
One can hear in Campbell’s recording that this was spontaneous. This is the meaning of the word “spiritual.” We think of spirituals of being hymns in a book because many spirituals were written down eventually (starting in 1867) but the original conception of a spiritual was that these songs were spontaneous and not written down. In the case of Campbell’s song, this type of hymn-singing was called “long meter” or “Dr. Watts” named after Dr. Isaac Watts, an English preacher who taught slaves to sing proper hymns early in the 18th century and encouraged clergy to do away with the more primitive forms of religious expression. Through reading the words of Watts, many African-American clergymen then did away with shouts and chants.
treemonisha,we're goin' around - YouTube
Scott Joplin including a ring shout in his 1915 opera “Treemonisha.” It partially gave birth to the square dance which was his reason for including in his opera—to show Americans where square dancing came from.
The spirituals prior to the Civil War always had a secret meaning. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” for example was a song of freedom to the slaves. The chariot referred to a train as in “underground railroad.” The term “swing low” meant for the train to come south and pick up the singer to carry him or her “home” which referred not only to heaven but to the North, to a land where they could live as free people. In this specific case, a town across the Ohio River called Ripley was the intended stop and the reference in the song to the Jordan River is really the Ohio. The song form and melody itself clearly taken from Africa. Blues and religious singing had its roots in Africa:
The African Roots of the Blues. Part 1 - YouTube
African Roots of The Blues Part 6 - Dagomba One String Traditions - YouTube
FOLI (there is no movement without rhythm) original version by Thomas Roebers and Floris Leeuwenberg - YouTube
Many blues songs contain “moan” or “groan” in title, e.g. Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” and “Long Distance Moan,” Little Papa Joe’s “Moaning Blues (Groan My Blues Away),” Rube Lacy’s “Mississippi Jailhouse Groan,” etc., this was not meant as an expression of pain or misery but is actually an expression of hope and bliss—a blotting out of ones miserable circumstances through humming and singing by drawing out notes spontaneously. It was born from the field holler. You might hear this done by a black singer doing the National Anthem before a ballgame although the church form of moaning is far more haunting. When I was in the service, I lived in the upstairs of a flat in my homeport. The downstairs was rented by a black family who held prayer meetings every week. They would commence to moaning and wailing but in a manner that was clearly an expression of music rather than people simply caterwauling in misery. I would sit in an easy chair or lie in bed and listen to them. I found it quite interesting.
The field holler was added to the blues by way of an introduction to each verse and often to each line. Blind Lemon Jefferson added a field holler to virtually every verse he sang. So when one listens to an old blues recording and hears the singer bellow out a long, drawn out kind of moan just before launching into a verse, that’s a field holler. Blues brought various aspects of African-American musical traditions together into a single expression and, in this way, preserved them.
Black Snake Moan - Blind Lemon Jefferson - YouTube
The early blues guitarists, when playing in open keys as E and A, relied on a pulsing bass monotone underlying the melody of the higher strings. The bass changed only to mark the change from I to IV to V. This is likely a holdover from the days of playing blues on banjos and cigar box guitars—both of which have sympathetic strings. A sympathetic string is never fingered but always strummed open to reinforce the fingered strings. Such instruments are not chromatic and so can only play in one key but the guitar is chromatic and can play in any key. So the early acoustic guitar blues mimicked a banjo or cigar box guitar by treating the bass strings as sympathetic. So the original blues must have sounded very melancholy and mesmerizing expressing what the people who sang it were feeling. The sub-genre of blues called North Mississippi was structured this way.
Another important part of blues structure is hambone otherwise known as the juba dance or “Pattin’ Juba.” It originated in West Africa. “Juba” derives from the Haitian word “Djouba” which derives from the Bantu word “giouba” which can mean “hour” or “peanut” or “the sun” or “to pat” or “to beat.” “Hambone” derives from “hand bone.”
Hambone was performed throughout the African diaspora including the Southern U.S. during slavery. The dance involved gathering in a circle stomping and clapping in unison as well slapping the chest, stomach and thighs also in unison. The dancers even patted their cheeks in unison. Hence the term “Pattin’ Juba.” The dance involves doing a step routine and then turning counterclockwise often with one leg raised and carrying out more steps called by such names as “pigeon wing,” “Jubal Jew,” “blow that candle out,”and “yaller cat” which all involve various patterns of stomping, clapping and patting. The dance ends with a step known as “the long dog scratch.”
The term “hand bone”imp lies the use of the hands on the body to supply percussive effects. The dance was done in places as Haiti and Congo Square in New Orleans during slavery when drums were not allowed for a time because whites feared secret messages encouraging organized rebellion were hidden in the drum patterns.
Over time, words were added to the dance in the form of rhymes chanted in time with the steps. For example:
Hambone Hambone where have you been
All ‘round the world and back again
Hambone Hambone what did you do
I got a train and I fairly flew
Hambone Hambone where did you go
I hopped up to Miss Lucy’s door
Or this one which appears to be directed at the white plantation owners:
Juba dis and Juba dat
And juba killed da yaller cat
You sift da meal and you gimme da husk
You bake da bread and you gimme da crust
You eat da meat and you gimme da skin
And dat’s da way my mama’s troubles begin.
African stories often involved talking animals who either help, hurt or deceive humans. The human characters show no surprise that the animals speak and even make deals with them. The point being that the animals are really humans who exhibit certain traits reminiscent of a certain animal. A thief might be personified in an African story as a monkey because monkeys will steal food right out of your hand. A sly person might be personified in the story as a snake because they slink and crawl about silently or sit immobile as though dead or inanimate until an edible creatures gets too close. So the origin of the following hambone rhyme is not hard to assess:
First come in was Mister Snake
He crawled all over that wedding cake
Next walked in was Mister Tick
He ate so much it made him sick
Next walked in was Mister Coon
We asked him to sing us a wedding tune
This form of Pattin’ Juba became closely associated with the ring shout or ring play.