Capstone Paper

Bending The Blues by Oliver Kennan A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, Bachelor of Arts (Music) Colorado College March 12, 2013 Approved by _______________________________ Date____________________ Victoria Lindsay Levine _______________________________ Date____________________ Thomas Taylor 1 Bending The Blues: The Guitar in Jazz and Blues Oliver Kennan The guitar has developed over the past four centuries. The six-course or six- string guitar was created at the end of the eighteenth century and was the first instrument that looked like a modern guitar (Montagu 2002: 547). It gained a new life in twentieth-century North America with the invention of amplification and its use in jazz and blues. By the end of the 1900s, the guitar was one of the most popular instruments in the world. Jazz and blues became two of the most unique American styles of music and are cornerstones of American culture today. This essay outlines the roots of jazz, blues, and the electric guitar. It then examines and analyzes the lives and compositions of three blues guitarists, two jazz guitarists, and one contemporary guitarist. This background and analysis provides a context for my recital. Jazz, Blues, and the Electric Guitar: A Brief History During the years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, a new kind of musician emerged in the south, known as songsters. Songsters were predominantly African American itinerant musicians who played on the street for change and were frequently the source of entertainment at various social gatherings in the post- reconstruction south (Oliver 2001b: 721). The songsters developed a diverse repertory because they often played audience-request songs. They performed dance tunes as well as ballads, reels, and minstrel songs. The original accompaniment for most of these pieces was a banjo or fiddle. The early songsters were also sometimes accompanied by “musicianers,” or non-singing string and reed pipe players. Later 2 songsters gravitated toward the guitar because it allowed them to accompany themselves, and therefore to make more money (Oliver 2001b: 721). The later, guitar- playing songsters are most closely associated with the origin of the blues. Jazz developed in the southern United States around the turn of the twentieth century. It is often said that jazz was born in New Orleans, but the truth is that it emerged in many different places in the south at about the same time (James 1983: 986). The jazz style associated with New Orleans features an ensemble composed of trumpet, trombone, clarinet, piano, guitar, banjo, and bass. This is often thought of as the quintessential jazz band. The style originated among African American musicians, who mixed different genres such as ragtime, field-hollers, work songs, vaudeville, marches, and blues. Many of these musicians played instruments that had been discarded by members of army bands after the Civil War (James 1983: 986). In the early days they played acoustic guitars, and because of their limited sound output, they were used simply as rhythm instruments. The guitarʼs role as a backing instrument continued until the invention of the electric guitar. The guitar manufacturers Rickenbacker and Gibson both offered their first electric models in the 1930s (Ingram 2001: 7). When Charlie Christian joined Benny Goodmanʼs band, he became one of the first electric guitarists to be heard on the radio. Initially, most jazz band leaders were skeptical of the electric guitar and it took artists such as Christian to demonstrate the instrumentʼs capabilities. Blues music developed after the Civil War, but was not formalized until the turn of the twentieth century. Much like jazz, blues emerged from a fusion of work songs and rural ballads that had been influenced by responsorial African American songs (Oliver 3 2001a: 730). The two styles developed simultaneously and influenced one another, especially in the realms of improvisation and vocal timbre. The twelve-bar blues, which is by far the most common form, was most likely a song structure derived from the songsterʼs repertory (Oliver 2001b: 721). The fact that most blues songs used the same chordal structure facilitated improvisation as well as performance by musicians who lacked formal training. The textual content was also clearly defined, which facilitated learning and improvisation. Blues songs are most often an expression of personal emotion, which differentiated them from earlier African American ballads that addressed the exploits of heros (Oliver 2001a: 731). Blues musicians also differentiated themselves from songsters by playing blues music exclusively instead a variety of styles. No recordings exist of the earliest blues music; the earliest known recording is Mamie Smithʼs 1920 Crazy Blues (Oliver 2001a: 731). Various forms of guitar-like instruments have existed since the sixteenth century, but the current six-string