By Lou Marinoff

In Part One we surveyed the early blues, epicentered in Mississippi, stylized from Texas to Tennessee to Georgia. It morphed into Ragtime, Vaudeville, The Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance. The blues is a “shape-shifter” par excellence: it adapts to any cultural milieu.

How does it do this? For one thing, blues players don’t wear just their hearts on their sleeves: they also wear their souls. Soulfulness touches everyone who still has one.  And the blues is often about luck gone wrong, love gone wrong, life gone wrong. It speaks to everybody in some way.

The next big test for the blues came in the 1940s, with the invention and evolution of electric guitars and amplifiers. This quantum leap from nylon stringed Spanish guitars, played by folk, flamenco and classical artists, and so-called “acoustic” or steel-stringed guitars played by country and folk blues artists, to electric guitars played through amplifiers, was comparable to the quantum leap from harpsichord to piano. Both leaps transformed compositions, performances, recordings, audiences and venues alike. Mix the electric Blues with the burgeoning power of records, radio, and TV, and you get the popular American music that shaped and reflected the 1940s, 50s, 60s and beyond.

1940s

Meet T-Bone Walker, one of the pioneers of electric guitar. His style would influence future blues giants including Buddy Guy, BB King, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. He first recorded “Stormy Monday in the 1940s.

Meet Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel blues artist, called the “Godmother of Rock n Roll”. “That’s All” was her signature adaptation of an old Washington Phillips song, “Denomination Blues”, played on the zither.

Meet Maceo Merriwether, a formatively influential blues pianist. He wrote and recorded “Worried Life Blues” in Chicago, in 1941, accompanied by guitarist Tampa Red. It became a blues classic, covered by Muddy Waters, BB King, John Lee Hooker, and Eric Clapton among others. This historic 8-bar blues is also emblematic of a style that evolved into the “Chicago Blues”.

Baby boomers both heard and heard all about the “Big Band Era” from their parents, who danced and romanced to its music in the 1940s. Glen Miller was a leading figure of that era. He bought the rights to “In the Mood” from Tin Pan Alley composer Joe Garland, who had adapted it from an earlier song by New Orleans jazz-man Wingy Malone, called “The Tar Paper Stomp”. “In the Mood” is a 12-bar-blues, arranged for a brass orchestra. The title was considered risqué at the time, but it foreshadowed the coming baby boom. Glenn Miller served in WW2, and tragically went MIA over the English Channel in 1944. Fortunately, his music lives on.

1950s:

Meet Elmore James, “King of the Slide Guitar”. He recorded Robert Johnson’s song “I believe I’ll dust my broom” in 1951 in Jackson, Mississippi, before bringing it to Chicago, where he helped pioneer the Chicago Blues.
Utilizing the slide on an electric guitar makes the instrument sing, cry and wail.

The 1950s saw the blues blossom into Rock n Roll.  One of the greatest hits of that time was “Hound Dog”, first recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952. It was followed by Elvis’s breakthrough rendition on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956. By the way, Ed Sullivan abhorred Elvis’s gyrations (Ed’s generation called him “Elvis the Pelvis”), and Sullivan could barely tolerate the screaming throngs of star-struck teenage girls.

Hound Dog was originally written for Big Mama by a Jewish team from L.A., Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Elvis bought the rights from Big Mama for only $100. It helped him make millions, but he led a tormented life, abused a cornucopia of addictive drugs, and died at only 42. Big Mama was later asked if she ever regretted selling Elvis those rights, and she replied with perfect aplomb: “At least I can still spend a hundred dollars.”

We’ll get back to Big Mama later.

Now meet Billie Holiday, a legendary jazz singer (1915-1959). The song Blue Moon was written either by the Jewish team of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, or else by Edward Roman, the son of Polish immigrants in upstate New York. That song was so versatile that the 1930s played it as big band and pop, while in later years it became rock n’roll and doo-wop.

Billie holiday’s 1952 bluesey jazz rendition is for many and by far the most compelling, backed up by an all-star jazz band, including Oscar Peterson on piano.

While Robert Johnson was the Godfather of the blues, Chuck Berry was the father of rock n Roll:  he bent the blues into a novel pop-culture shape, and was a primary influence on the early Beatles among many others. One of his many greatest hits was You Can’t Catch Me. While the early blues was about hitching a ride at a crossroads, Berry’s rock n roll was more about road racing the state police on the NJ turnpike. Chuck was also loved for his signature “duckwalk”.

