0:00:03 > 0:00:07The blues is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century.
0:00:07 > 0:00:10BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:00:14 > 0:00:17# I woke up this morning
0:00:17 > 0:00:20# Feeling round for my shoes... #
0:00:20 > 0:00:22It's such simple music, it seems timeless.
0:00:22 > 0:00:28# Well, I woke up this morning feeling round... #
0:00:28 > 0:00:32But the blues does have a history and it keeps changing.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37For the 1920's New York record industry,
0:00:37 > 0:00:40the blues was a parade of powerful women on stage,
0:00:40 > 0:00:43singing about sex, sadness and feeling blue.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46# I woke up this morning
0:00:46 > 0:00:50# With an awful aching head... #
0:00:52 > 0:00:56This is the story of how a folk art met up with new media
0:00:56 > 0:00:58and became the bedrock of American music.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03# Woke up this morning I looked round for my shoes... #
0:01:03 > 0:01:07From the Deep South came the blues that gave birth to rock 'n' roll.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12In the 1960's, white kids got the blues.
0:01:12 > 0:01:15# I am the little red rooster
0:01:15 > 0:01:18# Too lazy to crow for... #
0:01:18 > 0:01:23The blues ended the 20th century as the ultimate brand of authenticity.
0:01:27 > 0:01:31Music that could be celebrated by prisoners and presidents.
0:01:31 > 0:01:34This is music with humble beginnings.
0:01:34 > 0:01:36# Woke up this morning
0:01:36 > 0:01:40# And found my baby gone... #
0:01:57 > 0:02:01It's a bent note here. It's something that says,
0:02:01 > 0:02:04"I've been somewhere and you've been there, too,
0:02:04 > 0:02:07"but we don't necessarily want to talk about it."
0:02:07 > 0:02:10And blues is kind of like that.
0:02:10 > 0:02:13It's kind of a mystery and long may it stay a mystery, you know.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18The blues may have had its roots in Africa,
0:02:18 > 0:02:20but the music was born in the USA.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24# I'm going down in Louisiana... #
0:02:24 > 0:02:31Why is it that there is no blues in Cuba, no blues in Puerto Rico,
0:02:31 > 0:02:33no blues in St Kitts and Nevis?
0:02:33 > 0:02:36Why is that not happening?
0:02:36 > 0:02:39# I'm going down in New Orleans... #
0:02:41 > 0:02:46In 1865, the American Civil War freed the slaves.
0:02:46 > 0:02:50By around 1900, the blues had emerged in the deep south.
0:02:50 > 0:02:53Their musical roots may have been ripped from the African soil, but to
0:02:53 > 0:02:57talk to each other, black Americans needed to forge a new language.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03In the United States, the music was broken up,
0:03:03 > 0:03:04the people were broken up.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06They were not parts of the same tribe,
0:03:06 > 0:03:11so there was nothing to express it except the blues.
0:03:11 > 0:03:16# Well, you know, I just found out
0:03:16 > 0:03:20# My trouble just begun... #
0:03:20 > 0:03:23From the start, the blues spoke in the first person,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26talking about moving on and leaving your troubles behind.
0:03:26 > 0:03:32# I'm going down in New Orleans... #
0:03:32 > 0:03:35The blues comes actually as a release from the kind
0:03:35 > 0:03:40of strict localism, you call it, you know, being confined.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44And it's... you suddenly get songs about people travelling,
0:03:44 > 0:03:47and people going to see this and people what they met on the road.
0:03:55 > 0:04:00BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:04:01 > 0:04:05# I'm on my way but I don't know where... #
0:04:08 > 0:04:12Appropriately, a railroad station was the setting for a crucial
0:04:12 > 0:04:14early encounter with the blues.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18Here, a college-educated black man named WC Handy,
0:04:18 > 0:04:21the leader of a coloured band, met a "lean loose-jointed Negro" vagrant.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28We're in Tutwiler, Mississippi and this place is famous in blues
0:04:28 > 0:04:33lore because some time around 1903 this is the spot where
0:04:33 > 0:04:36WC Handy recalled that he had first heard the blues.
0:04:43 > 0:04:48He was sitting here and heard a musician playing
0:04:48 > 0:04:51a guitar by pulling a knife across the strings,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54and Handy recalled it was the weirdest sound he had ever heard.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04The blues was being improvised all over the south
0:05:04 > 0:05:06for pleasure and profit.
0:05:11 > 0:05:14FRANTIC BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:05:17 > 0:05:19Later, Handy heard in Cleveland, Mississippi,
0:05:19 > 0:05:22not too far away from here, an African American string band
0:05:22 > 0:05:25playing the blues, and that was also a really pivotal moment
0:05:25 > 0:05:28because that's when he realised, he saw people throwing
0:05:28 > 0:05:32coins at their feet and realised that he could make money off it.
0:05:34 > 0:05:36The sort of music Handy heard is played
0:05:36 > 0:05:39today by The Ebony Hillbillies.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51Early blues music was dance music designed for adults to
0:05:51 > 0:05:54get them to come to some place and drink and have a good time,
0:05:54 > 0:05:57and so it's mating music, essentially.
0:05:57 > 0:05:59It's about men and women.
0:06:02 > 0:06:06The driving instrumental part of the blues certainly
0:06:06 > 0:06:11comes from early fiddle music, slave fiddle players, banjo players,
0:06:11 > 0:06:14but the blues was purposely formed as the dance music
0:06:14 > 0:06:17so the musicians would make money, you know, to come to dance halls.
0:06:23 > 0:06:24Oh, he got me!
0:06:26 > 0:06:29- He got you too?!- Yeah, me too!
0:06:32 > 0:06:35At the turn of the century, the blues was being
0:06:35 > 0:06:38played by the poorest people on whatever came to hand.
0:06:45 > 0:06:49THEY SING
0:06:54 > 0:06:55You see old slavery pictures,
0:06:55 > 0:06:59guys working on the railroad track, they get to hitting the hammer the
0:06:59 > 0:07:03same way, you know, then they make up a song - ha-poom, ha-poom, ha-poom.
0:07:07 > 0:07:09I've heard guys that have put a piece on wire on the side
0:07:09 > 0:07:13of a house and played, take the tambourine and play, they take a
0:07:13 > 0:07:18washing tub, they take a wash board, take spoons, you know, anything
0:07:18 > 0:07:22that you put together like that with a feeling, somebody will listen.
0:07:27 > 0:07:30Handy translated the weird sounds that he heard
0:07:30 > 0:07:32into a publishing empire.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38In WC Handy Park in Memphis,
0:07:38 > 0:07:42a statue commemorates the writer, composer and publisher
0:07:42 > 0:07:45who gave himself the title, "Father of the Blues".
0:07:50 > 0:07:54Around 1914, in the era before records and radio,
0:07:54 > 0:07:58Handy's Memphis Blues and St Louis Blues became sheet music hits.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04What's really significant about Handy hearing this music is
0:08:04 > 0:08:07that within a decade he was writing these and making good
0:08:07 > 0:08:12money off of this music, so we often talk about blues as a folk
0:08:12 > 0:08:17music, but almost from its inception it was also commercialised.
0:08:22 > 0:08:23Soon this new musical form
0:08:23 > 0:08:26was crisscrossing the southern states of America.
