115-455: Gustavus Cannon (September 12, 1883 – October 15, 1979) was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands (such as his own Cannon's Jug Stompers) in the 1920s and 1930s. There is uncertainty about his birth year; his tombstone gives the date as 1874. Born on a plantation in Red Banks, Mississippi , Cannon moved a hundred miles to Clarksdale , then the home of W. C. Handy , at
230-433: A Baptist minister, and using his full name - Zekiel. This is the first example of black character development in cinema. Sometime later, he returns and preaches a rousing revival. After being ridiculed and enticed by Chick, Zekiel becomes engaged to a virtuous maiden named Missy ( Victoria Spivey ), thinking this will ward off his desires for the sinful Chick. Chick attends a sermon, heckling Zekiel, then asks for baptism but
345-495: A British usage of the 1600s referring to the "intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal". As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils and came to mean a state of agitation or depression. By the 1800s in the United States, the term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase ' blue law ', which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. In 1827, it
460-756: A Nation ...Is there, then, a defense for Hallelujah beyond its aesthetic importance? I think there is, and I think it lies in Vidor’s personality as we know it from his films... Hallelujah can and should be accepted as the remarkable achievement it is." Media critic Beretta Smith-Shomade asserts that from Vidor’s Hallelujah , there issued forth racist characterizations of black rural figures, in particular “the black harlot”, establishing these stereotypes in both black and white motion pictures for decades. "In these decades before television’s arrival, negras appeared in films as servants, harlots, mammies, tragic mulattoes and religious zealots. The nation’s carefree attitude during
575-592: A Ruckus Tonight," "Ain't Gonna Rain No More," "Boll-Weevil," "Come On down to My House," " Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor ," "Get Up in the Morning Soon," and "Crawdad Hole," along with his own "Walk Right In," with stories and introductions between songs. Cannon appeared in the film Hallelujah! (1929), produced by King Vidor , in the late-night wedding scene. Gus Cannon died in Memphis, Tennessee , on October 15, 1979, and
690-484: A banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House . Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in
805-415: A break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords. Much of the time, some or all of these chords are played in the harmonic seventh (7th) form. The use of the harmonic seventh interval is characteristic of blues and is popularly called the "blues seven". Blues seven chords add to the harmonic chord
920-499: A camera or a microphone before, they give unstudied and remarkably spontaneous performances. That speaks a lot for Vidor's direction." Mordaunt Hall , in The New York Times , wrote approvingly of the all-Black cast, stating, " Hallelujah! , with its clever negro cast, is one of the few talking pictures that is really a separate and distinct form of entertainment from a stage play". The combination of two groundbreaking aspects of
1035-567: A center for electric blues from 1948 on, when Muddy Waters recorded his first success, "I Can't Be Satisfied". Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by Delta blues , because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region. Howlin' Wolf , Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style
1150-399: A component of R&B. After World War II, new styles of electric blues became popular in cities such as Chicago , Memphis , Detroit and St. Louis . Electric blues used electric guitars , double bass (gradually replaced by bass guitar ), drums , and harmonica (or "blues harp") played through a microphone and a PA system or an overdriven guitar amplifier . Chicago became
1265-556: A contemporary dance craze where the participant makes movements backward and forward, but with no actual change of position, whilst moving the arms like a piston on a locomotive wheel. Years before creating Hallelujah , King Vidor had longed to make a film employing an all-African American cast. He had floated the idea around for years but "the studio kept turning the idea down". Vidor’s was in Europe during 1928 promoting his film The Crowd , when heard of talking motion pictures emerging in
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#17328378669731380-610: A movement known as the Great Migration . The long boom following World War II induced another massive migration of the African-American population, the Second Great Migration , which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The term race record , initially used by the music industry for African-American music,
1495-456: A note with a frequency in a 7:4 ratio to the fundamental note. At a 7:4 ratio, it is not close to any interval on the conventional Western diatonic scale . For convenience or by necessity it is often approximated by a minor seventh interval or a dominant seventh chord . In melody , blues is distinguished by the use of the flattened third , fifth and seventh of the associated major scale . Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce
1610-594: A part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson 's " Cross Road Blues " as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua , the orisha in charge of the crossroads". However, the Christian influence was far more obvious. The repertoires of many seminal blues artists, such as Charley Patton and Skip James , included religious songs or spirituals. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music, although their lyrics clearly belong to spirituals. The blues form
