Environmental Influence in Blues Music Composition

Blues singers have always drawn on their environment for inspiration in their lyrics as well as in the sound of their instruments. Unlike the traditional folk singer who will often sing of events that happened many years previous to their own experience -sometimes referring to events spanned by centuries. It is true there are a handful of “blues ballads” such as “John Henry”, “Stack 0’ Lee” or “Frankie & Albert/Johnnie”, which have persisted in black song but they are the exception to the rule - the majority of blues reflected their surroundings in the perspective present.
So, a pianist or guitarist would mimic the sounds of the train wheels in the late 19th. Century, which finally resulted in boogie-woogie. They would also imitate the fireman’s

bell, while the harp blower reproduced the lonesome sound of the train whistle as it sped through the countryside. The bobbing movements of logs floating downstream to the sawmill, are brilliantly captured by Charlie Patton’s guitar on his “Green River Blues” (1); reflecting his days in the logging camps in Mississippi. But one of the first sounds to inspire a blues singer was a natural one - the sounds of a bird singing.
A story handed down claims that one evening a slave was feeling low in spirit and heard a plaintive cry of a night bird.

The sound inspired the slave to get a piece of cane from a canebrake and cut some holes in it. He then commenced to play a “blues” on his whistle. As time went by, the instrument evolved into a set of “quills”. One definition of a quill runs: “a piece of reed used by weavers”(1). Paul Oliver quotes a report by U.S. writer, George Cable, in 1886 which refers to a “black lad” cutting 3 reeds from “the edge of the canebrake.. .blowing and hooting, over and over,"(2). Cable stated that blacks called these 3 reeds “quills”. On l2th April 1927, Big Boy Cleveland recorded 2 quill solos, for Gennett, one of which was issued. “Quill Blues” which lets the instrument “sing” the blues, could not have been too far removed from the l7tn.Century ex-African slave in the canebrake. An almost unique example on record, significantly, Cleveland’s only other issued side featured vocal and guitar, in the style of Furry Lewis. For this reason alone, I suspect, the only “fact” stated about Cleveland is that he could have been from Memphis Tennessee. which was Furry’s home base and an important centre for the Blues in the

1920s.
The only other example of quills or “pan-pipes” as they became known (from ”Pan’s pipes”) on a commercial blues record was by the Texas songster, Henry Thomas. Also known as “Rag Time Texas”, he started recording some 3 months after Cleveland’s session and played a set of pan-pipes on a rack around his neck while also playing guitar. He featured this combination for nearly half of his issued output of 23 sides. The technical term for quills or pan-pipes is a syrinx. One definition of which is “the organ of voice in birds.”(3). U.S. blues writer, Sam Charters, description runs: “Each “pipe” is a cross blown cane reed, held against the lips while the player blows across the opening in the top, just as a child blows on an empty bottle. The pitch of the reed is determined by its length - the shorter the reed the higher the sound - and usually the player binds a group of them together in a row, holding them together with pieces of stick.”(4).
Engineers in early locomotives in the l9th.Century had a set of pipes for a train whistle, also called ‘quills’. The most famous being Casey Jones on the Illinois Central. Freeman Hubbard relates that “By “valving”, or changing the pressure of steam admitted into the quill, engineers could change the tones and even play tunes”.(5). These train whistles were mounted “ahead of the smokestacks and using parabolic amplifiers.”(6), around 1890,when Casey Jones was stamping his own individuality on the Delta landscape. Jones “had a home-made six-chime whistle with six slender tubes bound together, the shortest being exactly half the length of the largest. With its interpretive tone, the “ballast scorcher” could make the quill say its prayers or scream like a banshee.” (7). obviously inspired by black singers using the quills or syrinx, like Henry Thomas and Big Boy Cleveland, Casey’s “plaintive moans” could be heard right up to that fateful day in 1900. It was at Vaughan, Mississippi. that around the curve came another I. C. passenger train and “Number Four stabbed ‘im in the face"(8), as Furry Lewis recalled some 28 years later, for Victor records.
Replacing the pan-pipes/syrinx/quills, by and large, certainly by the 1920s on record, blues singers started using the harmonica or “mouth-harp”. This being a more flexible instrument and better suited for dancing at picnics and what Leadbelly called 'sukey jumps’. One harp-blower with a unique style which featured screaming through his instrument, was George ‘Bullet’ Williams. Originally from Alabama, Williams included superb train imitations and also an atmospheric “The Escaped Convict" at his only session in 1928. The latter title referred to the harsh convict-lease system in the South, which was still on the Alabama statute book in 1930! Oliver refers to the “baying hounds and pounding feet copied on the harp” (9), when discussing William’s skill and artistry.
Intriguingly, from the same state came the Birmingham Jug Band who recorded 9 sides at a single session in 1930; including ‘Cane Brake Blues”. This consisted of a series of 1-line verses and points to an embryonic form of the more usual 3 line format found in the Blues. The harp player, unidentified, has been suggested as Jaybird Coleman, based in Birmingham, Alabama. Together with the obscure Ollis Martin, these musicians form the nearest to a “blues tradition” in Alabama, as Oliver suggests.
Burl Coleman, born in 1896 in Gainsville, Alabama, used the name of a common bird in the South, for his pseudonym as a blues man. As did pianist, Thomas Jones, who recorded simply as “Jaybird” in 1928 when he accompanied “Keghouse” for 10 sides, He also recorded for