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I'm glad this came up, as I know Peter Muir and expect this to be an extremely important book (I just called U of Illinois, and it will be available 12/1/09).

Some people are ideologically threatened by the existance of sheet music by white composers that pre-dates known black blues (eg A. Maggio's I Got the Blues, 1908) but the truth, as always, is more complex. We actually, of course, don't know how the form got its start, but there are clearly some 19th century white/black things happening concurrently that likely lead to the codification of the blues, as a couplet with a very specific kind of harmonic motion. Some people, like Dick Spottswood and Kip Lornell, have pointed to the coming together of white and black practices in the late 19th century, followed by Reconstruction and the re-institutionalization of racism and the racial schism that followed; it is thought that this violent and new separation of the races helped to draw black music back into itself and may have been responsible for the development of musical forms that were now more and more racially specific (like the blues). So something which had shared white/black roots (in early songs like Frankie and Johnny, Careless Love) developed into something else altogether.

as for the creation of sheet music using the blues form, it was likely, I would say, the result of composers hearing the format, possibly in Minstrel shows, which themselves were more often than we might think reflective of true black folk forms. Think of Lafcadio Hearn and the music he heard; likely many whites were slumming in search of entertainment and inspiration. That, of course, is an assumption, but based on the whole complicated history of black/white musical relationships. No one of sound mind would use the existance of early white blues as evidence that whites invented the music, because, as we know, the victors tend to write history, and not the oppressed. On the other hand, these things speak to complicated interactions that are more than intriguing.

interesting point, as guys like Jelly Roll Morton had a lot of class snobbery in their attitudes -

I wonder what the drunk guy thinks?

Masked Marvel wrote:

"but there are clearly some 19th century white/black things happening concurrently that likely lead to the codification of the blues, as a couplet with a very specific kind of harmonic motion"

"In one word: slavery!"


that's really odd, because I was not aware that white people were held, at this time, as slaves - can you give me the source for your info?