1725-569: A part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the " Saint Louis Blues ". In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, also reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. These female performers became perhaps the first African American "superstars", and their recording sales demonstrated "a huge appetite for records made by and for black people." The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by
1840-419: A recording career that began in 1926 and spanned forty years. These recordings were typically labeled " race records " to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well. These blueswomen's contributions to the genre included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered
1955-406: A separate genre arose during the black migration from the countryside to urban areas in the 1920s and the simultaneous development of the recording industry. Blues became a code word for a record designed to sell to black listeners. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of Afro-American community, the spirituals . The origins of spirituals go back much further than
2070-494: A single line repeated four times. However, the most common structure of blues lyrics today was established in the first few decades of the 20th century, known as the "AAB" pattern. This structure consists of a line sung over the first four bars, its repetition over the next four, and a longer concluding line over the last bars. This pattern can be heard in some of the first published blues songs, such as " Dallas Blues " (1912) and " Saint Louis Blues " (1914). According to W.C. Handy ,
2185-653: A tale of sexual passion, family affection, redemption and revenge performed by black actors earned enmity from the Deep South ’s white movie exhibitors and the “gripping melodrama” was banned entirely south of the Mason–Dixon line . Vidor’s film crew was racially mixed, and included Harold Garrison (1901–1974) as an assistant director. Black female choral conductor Eva Jessye served as musical director on Hallelujah ; she would later act as music director with George Gershwin on Porgy and Bess (1935). The overall assessment of
2300-642: A template for racist and degrading portrayals of "Negras" in the movie industry in subsequent years. Warner Bros. , who own the rights to Hallelujah , have added a disclaimer at the opening of the archive edition: "The films you are about to see are a product of their time. They may reflect some of the prejudices that were common in American society, especially when it came to the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities. These depictions were wrong then and they are wrong today. These films are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be
2415-520: A wheel and throws Chick out, giving Zeke a chance to catch up to them. Holding her in his arms, he watches Chick die as she apologizes to him for being unable to change her ways. Zeke then chases Hot Shot on foot. He stalks him relentlessly through the woods and swamp while Hot Shot tries to escape, but stumbles until Zeke finally catches and kills him. Zeke spends time in prison for his crime, breaking rocks. The movie ends with Zeke returning home to his family, just as they are harvesting their crop. Despite
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#17328378669732530-463: A wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music . The term 'Blues' may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman 's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase 'blue devils' may also have been derived from
2645-449: A young guitar player, Ashley Thompson. Lewis and Thompson later were members of Cannon's Jug Stompers. The three of them formed a band to play at parties and dances. In 1914 Cannon began touring in medicine shows . He supported his family through various jobs, including sharecropping, ditch digging, and yard work, but supplemented his income with music. Cannon began recording, as Banjo Joe, for Paramount Records in 1927. At that session he
2760-449: Is a cyclic musical form in which a repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music. During the first decades of the 20th century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of a particular chord progression. With the popularity of early performers, such as Bessie Smith , use of the twelve-bar blues spread across
2875-571: Is available on the compilation album The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead . Although their last recordings were made in 1930, Cannon's Jug Stompers were one of Beale Street 's most popular jug bands through the 1930s. A few songs Cannon recorded with the Jug Stompers are "Minglewood Blues," "Pig Ankle Strut," " Wolf River Blues," "Viola Lee Blues," "White House Station," and " Walk Right In " (a pop hit for The Rooftop Singers in
2990-469: Is buried at Greenview Memorial Gardens, Hernando, Mississippi . Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts , chants , and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture . The blues form
3105-620: Is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. The saxophonist J. T. Brown played in bands led by Elmore James and by J. B. Lenoir , but the saxophone was used as a backing instrument for rhythmic support more than as a lead instrument. Hallelujah! (1929 film) Hallelujah is a 1929 American pre-Code Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical directed by King Vidor , and starring Daniel L. Haynes and Nina Mae McKinney . Filmed in Tennessee and Arkansas and chronicling
