This point about Chicago Blues is particularly interesting to me. I think often about the Great Migration & about how much of the literature/studies focus on the people who left the south, but not those who stayed. https://twitter.com/adriawalkr/status/1324131732929552387

I think about this a lot in general, but also specifically as it relates to the blues. The first time I drove to Rochester, I stopped by the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center/Tina Turner Museum in Brownsville, TN. It’s really cool and you should visit if you can.

There, you can visit Sleepy John Estes’ home. Born in Ripley, TN in ~1899, Sleepy John Estes was a country blues musician. Like a lot of country/backwoods bluesmen, he didn’t have the same (inter)national success that urban blues musicians or electric blues musicians had.

Country/rural/backwoods blues is one of the earliest forms of blues. It typically features one instrument—most common being a guitar or banjo—and the vocalist. It’s not as showy as urban blues, &, though it led to the folk revival in the 60s, it’s not that acknowledged anymore.

Anyway, at Sleepy John Estes’ place, there’s a sign that reads:

“By the end of World War II blues styles had begun to change to a more urbanized sound, and Sleepy John Estes’s ‘country blues’ seemed old-fashioned to younger listeners.”

The sign didn’t explicitly say this, so I will: In the 50s/60s, largely because of TGM, electric blues became more popular.

When folks moved from the Deep South to the north, they wanted to shed a lot of their countryness. They shied away from it. They were embarrassed by it.

It was also painful--not for 2nd/3rd gen folks, with no direct, personal connection to the south, but for those who left & didn't want to be reminded of it.

I say all this to say, they were not trying to hear the country blues anymore. They wanted their music to better reflect their new environments. They didn't want music about the fields, about work.

During this time, blues musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon moved from MS to Chicago (this is why Chicago Blues is basically Delta blues’ city-raised, up-north grandkid).

While the new blues got popular, country blues lost (mainstream) favor. That's how country blues musicians, like Sleepy John Estes, for example, mostly died in relative obscurity.

The folk revival did revive some careers: Son House & Missisisppi John Hurt come to mind. The end.