For me, part of the country blues' allure is rooted in how the development of this distinction occurred during the genre's heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Music's long-established power to stir imaginations and evoke powerful feelings was validated when the Charley Pattons and the Geeshie Wileys of the country blues era committed their songs to wax, and performed live at juke joints and weekend picnics. Said musician Johnny Shines in Giles Oakley's The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues: "One time in St. Louis, we were playing one of the songs that Robert [Johnson] would like to play with someone once in a great while, 'Come on in My Kitchen.' He was playing very slow and passionately, and when we had quit, I noticed no one was saying anything. Then I realized they were crying ... Both women and men."
So the lesson learned wasn't firmly rooted in music's cultural significance; instead, it was music's commercial viability. "Race" records—78s recorded by African-Americans for African-Americans—made labels such as Victor, Okeh, and Vocalion prevail in a market war against the fledgling music industry's money-making behemoths: the sheet music publishers. Paramount sold wind-up phonographs at $11 a pop; records went for 75 cents and could be ordered through the mail. In 1921, record labels moved 100 million units for the first time; six years later, over 500 different "race" records were released. This was the start of what would be the record industry's seven-decade tenure of prosperity and influence.
But perhaps anecdotes are more telling than any sales statistic. From Pete Daniel, author of Deep'n as It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood: "When the flood came, people didn't have time to save very much and they sometimes got out with only the clothes on their back. But if they had a chance to save something, one of the first things they saved was the Victrola. Even some of the poorest people would save their money to buy a Victrola and then they would save money to buy records. It was a very important part of poor people's lives."
Technological progress has led to changes in how music is consumed. The phonograph brought music into the privacy of one's home; the Walkmen took that privacy to the outside world. Today, as technology speeds toward an end point where music accessibility will become infinite, I wonder if the sharp, clear distinction referenced above is hurrying toward its own end point: one of irrelevancy. After all, why make a fuss about how music is both an art form and a commodity when its powers as both are no longer potent or even pertinent?