0:08:32 > 0:08:36Today we think of minstrel shows as crude caricatures of black music,
0:08:36 > 0:08:40but at the beginning of the 20th century, dozens of African American
0:08:40 > 0:08:44minstrels were putting on tent shows across the south.
0:08:44 > 0:08:48# Woke up this morning Same thing on my mind
0:08:48 > 0:08:52# Woke up this morning Same thing on my mind... #
0:08:52 > 0:08:56Minstrel shows and their successors, the medicine shows, which toured
0:08:56 > 0:09:00the south right through the first half of the 20th century, were
0:09:00 > 0:09:04in a sense, academies for musicians who wanted to become professional.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12The tent shows travelled through the countryside, where audiences
0:09:12 > 0:09:15heard versions of the latest tunes from the big city.
0:09:17 > 0:09:21They were almost like travelling salesmen for songs.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23They would pick up stuff all over the place,
0:09:23 > 0:09:25whether from the vernacular,
0:09:25 > 0:09:29from songs that were being sung in plantations,
0:09:29 > 0:09:31or by professional troupes,
0:09:31 > 0:09:35by musical comedy troupes that was available on sheet music,
0:09:35 > 0:09:37and they mixed it altogether.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40LIVELY BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:09:43 > 0:09:46The men and women writing and performing the blues were ambitious.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50They used the latest media to bring their music to the public.
0:09:53 > 0:09:57It was New York, the capital of the new recording industry,
0:09:57 > 0:10:00that made the blues a driving force in popular music.
0:10:06 > 0:10:10Initially, the record business ignored black musicians.
0:10:10 > 0:10:14You have to remember that in this period, in the teens and '20s,
0:10:14 > 0:10:18the money in songs was in publishing, it was not in recording.
0:10:18 > 0:10:21And Perry Bradford, who was a black songwriter,
0:10:21 > 0:10:26he was a contemporary and a competitor of WC Handy,
0:10:26 > 0:10:30was writing these songs and he wanted to get hits.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34# I can't eat a bite
0:10:34 > 0:10:37# For the man I love... #
0:10:37 > 0:10:40In 1920, Perry Bradford scored a big hit with
0:10:40 > 0:10:43Crazy Blues, sung by Mamie Smith.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47# So I got the crazy blues
0:10:47 > 0:10:52# If my baby went away... #
0:10:52 > 0:10:56It's said to have sold a million copies. No-one knows for sure,
0:10:56 > 0:11:00but what is certain is that it launched the blues as pop music.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03# Now I got the crazy blues... #
0:11:06 > 0:11:07In the early 1920's,
0:11:07 > 0:11:10record companies began to release race records -
0:11:10 > 0:11:13music by black performers for black audiences.
0:11:13 > 0:11:20# The blues ain't nothing but your lover on your mind... #
0:11:22 > 0:11:25The first successful blues singers were women.
0:11:25 > 0:11:30The threat to whites was not black women, it was
0:11:30 > 0:11:35black men, so the black men on the stage were forced to black up.
0:11:35 > 0:11:36Black women were not.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40They could perform with their own skin,
0:11:40 > 0:11:43but a black man had to be a clown.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46He had to put on funny clothes and do funny dances.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56There was always interaction, although not always favourable,
0:11:56 > 0:12:01between American white males and black women.
0:12:01 > 0:12:04They were allowed to do or be vocal or say certain things that the
0:12:04 > 0:12:07black males wouldn't be able to say or do.
0:12:07 > 0:12:13# The blues ain't nothing but a slow aching heart... #
0:12:18 > 0:12:21They were more showbiz in their own way,
0:12:21 > 0:12:25even though they were as gut blues as anybody else,
0:12:25 > 0:12:28but they had to dress it up and there is nothing like a dressed up
0:12:28 > 0:12:30lady to turn the interests, I think.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33# I love my man
0:12:33 > 0:12:36# But he treats me like a dog... #
0:12:38 > 0:12:41Luckily they were some of the most phenomenally great singers.
0:12:41 > 0:12:43Even through those old records,
0:12:43 > 0:12:48you can tell the timbre of their voice and their delivery was amazing
0:12:48 > 0:12:49cos this was out pre-microphone,
0:12:49 > 0:12:53so you know these girls had to be able to project.
0:12:55 > 0:13:00In segregated 1920's America, the blues queens performed on a black
0:13:00 > 0:13:04theatre circuit and they lived their lives in a black underworld.
0:13:06 > 0:13:10When the artists used to perform and travel around, they would have
0:13:10 > 0:13:15to stay in people's houses, which turned out to be things that we
0:13:15 > 0:13:18called the buffet flats in which you could get entertainment, food,
0:13:18 > 0:13:20you could get a bed
0:13:20 > 0:13:24and you could get a bed with someone else in it if you wanted.
0:13:24 > 0:13:26# Woke up this morning
0:13:26 > 0:13:31# When chickens were crowing for days... #
0:13:32 > 0:13:36The blues may have been a view from the bottom of society,
0:13:36 > 0:13:41but in 1923 the blues produced its first superstar, Bessie Smith.
0:13:41 > 0:13:44A dark brown woman from Chattanooga Tennessee,
0:13:44 > 0:13:48she was a veteran of ten years touring with minstrel shows.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52# Some people call me a hobo
0:13:52 > 0:13:55# Some call me a bum
0:13:55 > 0:13:57# Nobody knows my name
0:13:57 > 0:14:00# Nobody knows what I've done... #
0:14:02 > 0:14:07Bessie Smith was talking about the woes of life with women
0:14:07 > 0:14:10and that's probably why she was so popular.
0:14:10 > 0:14:14She talked about domestic violence, which is what we call it now.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16She talked about even fighting back.
0:14:16 > 0:14:18Come on out. You're gonna move.
0:14:18 > 0:14:23Don't you hit me. Now wait a minute there! Grab the woman.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28Emerging from a dirt poor background,
0:14:28 > 0:14:31Bessie Smith at her peak commanded 2,000-a-week
0:14:31 > 0:14:32for her live performances.
0:14:32 > 0:14:36# Woke my baby
0:14:36 > 0:14:40# He's done left this town... #
0:14:43 > 0:14:47Bessie Smith lives the blues, especially those sexual songs,
0:14:47 > 0:14:50because she had a reputation and she lived up to it.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54One of my favourites is Sugar in My Bowl, you know.
0:14:54 > 0:14:58# I need a little sugar in my bowl
0:14:58 > 0:15:01# I need a little hot dog on my roll
0:15:01 > 0:15:05# I could stand some loving for so bad
0:15:05 > 0:15:09# I feel so funny I feel so sad... #
0:15:09 > 0:15:14You know, it's just something to entice.
0:15:14 > 0:15:17You know, you're going to listen to things that entice you.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20You're going to eat food that entices you, you know.
0:15:20 > 0:15:23Why not have a little spiciness in the music?
0:15:30 > 0:15:34The blues was black music making a lot of money for its superstars,
0:15:34 > 0:15:37but the structure of the music came out of work songs and churches.
0:15:38 > 0:15:43If it wasn't for Cavalry, where I would be?
0:15:43 > 0:15:45Yeah! Yeah!
