Well, the theme for today was going to be cheese – you read that correctly, cheese – but I may not get to that until tomorrow. We’ll see.
I’m putting cheese on hold because I need to revisit yesterday’s topic, “blue.” I realized too late that with the definitions I shared for “blue,” I overlooked a significant meaning of the word. I’m sure it was because I asked Google to define the singular “blue,” and not the plural form, “blues” – so that should tell you what was missing from yesterday’s post, the music genre that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States in the 1860s.
Of course, if you look up the meaning of “blues,” you’ll also get “feelings of melancholy, sadness, or depression,” the very definition that characterizes the singular form “blue,” but the first entry for “blues” when you add that “s,” is, in fact, the musical form.
I turned to Wikipedia for a quick history of the Blues; here is some of what is said: (HERE):
“The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or ‘worried notes’), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.”
The Wikipedia article also includes some fascinating facts related to the word’s etymology:
The term 'Blues' may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798).
By the 1800s in the United States, the term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase 'blue law', which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday.
In 1827, it was in the sense of a sad state of mind that John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues.”
In Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, he mentions "the blues" in the chapter reflecting on his time in solitude.
I’m putting cheese on hold because I need to revisit yesterday’s topic, “blue.” I realized too late that with the definitions I shared for “blue,” I overlooked a significant meaning of the word. I’m sure it was because I asked Google to define the singular “blue,” and not the plural form, “blues” – so that should tell you what was missing from yesterday’s post, the music genre that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States in the 1860s.
Of course, if you look up the meaning of “blues,” you’ll also get “feelings of melancholy, sadness, or depression,” the very definition that characterizes the singular form “blue,” but the first entry for “blues” when you add that “s,” is, in fact, the musical form.
I turned to Wikipedia for a quick history of the Blues; here is some of what is said: (HERE):
“The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or ‘worried notes’), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.”
The Wikipedia article also includes some fascinating facts related to the word’s etymology:
The term 'Blues' may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798).
By the 1800s in the United States, the term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase 'blue law', which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday.
In 1827, it was in the sense of a sad state of mind that John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues.”
In Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, he mentions "the blues" in the chapter reflecting on his time in solitude.
Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition.
| Of course, while Dickinson's poems contain many profound explorations of sorrow, grief, and melancholy, I am not aware of her ever referring to or using the expression “the blues" as a term for melancholy or a genre of music. The phrase was in use at the time, though, as Thoreau’s Walden was published in 1854 when Dickinson was 23 years old. But here’s something unexpected: While exploring all of this, I stumbled upon a site I’ve referenced before, The Parlando Project, and Frank Hudson, the blogger and musician there, posted an article in October 2024 entitled, “Nature Can Do No More Blues: Combining mysteries with bottleneck slide guitar,” a sort of “What if Emily Dickinson wrote the blues.” Take a look, HERE. |  |
Finally, what post on the Blues would be complete without a mention of the poet most closely associated with the Blues, Langston Hughes.
| To the right is a pic from a video of a video of Hughes himself reading the poem with jazz accompaniment. To view the video, click HERE. |  |
I suppose that’s enough for today, so I’ll get to the topic of cheese tomorrow. I reckon I could have thrown in a reference to blue cheese today, but I thought we’d all be cheddar off waiting till tomorrow.
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