The music of early post-war America has become synonymous with one style: Rock ‘n’ Roll. However, it was The Blues that was key in creating Rock ‘n’ Roll. Here, Matt Austin looks at migration and music in post-war America.
Muddy Waters in 1978. Source: Jean-Luc Ourlin, available here.
It is one of the great narratives of American History: The post-war boom. Following the Second World War, the United States enjoyed rapid, almost limitless, economic development. With Europe reeling from the devastation of war, the United States industrialised quickly to respond to the demand for wartime production. It therefore found itself in a far stronger economic position than prior to the war, to the extent that it was able to pull itself out of the Great Depression, which had ravaged the country throughout the 1930s.
As outlined by Sarah Pruitt, factory production, which had proven to be essential to the war effort, quickly mobilized for peacetime, rising to the needs of consumers.(1) This newfound ability to produce on a mass scale contributed to a post-war boom that was entirely consumer driven. Those who had saved money during the war now had an unprecedented amount of expendable income and as such, the opportunity to purchase affordable houses, cars, clothes and leisure activities, including of course, records.
The music of early post-war America has become largely inseparable with one style: Rock ‘n’ Roll.(2) The rise of Rock ‘n’ Roll and its youth revolution has come to dominate the narrative surrounding the development of music in this period. However, it is often overlooked that it was in fact a different genre that experienced an incredible transition, incorporating styles that would later feed into the vastly more popular Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Blues.
The Blues
As is a frequent consequence of wartime, an increased demand for production results in an increased demand for labour. This was certainly true of the Second World War in the United States, with a large increase in rural to urban migration, most notably among African Americans. This took place against the backdrop of The Great Migration, a period between 1910 and 1970 in which 6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to urban centres in the Northeast, Midwest and West.(3) The demand for labour created by the First World War had initially resulted in considerable spikes in migration,(4) whilst the Second World War created a “second wave” of wartime migration, in which a further influx of migrants moved north seeking to ditch the fields for the factories.(5) Isabel Wilkerson identifies the importance of this decision, noting that: “it was the first time that the nation’s servant class ever took without asking.”(6)
The African Americans who made the trip carried with them what little belongings they had, but more importantly than possessions, they brought a culture that had been cultivated in the rural South. With it they brought their “outdoor” music to urban centres, such as New York or Chicago.(7) These cities subsequently saw a huge rise in street performers, with many notable Bluesmen beginning their careers busking on street corners, such as the Mississippi born influence of the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Reed. It is important to note, however, that the big city was not a complete unknown to Southern Blues musicians of the early 20th Century. For musicians during this time, it was expected, as was industry standard, that records were to be made in the North, with many performers having to make the pilgrimage to record in Chicago or New York, among them “Father of the Delta Blues,” Charley Patton. This northern exposure even extends to the fact that the seminal 1928 recording “It’s Tight Like That” by Georgian born Tampa Red, is often referred to as the first “city” blues, with its style anticipating much of what would follow in later decades.(8)
Difference
Nevertheless, there was however something different about the Blues of the post-war era. Even Tampa Red’s style, although ahead of its time, had a distinct rural quality. The post-war Blues was new, exciting, and revolutionary. These are characteristics it owes to one word: amplification. It is not certain how or when the decision was made to transition from acoustic from electric guitar, but it was a seamless, almost overnight phenomenon, as if the guitarists of the North woke up in the morning and decided to go electric. Francis Davis suggests that the amplification and big beat added to the Blues of the post-war era may have been a necessary response to the roar of the big city.(9) Muddy Waters, upon his arrival in Chicago in 1943, was one such musician to quickly make the transition from acoustic to electric, reasoning that “couldn’t nobody hear you with an acoustic”, against the overpowering noise in the city’s overcrowded clubs.(10)
This created an ever-growing disparity between the music of the rural South and its harder, faster, rougher contemporary in the urban North. What marked this emerging style as clearly different to its elders lay with the increased urgency and flamboyance of its guitar playing.(11) Possibly the greatest example of this can be heard in Elmore James’ 1951 hit, “Dust My Broom”. A tribute to his Delta predecessor Robert Johnson’s 1937, “I believe I’ll Dust My Broom”, in adopting an electric guitar and a slide, Elmore James unknowingly went on to create one of the famous riffs in The Blues.(12) Despite being recorded in Mississippi, James’ version has become emblematic of big city Chicago Blues and more importantly as a symbol of the transition from acoustic to electric, from rural to urban. Only a mere fourteen years separate these songs, yet they sound worlds apart.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Elmore James was not one of the quarter million African Americans to migrate to Chicago in the 1940s. Rather, upon completing his military service during the war, he returned home to Mississippi. Following early success with a handful of hits, he followed the music and made the move north in the early 1950s. His legacy has endured as a founding influence on the Chicago Blues scene and it is clear why, when listening to the up-tempo, heavy beat of his 1961 “Shake Your Money Maker”, for example. He may have had his start in the delta, but like many of his contemporaries, his style heralded in a new era of popular music; a new era of African American culture.