0:15:45 > 0:15:47The call and response between the preacher
0:15:47 > 0:15:51and the congregation came ultimately from Africa.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55In tribal music, one singer sang a line and the others sang it back.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59- Oh a hill called Cavalry. - Yeah!
0:15:59 > 0:16:03In the blues, the second voice became an instrumental voice.
0:16:03 > 0:16:07- Y'all praying with me?- Yeah! - Y'all praying with me?- Yeah!
0:16:07 > 0:16:11The call and response, when you sing the blues,
0:16:11 > 0:16:17you say a word, a lyric, whatever and then you play behind that, you know.
0:16:17 > 0:16:21For instance, I said, "Thank you, sir." Duh, duh, duh.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23You know, "Thank you, sir." Duh, duh, duh. You know.
0:16:23 > 0:16:26- At Cavalry.- At Cavalry.
0:16:26 > 0:16:29We hear... the words.
0:16:29 > 0:16:31Yeah!
0:16:31 > 0:16:34The call and response, you can go back to early Africa,
0:16:34 > 0:16:39and it's usually based on a form of people returning from a hunt,
0:16:39 > 0:16:42saying, "I caught this blah, blah, blah."
0:16:42 > 0:16:45And the people say, "Yeah, you sure you caught that."
0:16:45 > 0:16:49It's acknowledgement and confirmation.
0:16:49 > 0:16:51You know, "Did you hear that?" "Yes, I heard that."
0:16:51 > 0:16:54"What did I say?" "This is what you said." "What does it mean?"
0:16:54 > 0:16:55"It means this."
0:16:55 > 0:16:59- We're going to show them on a hill called Calvary.- Yeah!
0:17:01 > 0:17:04Religion spoke of the life to come,
0:17:04 > 0:17:07but the blues was rooted in the here and now.
0:17:10 > 0:17:14# I hate to see
0:17:14 > 0:17:18# The evening sun go down... #
0:17:26 > 0:17:29The music evolved into the 12-bar blues,
0:17:29 > 0:17:31turning sadness into stoicism
0:17:31 > 0:17:34and misfortune into humour.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38The blues is definitely more than just a sadness.
0:17:38 > 0:17:40Because basically a blues, especially
0:17:40 > 0:17:43if you deal with the 12-bar, it's set up like a joke.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45You know, you repeat the line twice,
0:17:45 > 0:17:47then you've got the punch line at the end.
0:17:47 > 0:17:49"I've got a man that treats me like a rat.
0:17:49 > 0:17:51"I've got a man that treats me like a rat.
0:17:51 > 0:17:54"He gets me so worried I don't know where I'm at."
0:17:54 > 0:17:56It's a happy music, it truly is.
0:17:56 > 0:18:02It's just that some of the subject matter of the blues
0:18:02 > 0:18:05sometimes had that sad feeling,
0:18:05 > 0:18:09but truly, it is not a sad music.
0:18:09 > 0:18:12VINTAGE BLUES RECORDING
0:18:18 > 0:18:21# When the blues come and take me... #
0:18:25 > 0:18:29In 1926, race records got into a new market and a new type of southern
0:18:29 > 0:18:35solo artist, Blind Lemon Jefferson, a street singer from Texas.
0:18:35 > 0:18:38His high lonesome voice and solitary guitar sounded like another
0:18:38 > 0:18:42world from the Vaudeville women who had dominated blues recordings.
0:18:46 > 0:18:48It was a different kind of blues.
0:18:48 > 0:18:52It's one-on-one. A person is just kind of howlin' at the moon.
0:18:52 > 0:18:55There's no ulterior motive
0:18:55 > 0:18:59for a cat to do what he does
0:18:59 > 0:19:04because he's expressin' his or her soul to the universe.
0:19:04 > 0:19:06# You're so good lookin'... #
0:19:10 > 0:19:13Blind Lemon Jefferson may have sounded like a voice
0:19:13 > 0:19:16howling at the moon, but he was backed by a business plan.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19Paramount Records employed black producer Jay Mayo Williams
0:19:19 > 0:19:22to run their race records division.
0:19:22 > 0:19:26In his catalogue, Williams appealed to his customers, asking
0:19:26 > 0:19:28if they could recommend any new blues talent.
0:19:30 > 0:19:34And, by God, someone working in a record store in Dallas wrote
0:19:34 > 0:19:37to Paramount Records and said there's this guy
0:19:37 > 0:19:41plays down by the tracks here, who gets these huge crowds
0:19:41 > 0:19:43and if we had a record of him we could sell a bunch of them.
0:19:43 > 0:19:45And that was Blind Lemon Jefferson
0:19:45 > 0:19:48and the record company thought he sounded terrible,
0:19:48 > 0:19:52but they gave it a try and, by God, it sold all over the country.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56MUSIC: "One Kind Favor" by Blind Lemon Jefferson
0:19:58 > 0:20:03# Well, there's one kind favour I ask of you... #
0:20:03 > 0:20:07He became a recording star and his success transported him
0:20:07 > 0:20:10far away from singing on street corners in Texas.
0:20:16 > 0:20:20# It's a long, long lane, ain't got no end
0:20:21 > 0:20:25# It's a long, long lane, ain't got no end
0:20:26 > 0:20:31# It's a long, long lane It ain't got no end
0:20:31 > 0:20:35# It's a bad wind that never change... #
0:20:36 > 0:20:40He did all right for himself. They say he owned his own car, he had
0:20:40 > 0:20:45his own chauffeur to drive him around. He was a doozy.
0:20:46 > 0:20:49That's it. I don't know about ragged.
0:20:49 > 0:20:51Some people say he was mighty sophisticated.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55Some people say he had some of the wildest suits you ever seen.
0:20:57 > 0:21:01# Have you ever heard a coffin sound?
0:21:01 > 0:21:06# Have you ever heard a coffin sound? #
0:21:06 > 0:21:09The success of Blind Lemon Jefferson gave birth to a new
0:21:09 > 0:21:13style of the blues, as if the vagrant with a guitar
0:21:13 > 0:21:16heard by WC Handy at the railroad station had come back to life.
0:21:16 > 0:21:20But this time he was selling a lot of records.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23THEY SING TOGETHER
0:21:26 > 0:21:28All over the south, the songsters were auditioning.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35They were street musicians with a big repertory of songs,
0:21:35 > 0:21:38but the record companies wanted just one thing.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41The reason these fellows got pressed so hard into the blues is
0:21:41 > 0:21:44because the recording companies found out that blues was big
0:21:44 > 0:21:49business, so all these musicians who'd run around singing pop
0:21:49 > 0:21:54songs and ballads of the day end up writing a bunch of blueses.
0:21:54 > 0:21:57HE SINGS
0:22:01 > 0:22:03The record company would simply go to the
0:22:03 > 0:22:06songsters and they would go to the south, go to Atlanta.
0:22:06 > 0:22:09They would just say, "Everybody come who wants to sing for us."
0:22:09 > 0:22:12They'd get a hotel, everyone would stay four or five people to
0:22:12 > 0:22:15a room, they would go and hear the songs.
0:22:15 > 0:22:18They would pick the blues and nothing else.
0:22:26 > 0:22:28There was one region that supplied spectacular blues
0:22:28 > 0:22:30talent for this southern market.
0:22:30 > 0:22:33The Mississippi Delta was a flat area
0:22:33 > 0:22:36formed by the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers.
