"Damn Right I got the blues!"

In John Leland's book, "Hip: The History", he makes some damn good points about the blues that I would like to re-examine here.

• The blues were the Africans way of making sense in this new environment, brought on by slavery.
• The first real "celebrity" came from early blues artist's; for white folks it was Elvis Presley doing the blues
• Rhythm IS the universal language and helped to blend the white and black communities
• The blues helped to fuel the economy through records and guitar manufacturing
• Blues musicians became the ultimate "Rebel Icon"- The essence of "Hip"

>Early blues music grew from farms and plantations and was essentially black slaves singing about everyday life and just trying to get by. Out of this grew the first idols like Charley Patton - who defied his father to lead a life of music and entertaining- thus becoming even more of a bad ass! Leland makes a great point on this when he says,

                      "The history of the blues seems custom made for American-legend, an act of spontaneous creation by rebel geniuses."

So was the black blues musician the first "Rock Star"?

                                                        Robert Johnson


Rhythm became the common ground for black and white cultures to come together, thus making blues music the first beacon for civil rights, in a way.

>Another interesting point is that during the civil rights movement in the 60's, the beat poets and people who were considered "hip" were advertising the blues and the black musician and saying that this was part of American history!

>Bob Dylan especially was sort of "accepted" by the black community to tell the stories of suffering and discrimination. That's were we get songs like "Hattie Carol," "Who killed Davie Moore?" and "Hollis Brown." This too may have opened alot of eyes to racism and helped whites to empathize.

> Without the blues, America would not be the same.