design appeared in the late eighteenth century (Montagu 2002: 547). The quest for a louder and more playable guitar began in the early twentieth century. Companies such as C.F. Martin had produced the steel string acoustic guitar and larger dreadnought-style bodies,1 which increased the volume of acoustic guitars and gave them a stronger bass sound. The first experiments with electric guitars involved electrostatic and electromagnetic pickups.2 Electrostatic pickups received the vibrations of the strings through the body of the guitar, but were susceptible to humidity 1 C.F. Martin created a larger style of acoustic guitar and named the line “Dreadnought” after the battleship. This style of guitar was louder and had more bass than smaller guitars. It is now considered the standard acoustic guitar size (Anonymous 1998e: 3483). 2 Pickups are the devices on electric guitars that turn the vibrations of the strings on the guitar into an electronic signal, which is sent through a cable to the amplifier (Bacon 2001: 56). 4 and could not function with a long cable. Electromagnetic pickups were mounted above or more commonly below the strings and picked up the vibrations of the strings with magnets (Ingram 2001: 8-9). The fluctuation of the vibrating string next to the magnet produces a signal, which is sent through a cable to an amplifier. The amplifier boosts the signal before sending it to the speaker, which produces the amplified sound. Electromagnetic pickups eventually replaced the electrostatic type. Rickenbacker and Gibson had been producing lap-steel guitars and Hawaiian guitars3 for years and these were the first guitars to be made electric. These guitars were designed to be played in open tunings on the musicianʼs lap with individual finger plectrums and a glass or metal slide held in the left hand for pitch control (Montagu 2002: 548). Both companies produced their first commercially-available electric models in 1935. Many of the early electric guitars were simply acoustic guitars fitted with electromagnetic pickups. Problems with feedback due to the highly resonant quality of the hollow-body guitars prompted the invention of the solid-body electric guitar. Charlie Christian was the first jazz guitarist to play the electric guitar with a serious jazz band, Benny Goodmanʼs band (Anonymous 1998c: 1073). The first well-known blues band to incorporate the electric guitar was the Muddy Waterʼs band in 1946 (Palmer 1981: 15-16). Profiles: Three Blues Guitarists Robert Leroy Johnson (1911-1938) was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Little is known about his early life, although he relocated with his mother many times during his 3 The lap-steel guitar or Hawaiian guitar was invented in Hawaii during the second half of the nineteenth century. The guitar was tuned to a major triad and played with a slide to produce the glissandos that became the distinct characteristic of the instrument (Davies 2001: 159). 5 childhood. As an adult he was renowned for his guitar-playing skills and he cultivated the rumor that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical prowess (Anonymous 1998d: 2855). His songs “Crossroads” and “Me and the Devil Blues” address this rumor that was either started by Johnson himself or by jealous contemporaries. “Me and the Devil Blues” exemplifies an early blues song in the key of A. The lyrics follow the traditional blues scheme of A-A-B: Early this morning, when you knocked upon my door Early this morning, ooh, when you knocked upon my door And I said, “Hello Satan, I do believe itʼs time to go.” Me and the Devil, was walking side by side Me and the Devil, ooh, was walking side by side And Iʼm going to beat my woman, until I get satisfied. She say you donʼt see why, that you would dog me round She say you donʼt see why, ooh, that you would dog me round It must be that old evil spirit, so deep down in the ground. You may bury my body, down by the highway side You may bury my body, ooh, down by the highway side So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride. (Johnson 2003) Johnson sings the first two lines to the same melody, first over the tonic chord and then over the subdominant. On the second line Johnson uses falsetto to hit the A on “ooh,” which was unusual at the time but became a standard blues singerʼs tool. The guitar part begins with a short introduction. Three-note dominant seventh chords 6 descend chromatically starting on A. In measure three, another descending chromatic line starting on D with an A repeated in the higher register, hints at the sub-dominant D7 chord. A standard dominant E7 chord returns the piece to the tonic A7 chord. Johnson then begins to sing. The meter is not constant in the song; Johnson often adds beats freely to accomodate the lyrics, which was a characteristic of early blues songs played by one performer rather than by a band.

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