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  1. Paul
    I would like to ask a question? I often hear people refer to the period pre-dating The
    Electric Blue’s age,
    As Delta Blues, I personally have always defined it Primitive Blues.. Suddenly I realize that, could be a bit of a misnomer as well. What is the correct answer Paul???

  2. There’s no probably no one correct answer, Dennis. Blues came out of ragtime, which emerged in Kentucky around 1895. The only Delta Blues performer around this time was Henry Sloan, who taught Charlie Patton in Mississippi. Patton, King of the Delta Blues,however, didn’t record until 1929. Lonnie Johnson from New Orleans was the biggest influence on Delta Bluesmen and Chicago Bluesmen alike before then, recording some 130 tracks for Okeh between 1925 and 1932. Sylvester Weaver from Louisville was probably the first to record blues on a guitar and was admired by Johnson. The only bigger blues artist bigger than Lonnie Johnson in the 1920s was Blind Lemon Jefferson who, as you know, was from Texas. His mate Lead Belly was from Louisiana but started off with Blind Lemon in Texas. So was Delta Blues the first blues … who knows.
    Blues, as sung by black divas in vaudeville, in the early 20th century, was often known by African Americans as Colored Folks’ Opera. W.C. Handy said musicians in Mississippi called blues: ballets. Others called blues: reels or jigs.
    As for primitive blues, this was the music sung by the lowest of the low, as described by African Americans, who toiled in the fields. I believe the ‘lowest of the low’ took their old African work chants, and mixed them with sea shanties and minstrel tunes that were in the air from the 1840s.
    Blues wasn’t officially named until 1912, with its first mention in print being in a newspaper in 1910. W.C. from Alabama, was the man who formulated blues into its standard 12-bar format. You can get the full story on all this in America’s Gift which, as I like to say, is history going for a song, at Amazon.

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