The evolution of music often tacks along side technological innovation. Blues, like most other musical styles, originated out of the primary musical instrument for eons: the human voice. As the reader probably already knows, the blues’s roots was adapted from African musical styles native in early black Americans brought to the Western Hemisphere as part of the colonial slave trade. Even at that time, instruments like drums and stringed instruments had been invented and utilized by professional musicians at round the world.
We might not think in today’s society that this was technological innovation, but on the plantation, a simple stringed instrument was fashioned by tensioning nailed bailing wire to the outside wall of their quarters. A stringed instrument like this was a variant of the diddley bow, and created a new tool to make music forward for those individuals.
As industrialization transformed instrument making from a craft to a manufacturing process, instruments of all kinds became affordable to the masses. These economies of scale in turn enabled budding musicians to create the many new elements of music (and blues) we know today.
In blues, there were many turning points that has took the musical idiom from the diddley bow to the more “edgy” electronica-influenced blues. The sound that we all associate with country blues is the simple acoustic guitar with the addition of slide (improvised from a glass bottle, metal pipe, or even a knife!). From an acoustics standpoint, playing blues on an acoustic guitar in a rowdy juke joint must have been pretty challenging! In the time before amplification, the resonator guitar attempted to solve that problem. The resonator was invented by John Dopyera in 1927 in response to a request by steel guitar player George Beauchamp. The resonator became such a staple that, today, many country-blues aficionados include a resonator as part of their instrument line up.
The guitar amplifier was invented in the 1930s and 1940s during the Hawaiian music craze. Interestingly, many of the guitar amplifier circuits that we still use today were based on vacuum tube radio circuits invented during World War II. Of course, the guitar amplifier only had it’s most significant impact when paired with the electric guitar! From Muddy Waters onward, the electric guitar and amplifier left huge shoes to fill from a music technology standpoint.
As the decades rolled on, and blues musicians upped the volume, distortion, and as rock n’ roll came to the forefront, the ability to craft a unique tone became as much a part of blues musicianship as the music itself. One particular musician blew up the blues: Jimi Hendrix. With 100 watt Marshall stacks, fuzz pedals, and feedback orchestration, Hendrix assembled the “modern” blues sound, and amply filled those shoes. “Machine Gun” assembles all of his talents and technology in one place.
Through the latter part of the 1970s and certainly into the 1980s and beyond, as transistors started to become affordable, the switch from analog to digital effects and modeling took hold. Taking Robert Cray as an example, you can hear the the digital-influenced stylistic elements of the 1980s. Although partially an artistic choice by Cray, the clean sound that he creates evokes the larger 1980s music scene with its synthesizers and rock-pop hair bands.
The culmination of the technological influence in blues may be with some of R.L Burnside’s late career recordings at the verge of the new millennium. These tracks, take for example “Got Messed Up,” include many hip-hop, remixing, and modern stylistic trappings makes you realize how technology and blues can indeed evolve together.
Although in many cases controversial (then and now), many more people can play, enjoy, and feel the blues because of the many technological advancements that are in place today. Consider the ability: to use an ordinary laptop to create an entire album; to slow down and maintain proper pitch for a certain loop of a riff a musician is trying to learn; to discover music so easily via the Internet.
To hear some of the songs mentioned in the article, you can visit this Spotify playlist:
Ashley Roach is a Denver-based music fan and jammer.