3220-448: Is clearly not truly repentant. During a rousing sermon, Chick seduces Zekiel and he throws away his new life for her. Months later, Zeke has started a new life; he is working at a sawmill and is married to Chick, who is secretly cheating on him with her old flame, Hot Shot (William Fountaine). Chick and Hot Shot decide to run off together; Zeke finds out about their affair and chases after them. The carriage carrying Hot Shot and Chick loses
3335-709: Is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio ( Albert Ammons , Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis ). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines , who "linked
3450-491: Is often associated with the California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues à la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s. The transition from country blues to urban blues that began in the 1920s was driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms that led many rural blacks to move to urban areas, in
3565-406: Is ubiquitous in jazz , rhythm and blues , and rock and roll , and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale , and specific chord progressions , of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch , are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce
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3680-475: The American South sometimes referred to as a jitterbug or a one-string in the early twentieth century) and the banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. The banjo seems to be directly imported from West African music. It is similar to the musical instrument that griots and other Africans such as
3795-590: The Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's " One O'Clock Jump " and " Jumpin' at the Woodside " and boisterous " blues shouting " by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and " Sent for You Yesterday ". A well-known big band blues tune is Glenn Miller 's " In the Mood ". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from
3910-548: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 : Backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time I said, backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time And I can't get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the lyrics could also be humorous and raunchy: Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying
4025-579: The Igbo played (called halam or akonting by African peoples such as the Wolof , Fula and Mandinka ). However, in the 1920s, when country blues began to be recorded, the use of the banjo in blues music was quite marginal and limited to individuals such as Papa Charlie Jackson and later Gus Cannon . Blues music also adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals , including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also
4140-741: The Theater Owners Booking Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club and juke joints such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation , Okeh Records , and Paramount Records , began to record African-American music. As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter , Jimmie Rodgers , Blind Lemon Jefferson , Lonnie Johnson , Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in
4255-409: The degrees of the progression. For instance, for a blues in the key of C, C is the tonic chord (I) and F is the subdominant (IV). The last chord is the dominant (V) turnaround , marking the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the 11th bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as
4370-468: The "AAB" pattern was adopted to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times. The lyrics are often sung in a rhythmic talk style rather than a melody, resembling a form of talking blues . Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. African-American singers voiced their "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times". This melancholy has led to
4485-404: The "plight of women who have fallen on hard times due to unemployment, unwanted pregnancies, divorce, childhood deprivation or simply because they have been ‘born on the wrong side of the track'." Throughout the silent film era, the cautionary tales of woman turning to prostitution had been uniformly presented as shameful and degrading. These Victorian -inspired scenarios, however, were declining at
4600-695: The 1920s forwarded the Harlem Renaissance and launched the Colored woman as featured artist on screen. Nina Mae McKinney distinguished herself as the first colored harlot. She played in King Vidor’s Hallelujah sound film, as a Jezebel, of course, bamboozling a good man... Donald Bogle describes McKinney’s character, Chick, as a 'black, exotic sex object, half woman, half child...She was a black woman out of control of her emotions, split in two by her loyalties and her own vulnerabilities. Implied throughout
4715-438: The 1920s, among them "the big three"— Gertrude "Ma" Rainey , Bessie Smith , and Lucille Bogan . Mamie Smith , more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African American to record a blues song, in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month. Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to
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4830-428: The 1920s, when the record industry created the marketing categories " race music " and " hillbilly music " to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country", except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies. Though musicologists can now attempt to define
