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Chicago Blues: Annyta Malagon Brayan Ramirez Erendira Martinez Senior Division Group Website

Chess Records helped turn Chicago blues artists into international superstars by promoting their music. Many African Americans moved north during the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow laws in the South, bringing blues music with them. Blues emerged as an urban genre popular in Chicago in the 1950s. Muddy Waters transformed Delta blues into Chicago blues by electrifying his sound to be heard in noisy crowds. Chess Records recordings of Chicago blues artists like Muddy Waters helped the genre reach worldwide audiences.

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Alba Morales
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83 views2 pages

Chicago Blues: Annyta Malagon Brayan Ramirez Erendira Martinez Senior Division Group Website

Chess Records helped turn Chicago blues artists into international superstars by promoting their music. Many African Americans moved north during the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow laws in the South, bringing blues music with them. Blues emerged as an urban genre popular in Chicago in the 1950s. Muddy Waters transformed Delta blues into Chicago blues by electrifying his sound to be heard in noisy crowds. Chess Records recordings of Chicago blues artists like Muddy Waters helped the genre reach worldwide audiences.

Uploaded by

Alba Morales
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Chicago

Blues
Annyta Malagon
Brayan Ramirez
Erendira Martinez
Senior Division
Group Website
The promotion by companies such as Chess Records turned Chicago blues artists from
street performers into international superstars. Jim Crow laws in the south restricted the freedom
of African Americans, leading many to move north during the Great Migration beginning in
1916. Southern blacks brought their music with them, out of which emerged urban blues which
became popular during the 1950s in Chicago. During the 1940s McKinley Morganfield (Muddy
Waters) found that his acoustic guitar could not be heard over the noisy crowd causing him to
trade it for an electric guitar. Overtime he also added more instruments to his sound, thereby
transforming the Delta Blues into the Chicago/Urban/Electric Blues. The Chicago blues
eventually reached Europe and the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, young British musicians were
influenced by it and groups such as the Rolling Stones brought this music back to America

during the British Invasion of the 1960s. Much of modern rock has been built on the foundation
of Chicago blues.
The historical question that we started off with was how did the Chicago Blues come into
Chicago, and why? When we started to do our research we realized that there was a lot more to
the blues then we had expected. We realized that without Chess Records the Chicago blues
wouldn't have came to be. We decided to change our thesis and focus it on how chess records
helped out African Americans that played the blues. Must waters then became on of our targets
for this website because when doing research we came across him, and he was the attachment to
why the blues came to Chicago. The great migration caused many African Americans, such as
muddy waters to leave their homes and go to the north to have better opportunities. Along the
way muddy waters exchanged music with other African Americans on the train and that made up
the blues. Every new piece of information would guide us to a new question, but then we tied all
this information together and realized that this all helps support how chess records helped the
blues be known. Muddy Waters once said "There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues
the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with.
People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money." This
quote influenced our argument because Muddy Waters wouldnt have been known if in Chicago
if it wasnt for Chess Records who helped the Blues be recorded.
The resources we used as evidence to develop our argument were photographs from
museum websites and history websites. We used an interview and a video of a muddy waters
performance. We had a lot of pictures from a variety of websites from biographies and historical
websites.
Many may not think the Blues are important, but without it many other genres wouldn't
have been made. Music gets exchanged each generation that then becomes new music. Blues are
the main genre of music that helped develop other type of music. We did our project on the Blue
because not many people realize that without the Blues, then the music today probably wouldn't
have been made.

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