Endless Mountains Blues Fest

"The blues? Why, the blues are a part of me. They're like a chant.
The blues are like spirituals, almost sacred. When we sing blues, we're
singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt
and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.
When I sing, 'I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry --
Yes, I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry,'
... what I'm doing is letting my soul out." -Alberta Hunter

Traveling and working together, performers adapted each other's styles and songs and created the classic blues.
Ma Rainey was the first of the classic blues singers, nicknamed the Mother of the Blues, She was one of the first to feature the blues onstage, in the early 1900's. With her husband, "Pa" Rainey, she began barnstorming across the South. She dazzled show-goers with her feather fans and glittery headbands, and would appear on stage blowing kisses. She performed a rural down-home blues.

Bessie Smith - Empress of the Blues -Legend has it that Ma Rainey kidnapped Bessie, was a mother figure to her, and taught her to sing the blues. Bessie sported spectacular gold and jewels, feather plumes, and fringed dresses. Bessie recorded 180 songs, with top-notch accompanists like Louis Armstrong. She became the top-selling blues artist of the period.

Ida Cox sang with the distinctive sound of St. Louis, with a nasal and booming voice that belted out her songs. Her style and songs were copied by many. Ida Cox managed her own career. She performed with spirit and humor, negotiated her own deals, paid her performers, and booked her act herself in the next town. Ida Cox headlined on the vaudeville circuit and traveled to Chicago for recording sessions and to work the Plantation Club with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.

While Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ida Cox toured the Southern Circuit, other blues women migrated north and
were soon playing in the big city clubs and cabarets. In Chicago, they preferred down-home blues and jazz. In the urban atmosphere of clubs and cabarets, northern blues women presented a more sophisticated formal style of blues, rather than belting out their songs.

Paramount, Columbia and Victor and others, established "race" catalogues, distributed mainly to black communities through record stores in the North and mail order to the South. Their scouts traveled the country-side for the best talent. It was almost exclusively the classic blues singers who were signed.