St. Louis Blues

Question 0

What is call and response?

Answer 0

When a solo leader presents a motif and the chorus responds either by echoing the motif or through a contrasting answer

Question 1

What is the most common form of African American group singing?

Answer 1

Call and Response

Question 2

By what religion was the music of many African cultureus influenced by?

Answer 2

Islam

Question 3

What is the term for the embellished manner of reciting the Qu’ran?

Answer 3

Melismatic

Question 4

What does it mean if something is melismatic?

Answer 4

That one syllable of the poetry is set to multiple pitches in the melody

Question 5

What is a Christian example of melisma?

Answer 5

Gloria in Angels We Have Heard on High

Question 6

During the 16th century what was the blue devils a common synonym for?

Answer 6

Feeling depressed

Question 7

What are spirituals?

Answer 7

Heartfelt expressions of grief usually with a religious message

Question 8

What two ways would slaves often express their emotions?

Answer 8

Though work songs and field hollars

Question 9

What are work sungs?

Answer 9

Songs that are sung a steady pace, often in call and response pattern or with alternating lines between groups of laborers

Question 10

What are field hollars?

Answer 10

Long lamentations by an individual singer with a getting it off his chest spirit

Question 11

Where did many of the first blues singer originate?

Answer 11

From the Mississippi Delta region

Question 12

What are the three core chords used in blues?

Answer 12

The tonic, dominant and subdominant

Question 13

The use of a consistent harmonic foundation in blues is important why?

Answer 13

Because it meant that illiterate blues performers could play together without needing sheet music to guide them

Question 14

How many phrases of poetry are sung during a blues song with how many measures per phrase?

Answer 14

Three phrases of poetry each spanning four measures

Question 15

In the blues scale what two steps are inflected?

Answer 15

The third and the seventh

Question 16

Who pointed out that the word blues has developed to have many meanings?

Answer 16

Frank Tirro

Question 17

What is the earliest style of blues?

Answer 17

Country blues

Question 18

What is country blues also known as?

Answer 18

Folk blues, southern blues, delta blues, down home blues

Question 19

What are the characteristics of country blues?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What is seen as the ancestor of the protests songs that arose later in the twentieth century?

Answer 20

Country blues

Question 21

Who was the earliest blues singer to be preserved on disk?

Answer 21

Papa Charlie Jackson

Question 22

What two blues artists followed Jackson and were recorded on disk as well?

Answer 22

Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter who was better known as Lead Belly

Question 23

What country blues singer has a myth in which he had sudden improvement in his ability to play guitar after a six moth abscense?

Answer 23

Robert Johnson

Question 24

What were the other names for Classic Blues

Answer 24

Urban blues, city blues or vaudeville blues

Question 25

What were the characteristics of classic blues?

Answer 25

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

Question 26

What is a combo in music?

Answer 26

A small ensemble of players

Question 27

Who earned the nickname Mother of the Blues?

Answer 27

Gertrude Ma Rainey

Question 28

What vaudeville circuit ran 67 theaters across the South and Midwest and booked blues singers and had them recorded

Answer 28

Theatre Owners Booking Association T.O.B.A>

Question 29

What was one of Rainey’s first recordings which also offered pragmatic advice on what to do if your house was on fire?

Answer 29

Souuthern Blues

Question 30

How any theaters did the Theatre Owners Booking Association Run?

Answer 30

67

Question 31

Who was dubbed Empress of the Blues?

Answer 31

Bessie Smith

Question 32

Why was Bessie Smith dubbed Empress if the Blues?

Answer 32

Because of her cast iron voice which could fill an entire room without a microphone and due to her many recordings

Question 33

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?

Answer 33

Janis Joplin

Question 34

What two singers were affected by Bessie Smith’s performance?

Answer 34

Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerlad

Question 35

What was William Christopher one of the first to do?

Answer 35

Produce sheet music that used the classic blues

Question 36

Who declared himself Father of the Blues?

Answer 36

W.C> Handy

Question 37

Whhat instrument did Handy play as a child?

Answer 37

The Cornet

Question 38

What religion was W.C> Handy’s father?

Answer 38

A staunch Methodist

Question 39

How many years after St. Louis Blues was published was it recorded?

Answer 39

Eleven years

Question 40

Who recored St. Louis Blues?

Answer 40

Bessie Smith, a cornet player named Louis Armstrong and Fred Longshaw playing a small reed-pipe organ plus Handy on the cornet

Question 41

How many measures long is Handy’s B string in St. Louis Blues?

Answer 41

Eight

Question 42

Why did Bessie Smith only play one statement of the C melody n St. Louis Blues?

Answer 42

Because of the time limit of the 1925 recording meant that the song had to be shortened

Question 43

The interplay between Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong represent?

Answer 43

Seamless call and response interweiving

Question 44

What is the cumulative effect of three performers in St. Louis Blues?

Answer 44

Making the song mournful and highly personal