How Blue Can You Get?
By Don Allan Mitchell

The term African American is applied to people in the United States who are of African ancestry. Black people were first brought to this country in chains as slaves. They were stripped of their African homes, their African families, their African traditions, their African languages, and even their African clothes. Slave owners did not want their slaves to be proud of being Africans; they wanted the slaves to work like mules and to forget their African culture.

However, the ancestors of today’s African American resisted the tragedy of slavery, and they survived. They also secretly kept many African customs. One of the most important traditions was African music making. They soon applied African music making customs to the songs their masters forced them to sing. They sang as they worked to make the hard labor a little easier. They also applied African musical styles to church songs, and soon the great African American tradition of singing spirituals was born.

After slavery was ended by the American Civil War, other types of Black music developed besides spirituals. By 1900, Black Americans were applying African musical styles and ideas not only to religious music but also to music about day-to-day life. As life was still hard for many African Americans, these songs were sung to escape their pain and to bring joy in the hard times. Even as Black Americans worked, songs were performed to set a tempo to the labor and relieve some of the burden of oftentimes back-breaking jobs like picking cotton, digging ditches, and cutting down trees. This music influenced and merged with other types of songs to bring hope to the weary. By 1910, many people called this music the Blues.

We have a century-old tradition of the Blues in Mississippi. Many people call our state the cradle of this music. I recently asked my college students what they have learned in my Blues class and how they would share this knowledge with younger students.

Tara, Catherine, Heather, and April were fascinated by the ties of The Blues to Hip Hop. Sometimes, Rap musicians like Kanye West in Gold Digger and Ludacris with Georgia will sample older Rhythm and Blues singers like Ray Charles. Sometimes, rappers like Nas will actually record with his father, Olu Dara, a blues and jazz man originally from Natchez, and together, they will both update the idea of singing the Blues. Then there are rappers like David Banner, who sing about a lot of the same places and hard times that are mentioned in blues songs. In Cadillac on 22s, when David Banner “pray[s] to God for those Mississippi streets,” he’s not only praying for us, but he’s also praying for generations of African Americans that walked or drove those same dusty Mississippi roads, including musicians like B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Elmore James or as Howlin’ Wolf sang:

I got the blues this mornin’
I’m rollin’ into Jackson town
I’ve been looking for my baby
Lawd, I don’t think that girl can be found.

Long tall mama, she don’t pay me no mind
Yeah, long tall mama, she don’t pay me no mind
All she wanna do
Walk the Highway 49.

Besides its ties to modern times, other students commented on the music and the messages of The Blues itself.

According to my students Bridgette, Jim and Andrew, what they found interesting was that a lot of Blues Musicians would make their own instruments, especially when they were younger. They’d make a simple one-string instrument out of cotton bale wire and an old board, or use an old bucket or sticks for drums. In other words, they were so passionate about their music, they could make a musical sound out of just about anything, kind of like beatboxing today.

This is not the only connection to other areas of African American culture on which my students commented. My students Dewonda, Kelsey, Cole, and Patrick talked about how The Blues were carried to a worldwide audience. These students stated, “Because life was so hard for a lot of African Americans in the Deep South, they left to find work and better living conditions in other parts of the country. They took the Mississippi Delta Blues to cities like Chicago and Detroit. It was there that their down home music from Mississippi was influenced by music from black communities across the U.S. It was also in these Northern cities that the Delta Blues which was primarily played on an acoustic, unplugged guitar came to be played on the electric guitar. Finally, my students also added, “Soon, in these cities with large populations and a good number of radio stations, white people from the other side of the city started to hear this Blues music. They liked what they heard, and they started buying records and imitating the black performers of The Blues. This imitation lead to the creation of Rock and Roll.”

We know that Rock and Roll is popular worldwide. However, it is not the only music that was influenced by The Blues. As Lydia, Erica, and Carl put it, “The Blues has had a widespread popularity because its songs are about issues that everyone can understand, whether you are white or black, rich or poor. The Blues are songs about pain, death, love, loss, work, good times, hard times, and sad times.”

We respond to the call of The Blues with how it makes our mind and our hearts feel. For instance, B.B. King must have been really sad when he sang,

I've been downhearted
Ever since the day we met
Baby I've been downhearted
Ever since the day we met
I've been loving nothing but the blues
Baby, how blue can you get?

However, I imagine he felt a lot better after singing this song. You don’t have to “..love nothing but the blues,” but there is a lot in The Blues to love.