Lord Larehip

In jazz and blues there is the phenomenon of the “blue note,” which is a lower note hit by a musician or singer that doesn’t quite belong in the major scale in which he is playing that causes an emotive response in the listener. It is called blue as in being out of sorts similar to being in pain or being sick is also being out of sorts. In fact, the blue note is sometimes referred to as the “worried note.” It may be a holdover from Africa where some work songs employ the blue note. Country blues is especially dependent on blue notes—often a flatted third or fifth but flatted somewhat less than a semitone. Due to the visceral impact of both the blue note and of blues music in general, both are called blue for the same reason.

Many assume that blues started before jazz and served as the basis of jazz. A close examination of the situation, however, proves this to be untenable. Jazz and blues were already being played sometime around 1900-1905 but good blues-players as Louis Armstrong had to be trained to play jazz demonstrating that these were two distinctly different styles.

Jazz and blues seem to have sprung up independently. Something else also becomes apparent—whites did not have anywhere near the aversion to jazz that they showed towards blues in the early days. The truth is, when one examines old photographs of very early jazz bands, there always seems to have been white groups who had already formed as society dance bands and marching bands from which jazz is partially descended. So whites were integrally involved in the formation of jazz—there from the beginning. The raggy-blues flavoring probably came from blacks (specifically Buddy Bolden) but white musicians seemed to have picked up on it quite early adding in their own modifications. In turn, black musicians picked up on these modifications and further modified them and so on.

This presents us with an incongruity being that “Dallas Blues,” the first published blues, came out in 1912 and was composed by a white Oklahoma City bandleader named Hart Ancker Wand (1887-1960). Apparently, Wand had heard the tune somewhere and played it for a pianist named Annabelle Robbins who wrote an arrangement. When a workman in Wand’s father’s employ heard the tune, he said it gave him the blues for his beloved Dallas and hence the name of the song, which became quite popular all along the Mississippi River. Since Wand’s father died in 1909, the song must been around at least that early. That a white man should publish the first blues is not that surprising since they had better access to publishing houses than blacks. The first published ragtime piece to have “Rag” in the title was written by a white man. The first jazz band to record was also white. If the story of how the piece was named is true, then Wand may possibly have set the tradition of using “Blues” in a title but the word itself had obviously been around for some time.


The original sheet music for "Dallas Blues."


Hart Wand, 1910.


Origins of the Blues *** Dallas Blues *** 1912, Hart A. Wand - YouTube

While a very pretty piece, “Dallas Blues” is a bit stiff and genteel rather than earthy. While the piece had a great influence (Jimmie Rodgers probably built his “Blue Yodel” from it), it is not possible that Wand could have invented blues as a genre. That illiterate sharecroppers from Texas to Mississippi could ever have heard of it much less build a huge variety of songs out of it is untenable. Like Handy (below), Wand heard blues somewhere and decided to capture it in written form which was a common practice in that day. But Wand obviously had a grasp of blues structure since “Dallas Blues” is in a true blues format but sounded like Wand was reluctant to play around much with the melody or structure fearing it would cease to be a blues. Regardless, it’s a nice piece and the first recording of it was by a black bandleader and composer, Wilbur Sweatman (author of “Down Home Rag”), in 1918 on the Columbia Graphophone label.


Wilbur Sweatman´s Original Jazz Band "Dallas Blues" 1918 - YouTube