The Blues is a genre that takes its influence from the everyday troubles faced throughout life. However, one of the most surprising elements of the post-war Blues is an incredible lack of reference to its musician’s surroundings in the industrial North. Despite its new and upbeat style, the music of artists such as Muddy Waters was evocative not of a day spent working in the train yards and factories, but of one in the fields.(13) Guitar mentor Lynwood Perry notes that the Blues of the North was played to dance to, but the Blues of the South possessed a deeper message, telling of the many troubles in life.(14) Where the post-war northern blues truly stand out, is that it ultimately contained elements of both. Not only did it rely on a fast-paced pounding style that would lay the groundwork for Rock ‘n’ Roll, it also had a nostalgic quality to it, an echo of the Southern Country Blues on which many of its artists had been raised. No track better exemplifies this than Muddy Waters’ 1948, “I Can’t Be Satisfied”, with the B-side, “I Feel Like Going Home.” The latter track, with its rather unsubtle title, sent those who listened to the record back home to Mississippi, if only symbolically.(15) This was, in fact, as suggested by Davis, as close to a return trip as many African Americans would have wanted to take.(16) It is certainly true that life was better to Northern migrants than those in the southern states, a notion long held before the Second World War. Giles Oakley states that many compared the pilgrimage North to the Flight Out of Egypt.(17) This homage to the bible would present the North as the Promised Land, an opportunity to escape racial segregation and intimidation in the South.
Tough life
Life in the North however, was not easy. Muddy Waters, despite possessing a highly trained ear and a knack for the guitar, had made the journey for work. And for a black uneducated southerner in 1940s Chicago this meant one thing: hard, manual labour. He possessed no illusions as to his chances of music stardom, and whilst he may have held such fantasies deep in the back of his mind, he ultimately took the first job he could find at a train yard. This was, after all, the last era of American popular music in which its stars were neither youthful, or naïve. They had experienced largely ‘normal lives’ up until that point, as the early Chicago Bluesmen had, after all, moved north for opportunities, and whilst they would certainly have been confident in their abilities (why else would Muddy have packed his guitar?), they were under no illusion that success was not guaranteed.
This is in no way to belittle the efforts of those breaking into the music world in the following decades, a feat that has and will be never be easy. However, the few months spent by Elvis Presley as a truck driver, or George Harrison as an electrician cannot compare to years spent in the fields and factories. This is what arguable gave the big city Blues its distinct, inexhaustible style.
The Second World War modernised America and its musical styles. The Blues was especially not immune to change as a consequence, the transition from field to factory made the slow country blues of the rural South seem even further detached from the pounding electric blues of the urban North. It was the war that brought them there, and the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf carried with them not only their guitars on their backs, but also the dream of a better life. They took their early influences and adapted them to the harsh backdrop of the urban North and like the cities they now called home, the Blues became fast-paced, loud, and most importantly, inescapable. They were the country’s first Rock stars, a statement that is inclined to make the most devout Blues fans wince, but the decision to amplify the sound of the rural South in the urban North would ultimately place the Blues on a rapid, irreversible path towards its sudden explosion as Rock ‘n’ Roll, the phenomenon that would change the face of American popular music.
What do you think of the article? Let us know below.
1 Sarah Pruitt, “The Post World War II Boom: How America Got Into Gear,” History, accessed 12/08/22, https://www.history.com/news/post-world-war-ii-boom-economy#:~:text=After%20years%20of%20wartime%20rationing,war%20to%20peace%2Dtime%20production.&text=Collection%2FGetty%20Images-,After%20years%20of%20wartime%20rationing%2C%20American%20consumers%20were%20ready%20to,war%20to%20peace%2Dtime%20production.
2 Robert Palmer, “The 50s: A Decade of Music That Changed the World”, Rolling Stones, accessed 12/08/22, https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-50s-a-decade-of-music-that-changed-the-world-229924/.
3 “The Great Migration (1910-1970)”, African American Heritage, National Archives, accessed 12/08/22, https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration.
4 “America: The Story Of Us”, Episode 8: Boom, History, 2010, accessed 12/08/22.
5 Mike Evans, The Blues: A Visual History (Atglen: Schiffer Publishing, 2014), 82.
6 Ibid, 83.
7 Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2019), 240.
8 Francis Davis, The History of the Blues: The Roots, The Music, The People (Boston: De Capo Press, 1995), 138.
9 Ibid, 181
10 Ibid, 179.
11 Ibid, 198-199
12 Gerard Herzhaft, Encyclopedia of The Blues (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1992), 442.
13 Davis, The History of the Blues, 181.
14 Evans, The Blues: A Visual History, 14.
15 Davis, The History of the Blues, 180
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid, 180-181.