Chuck Berry morphed the blues into something that had instant, widespread and enduring appeal. It translated into Hillbilly country rock, called “Rockabilly”. Meet Carl Perkins, a major exponent of this genre. The Beatles were so infatuated with him that they brought him to London to sit in on their recording of one of his songs. Among his greatest hits was “Blue Suede Shoes”, once again made famous by Elvis.

The most famous rock song of the 1950s, sometimes called the “Declaration of Independence” of Rock and Roll, was undoubtedly “Rock Around the Clock”, recorded in 1955 by Bill Haley and the Comets. It was #1 on the charts for two months, and was written by Max Freedman and James Myers (aka “Jimmy De Knight”), a Jewish team from Philadelphia.

Decades later, it still rocks. But one intangible key to success on the charts is the right song at the right time. Blueberry Hill had made negligible impact in the 1940s, even when recorded by giants like Glen Miller and Louis Armstrong. Fats Domino’s 1956 recording immediately went sky high, reaching #1 on the rhythm & blues charts and #2 on the pop charts. The very day after performing it on the Sullivan Show, the 45 rpm record sold 1 million copies! And this was in the mid-1950s.

In 1959, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald and the immortal Louis Armstrong teamed up to record selections from George Gershwin’s opera, Porgy and Bess. Their rendition of Summertime is haunting.

The last year of that decade, 1960, saw Chubby Checker take a B-side track by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters to global prominence. His version of The Twist is the only song ever to reach #1 on Billboard twice: in 1960, and again in 1962.

The 1950s closed on a decisively blue note: Etta James, called “The Matriarch of the Blues”, recorded “At Last” in Chicago. Like Chuck Berry among other major artists in the emergent Blues Revival, she was produced by the remarkable Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil. As we’ll see, they forged a symbiotic partnership between the Blues and the Jews.

1960s:

This decade of Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, transistor radios, psychedelics, and the pill produced a completely novel counter-culture, in which blues and its many variations attained unprecedented heights.

Meet Buddy Guy, born in Louisiana, a leading exponent of the Chicago the blues sound. His note-bending riffs influenced every generation of blues guitarists to come. An example of his slow blues is Stone Crazy.

Now meet Little Richard, known as the “Architect of Rock and Roll”. He was born Richard Wayne Penniman, in Macon, Georgia. Rock and Roll shook up the world; Little Richard shook up Rock and Roll with his electric personality and ultra-high energy.

The early Beatles were profoundly influenced by Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, and Little Richard, among others.

And just as the Beatles started life as a Rock and Roll band, the Rolling Stones debuted as a Blues Band. Remember Memphis Minnie? Here the Stones’ 1964 version of “Little Red Rooster” was the very first blues song to reach #1 on the British charts.

Now back to the irrepressible Chuck Berry. His 1955 breakthrough hit, Maybelline had Chuck on the move as usual. But instead of road-racing the state police, he was trying to catch up to his girlfriend’s Cadillac at 95 mph.

Back in New York City, a folk-rock revolution joined the blues revival. Meet Dave Van Ronk, “the Mayor of MacDougall Street”. He kept company with Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and other denizens of the 1960s Village. Who could forget his performance with the Red Onion Jazz Band, from way down under in Melbourne, Australia, in their stirring 1963 cover of an eternal Jazz Age classic: CC Rider. Written and first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924, it was covered by Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, and The Animals.

Bob Dylan was unquestionably the leading poetic light of the entire 1960s. Even The Beatles regarded him as inspirational.

Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota, he began in the folk tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, then went electric to the dismay of purist folk fans. Heavily influenced by the blues, in Dylan’s hands it also became a vehicle for social protest at conformist status quos. His 1965 Subterranean Homesick Blues also anticipates a style that would later flourish as Rap.

Now back to Chicago, the epicenter of the 1960’s Blues Revival, and an improbable but remarkable chapter in the ongoing story of the Blues and the Jews. In 1928, two young Jewish brothers from Poland joined their father in Chicago’s Near-West Side urban enclave, known to everyone as “Jew town”. This was purely descriptive, not anti-Semitic: It was simply a fact. Heck, it was also an upgrade! Jews were confined to shtetls and ghettos in the Old Country. In America, they gave us a whole town!

The boys were Lazer and Fizel Czyż, which they Anglicized to Leonard and Philip Chess. While helping their father in his South Side junkyard, they heard gospel blues emanating from the Baptist church across the street. It captivated them, so they decided to go into the music business. This foray became the legendary Chess record label.