4945-403: The 1960s and for Dr. Hook in the 1970s). By the end of the 1930s, Cannon had effectively retired, although he occasionally performed as a solo musician. Cannon made a few recordings for Folkways Records in 1956. During the blues revival of the 1960s, he made some appearances at colleges and coffee houses with Furry Lewis and Bukka White , but he had to pawn his banjo to pay his heating bill
5060-451: The 9-bar progression in " Sitting on Top of the World ", by Walter Vinson . The basic 12-bar lyric framework of many blues compositions is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of 12 bars in a 4/4 time signature . The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a 12-bar scheme. They are labeled by Roman numbers referring to
5175-601: The African American community. Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues . The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished city or urban blues. Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only
5290-520: The African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots . Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming. Some scholars identify strong influences on
5405-567: The South, which was my home. I studied their music, and I used to wonder at the pent-up romance in them". Vidor began shooting in Arkansas , Memphis and Southern California at the MGM studios. The people inhabit a world of racial paternalism where, partly due to religion, the plantation workers are happy with the status quo. Zeke the plantation boy represents the morally upstanding country boy (the good) against
5520-410: The United States. He wanted an all-African American cast to sing "negro spirituals" after he had seen the success of it on Broadway. Vidor stated, "If stage plays with all negro casts, and stories like those by Octavus Roy Cohen and others, could have such great success, why shouldn’t the screen make a successful negro play?" Vidor was able to convince Nicholas Schenck , who was the president of MGM at
5635-647: The age of 12. His musical skills came without training; he taught himself to play a banjo that he made from a frying pan and a raccoon skin. He ran away from home at the age of fifteen and began his career entertaining at sawmills and at levee and railroad camps in the Mississippi Delta around the turn of the twentieth century. While in Clarksdale, Cannon was influenced by two local musicians, Jim Turner and Alec Lee. Turner's fiddle playing in W. C. Handy's band so impressed Cannon that he decided to learn to play
5750-420: The back of a room". Smith would "sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed". In 1920, the vaudeville singer Lucille Hegamin became the second black woman to record blues when she recorded "The Jazz Me Blues", and Victoria Spivey , sometimes called Queen Victoria or Za Zu Girl, had
5865-465: The battle with self was the tragic mulatto theme; the white half of her represented the spiritual, the black half the animalistic.' [These] screen stereotypes presented themselves in both mainstream and early black cinema. They stood as Negras’ predominant roles." Film critic Kristin Thompson registers an objection to Warner Bros.’ disclaimer attached to its Hallelujah archive edition: "Unfortunately
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#17328378669735980-544: The beginning of the 20th century. They are now lost. Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert . Later, several recordings were made by Robert W. Gordon , who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress . Gordon's successor at the library was John Lomax . In the 1930s, Lomax and his son Alan made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to
6095-511: The black cast. They hosted two premieres, one in Manhattan and one in Harlem. The Black people who came to watch the film in Manhattan were forced to sit in the balcony. Hallelujah was commercially and critically successful. Photoplay praised the film for its depiction of African Americans and commented on the cast: "Every member of Vidor's cast is excellent. Although none of them ever worked before
6210-441: The blues are also closely related to the religious music of the African-American community, the spirituals . The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery , with the development of juke joints occurring later. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music
6325-647: The blues from the melodic structures of certain West African musical styles of the savanna and sahel. Lucy Durran finds similarities with the melodies of the Bambara people , and to a lesser degree, the Soninke people and Wolof people , but not as much of the Mandinka people . Gerard Kubik finds similarities to the melodic styles of both the west African savanna and central Africa, both of which were sources of enslaved people. No specific African musical form can be identified as
6440-568: The blues in the same year in Missouri ; and W.C. Handy , who first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi , in 1903. The first extensive research in the field was performed by Howard W. Odum , who published an anthology of folk songs from Lafayette County, Mississippi , and Newton County, Georgia , between 1905 and 1908. The first non-commercial recordings of blues music, termed proto-blues by Paul Oliver , were made by Odum for research purposes at
6555-460: The blues is usually dated after the Emancipation Act of 1863 , between 1860s and 1890s, a period that coincides with post- emancipation and later, the establishment of juke joints as places where African-Americans went to listen to music, dance, or gamble after a hard day's work. This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production, and
