Postwar Chicago became the capital of the blues world, and certainly had ample recording studios to get legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon on record. Memphis also became an important recording hub of blues music, particularly for B.B. King. New York was no longer a popular recording location for blues musicians, yet it certainly remained the city of choice for big band recordings although these were drifting ever further from the blues and toward the popular vocal jazz style that focused more on singers than instru mentalists. Yet there are more significant develop ments that New York blues contributed to the tapestry of popular music – in 1951 Atlantic Records execu tives Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun signed Big Joe Turner after seeing him perform with the Count Basie Orchestra at the Apollo Theater. Turner would record “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” in New York in 1954 (which reached #1 on the R&B chart), and would see it become an early rock and roll standard when covered by Bill Haley and His Comets and Elvis Presley. Similarly, New York based blues recording artist Big Maybelle recorded “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” for Okeh in New York in 1955, which saw greater success in a spedup boogie woogie piano based version by Jerry Lee Lewis two years later. Many music critics claim that the roots of rock and roll obviously come from the blues – listening to the boogiewoogie blues style of blues shouters like Big Joe Turner shows this to be undeniable. Though cities like Detroit and Memphis may be looked upon as cities most responsible for the emergence of rock and roll, the contributions of New York blues artists to the form were essential to the development of both the style of the music and the growing influence of the music industry. The development of New York Blues in the 1930s and its future influence follows the “melting pot” tradition of the city it originated in, being born out of its own
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combination of AfricanAmerican music to create a sound that defied traditional categories. New York City has given birth to so many styles of music that it seems odd that the city’s key role in the development of the blues has been ignored, but it is not entirely without justification. Perhaps the key difference between jazz and blues is in their levels of sophistication, in which jazz is often embraced for being “polished” or “tight” while blues is embraced for being “raw” and “loose.” The “booze, broads, and bullets” lives of bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Lead Belly are embraced for their seeming authenticity, although undoubtedly some of what we know about these men must be fictional constructs of a persona. Therefore it is no wonder that the rawness of the penniless traveling bluesman has been held up as the “founding” principles of the form rather than women who were recorded in polished New York City studios backed by seasoned jazz musicians who went on to unprecedented success for women of color. Those who have followed in the footsteps of the blues prefer to stick to the legends. It is hard to insist on authenticity when there is no way to separate the facts from the legends, especially when the legends provide far more interesting stories.