In those days the main artery of Jew Town was Maxwell Street, a sprawling open-air market where vendors and shoppers were entertained by street musicians. The Chess brothers swept them into their studios, along with leading club musicians from the South Side, and recorded the veritable “Who’s Who” of 50s and 60s blues artists. Chuck Berry, Etta James, Buddy Guy. BB King and countless other blues legends recorded with Chess.

Meet Muddy Waters, born in Mississippi and rightly called “the father of modern Chicago Blues”. He famously said of the Chess brothers: “I made them rich; they made me famous”. So famous, in fact, that The Rolling Stones idolized him, covered his songs, and even jammed with him, impromptu, on a South Side Stage.

For one of his many classics, “Got My Mojo Working, But It Just Don’t work on You” he was backed by his all-star band, including Otis Spann on piano, and James Cotton on harmonica. Played through a mike and an amp, the harmonica became a surging solo voice, like a saxophone on steroids, described as “blistering”.

This was the very essence of the modern Chicago Blues, an essence that also transcended color. Remember, this was the USA in the mid-sixties. Integration had to be enforced in Southern Schools. But on the South Side of Chicago, the blues was about the soul, not the skin. In fact, combining black and white players did not produce grey; rather, a palette of new and brilliant musical colors.

Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield had both paid their dues in club bands, and had formed close bonds with Muddy Waters and his blues circle. Paul Rothschild, a producer for Elektra, released their maiden album in 1965. And so the Butterfield Blues Band was born.

We’ll revisit Mike Bloomfield in Part Three. The mid-1960s also saw an explosion of rhythm and blues and soul music, “kissing cousins” of blues and rock. The Ford Mustang was introduced in 1965 and became an instant classic car. Wilson Pickett’s Mustang Sally was an instant R&B hit in 1966.

Now meet Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul.” She sold 75 million records worldwide, won 18 Grammys, and was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her 1967 classic, “Respect”, was not only or at all about respect in a relationship: as a political and social activist, Aretha was implicating civil rights and feminism too.

Now back to the Chicago Blues. Willie Dixon was another Mississippi-born blues legend recorded by the Chess Brothers. His song “Spoonful”, later covered by Cream is about being addicted to someone’s love, and what happens when you can’t get a fix.

Now meet yet another Mississippi-born blues legend, Chester Arthur Burnett, aka “Howling Wolf”. His Chess records so impressed The Rolling Stones that they invited him to London to record the now-celebrated “London Sessions”.

Next, meet the King of all modern Mississippi-born bluesmen, the one and only BB King. In 1972, he played at the notorious Sing Sing prison in upstate New York in the wake of the deadly riots at Attica prison. Just prior, King said he feared for his very life. It turned out to be, in his own words, “the best performance he ever gave”.

We’ll hear more from BB King in Part 3. Now meet John Lee Hooker, yet another iconic Mississippi-born bluesman. The movie “Blues Brothers,” filmed in 1979, showcased him in a live performance of his signature song, “Boom, Boom, Boom”, smack dab on Maxwell Street. It also captured and preserved Maxwell Street as it truly was, before urban renewal erased it forever.

That song lives on well into this century, as the Intro to a hit TV series, “NCIS New Orleans”. Aired umpteen times every evening, one hopes that John Lee Hooker’s estate is raking in the royalties.

Back to the late 60s, Big Mama Thornton sang her signature slow blues lament, “Ball and Chain,” on Boston public television backed up by the Buddy Guy Blues Band.

Let’s never forget the unpayable debt that jazz owes the blues. Some pure gold payback by the immortal Oscar Peterson was his encore piece called “Cute”, in which he incorporated Chicago blues, ragtime, honky-tonk, and jazz.

John Lennon once said “If you want to give another name to Rock and Roll, you might call it “Chuck Berry”. Voyageur One contains a golden disk of our planet’s finest multicultural and multicontinental music. It includes Bach, Beethoven, Mozart­—and Chuck Berry. A fanciful tale relates that the disk is eventually heard and liked by intelligent aliens from another galaxy, who relay the following message back to Earth: “Send More Chuck Berry”.

In 1982 Chuck Berry, forever in the fast lane, was joined by none other than “the remarkable Tina Turner” at the Roxy Theatre on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Talk about two “live wires” onstage! Their energy electrified the whole block!