6670-457: The blues narrowly in terms of certain chord structures and lyric forms thought to have originated in West Africa, audiences originally heard the music in a far more general way: it was simply the music of the rural south, notably the Mississippi Delta . Black and white musicians shared the same repertoire and thought of themselves as " songsters " rather than blues musicians. The notion of blues as
6785-411: The blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns , in particular those of Isaac Watts , which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of spirituals. It was the low-down music played by rural blacks. Depending on
6900-479: The boogie-woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner , based in Kansas City, Missouri , influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker , who
7015-526: The company has chosen to put a boilerplate warning at the beginning that essentially brands Hallelujah as a racist film...I don’t think this description fits Hallelujah , but it certainly sets the viewer up to interpret the film as merely a regrettable document of a dark period of US history. Warner Bros. demeans the work of the filmmakers, including the African-American ones. The actors seem to have been proud of their accomplishment, as well they should be." Source: Critic Donald Bogle identifies McKinney as
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#17328378669737130-479: The emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz, Broadway musicals , torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s, gospel , rhythm and blues , and eventually rock and roll ." Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such as Tampa Red , Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr . An important label of this era
7245-641: The end, where he launches into Irving Berlin 's "Waiting at the End of the Road". Similarly, an outdoor group of workers near the beginning of the film are singing a choral arrangement of " Way Down Upon the Swanee River " (written by Stephen Foster , who never visited the South). Supposedly, according to Vidor himself in an interview given to The New York Times , "while Stephen Foster and others were inspired by hearing negro songs on
7360-429: The expansion of railroads in the southern United States. Several scholars characterize the development of blues music in the early 1900s as a move from group performance to individualized performance. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people. According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon
7475-455: The fiddle himself. Lee, a guitarist, taught Cannon his first folk blues, "Po' Boy, Long Ways from Home," and showed him how to use a knife blade as a slide , a technique that Cannon adapted to his banjo playing. Cannon left Clarksdale around 1907 and soon settled near Memphis, Tennessee , where he played in a jug band led by Jim Guffin. He began playing in Memphis with Jim Jackson . He met the harmonica player Noah Lewis , who introduced him to
7590-468: The film from film historians ranges from condemnation to qualified praise. Museum of Modern Arts film archivist Charles Silver made this appraisal: "On one level, Hallelujah clearly reinforces the stereotypes of Blacks as childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless [yet] Vidor could never be accused of the overt racial venom exhibited by Griffith in The Birth of
7705-426: The film, audible dialogue and an all-black cast, set the movie apart from its contemporaries. Some of the critiques of the film spoke to the particular spirit of the times, and would likely be vastly different today. In The New York Times , Mordaunt Hall wrote: "in portraying the peculiarly typical religious hysteria of the darkies and their gullibility, Mr. Vidor atones for any sloth in preceding scenes." Hallelujah
7820-417: The formula: "The prostitute “is likely to die at the end of the film, through suicide, illness, accident, murder or execution (the conventions of Victorian art and literature...ordained that ‘a woman’s fall ends in death’). Otherwise she may survive and save her soul through an act of redemption; frequently she is paired off with a good man whose upright character serves to cancel out the poor impression of
7935-410: The four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans. Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa . The origins of
8050-417: The genre took its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performers. However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues. Call-and-response shouts were an early form of blues-like music; they were a "functional expression ... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure". A form of this pre-blues
8165-751: The hell out of me. Hokum blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterous, farcical performance style. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom 's " It's Tight Like That " (1928) is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being " tight " with someone, coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity. Blues songs with sexually explicit lyrics were known as dirty blues . The lyrical content became slightly simpler in postwar blues, which tended to focus on relationship woes or sexual worries. Lyrical themes that frequently appeared in prewar blues, such as economic depression, farming, devils, gambling, magic, floods and drought, were less common in postwar blues. The writer Ed Morales claimed that Yoruba mythology played