0:22:37 > 0:22:41# I'd rather be the Devil... #
0:22:48 > 0:22:50It was amazingly fertile soil for cotton
0:22:50 > 0:22:53and it proved equally fertile for music.
0:22:56 > 0:22:58But this was no ancient landscape
0:22:58 > 0:23:01of big plantations filled with former slaves.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04There was virtually nobody in the Mississippi Delta
0:23:04 > 0:23:08until quite late because it was flooded.
0:23:08 > 0:23:10They had to build the levees on the Mississippi river.
0:23:10 > 0:23:12You needed the army corps of engineers
0:23:12 > 0:23:14in order to get the modern Deltas.
0:23:19 > 0:23:21And what that meant was the population
0:23:21 > 0:23:23that was there at the beginning
0:23:23 > 0:23:27of the 20th century when blues was happening was very, very young.
0:23:31 > 0:23:34In the Delta everybody was ready to get into the new style, which
0:23:34 > 0:23:37was blues, and so it becomes this huge blues centre,
0:23:37 > 0:23:41not because it's ancient, but for exactly the opposite reason.
0:23:44 > 0:23:47VINTAGE BLUES MUSIC
0:24:01 > 0:24:03Will Dockery's farm was hacked out of the wilderness
0:24:03 > 0:24:07in the 1890's to become one of the biggest plantations in the Delta.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12When Mr Will first got here there were bears and panthers, er,
0:24:12 > 0:24:15and the whole place was covered in woods.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19And so he set about to clear it, and he needed help, and so that's
0:24:19 > 0:24:23how he got so many people to come here cos he realised that these
0:24:23 > 0:24:27thousands of acres that he wanted to clear needed lots of helpers.
0:24:39 > 0:24:43By 1920, there were more than 2,000 workers living on Dockery.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47It was like a small town, a town which needed
0:24:47 > 0:24:49entertaining on a Saturday night.
0:24:49 > 0:24:51Well, once you had this commissary situation
0:24:51 > 0:24:54and people standing out here in front of it being paid on Saturday
0:24:54 > 0:24:57afternoon, it was the perfect place for these blues singers to come.
0:25:05 > 0:25:09The greatest entertainer based at Dockery was Charlie Patton,
0:25:09 > 0:25:11the father of the Delta blues.
0:25:11 > 0:25:15Patton sang at the top of his voice.
0:25:15 > 0:25:18He liked to clown, throw the guitar behind his head.
0:25:18 > 0:25:20He liked to talk to people in the audience,
0:25:20 > 0:25:23but he was a performer. He was an entertainer.
0:25:26 > 0:25:30# She's tryin' to keep it here
0:25:32 > 0:25:35# My rudder got sucked in
0:25:35 > 0:25:39# She's tryin' to keep it here... #
0:25:50 > 0:25:54He had a lot of the extremes. He had a lot of the hard lives
0:25:54 > 0:25:57and he had a lot of women.
0:25:57 > 0:26:03He played... Every blues man gets a little but he had a lot!
0:26:05 > 0:26:11# But I got something to find them something with... #
0:26:15 > 0:26:18He had him a rough wife and they lived a rough life,
0:26:18 > 0:26:21and that's what killed him in his 40's...
0:26:23 > 0:26:25And that's what almost got him killed
0:26:25 > 0:26:28a few times before that, I'd wager!
0:26:29 > 0:26:32VINTAGE BLUES RECORDING
0:26:39 > 0:26:43The blues singers travelled the south and performed on isolated
0:26:43 > 0:26:48plantations, but talent scouts connected them to recording studios.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51The most important venue was a furniture store
0:26:51 > 0:26:55in Jackson, Mississippi, owned by a white man, HC Speir.
0:26:57 > 0:27:00Well, really he's the godfather of Delta blues.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04He is to Delta blues and Mississippi blues what Sam Phillips was
0:27:04 > 0:27:08to rock and roll with his Sun label in the 1950's.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11# Will you kill a man? Yes, I will... #
0:27:14 > 0:27:16Gayle Dean Wardlow tracked down HC Speir
0:27:16 > 0:27:19and interviewed him before his death.
0:27:19 > 0:27:22This is HC Speir, Jackson, Mississippi.
0:27:22 > 0:27:28By 1926, I became a talent scout through all the southern states.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32Well, he would walk up when he was on the streets
0:27:32 > 0:27:34and listen to a musician play.
0:27:34 > 0:27:36He was looking for four original songs.
0:27:36 > 0:27:39The reason many bluesmen never got recorded is
0:27:39 > 0:27:41they didn't have enough original material.
0:27:41 > 0:27:45VINTAGE BLUES RECORDING
0:27:51 > 0:27:53Speir told tales of drunken blues singers
0:27:53 > 0:27:57and bootleg liquor that fuelled Saturday night parties.
0:27:58 > 0:28:01People came to drink and they came to dance
0:28:01 > 0:28:03and they were drinking moonshine.
0:28:03 > 0:28:04And, you know, some of this
0:28:04 > 0:28:08moonshine was made through lead radiators, so I mean it had
0:28:08 > 0:28:11a high lead content, but there was always booze to be found at a party.
0:28:19 > 0:28:23HC Speir said the bluesman, he said he don't fit.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26He said he got to have a drink before he can make a record
0:28:26 > 0:28:31and he smells a little bit, but he says they're great guitar players.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39He said the Delta blues was kind of like the meat barrel -
0:28:39 > 0:28:42it smells a little bit. And someone like Bessie Smith,
0:28:42 > 0:28:46the city singers, they had dolled it up and put perfume on their blues.
0:28:57 > 0:28:59Speir got a letter from Charlie Patton in the Delta
0:28:59 > 0:29:03and basically Patton said, "I think I'm as good as anyone who's
0:29:03 > 0:29:06"been recorded and I would like to audition for you."
0:29:07 > 0:29:09Speir got Patton a record contract.
0:29:09 > 0:29:13Patton was good. Patton was one of the best talents I ever had
0:29:13 > 0:29:16and he was one of the best sellers, too, on record.
0:29:17 > 0:29:19His records made him famous
0:29:19 > 0:29:22and he passed on his tips to the next generation.
0:29:22 > 0:29:26I done started to make records, I was ploughing,
0:29:26 > 0:29:29ploughing on the plantation,
0:29:29 > 0:29:34and a man come through picking the guitar called Charlie Patton,
0:29:34 > 0:29:36and I liked his sounds.
0:29:36 > 0:29:40And so, every night that I'd get off of work,
0:29:40 > 0:29:44I'd go to his house and he'd learn me how to pick the guitar,
0:29:44 > 0:29:46so I got good with it.
0:29:47 > 0:29:51For the musicians who started life on these plantations,
0:29:51 > 0:29:54Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, BB King and many more,
0:29:54 > 0:29:56the blues offered a way out.
0:29:56 > 0:30:00Excuse me. These guys never picked cotton in their life,
0:30:00 > 0:30:03that's why they're playing the blues, you know,
0:30:03 > 0:30:06to get out of the cotton fields, they were playing.
0:30:07 > 0:30:10The black families working in these cotton fields were share
0:30:10 > 0:30:14croppers and for many, it was a modernised form of slavery.
0:30:22 > 0:30:27# Cos it's harder than ever been before... #
0:30:28 > 0:30:31Mississippi was the poorest state in the Union.
