St. Louis Blues Flashcards
What is call and response?
When a solo leader presents a motif and the chorus responds either by echoing the motif or through a contrasting answer
What is the most common form of African American group singing?
Call and Response
By what religion was the music of many African cultureus influenced by?
Islam
What is the term for the embellished manner of reciting the Qu’ran?
Melismatic
What does it mean if something is melismatic?
That one syllable of the poetry is set to multiple pitches in the melody
What is a Christian example of melisma?
Gloria in Angels We Have Heard on High
During the 16th century what was the blue devils a common synonym for?
Feeling depressed
What are spirituals?
Heartfelt expressions of grief usually with a religious message
What two ways would slaves often express their emotions?
Though work songs and field hollars
What are work sungs?
Songs that are sung a steady pace, often in call and response pattern or with alternating lines between groups of laborers
What are field hollars?
Long lamentations by an individual singer with a getting it off his chest spirit
Where did many of the first blues singer originate?
From the Mississippi Delta region
What are the three core chords used in blues?
The tonic, dominant and subdominant
The use of a consistent harmonic foundation in blues is important why?
Because it meant that illiterate blues performers could play together without needing sheet music to guide them
How many phrases of poetry are sung during a blues song with how many measures per phrase?
Three phrases of poetry each spanning four measures
In the blues scale what two steps are inflected?
The third and the seventh
Who pointed out that the word blues has developed to have many meanings?
Frank Tirro
What is the earliest style of blues?
Country blues
What is country blues also known as?
Folk blues, southern blues, delta blues, down home blues
What are the characteristics of country blues?
The singer is male and sings alone accompanying himself with a guitar or a harmonica, sings in informal situations and his payment is sometimes not cash but alcohol
What is seen as the ancestor of the protests songs that arose later in the twentieth century?
Country blues
Who was the earliest blues singer to be preserved on disk?
Papa Charlie Jackson
What two blues artists followed Jackson and were recorded on disk as well?
Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter who was better known as Lead Belly
What country blues singer has a myth in which he had sudden improvement in his ability to play guitar after a six moth abscense?
Robert Johnson
What were the other names for Classic Blues
Urban blues, city blues or vaudeville blues
What were the characteristics of classic blues?
They were sung at places where he audiences sat and listened, most of the women were supported by fuller accompaniments with a combo and their focus was on love and romantic relationships, often autobiographical and carefully planned before singing
What is a combo in music?
A small ensemble of players
Who earned the nickname Mother of the Blues?
Gertrude Ma Rainey
What vaudeville circuit ran 67 theaters across the South and Midwest and booked blues singers and had them recorded
Theatre Owners Booking Association T.O.B.A>
What was one of Rainey’s first recordings which also offered pragmatic advice on what to do if your house was on fire?
Souuthern Blues
How any theaters did the Theatre Owners Booking Association Run?
67
Who was dubbed Empress of the Blues?
Bessie Smith
Why was Bessie Smith dubbed Empress if the Blues?
Because of her cast iron voice which could fill an entire room without a microphone and due to her many recordings
Who helped pay for a headstone to be placed over Bessie Smith’s headstone calling her the greatest blues singer in the world who will never stop singing?
Janis Joplin
What two singers were affected by Bessie Smith’s performance?
Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerlad
What was William Christopher one of the first to do?
Produce sheet music that used the classic blues
Who declared himself Father of the Blues?
W.C> Handy
Whhat instrument did Handy play as a child?
The Cornet
What religion was W.C> Handy’s father?
A staunch Methodist
How many years after St. Louis Blues was published was it recorded?
Eleven years
Who recored St. Louis Blues?
Bessie Smith, a cornet player named Louis Armstrong and Fred Longshaw playing a small reed-pipe organ plus Handy on the cornet
How many measures long is Handy’s B string in St. Louis Blues?
Eight
Why did Bessie Smith only play one statement of the C melody n St. Louis Blues?
Because of the time limit of the 1925 recording meant that the song had to be shortened
The interplay between Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong represent?
Seamless call and response interweiving
What is the cumulative effect of three performers in St. Louis Blues?
Making the song mournful and highly personal