8280-454: The huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts . A record of blues music as it existed before 1920 can also be found in the recordings of artists such as Lead Belly and Henry Thomas . All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct from twelve- , eight- , or sixteen-bar . The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of
8395-434: The individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine stated that "psychologically, socially, and economically, African-Americans were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did." There are few characteristics common to all blues music, because
8510-412: The levees, their music was not at all of the negro type". He went on to add that Foster’s music had "the distinct finish and technique of European music, possibly of German Origin." A sequence which is of vital importance in the history of classic jazz is in the dancehall, where Nina Mae McKinney performs Irving Berlin 's "Swanee Shuffle." Although actually filmed in a New York studio using black actors,
8625-586: The low rate of literacy among rural African Americans at the time. Reports of blues music in southern Texas and the Deep South were written at the dawn of the 20th century. Charles Peabody mentioned the appearance of blues music at Clarksdale, Mississippi , and Gate Thomas reported similar songs in southern Texas around 1901–1902. These observations coincide more or less with the recollections of Jelly Roll Morton , who said he first heard blues music in New Orleans in 1902; Ma Rainey , who remembered first hearing
8740-524: The male sex given earlier in the film…for others, death awaits." McKinney’s exuberant and highly seductive portrayal of Chick anticipates the change in perception towards female sexual expression. Her performance influenced both black and white actresses with her version of a "rough nightlife heroine", among them Jean Harlow , a white film star who also engagingly portrayed brothel whores and prostitutes. According to film historian Jean-Marie Lecomte, "prostitutes, ladies of leisure, street walkers, and tramps, as
8855-445: The morally corrupt (due to Hotshot's influence) city girl Chick (the bad) who tempts him from the straight and narrow. Sharecroppers Zeke and Spunk Johnson sell their family's portion of the cotton crop for $ 100. They are promptly cheated out of the money by the shill Chick (Nina Mae McKinney), in collusion with her gambling-hustler boyfriend, Hot Shot. Spunk is murdered in the ensuing brawl. Zeke runs away and reforms his life: becoming
8970-643: The more apparent today “given the enormous changes in ideology [and] sensibilities” since 1929—covers a spectrum of opinions. Vidor biographer John Baxter reports “a now-disconcerting [white] paternalism” that pervades Hallelujah , while film scholars Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell argue that “the film was as progressive as one could expect in the day.” Film critics Kerryn Sherrod and Jeff Stafford agree that “seen today, Hallelujah invites criticism for its stereotypes; blacks are depicted as either naive idealists or individuals ruled by their emotions.” Media critic Beretta Smith-Shomade considers Vidor’s Hallelujah
9085-516: The music industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Other chord progressions, such as 8-bar forms, are still considered blues; examples include " How Long Blues ", " Trouble in Mind ", and Big Bill Broonzy 's " Key to the Highway ". There are also 16-bar blues , such as Ray Charles 's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars" and Herbie Hancock 's " Watermelon Man ". Idiosyncratic numbers of bars are occasionally used, such as
9200-489: The propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand". The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles. Another development in this period was big band blues. The " territory bands " operating out of Kansas City , the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann , and
9315-458: The religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel singers and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, when rural black music began to be recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music
9430-434: The same as claiming these prejudices never existed. While the following certainly does not represent Warner Bros.’ opinion in today’s society, these images certainly do accurately reflect a part of our history that cannot and should not be ignored." In Hallelujah , Vidor develops his characterizations of black rural workers with sensitivity and compassion. The “social consciousness” of the film and its sympathetic rendering of
9545-456: The savannah, are conspicuously absent. According to the historian Paul Oliver , "the roots of the blues were not to be found in the coastal and forest regions of Africa. Rather... the blues was rooted in ... the savanna hinterland, from Senegambia through Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Ghana, Niger, and northern Nigeria". Additionally, ethnomusicologist John Storm Roberts has argued that "The parallels between African savanna-belt string-playing and
9660-452: The sequence gives an accurate representation of a low-life black dance-hall - part of the roots of classic jazz. Most Hollywood films of the period sanitized black music. Given the equipment available at the time, the film's soundtrack was a technical achievement, employing a much wider range of editing and mixing techniques than was generally used in "talkies" in this period. Exhibitors were worried that white audiences would stay away due to
