Blues

JOE TURNER BLUES

Joe Turner Blues Song History-

In 1915, Pace & Handy published another piece with some unique origins, the Joe Turner Blues. Though the musical origins were still strong traditional blues, the idea for the music and lyrics came from Joe Turner (or Turney) who was the brother of Peter Turney, (1827 – 1903) Governor of Tennessee from 1893 to 1897. It was Joe's task to move convicts from Memphis to the State Penitentiary in Nashville. Joe was not popular with the African Americans for obvious reasons and the music and Lyrics lament his arrival. Over the years the song was often incorrectly attributed to have been inspired by the blues singer Big Joe Turner. Though Big Joe did eventually record the song in 1941, he was only five when the piece was published.

WC Handy

W. C. (William Christopher) Handy is revered as one of the originators of a particularly American form of popular music, the blues. In fact, in his autobiography, he assumed the mantle of "Father of the Blues." Born in Florence, Alabama in 1873, he was the son of former enslaved parents. Handy's first musical instruction was from his parents, on the church organ playing only sacred music. He studied music theory at the Florence district school. As a teenager, he played cornet in a local brass band where he also began his composing activities. Later, Handy acquired a trumpet from a traveling circus performer. At age 18 he left home and in a short time he learned to play it so well that he joined a traveling Minstrel troupe. He then became a teacher at Alabama and Mechanical College and later worked in a foundry where he organized and directed a brass band.¹

Though some may question his title of "Father of the Blues," there is little doubt that he popularized the blues and made them mainstream music through his compilations and arrangements of traditional blues-like music which undoubtedly inspired him. Regardless of exactly who may be considered the true father of the style, his blues masterpieces and other blues works made them available throughout the world.

JOE TURNER BLUES

C

They tell me, Joe Turner's come and gone.

F C

They tell me, Joe Turner's come and gone.

G7 F C

He left me here to sing this song.

C

He came here with forty links of chain.

F C

He came here with forty links of chain.

G7 F C

He left me here to sing this song.

C

Joe Turner, he took my man away.

F C

Joe Turner, he took my man away.

G7 F C

He left me here to sing this song.

PARAMOUNT RECORDS:

Paramount Records was an American record label, best known for its recordings of African-American jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Paramount Records, founded in Grafton, Wisconsin, was founded in the 1910s as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin, Fred Dennett Key, director. The chair company had made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records. Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the "United Phonograph Corporation" at the end of 1915. It made phonographs under the "Vista" brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially. In 1918 a line of phonograph gramophone records was debuted with the "Paramount" label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary "The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated", which despite its name was located in the same Wisconsin factory complex as the parent concern (advertisements, however, stated somewhat misleadingly, "Paramounts are recorded in our own New York laboratory").

Parmount Blues #1

Parmount Blues #2

MA RAINEY

SON HOUSE

MAMIE SMITH

BLIND BLAKE

BILLIE HOLIDAY