“1 – The Blues… It’s 12-bar, bent-note melody is the anthem of a race bonding itself together with cries of shared self victimization. Bad luck and trouble are always present, and always the result of others, pressing upon unfortunate and down trodden poor souls, yearning to be free from lifes’ responsibilities. Never ending beats repeat the chants of sorrow, and the pity of a lost soul many times over. These are the Blues;
2 – Found under the blazing sun of the Northern Mississippi cotton fields, it’s father, the old African tribal call and response, and it’s mother, the Gospel sounds which bellowed from the church choirs;
3 – A lead worker would chant the opening lines, and the chorus of workers would answer, falling into a regular pattern to match the task at hand. This ancient African call and response chant is the core of the Blues, found both in African American church pulpits (an elevated platform or high reading desk used in preaching or conducting a worship service), and antebellum (existing before the Civil War) plantations;
4 – W.C. Handy was the first trained musician to capture the sounds of Blues on paper. In 1909, Handy penned the first written Blues song “Mr. Crump Blues” in the Pee Wee’s Saloon on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennesse. . . .
5 – “If you wants to know about the Blues, you got’s to go back to the church” — Muddy Waters –;
6 – “We were always singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin’, but we made up our songs about things that was happenin’ to us at the time, and I think that’s where the Blues started” — Son House –. . . .”

—Harry’s Blues Lyrics Online, blueslyrics.tripod.com, updated December 17, 2000.