Blues Lyrics

             Blues lyrics are deeply personal commentaries on the situation in which the singer found himself when he chose to sing. [1]   The personal nature of blues lyrics is a direct reflection of the spontaneous work songs and field hollers that preceded them, although with the passage of time certain common themes emerged that characterized blues rhetoric, including sex, lost love, violence, issues of class and race, and travel (particularly by train).

             Despite strong thematic content, the language of blues lyrics was often rather mild. Henrietta Yurchenco argues that blues singers concealed the raw and often ugly meaning of their lyrics in order to achieve success in the recording industry, although it is also likely that black singers in the Delta also used language meant to fool white listeners or circumvent limitations and prohibitions imposed by oppressive white authorities. [2]   Thus, the language of blues lyrics was rife with double entendre and ambiguity, and certain metaphorical images became standard blues fare (such as “black snakes,” “riders,” “jelly rolls,” and others). [3]

             These images were retained during the blues ’ Great Migration, and they remained standard lyrical material in the Chicago Blues style, as in songs like Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man. [4] They were eventually integrated into other styles during the blues revival through covers and adaptations of older blues songs, like the Allman Brothers Band’s rocking cover of Hoochie Coochie Man and the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, which channeled the blues' often hellish imagery (particularly Robert Johnson’s dark embrace of Satan, with whom he walks "side by side" in Me and the Devil Blues). [5]

   Bibliography

      [1]  Yurchenco, “Blues Fallin’ Down Like Hail,” 450.       [2]  Joel Rudinow, “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 134.       <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[3]  Ibid., 459. <p class="MsoFootnoteText">      <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[4]   Muddy Waters, “Hoochie Coochie Man” [sound recording], in “Week 4: Listening,” Crossroads: Musical and Cultural Perspectives on the Blues (online course), Boston University, https://onlinecampus.bu.edu (accessed June 22, 2014). <p class="MsoNormal">      <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US; mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[5]  Allman Brothers Band, live recording of “Hoochie Coochie Man” on The Best of the Allman Brothers Band, Polydor PDS-2-6320, 1981, compact disc; The Rolling Stones, studio recording of “Sympathy for the Devil” on Beggar’s Banquet, Decca, SKL 4955, 1968, compact disc; Robert Johnson, studio recording of “Me and the Devil Blues” on King of the Delta Blues Sony Music Entertainment Inc., 1997, compact disc.

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