9775-474: The silver screens' “first black whore”, with respect to the role Vidor had fashioned for her in Hallelujah . Nina Mae McKinney, coming from the recent stage production of Blackbirds of 1928 portrayed Chick, the object of Zeke’s desire and victim in the films’ tragic denouement. Theater critic Richard Watts Jr. , a contemporary of McKinney, described her as “one of the most beautiful women of our time” She
9890-510: The single direct ancestor of the blues. However the call-and-response format can be traced back to the music of Africa . That blue notes predate their use in blues and have an African origin is attested to by "A Negro Love Song", by the English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor , from his African Suite for Piano , written in 1898, which contains blue third and seventh notes . The Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of
10005-446: The songs "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit", conditions that have inspired countless blues songs. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand 's " Dallas Blues " became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. Early traditional blues verses often consisted of
10120-406: The southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with Curley Weaver , Tampa Red , "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style. The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near Memphis, Tennessee ,
10235-528: The suggestion of an Igbo origin for blues, because of the reputation the Igbo had throughout plantations in the Americas for their melancholic music and outlook on life when they were enslaved. Other historians have argued that there is little evidence of Sub-Sahelian influence in the blues as "elaborate polyrhythm, percussion on African drums (as opposed to European drums), [and] collective participation" which are characteristic of West-Central African music below
10350-507: The techniques of many blues guitarists are remarkable. The big kora of Senegal and Guinea are played in a rhythmic-melodic style that uses constantly changing rhythms, often providing a ground bass overlaid with complex treble patterns, while vocal supplies a third rhythmic layer. Similar techniques can be found in hundreds of blues records". The lyrics often relate troubles experienced within African American society. For instance Blind Lemon Jefferson 's "Rising High Water Blues" (1927) tells of
10465-443: The time of Hallelujah ' s production, as they were in the industrialized countries globally. As a result "the concept of a loss of chastity leading inexorably to prostitution became no longer tenable." The formula that Vidor used for McKinney’s Chick was modeled after conventional scenarios depicting white prostitutes in these earlier films: narratives that were already in decline. Film and social critic Russel Campbell describes
10580-411: The time that has passed and the way Zekiel left, the family joyfully welcomes him back into the flock. The film gives, in some sections, an authentic representation of black entertainment and religious music in the 1920s, though some of the sequences are Europeanized and over-arranged. In the outdoor revival meeting, with the preacher singing and acting out the "train to hell," is authentic in style until
10695-399: The time, to get the movie made by framing it more as a film that depicted African American’s sexual deviance. Schenck put it simply to Vidor, "Well, if you think like that, I’ll let you make a picture about whores". Vidor received the inspiration to create this film based on real incidents he witnessed as a child during his time at home in the south. He observed: "I used to watch the negroes in
10810-446: The trance-like rhythm and call-and-response, and they form a repetitive effect called a groove . Characteristic of the blues since its Afro-American origins, the shuffles played a central role in swing music . The simplest shuffles, which were the clearest signature of the R&;B wave that started in the mid-1940s, were a three-note riff on the bass strings of the guitar. When this riff
10925-444: The trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove . Blues music is characterized by its lyrics , bass lines , and instrumentation . Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern , consisting of a line sung over
11040-450: The troubled quest of a sharecropper , Zeke Johnson (Haynes), and his relationship with the seductive Chick (McKinney), Hallelujah was one of the first films with an all-African American cast produced by a major studio. (Although frequently touted as Hollywood's first all-black cast musical, that distinction more properly belongs to Hearts in Dixie , which premiered several months earlier.) It
11155-469: The winter before The Rooftop Singers had a hit with "Walk Right In." In the wake of becoming a hit composer, he recorded an album for Stax Records in 1963, with fellow Memphis musicians Will Shade (the former leader of the Memphis Jug Band) on jug and Milton Roby on washboard. Cannon performed traditional songs, including "Kill It," "Salty Dog," "Going Around," "The Mountain," "Ol' Hen," "Gonna Raise
11270-532: Was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been
11385-504: Was a free-born black woman from Pennsylvania who was working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, and wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and later noted a number of songs, such as "Poor Rosy", that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that
