Chapter 1          History the Blues 

Mississippi River in Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, to work in the first metallurgical refineries and the country or on construction sites.

But most of them ended up in warehouses and cotton fabrics. This movement toward the southern cities peaked between the turn of the century and the end of the First World War (1914-1918).

The formation of ghettos was inevitable. In them, the black scraped, and also suffered amused. The search for pleasure in brothels, bars and gambling houses have one thing in common: music. In this environment, the revolution exploded Urban Blues.

When could take off musical instruments, blacks played the banjo, an ancestor of the banjo from Africa, and the fiddle, violin kind of brought to America by the Irish. The guitar appears soon after, thanks to the Spanish influence coming from Mexico.

The early bluesmen professionals form a separate category. Unable to work manual, blind and found the music their livelihood. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell and many others Blinds (blind) started well. Also born the tradition of the itinerant musician living on the road.

The first turning Blues album was recorded in New York by singer Mamie Smith in 1920. "Crazy Blues" exceeded all expectations, selling 75,000 copies a week. With success Mamie returned to the studio three times in three weeks and turned fever.

From 1921, all American major labels have been given their "race series" (race series), subdivision who cast disks of black musicians for the consumption of the population of the ghetto south.

The first wave of successful sales record was made by singers such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey Geertrude and Alberta Hunter.

Until the Second World War (1939-1945), the most important barn Blues was the Delta region of Mississippi. Ali emerged as fundamentals bluesmen Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Big Joe Williams and the legendary Robert Johnson.

For some historians, which made the Delta Blues of being single was the strong African influence, with a syncopated rhythm, chewed the feet, the use of falsetto vocals, repetitions of the same chord and the use of a trick that would become a trademark the genre: the slide.

Sliding the neck of a bottle or a piece of bone - later, metal tubes would also be used - on the strings of the guitar, the musician could affect single instrument.

With the onset of World War II, the social landscape began to change in the states of South Thanks to the entry of blacks in the military cadres; there is a promise of racial integration. Pure illusion. Finding the same scenario back home, blacks began to increasingly isolate themselves in neighborhoods and born a racial consciousness that would end in the civil rights movement of the '60s.

In the music world, the forgotten regional Blues gives way to a distinctly urban sound, marked by the presence of a new ingredient: the electric guitar.

New record companies open their doors and other bluesmen come to dominate the scene. In Memphis, now the capital of the region of the Mississippi Delta, boys like B. B. King, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin 'Wolf take their first steps. In Chicago, there is another wave of geniuses.