Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated 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.
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles.
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.
A honky-tonk is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano used to play such music. Bars of this kind are common in the South and Southwest United States. Many eminent country music artists, such as Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Johnny Horton, and Merle Haggard to name a few, began their careers as amateur musicians in honky-tonks.
"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, 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.
Eugene Delbert Greene was an American vaudeville and ragtime singer. He was one of the first to use scat singing techniques.
Louis Wolfe Gilbert was a Russian-born American songwriter of Tin Pan Alley. He is best remembered as the lyricist for "Ramona" (1928), the first movie theme song ever written.
George Botsford was an American composer of ragtime and other forms of music.
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.
Hart Ancker Wand, was an American early fiddler and bandleader from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was of German extraction. In the musical world he is chiefly noted for publishing the "Dallas Blues" in March 1912. "Dallas Blues" was an early example of published twelve-bar blues song.
"Magnetic Rag" is a 1914 ragtime piano composition by American composer Scott Joplin. It is significant for being the last rag which Joplin published in his lifetime, three years before his death in 1917. It is also unique in form and in some of the musical techniques employed in the composition.
"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.
This is a timeline of music in the United States from 1880 to 1919.
"Nigger Blues", written by Le Roy "Lasses" White, was one of the first blues songs published. Copyrighted by the Texas-born White in 1912, it was first titled "Negro Blues", but for unknown reasons when White published it in 1913, he retitled it.
Hugo Cannon was an American songwriter and pianist whose best-known composition was the popular ragtime song "(Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey".
"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.
H. Franklin "Baby" Seals was an American vaudeville performer, songwriter and pianist, whose successful 1912 song "Baby Seals' Blues" was one of the first published blues compositions, predating W. C. Handy's "The Memphis Blues" by several months.
Hitchy-Koo is a 1912 American popular song and a series of musical revues, inspired by the song, staged on Broadway each year from 1917 through 1920 and on tour in 1922.
