Entry · catalog no. 8213
the blues
/ /ðə bluːz/ /thuh BLOOZ
noun · Mississippi Delta and the Deep South · 1900s
✓ Verified
1.
The music of Black Southerners, sung in first person, mixing sorrow and humor over a repeating harmonic frame, and the low mood the songs name.
“She sang the blues like she'd lived every verse.”
Origin & Attribution
The English phrase \"blue devils,\" meaning melancholy, dates to at least George Colman's 1798 farce Blue Devils and shortened to \"the blues.\" The Black musical form emerged in the Deep South, with the Mississippi Delta especially important, and observers were noting it in places such as Clarksdale and southern Texas around 1901 to 1902; the form likely dates to about 1890. The first copyrighted blues composition, Hart Wand's \"Dallas Blues,\" and W. C. Handy's \"The Memphis Blues\" both appeared in 1912. Mamie Smith's \"Crazy Blues\" (1920) was the first commercial recording by a Black blues singer and sold 75,000 copies in its first month.
1912
Wand's "Dallas Blues" and Handy's "The Memphis Blues" published
1920
Mamie Smith records "Crazy Blues"
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Mississippi Delta and the Deep South · 1900s
Spoken by
Black Southerners, musicians worldwide
$THEBLUThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady8 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
85/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1912
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1920
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
W. C. Handy, "The Memphis Blues," sheet music, 1912
1912
■
Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues," Okeh Records, 1920
1920
■
+ Cite a sourceWikipedia, "Blues" (Hart Wand 1912, Colman 1798, early observers 1901–1902)
online
See also