The blues was mutating according to the changing social and artistic landscape.
The 32 beats of white pop music, the dramatic emphasis of gospel singers,
the heavy rhythm of jump blues, the tight brassy riffs of swing orchestras,
the witty attitude of minstrel shows,
all had a role in making blues music more malleable and entertaining.
Transplanted in the dancehalls, the juke joints and the vaudeville theaters,
blues music became energetic and exuberant.
Form (arrangement, rhythm and vocal style) began to prevail over content
(message and emotion). While the lyrics were still repeating the traditional
themes of segregation, the music was largely abandoning its original
traits.
A new style was born in New York thanks to saxophonist, vocalist and bandleader Louis Jordan, who became one of the best-selling
artists of his time.
Jordan (who had inherited a band in 1938) shrank down the size of swing's
orchestras, emphasized the dance rhythm (the "shuffle"), sharpened the sax
and trumpet counterpoint, and sang
the hardship of black life in a detached (almost ironic) tone.
His Tympany Five, that ranged from five to nine members, penned
At The Swing Cats Ball (1939),
Fore Day Blues (1939) and
Somebody Done Hoodooed the Hoodoo Man (1940)
before becoming hit makers with
Outskirts Of Town (1941),
Five Guys Named Joe (1942),
Is You Is (1944),
Caldonia (1945),
Stone Cold Dead In The Market (1945), a duet with jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald,
Choo Choo Ch'Boogie (1946), the multi-million seller that changed
the history of black music,
Beans and Cornbread (1947).
These songs defined "jump Blues", the uptempo, jazz-tinged style of blues
that ruled the race charts after the war.
Jordan was the link between blues, jazz and rock music.
Few people noticed it, but Carl Hogan played a powerful guitar riff on Jordan's
Ain't That Just Like a Woman (1945) that, ten years later, would make
Chuck Berry's fortune.
Another intermediary between the swing orchestra and the jump-blues combo was
Erskine Hawkins, who straddled the border between jazz and blues in
Tuxedo Junction (1939),
After Hours (1941),
Tippin' In (1945).
New Orleans' barrelhouse piano blues survived in the early cuts of
pianist Jack Dupree,
Dupree Shake Dance (1941) and
the drug song
Junker Blues (1941).
Surprisingly, World War II fostered a boom of "race" music that enabled
a more effective distribution of black music.
It was during the war, in 1941, that a radio station in Arkansas (KFFA)
hired Sonny Boy Williamson to advertise groceries, the first case of
mass exposure by blues singers.
It was during and right after the war that
the growing business of "race" music spawned several labels (all of them
founded
and run by white people) devoted only to black music, such as
Savoy, founded in 1942 in Newark (New Jersey) by Herman Lubinsky,
King, founded in 1944 in Cincinnati (Ohio) by Syd Nathan,
Atlantic, founded in 1947 in New York by songwriter Ahmet Ertegun,
and Aristocrat, founded in 1947 in Chicago by by two Polish Jews, Phil
and Leonard Chess.