11500-643: Was backed by Blind Blake . After the success of the Memphis Jug Band 's first records, he quickly assembled a jug band, Cannon's Jug Stompers, featuring Lewis and Thompson (later replaced by Elijah Avery). The group was first recorded at the Memphis Auditorium for Victor Records in January 1928. Hosea Woods joined the Jug Stompers in the late 1920s, playing guitar, banjo and kazoo and providing some vocals. Cannon's Jug Stompers' recording of "Big Railroad Blues"
11615-399: Was closely related to ragtime , which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music". The musical forms and styles that are now considered the blues as well as modern country music arose in the same regions of the southern United States during the 19th century. Recorded blues and country music can be found as far back as
11730-466: Was dubbed “the Black Garbo ” when touring Europe in the 1930s. Vidor considered her performance central to the success of Hallelujah . Though McKinney was the first to portray a black prostitute, this “archetypal narrative” goes back as far as 1900, when only white female actors played "the fallen woman" who turn to prostitution. Many of these films appeared in the silent era with narratives deploring
11845-457: Was heard in slave ring shouts and field hollers , expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and
11960-416: Was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues , Delta blues and Piedmont blues , as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues . World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to
12075-440: Was in the sense of a sad state of mind that John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues". In Henry David Thoreau 's book Walden , he mentions "the blues" in the chapter reflecting on his time in solitude. He wrote his account of his personal quest in 1845, although it was not published until 1854. The phrase "the blues" was written by Charlotte Forten , then aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862. She
12190-509: Was influenced by jug bands such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers . Performers such as Frank Stokes , Sleepy John Estes , Robert Wilkins , Kansas Joe McCoy , Casey Bill Weldon and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard , fiddle , kazoo or mandolin . Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style
12305-571: Was intended for a general audience and was considered so risky a venture by MGM that they required King Vidor to invest his own salary in the production. Vidor expressed an interest in "showing the Southern Negro as he is" and attempted to present a relatively non-stereotyped view of African-American life. Hallelujah was King Vidor's first sound film, and combined sound recorded on location and sound recorded post-production in Hollywood. King Vidor
12420-659: Was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by the blues form than its secular counterpart. The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues", by Baby Franklin Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews ); "Dallas Blues", by Hart Wand ; and " The Memphis Blues ", by W.C. Handy . Handy
12535-597: Was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for the film. In 2008, Hallelujah was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival , as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career. The film contains two scenes of "trucking":
12650-474: Was one of the early projects that gave African Americans significant roles in a movie, and though some contemporary film historians and archivists have said that it had "a freshness and truth that was not attained again for thirty years", a number of contemporary film historians and archivists agree that Hallelujah exhibits Vidor’s paternalistic view of rural blacks that included racial stereotyping. The emphasis these critics place on Vidor’s white prejudice—all
12765-420: Was played over the bass and the drums, the groove "feel" was created. Shuffle rhythm is often vocalized as " dow , da dow , da dow , da" or " dump , da dump , da dump , da": it consists of uneven, or "swung", eighth notes. On a guitar this may be played as a simple steady bass or it may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the sixth of the chord and back. Hart Wand 's " Dallas Blues "
12880-430: Was published in 1912; W.C. Handy 's " The Memphis Blues " followed in the same year. The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith 's 1920 rendition of Perry Bradford 's " Crazy Blues ". But the origins of the blues were some decades earlier, probably around 1890. This music is poorly documented, partly because of racial discrimination in U.S. society, including academic circles, and partly because of
12995-507: Was replaced by the term rhythm and blues . This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by Billboard magazine's Rhythm & Blues chart . This marketing strategy reinforced trends in urban blues music such as the use of electric instruments and amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the blues shuffle , which became ubiquitous in rhythm and blues (R&B). This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music, which, together with jazz and gospel music , became
13110-444: Was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement. City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate, as a performer was no longer within their local, immediate community, and had to adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic. Classic female urban and vaudeville blues singers were popular in
13225-536: Was the Chicago-based Bluebird Records . Before World War II, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 1950s with artists such as Charles Brown and even Nat "King" Cole . Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style
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