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[email protected] www.newworldrecords.org Roots of the Blues New World 80252-2 f the United States has a national song form, it the black migratory laborers—who built the lev- I may well be the blues. Wailed by solo singers, ees and the railroads, raised the crops, and the thousands of verses of the blues, borne on a worked in the mills—knew what it was to be so single but endlessly varied haunting cadence, fill economically and culturally underprivileged as to a regular Mississippi River of song that long since be without family, friends, or community. They overflowed its banks into jazz, hillbilly, gospel, sang: opera, pop, and rock.The simplicity of the blues form is as remarkable as its vitality. In this the I'm a poor old boy,jes ain't treated right, blues is like other national song forms—the aus- Freezin' ground was my folding bed last night. tere copla in which Spanish singers have rhymed the whole Iberian experience, the bittersweet They knew total rejection: stornello that since the early Renaissance has I asked my captain what time of day, registered the Italian view of the beauties of He looked at me and walked away. women and the ironies of love. But the blues is not only the national song of the United States; it Now, after depression, war, the breakdown of is creeping into the ear of the whole world and the family and the neighborhood, in gradual disil- may become the first international song style.