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The Emancipation Proclamation initiates the start of sharecroppers and Juke Joints where African-Americans went to listen to music and gamble. In this setting spiritual songs left the group setting and moved to a more individualized performance. According to Lawrence Levine, there was a direct relationship between the national emphasis on individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings and the rise of the Blues.
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Three northern abolitionists publish a collection of 136 African-American songs sung by the slaves on the plantations. Most were spiritual. This was the first publication of spirituals and folk songs ever published and considered by many to be the most influential as well.
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This timeline describes important events and identifies significant figures in the history of the Blues from slavery until the modern masters.
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Will Dockery establishs the Dockery Farms cotton plantation and sawmill. Many farm worker and traveling musicians traveled through Dockery Farms learning the blues and taking what they learned with them including Son House, Willie Brown, Charley Patton, Henry Sloan and other musicians.
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In the Deep South reporters first began reporting on the Blues. Jelly Roll Morton said that he first heard the Blues in 1902.
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Victor Records issues the first known recordings of African American field hollers called "Camp Meeting Shouts."
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Antonio Maggio's "I Got the Blues" was the first piece of Blues Music published.
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The first Blues songs are published as sheet music, including W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues."
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The United States enters World War I and the military and economic mobilization of African-Americans exposes American troops to Blues Music, causing what has been caused an explosion of the Blues.
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African-Americans begin migrating out of the South into urban centers throughout the United States spreading what had been thought of as music of the rural Mississippi Delta. One influential musician who makes the move to Chicago was Big Bill Broonzy who was a key contributor to Chicago Blues.
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Sylvester Weaver from Kentucky is the first to record the style of the slide guitar using a knife or broken off bottle top as a slide on the guitar's fret board.
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Electrical recording technology is introduced to the music world which makes Blues Music available to a wider audience.
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Huddie Ledbetter, also known as Lead Belly, is the first Blues musician to play Blues to a white audience outside of the South.
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Robert Johnson, one of the most influential blues artists in history, who impacted the development of the genre, is poisoned while playing a gig outside Greenwood, Mississippi. The poison was put in his whiskey which he drank throughout the night. He died three days later at the age of 27.
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The first recording of the electric guitar, created by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacher, is played by Eddie Durnham.
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Muddy Waters rides a bus from Clarksdale, Mississippi to Chicago, Illinois. His trip, and the music he played during that trip, is recognized as the first step in the transition from rural, country blue to urban blues.
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B.B. King has his first Rhythm and Blues hit with a version of the song "Three O'Clock Blues." B.B. King was one of the most influential blues guitarists. He was one of the artists that refined the new era of innovation electrifying Blues and influenced many musicians after him.
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Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Big Mama Thornton, Lightning Hopkins and Jimmy Smith begin the modern Blues that is best known today.
