The Blues developed differently in different regions of the country so that
people speak of 'Texas Blues', 'Louisiana Blues', 'Chicago Blues' and the
like. But the music can be divided most broadly into two distinct styles:
Delta Blues from the Mississippi Delta and Piedmont Blues, also known as
East Coast Blues, which were played in the more eastern states, from
Washington, DC all the way to Florida.
Delta Blues stayed very close to their African roots, retaining many
African musical values. [A Delta is an alluvial deposit that occurs at the
mouth of a river where it enters a larger body of water, slows down and
releases it's load of sediment in a triangular deposit. The name comes from
the symbol for the Greek letter 'delta', a triangle.] The Mississippi Delta
is a leaf shaped plain that stretches from Memphis in the North to
Vicksburg in the South and is bounded by the hill country of Mississippi to
the East and Arkansas to the West. In the early 1800's, the Mississippi Delta was both an inviting, and forbidding place.
The Mississippi---a river drains fully 41% of the continental United States (including all or part of 31 states!)
and is superseded in size only by the Congo and the Amazon---has been spreading out regularly over the land surrounding it for eons.
[Topsoil in the Delta has average thickness
of more than 132 feet!] The river made the Delta an agriculturally perfect
farm land that was nearly too dangerous to work. As settlers did risk the
floods of the Mississippi to reap the rewards of cotton, huge plantations were set up.
The cotton in the Delta could grow as tall as a man and produce yields two and three times that of other soils.
The land holdings were large---2,500-3,000 acres and
would have 250-300 slave, later sharecropping families on them.
Towns in the Delta were far apart and, after the Civil War, plantation
owners set up the Share Cropping system, whereby former slaves would
remain on their plantations in the Delta and work. In exchange for their labor,
their former owners continued to provide food, supplies and shelter, and at the end of the planting season
they would theoretically 'share' the crop. As the land owner could read and write, this typically worked out in their
favor. Plantation owners usually stocked a commissary on the place and
allowed their workers to take out goods on credit, against their share of
the crop. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, after the harvest and sale of
the cotton, share croppers would be called into the land owner's office to
settle accounts. Land owners generally charged outrageous prices for the
goods in the commissary---even taking out rent for the share cropper's
shacks (built by their forebearers)---leaving many share cropping families
heavily in debt at the end of a year working the fields. [This quickly
became an economic extension of slavery. There are many accounts of share
croppers being as much as $700 dollars in debt to the land owners at the
end of a season the equivalent of $10,000-14,000 today!]. These circumstances in the Delta worked to isolate Delta sharecroppers and
musicians---economically, geographically, socially, politically and musically
leaving them very much to their own devices for survival, and for their entertainments. Delta Blues grew in this dark soil, retaining much of its African character, but on the
East Coast things were different.
Piedmont Blues, also known as East Coast Blues, were played in the coastal
Southern states, from Washington, DC, all the way to Florida. At the turn
of the century---when Blues started to develop and be noticed---Ragtime music was king. In 1900, the Black composer Scott Joplin published "The Maple Leaf Rag" and sold one million copies of it, in a country of only a
little over 75 million! Joplin's rags and John Philip Sousa's marches were
immensely popular and influenced dance and music styles all over the
country, except in the Delta and other severely isolated regions. In
Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida,
Black guitarists and musicians heard and responded to Ragtime and Piedmont Blues grew to a different beat and dance style.
Unlike the Delta, land holdings were much smaller on the East Coast and
towns were closer together. Share croppers could get into town to get their
own supplies and hear the music of the time. From around 1900
until World War II, the east coast reverberated to this ragtime-influenced
blues, which came to be named for the region in which many of its most
famous and popular recording stars were based.
Up until 1942, when the city outlawed street music and one of its most
respected musicians, Blind Boy Fuller, died, Durham, North Carolina was
home to Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Boy Fuller (Fulton Allen was his given name),
harmonica great Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Additionally, Chapel Hill was home to the young Libba Cotten, who, as a young girl, wrote the words to 'Freight Train' (recorded in the 1960's by Peter, Paul & Mary).
And Morganton, NC is still home to Etta Baker, a nationally recognized Piedmont Blues performer who has been given a lifetime achievement award by the National Endowment
for the Arts---and North Carolina's own Folk Heritage Award---for her lifetime of performing
and advancing North Carolina's Piedmont Blues tradition.