0:30:31 > 0:30:36Segregation was total and the white man's word was the rule of law.
0:30:37 > 0:30:40A white shop keeper like HC Speir
0:30:40 > 0:30:44understood why this was fertile soil for the blues.
0:30:44 > 0:30:46You take the Negro.
0:30:46 > 0:30:51For 100 years, he's been deprived of so many privileges.
0:30:51 > 0:30:56They could get into the fields and become more satisfied with themselves
0:30:56 > 0:30:58by singing, you understand.
0:30:58 > 0:31:02It was singing off something that has happened to them.
0:31:02 > 0:31:06A white man would take him and keep him for a week or two and not pay
0:31:06 > 0:31:09him anything, and even maybe kill one or two now and then.
0:31:09 > 0:31:12BELL TOLLS
0:31:15 > 0:31:18It isn't what we hear. It's what we don't hear.
0:31:18 > 0:31:21What we don't hear in the blues is the real reason for the blues -
0:31:21 > 0:31:24the segregation and the discrimination.
0:31:24 > 0:31:27The control was total.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31# Sing this song and I ain't gonna sing no more... #
0:31:32 > 0:31:38Well, to me, the blues is the expression where a people
0:31:38 > 0:31:40couldn't express themselves.
0:31:40 > 0:31:44Those riffs and those songs came off of the expression of not being
0:31:44 > 0:31:48able to say to their slave master vocally that "I don't like this".
0:31:50 > 0:31:54# Down 61 Highway
0:31:54 > 0:31:58# It be the only road I know... #
0:31:59 > 0:32:02What is the cause of we being on the Highway 61?
0:32:02 > 0:32:08129 women and children here starving
0:32:08 > 0:32:13and suffering, but we, who have the bite, are dividing with them.
0:32:17 > 0:32:21Thousands of black people began to vote with their feet,
0:32:21 > 0:32:25leaving poverty in the south for jobs in the north.
0:32:25 > 0:32:28Their numbers were boosted by the Wall Street crash in 1929
0:32:28 > 0:32:30and the depression that followed.
0:32:32 > 0:32:35It signalled hard times for the music industry.
0:32:35 > 0:32:39Sales of records slumped and the blues recording sessions dried up.
0:32:39 > 0:32:42# Lordy, some folks sat down
0:32:42 > 0:32:46# Greyhound busses don't run. #
0:32:47 > 0:32:51Delta bluesmen like Son House and Skip James
0:32:51 > 0:32:53made records that were commercial flops.
0:32:53 > 0:32:56# I'm so tired of here
0:32:56 > 0:32:57# So tired of New Orleans
0:32:57 > 0:33:00# I'm so tired of... #
0:33:00 > 0:33:02Their music would lie buried like a time capsule.
0:33:07 > 0:33:10But in the 1960's, they would be rediscovered
0:33:10 > 0:33:13and acclaimed as masters of the Delta blues by a young white
0:33:13 > 0:33:17audience who adopted the blues as their own.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21# If that don't settle my drunken spree
0:33:21 > 0:33:25# I'll never get drunk again... #
0:33:25 > 0:33:27The path that led these young white people to the
0:33:27 > 0:33:31blues began with a new kind of record scout driving south -
0:33:31 > 0:33:32the folklorist.
0:33:32 > 0:33:36# Be my woman, girl, I'll
0:33:36 > 0:33:39# Be your man...
0:33:39 > 0:33:41# Be my woman... #
0:33:41 > 0:33:44The only white people so far involved in the blues had
0:33:44 > 0:33:47been record manufacturers looking for hits.
0:33:49 > 0:33:52But the folklorists were looking for music they wanted to preserve.
0:33:56 > 0:33:58THEY SING
0:33:58 > 0:34:00John Lomax had grown up in Texas
0:34:00 > 0:34:04and had a long-standing love of folk music.
0:34:04 > 0:34:08# His wife and his sister too... #
0:34:08 > 0:34:12In 1933, he and his son, Alan, received a grant
0:34:12 > 0:34:15from the Library of Congress to motor through the south,
0:34:15 > 0:34:19visiting big penitentiaries to make recordings.
0:34:19 > 0:34:24My son and I conceived the idea this summer that the best way
0:34:24 > 0:34:28to get real Negro singing in the Negro idiom was to find
0:34:28 > 0:34:32the Negro who had the least contact with the whites.
0:34:32 > 0:34:35People have written that my grandfather
0:34:35 > 0:34:38was obsessed with the prisons
0:34:38 > 0:34:41and he wanted to capture something isolated.
0:34:41 > 0:34:44But he wanted to find the oldest material,
0:34:44 > 0:34:47which is a very important thing to do.
0:34:47 > 0:34:51It's like archaeology. It was very scientific.
0:34:51 > 0:34:54THEY SING
0:35:03 > 0:35:07Prisons in the south were huge farms, which were run for profit.
0:35:14 > 0:35:16I think you could almost call it
0:35:16 > 0:35:19an extension of slavery in the 20th century.
0:35:19 > 0:35:23And the men had to work from sun up to sun down what they called
0:35:23 > 0:35:25"from cane to caint",
0:35:25 > 0:35:27from when you can't see in the morning until when you
0:35:27 > 0:35:32can't see in the night. You know, the whole of the day in unbearable heat.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36ALL SING TOGETHER
0:35:45 > 0:35:49The music sung by black prisoners inspired an extraordinary
0:35:49 > 0:35:51passion in the young Alan Lomax.
0:35:51 > 0:35:54He would spend the rest of his life recording music
0:35:54 > 0:35:58created by people at the bottom of society.
0:35:58 > 0:36:01I had heard all the symphonies there were,
0:36:01 > 0:36:04and the chamber music and the best jazz,
0:36:04 > 0:36:07and I said, "This is the greatest music."
0:36:07 > 0:36:12There were 50 black men, who were working under the whip and the gun,
0:36:12 > 0:36:17and they had the soul to make the most wonderful song I'd ever heard.
0:36:21 > 0:36:25The most spectacular discovery the Lomaxes made in jail was
0:36:25 > 0:36:30a 45-year-old prisoner, Huddie Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly.
0:36:30 > 0:36:33HE SINGS SOMBRELY
0:36:37 > 0:36:39He was a convicted murderer
0:36:39 > 0:36:42and had a fantastic repertory of blues and ballads.
0:36:44 > 0:36:46# Take this hammer
0:36:46 > 0:36:48# Haaa!
0:36:48 > 0:36:50# If he asks you
0:36:50 > 0:36:51# Haaa... #
0:36:56 > 0:36:58He had a big, penetrating voice.
0:36:58 > 0:37:03He was a dynamic presence, almost frightening to some people.
0:37:03 > 0:37:05He was, in one sense, a great performer,
0:37:05 > 0:37:07you knew it from the second you saw him.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10But another way you thought, "This guy is beyond performance."
0:37:10 > 0:37:17# My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
0:37:17 > 0:37:22# Tell me where did you sleep last night. #
0:37:22 > 0:37:26When Lead Belly got out of jail and met the media it became
0:37:26 > 0:37:30clear how much American journalists enjoyed writing about bad black men.
0:37:30 > 0:37:33Life Magazine published a profile,
0:37:33 > 0:37:36"Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel".
