Page 76 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2018

Following the Depression, money flowed during the wartime White, Specialty, Imperial and other West Coast labels spread
economy and continued to provide opportunities for musicians the music of Charles Brown, Jimmy Witherspoon, T-Bone Walker,
and music entrepreneurs after the war, fed by ever-increasing Pee Wee Crayton, Amos Milburn and Lowell Fulson across the
waves of migrants that constituted a huge and concentrated country, in addition to recording blues and R&B from the South
market for blues. With jobs in the city, people had money to by B.B. King, Fats Domino, Little Richard and many more.
spend on records and nighttime entertainment. Blues was largely Detroit experienced one of the most drastic transformations.
limited to weekend activity on the plantations, but in Chicago, In 1910, the city was home to only 9,000 African Americans;
clubgoers could enjoy blues by top names every night of the by 1940 – thanks mostly to the automotive plants – that figure
week, and with steadier club work, musicians could develop was 168,600; in 1970, it was 753,800; and today more than
another level of professionalism. 80 percent of the city’s estimated 677,000 residents are African
Chicago blues became even more electrified as a new American. Though it would become most famous for the Motown
wave of performers from the South, including Otis Rush, Magic sound, built by a mix of Southern-born and local musicians, the
Sam, Buddy Guy and Freddie King, came to the fore, and the Motor City was home to one of the giants of the blues, John Lee
city’s black population swelled. The blues had grown from its Hooker from Mississippi, and many others from the Deep South.
downhome roots in new directions and while the change from As late as 1976, the migration theme could produce hit
the older acoustic styles into modern electric blues is often linked blues records, as Albert King proved by recording the song
to the migration, that development was really more a function “Cadillac Assembly Line,” written by fellow Mississippi native
of time and technology, since musicians in the South were Mack Rice:
amplifying their blues too.
The migration saga was repeated to varying degrees with Goin’ to Detroit, Michigan
different casts in many other cities. California did not have Girl, I can’t take you
much of an African American population until the shipyards and Hey, I’m goin’ to Detroit, Michigan
defense industries spurred mass migration from the South and Girl, you got to stay here behind
Southwest. Los Angeles’ African American population grew from Gonna get me a job
7,600 in 1910 to 76,200 in 1940 and 10 times that figure On the Cadillac assembly line
in 1970. The city become an important recording center in the I’m tired of whoopin’ and hollerin’
1940s, and in the years to come, Aladdin, Modern, Black & Up and down the Mississippi road
Hey, I’m tired of whoopin’ and hollerin’
Pickin’ that nasty cotton
Gonna catch me a bus up North
I won’t have to keep sayin’ yassir, boss
Despite the potential opportunities and advantages that drew
migrants to the cities, the North and West did not always turn
out to be the Promised Land. Urban decay, crime, segregated
and substandard housing, discrimination and poverty were facts
of life in the cities. As a result, a trend of Reverse Migration
had emerged by the 1970s, and with the social and political
changes back home in the post-Civil Rights era, more and more
African Americans moved south. While many blues songs have
been written about going to Chicago and other cities, there may
have been even more about going back home.
Movement to one place or another has always been a
major theme in the music. The blues has survived, whether in
its Southern surroundings or transplanted urban bases, and has
even taken root in new locales that never had a blues scene
before. There will always be reasons to sing the blues.

Jim O’Neal is a cofounding editor of Living Blues magazine,
research director with the Mississippi Blues Trail and co-editor
of the book The Voice of the Blues. He operates a mail order
business (Stackhouse & BluEsoterica, 3516 Holmes St., Kansas
City MO 64109, www.bluesoterica.com) buying and selling
records, magazines and memorabilia.

74 Blues Festival Guide 2018