| "Beale Street Blues" | |
|---|---|
 Sheet music cover | |
| Song by Gilda Gray | |
| Published | 1917 |
| Genre | Blues |
| Songwriter(s) | W.C. Handy |
"Beale Street Blues" is a song by American composer and lyricist W.C. Handy. It was named after Beale Street, a center of African-American music in Memphis, Tennessee, and was published in 1917.
The title refers to Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, an entertainment district for the city's African-American population in the early part of the 20th century. [1] Accounts of Handy's inspiration vary: one is that he observed a pianist playing in a cafe on that street; [2] another credits a barber commenting on closing early because no one had been murdered on the street that day. [3]
"Beale Street Blues" "juxtaposes the 12-bar blues form with an 8-bar counter-theme". [1] The song was published in 1917. [1] Difficulty in securing a good publishing deal meant that Handy published it himself. [4]
The publication of the song coincided with the beginning of jazz recordings. [1] An early version by Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band earned Handy's firm $2,857 in royalties. [1] A version by singer Marion Harris was a top 10 hit in December 1921. [1] More typically, however, in the early years after it was written, jazz musicians played instrumental versions of the song. [1]
Jack Teagarden used the song as a vocal showcase in the 1930s and 1940s, and recorded it with several bands in that period. [1] In the big band era, only a few of the well-known bands recorded it; these included Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington. [1] Since the 1950s, the song has been associated with trad bands. [1]
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
The Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) was a Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz record ever issued. The group composed and recorded many jazz standards, the most famous being "Tiger Rag". In late 1917, the spelling of the band's name was changed to Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
William Christopher Handy was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. He was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the one of the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.
The Memphis blues is a style of blues music created from the 1910s to the 1930s by musicians in the Memphis area, such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows and was associated with Beale Street, the main entertainment area in Memphis.
The story of Tennessee's contribution to American music is essentially the story of three cities: Nashville, Memphis, and Bristol. While Nashville is most famous for its status as the long-time capital of country music, Bristol is recognized as the "Birthplace of Country Music". Memphis musicians have had an enormous influence on blues, early rock and roll, R&B, and soul music, as well as an increasing presence in rap.
"The Saint Louis Blues" is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the blues style and published in September 1914. It was one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song and remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire. Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Bing Crosby, Bessie Smith, Eartha Kitt, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Peanuts Hucko, Art Tatum, and the Boston Pops Orchestra are among the artists who have recorded it. The song has been called "the jazzman's Hamlet". Composer William Grant Still arranged a version of the song in 1916 while working with Handy.
Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles (2.9 km). It is a significant location in the city's history, as well as in the history of blues music. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts frequently bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas.
Walter E. "Furry" Lewis was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of the earliest of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given new opportunities to record during the folk blues revival of the 1960s.
The Memphis Jug Band was an American musical group active from the mid-1920s to the late-1950s. The band featured harmonica, kazoo, fiddle and mandolin or banjolin, backed by guitar, piano, washboard, washtub bass and jug. They played slow blues, pop songs, humorous songs and upbeat dance numbers with jazz and string band flavors. The band made the first commercial recordings in Memphis, Tennessee, and recorded more sides than any other prewar jug band.
Little is known about the exact origin of the music now known as the blues. No specific year can be cited as its origin, largely because the style evolved over a long period but blues is inarguably a Black American art form as it is noted "it is impossible to say exactly how old blues is - certainly no older than the presence of Negroes in the United States. It is native American Music, the product of the Black in this Country or to put it more exactly the way I have come to think about it, blues could not exist if African Captives had not become American Captives". Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik traces the roots of many of the elements that were to develop into the blues back to the African continent, the "cradle of the blues". One important early mention of something closely resembling the blues comes from 1901, when an archaeologist in Mississippi described the songs of black workers which had lyrical themes and technical elements in common with the blues.
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the other singers in this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues.
Rosco N. Gordon III, sometimes billed as Roscoe Gordon, was an American blues singer, pianist, and songwriter. He is best known for his hit songs "Booted," (1952), "No More Doggin'" (1952), and "Just a Little Bit" (1960). Gordon was a pioneer of the Memphis blues style. He played piano in a style known as the "Rosco rhythm," with the emphasis on the off-beat. This rhythm was an influence on later musical styles such as Jamaican ska and reggae.
Frank Stokes was an American blues musician, songster, and blackface minstrel, who is considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style.
"Careless Love" is a traditional song, with several popular blues versions. It has been called a "nineteenth-century ballad and Dixieland standard".
"The Memphis Blues" is a song described by its composer, W. C. Handy, as a "southern rag". It was self-published by Handy in September 1912 and has been recorded by many artists over the years.
"Livery Stable Blues" is a jazz composition copyrighted by Ray Lopez and Alcide Nunez in 1917. It was recorded by the Original Dixieland Jass Band on February 26, 1917, and, with the A side "Dixieland Jass Band One-Step" or "Dixie Jass Band One-Step", became widely acknowledged as the first jazz recording commercially released. It was recorded by the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York City at its studio at 46 West 38th Street on the 12th floor – the top floor.
Mose Vinson was an American boogie-woogie, blues and jazz pianist and singer. His recordings included "Blues with a Feeling" and "Sweet Root Man". Vinson worked with Booker T. Laury and James Cotton.
Dan Sane was an American Memphis blues and country blues guitarist and songwriter. He was an associate of Frank Stokes. According to the Music journalist Jason Ankeny, "they had emerged among the most complementary duos in all of the blues, with Sane's flatpicking ideally embellished by Stokes' fluid rhythms." The best-known of the songs written by Sane are "Downtown Blues" and "Mr. Crump Don't Like It." His surname was sometimes spelled "Sain".
Joyce Renee Cobb is an American singer specializing in jazz and R&B. She is closely associated with traditional blues and jazz in the style of Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. She has had a wide-ranging career as a solo artist and vocalist, having charted several country, pop, and R&B singles in the 1970s and early 1980s, later recording as a jazz vocalist.