0:37:36 > 0:37:38He was called a "Murderous Minstrel",
0:37:38 > 0:37:40a "Sweet singer of the swamplands
0:37:40 > 0:37:44"here to do a few tunes between homicides".
0:37:44 > 0:37:48# I'm going where the cold wind blows... #
0:37:50 > 0:37:52This narrative had been shaped by reporters
0:37:52 > 0:37:56and the like who wanted to see, number one, a murderer who was
0:37:56 > 0:37:59out walking around and a murderer who sang songs that people
0:37:59 > 0:38:01enjoyed, which was, you know, it's priceless.
0:38:01 > 0:38:07# My girl, my girl Don't you lie to me... #
0:38:07 > 0:38:12In February, 1935, John Lomax took Lead Belly to a mansion
0:38:12 > 0:38:17in Connecticut where a newsreel crew staged and filmed a re-construction
0:38:17 > 0:38:21of Lead Belly's journey from singing convict to grateful performer.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24Lead Belly, what are you doing here?
0:38:24 > 0:38:26Boss, I've come here to be your man.
0:38:26 > 0:38:29I've come here to work for you the rest of my life.
0:38:29 > 0:38:34It is scripted in kind of cringing detail to
0:38:34 > 0:38:39show Lead Belly as a servile,
0:38:39 > 0:38:42compliant...
0:38:42 > 0:38:45plantation negro
0:38:45 > 0:38:50who John Lomax shepherds out of confinement.
0:38:50 > 0:38:52Thank you sir, boss.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55I'll drive you all over the United States.
0:38:55 > 0:38:57I'll tie your shoestrings for you
0:38:57 > 0:38:59and you won't have to tie your shoestrings
0:38:59 > 0:39:00as long as I work for you.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03Later, John Lomax was embarrassed by this newsreel,
0:39:03 > 0:39:05while Lead Belly was angry because he didn't get paid.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08Thank you, sir boss. Thank you, sir.
0:39:08 > 0:39:11Despite growing tension between them, Lead Belly performed
0:39:11 > 0:39:15with Lomax at Harvard University and literary conferences.
0:39:16 > 0:39:21He got a new audience that was unexpected
0:39:21 > 0:39:26and that was educated, middle class whites who were very liberal.
0:39:26 > 0:39:29He didn't really have an audience among blacks.
0:39:32 > 0:39:35Lead Belly was never a success with black audiences, and white society
0:39:35 > 0:39:39saw him as wild-eyed and dangerous, an embodiment of his race.
0:39:39 > 0:39:43However Lead Belly did find support in left wing circles.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47We do not preach the sure hope of socialism in the lives
0:39:47 > 0:39:50of these young comrades of ours...
0:39:51 > 0:39:54As the blues entered white liberal society,
0:39:54 > 0:39:57the music could now be heard in the context of civil rights.
0:39:58 > 0:40:00The blues were getting political.
0:40:01 > 0:40:04# I want all the coloured people to listen to me
0:40:04 > 0:40:07# Don't ever try to get a home in Washington DC
0:40:07 > 0:40:09# Cos it's a bourgeois town
0:40:09 > 0:40:11# Oooh, it's a bourgeois town
0:40:13 > 0:40:17# I got the bourgeois blues and I'm sure gonna spread the news... #
0:40:17 > 0:40:20The only support for blacks in the south
0:40:20 > 0:40:25in the '30s was the Communist Party, so there was a great symbiosis
0:40:25 > 0:40:28between the communists and this black.
0:40:28 > 0:40:31And in 1936, a meeting of the American Communist Party, they did
0:40:31 > 0:40:38officially recognise the blues as the voice of the proletarian black.
0:40:38 > 0:40:40UPBEAT BLUES MUSIC
0:40:46 > 0:40:50But proletarian black record buyers were dancing to a different beat.
0:40:50 > 0:40:54The blues records that dominated the Harlem hit parade of the 1930's
0:40:54 > 0:40:56were by the Count Basie Orchestra.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00# Don't the moon look lonesome shining through the trees?
0:41:02 > 0:41:07# Don't the moon look lonesome shining through the trees?
0:41:07 > 0:41:13# Don't your house look lonesome when your baby pack up to leave? #
0:41:13 > 0:41:16You say to dance you must have a beat.
0:41:16 > 0:41:19Every beat you put your foot down on a beat
0:41:19 > 0:41:21and that's what Basie does for you.
0:41:21 > 0:41:25You can dance to Basie, it don't matter what he plays, any sound.
0:41:25 > 0:41:29And that's why dah-dah,
0:41:29 > 0:41:31dah-dah, dah-dah...
0:41:31 > 0:41:33That's so pronounced you can't miss it!
0:41:35 > 0:41:38# You can't love me, baby, and treat me that way... #
0:41:41 > 0:41:44Count Basie's band combined the blues sound of Bessie Smith
0:41:44 > 0:41:46with the latest developments in swing.
0:41:46 > 0:41:49It was a very successful formula.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53He took an eight-bar phrase, made it a 12-bar phrase
0:41:53 > 0:41:55and now you got the blues.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59And he had 16 guys who can shout it.
0:41:59 > 0:42:01Oh, God, they were great!
0:42:01 > 0:42:03# In the evening
0:42:03 > 0:42:08# In the evening
0:42:08 > 0:42:11# Mama, when the sun goes down... #
0:42:11 > 0:42:14The blues singers were getting more sophisticated.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16The new style of blues crooners,
0:42:16 > 0:42:19like Leroy Carr, were no longer shouting the blues.
0:42:19 > 0:42:23We have electrical recording - simple as that.
0:42:23 > 0:42:27You didn't need to shout, so these singers could be more intimate.
0:42:27 > 0:42:31There's another innovation comes at the same time - radio.
0:42:31 > 0:42:33So, an intimate voice,
0:42:33 > 0:42:38singing softly in a radio late at night - irresistible.
0:42:38 > 0:42:42# Well, it's hard to tell Hard to tell
0:42:42 > 0:42:44# Which one will treat you the best
0:42:44 > 0:42:48# When the sun goes down... #
0:42:48 > 0:42:51This melody was not lost on a young man in Mississippi.
0:42:51 > 0:42:55# Well, it's hard to tell It's hard to tell
0:42:55 > 0:42:58# When all your love's in vain
0:42:58 > 0:43:01# All your love's in vain... #
0:43:01 > 0:43:05In 1936, a 25-year-old walked into HC Speir's
0:43:05 > 0:43:10store in Jackson, Mississippi - his name was Robert Johnson.
0:43:10 > 0:43:12He had a bunch of songs
0:43:12 > 0:43:14and he wanted an audition to make some records.
0:43:14 > 0:43:17# Well, I felt lonesome I was lonesome
0:43:17 > 0:43:21# And I could not help but cry
0:43:21 > 0:43:23# All my love's in vain... #
0:43:23 > 0:43:27Robert Johnson really used his ears and he listened to everything
0:43:27 > 0:43:29that was going on around him.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32And he took in everything that was
0:43:32 > 0:43:35goin' on around him, all the popular musicians,
0:43:35 > 0:43:39he took them off other instruments and arranged them for his instrument.
