Elijah Wald, musician, writer, and historian, presents a historical concert tracing the roots and branches of the blues.

The blues drew on numerous roots: African-rooted “field hollers” and banjo styles; songs and tunes from Britain, Ireland, and other areas of Europe; and infinite overlaps and crosscurrents in the United States.

This concert begins with those traditions and traces the spread and evolution of the music in the early twentieth century. There is the sweet and gentle guitar style of Mississippi John Hurt, the exuberant ragtime of Blind Blake, the distinctive Texas sound of Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the biting slide guitar of Delta masters like Son House and Robert Johnson.

There are also myriad urban styles, from the jazz-flavored theatrical blues of Bessie Smith to the late-night cafe blues of Leroy Carr, who shaped old country traditions into finely-crafted lyrics about the trials and pleasures of city life.

Blues was first of all Black music, rooted in the difficult and complex history of Africans brought to the United States and enslaved over centuries, but when it arrived as a popular style in the twentieth century, it appealed across all barriers of race and age. The first blues stars included Jimmie Rodgers, the yodeling “father of country music,” who was inspired by Black singers and also inspired them — B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf both named him as an early influence — and he was followed by honky-tonk heroes like Hank Williams.

This concert traces that story up to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, when artists like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley created a new style that remained deeply rooted in all that came before.

Elijah Wald has been playing blues and blues-related styles for over fifty years and is the author of over a dozen books, including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories, and The Blues, a volume in Oxford University Press’s “Very Short Introductions” series, for which he also wrote the volume on Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Videos of Elijah onstage:

And a touch of slide:

For more about Elijah, visit his homepage or sample his Songobiography site, which includes videos of hundreds of songs with associated stories and commentary. He also has a booking/promo page with more biography, quotes from reviews, peers, and concert promoters, and some live videos. Or you can contact him directly by writing to elijah at elijahwald dot com.