0:43:39 > 0:43:44He's the first person we have from the blues world who had heard
0:43:44 > 0:43:48all the blues records and, as a result,
0:43:48 > 0:43:52he's the first person who doesn't just play a style from his place.
0:43:52 > 0:43:57He's like already this compendium of the greatest blues
0:43:57 > 0:44:01styles of the '20s and early '30s, and he's putting it all together.
0:44:07 > 0:44:10# I woke up this morning
0:44:10 > 0:44:14# Looking round for my shoes... #
0:44:14 > 0:44:18In his short lifetime, Robert Johnson recorded 29 songs.
0:44:18 > 0:44:21He remained almost totally unknown.
0:44:24 > 0:44:27But beginning in the 1960's, Johnson's songs would see him
0:44:27 > 0:44:31acclaimed as, "King of the Delta Blues Singers".
0:44:31 > 0:44:36# I got these old walking blues... #
0:44:36 > 0:44:41I think he brought the idea of writing them yourself
0:44:41 > 0:44:45and playing them yourself to a new peak, you know, where it
0:44:45 > 0:44:49became important that you were actually singing your own songs.
0:44:52 > 0:44:54# I've been mistreated
0:44:54 > 0:44:58# And I don't mind dying
0:45:01 > 0:45:02# Well... #
0:45:02 > 0:45:05His guitar playing is on the virtuoso scale.
0:45:05 > 0:45:08This is... You're listening to an orchestra.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11You're not listening to one guy - this is impossible.
0:45:28 > 0:45:32In New York City, Robert Johnson had one very important fan.
0:45:35 > 0:45:39John Hammond was a record producer from a wealthy background who
0:45:39 > 0:45:41combined left wing politics,
0:45:41 > 0:45:45man-about-town sophistication with a very discerning ear.
0:45:47 > 0:45:52He discovered and encouraged Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan.
0:45:54 > 0:45:57Hammond described Johnson as "the greatest Negro blues singer
0:45:57 > 0:46:01"who has cropped up in recent years", in a Communist magazine.
0:46:01 > 0:46:04He asked the magazine to sponsor a concert he was planning,
0:46:04 > 0:46:08which would showcase the rich heritage of black music.
0:46:10 > 0:46:13I'm sure John had never bothered to join anything,
0:46:13 > 0:46:17but he didn't mind contributing to the Communist Party
0:46:17 > 0:46:21if they would help make it possible to have this concert.
0:46:24 > 0:46:27Hammond sent scouts down south to locate Robert Johnson,
0:46:27 > 0:46:29but they returned with the news that Johnson had died
0:46:29 > 0:46:31in mysterious circumstances.
0:46:35 > 0:46:37Nevertheless, the show went on.
0:46:42 > 0:46:46In December of 1938, John Hammond put on a concert here at
0:46:46 > 0:46:51Carnegie Hall, the most prestigious classical music venue in New York.
0:46:51 > 0:46:53He called it, From Spirituals to Swing
0:46:53 > 0:46:56and the idea was that he was taking swing music,
0:46:56 > 0:47:01which everyone knew as a pop music, and trying to show its depth,
0:47:01 > 0:47:05put it in context of spirituals, of blues, of African music,
0:47:05 > 0:47:08and suggest that this was serious art.
0:47:08 > 0:47:11This was something they should take with the same seriousness
0:47:11 > 0:47:13as European classical music.
0:47:15 > 0:47:17UPTEMPO BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:47:26 > 0:47:29Hammond began the show by playing two Robert Johnson records.
0:47:37 > 0:47:41Then, as a substitute, he brought on another blues singer -
0:47:41 > 0:47:42Big Bill Broonzy.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46# Way down yonder in New Orleans
0:47:46 > 0:47:49# Looking for a girl that I had never seen... #
0:47:51 > 0:47:53Broonzy was based in Chicago.
0:47:53 > 0:47:56He had released over 100 records under his own name.
0:47:56 > 0:48:00He wore sharp suits and played the latest musical styles,
0:48:00 > 0:48:03but because Hammond was in love with the idea the blues came from the
0:48:03 > 0:48:07primitive countryside, he presented Broonzy as a simple farmhand.
0:48:11 > 0:48:14Hammond wrote, "Big Bill Broonzy was prevailed
0:48:14 > 0:48:18"upon to leave his Arkansas farm and mule,
0:48:18 > 0:48:20"and make his very first trek to the big city to
0:48:20 > 0:48:23"appear before a predominantly white audience."
0:48:25 > 0:48:28He was completely a Chicago musician,
0:48:28 > 0:48:34but his job in that concert was to represent the rural blues,
0:48:34 > 0:48:37and so they turned him into that.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40And Big Bill Broonzy was no fool and realised that that was a good
0:48:40 > 0:48:46part to play and kept playing it in New York, in London, in Paris.
0:48:46 > 0:48:50# I got the key to the highway
0:48:51 > 0:48:55# And I'm bound to go... #
0:48:55 > 0:48:57# Hey
0:48:57 > 0:48:59# Hey-hey
0:48:59 > 0:49:02# Hey, Lord, Lordy, Lord
0:49:02 > 0:49:05# Hey, Lord, Lord, Lord... #
0:49:06 > 0:49:08The blues was being re-defined.
0:49:08 > 0:49:11It was no longer just black pop music.
0:49:11 > 0:49:16It was now folk art from the era before records and radio.
0:49:16 > 0:49:19Its new middle class white audience heard the blues as music
0:49:19 > 0:49:22endangered by the modern world.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26ARCHIVE: Musicians and sociologists can now study American folk songs
0:49:26 > 0:49:29that have never been transcribed and would otherwise be lost
0:49:29 > 0:49:33if the Library officials did not go into the field to record
0:49:33 > 0:49:35unknown primitive singers.
0:49:36 > 0:49:42In 1941, John Lomax's son, Alan, was at the Archive of Folk Song
0:49:42 > 0:49:46at the Library of Congress and he was heading back into the field.
0:49:46 > 0:49:48# It ain't what you do It's the way that you do it
0:49:48 > 0:49:51# It ain't what you do It's the way that you do it
0:49:51 > 0:49:55# It ain't what you do It's the way that you do it
0:49:55 > 0:49:57# That's what gets results... #
0:49:57 > 0:50:00Working with a team of black academics, Lomax set out to
0:50:00 > 0:50:03examine every aspect of music in the Mississippi Delta.
0:50:05 > 0:50:09They visited juke joints to discover what the locals were listening to.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12It wasn't Robert Johnson's blues but recordings by urban,
0:50:12 > 0:50:14black hit makers.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18In Lomax's notes there's a wonderful
0:50:18 > 0:50:23account of late one night he's wandering around,
0:50:23 > 0:50:25stumbles across
0:50:25 > 0:50:30a juke joint on the edge of a cotton field and opens the door to find the
0:50:30 > 0:50:35whole place lit up and everybody in there jitterbugging to Fats Waller.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38# It ain't what you do It's the way that you do it
0:50:38 > 0:50:42# It ain't what you play It's the way that you play it... #
0:50:42 > 0:50:44This could have been any place.
0:50:47 > 0:50:51In his field trip through the Delta, Lomax recorded one man who
0:50:51 > 0:50:56was to become a blues legend - a 28-year-old tractor driver,
0:50:56 > 0:51:00McKinley Morganfield, also known as Muddy Waters.
0:51:06 > 0:51:08# Like blowing my horn
0:51:08 > 0:51:14# I woke up this morning and found my little baby gone... #
0:51:14 > 0:51:19Muddy Waters had a profitable sideline distilling illegal liquor,
0:51:19 > 0:51:22so he was suspicious of this white man and his recording equipment.
0:51:22 > 0:51:27Muddy thinks that Alan Lomax is going to bust Muddy for bootlegging
0:51:27 > 0:51:31moonshine and so Muddy doesn't trust this guy as far as he can throw him.
0:51:31 > 0:51:35The way Alan Lomax wins Muddy's trust is Alan, white,
0:51:35 > 0:51:39drinks out of the cup that Muddy has just had a sip out of,
0:51:39 > 0:51:44and Muddy thinks, "Oh, my God. Even the revenue agent wouldn't
0:51:44 > 0:51:47"drink after a black man. This guy must be serious."
0:51:47 > 0:51:49I want to know the facts,
0:51:49 > 0:51:52how you felt and why you felt the way you did.
0:51:52 > 0:51:54That's a very beautiful song.
0:51:54 > 0:51:59Well, I just felt blue and the song fell into my mind,
0:51:59 > 0:52:03and it came to me and I start to singing and went on.
0:52:03 > 0:52:06# I feel mistreated, girl, you know now
0:52:06 > 0:52:09# I don't mind dying...
0:52:18 > 0:52:22# Yeah I've been mistreated, baby, now
0:52:22 > 0:52:25# And I don't mind dying... #
0:52:30 > 0:52:33Alan Lomax would return to the blues all his life,
0:52:33 > 0:52:38but he had an uneasy relationship with its commercial popularity.
0:52:38 > 0:52:40He always felt, of course, that it was
0:52:40 > 0:52:42the music of the people who were singing it.
0:52:42 > 0:52:45It wasn't an industrial music, it wasn't big business music,
0:52:45 > 0:52:48it was actual music that had come from the hearts of people,
0:52:48 > 0:52:50and from the lives they lived.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54Alan did not see the blues as a commercial form of music.
0:52:54 > 0:52:56He was more interested in documenting,
0:52:56 > 0:53:00like, the country-style blues, the early proto blues
0:53:00 > 0:53:04and field hollers and those sorts of things.
0:53:17 > 0:53:21At the same time that Alan Lomax was recording Muddy Waters,
0:53:21 > 0:53:23new media were reaching the Delta.
0:53:23 > 0:53:25The first blues radio programme
0:53:25 > 0:53:28began to broadcast from Helena, Arkansas,
0:53:28 > 0:53:31and they publicised themselves with a touring road show.
0:53:31 > 0:53:34UPTEMPO BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:53:40 > 0:53:42# Ain't that a pity?
0:53:42 > 0:53:45# I declare it's a crying shame... #
0:53:45 > 0:53:50It starts out light as air, white as snow, that's world famous King
0:53:50 > 0:53:53Biscuit Flour, the perfect flour for all your baking needs.
0:53:55 > 0:53:59King Biscuit Time was sponsored by a local flour manufacturer.
0:53:59 > 0:54:00Aimed at black listeners,
0:54:00 > 0:54:03its broadcasts were timed to catch the workers at lunchtime
0:54:03 > 0:54:07on the plantations, including Muddy Waters.
0:54:09 > 0:54:14Muddy used to hear the show on the air every day at 12.15
0:54:14 > 0:54:18and Muddy was out on the farmland listening to the show...
0:54:18 > 0:54:21and as so many others were.
0:54:21 > 0:54:23That's how they knew about it.
0:54:23 > 0:54:27They said, "They should hear our kind of blues. We're the blues artists."
0:54:27 > 0:54:31UPTEMPO BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:54:44 > 0:54:47Muddy Waters was beginning to get gigs at the juke joints
0:54:47 > 0:54:48in the Delta.
0:54:48 > 0:54:53The Blue Front Cafe started in the 1940's in Bentonia, Mississippi.
0:54:55 > 0:54:58SASSY BLUES MUSIC PLAYS
0:55:13 > 0:55:18Juke joint music, drinking, gambling, eating...
0:55:18 > 0:55:20I mean, you name it.
0:55:20 > 0:55:25You'd have people come by, they'd have a harmonica in their pocket,
0:55:25 > 0:55:29a guitar strapped across their back and they would play solo.
0:55:29 > 0:55:31Set a cap or a bucket down in front of them,
0:55:31 > 0:55:34and some of them would contribute, nickels, dimes,
0:55:34 > 0:55:36pennies or whatever, and they'd play for that.
0:55:36 > 0:55:38SASSY BLUES CONTINUES
0:55:56 > 0:55:57CROWD CHEERING
0:56:02 > 0:56:05But blacks were leaving the south in large numbers,
0:56:05 > 0:56:09pushed off the land by new machines on the plantations, and pulled
0:56:09 > 0:56:13towards the north especially Chicago by jobs in the factories.
0:56:15 > 0:56:18The motivation for Muddy Waters to put on his best suit,
0:56:18 > 0:56:21have his picture taken and leave Mississippi
0:56:21 > 0:56:24arrived in the shape of a record sent by Alan Lomax.
0:56:27 > 0:56:30In an evening at the White House devoted to celebrating
0:56:30 > 0:56:35the blues, America's first black President focused on that moment.
0:56:35 > 0:56:40Lomax sent Muddy two pressings from their sessions
0:56:40 > 0:56:43together along with a cheque for 20.
0:56:44 > 0:56:47Later in his life, Muddy recalled what happened next.
0:56:47 > 0:56:50He said, "I carried that record up to the corner
0:56:50 > 0:56:53"and I put it on the juke box.
0:56:53 > 0:56:58"Just played it and played it and said, 'I can do it. 'I can do it.'"
0:57:00 > 0:57:04In many way, that right there is the story of the blues.
0:57:04 > 0:57:08# Well, I feel... #
0:57:09 > 0:57:15Heading for Chicago, Muddy caught the train out of the Delta in 1943.
0:57:21 > 0:57:24# Well, babe, I just can't be satisfied
0:57:24 > 0:57:26# And I just... #
0:57:28 > 0:57:30The trains were segregated.
0:57:30 > 0:57:33Black Americans rode in carriages at the back
0:57:33 > 0:57:35and the journey itself was an education.
0:57:38 > 0:57:41They had a coloured car and a regular car.
0:57:41 > 0:57:43One thing I always remember in the coloured car,
0:57:43 > 0:57:46they left the windows open, so you'd go through the tunnels, you'd
0:57:46 > 0:57:48get all that stuff in your face.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54In terms of learning about
0:57:54 > 0:57:57the real history of this country,
0:57:57 > 0:58:02you know, nothing is sharper than that teaching.
0:58:02 > 0:58:05# Well, I know my little old baby
0:58:05 > 0:58:07# She gonna jump and shout
0:58:07 > 0:58:10# That old train be late, man, and... #
0:58:10 > 0:58:14In Chicago, Muddy plugged his guitar into electricity.
0:58:14 > 0:58:15The music made by Muddy
0:58:15 > 0:58:19and other musicians from the south didn't just change Chicago -
0:58:19 > 0:58:21it changed the world.
0:58:29 > 0:58:32Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd