11-, 12-, and 13½-Bar Blues: Time and African American Country Blues Recordings (1925–1938)

Abstract

This chapter examines commercially-issued recordings of African American country blues from the early twentieth century, and considers the politics of representation involved with these recordings related to the metric and structural orthodoxies of blues performance. Often featuring solo male singers performing with guitar accompaniment, the recorded country blues of the 1920s–30s are markedly flexible in their approaches to timing. Drawing upon recordings of important country blues artists including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and Charley Patton, the chapter considers key issues such as the controversy over the speed at which Johnson’s records were recorded, the flexible approach musicians took to the standard 12-bar format, and the strictures that the three-and-a-half minute 78 rpm record side posed for artists’ songcraft. How these factors challenge musicological orthodoxies over conventional blues structures and historical insights into the practice of the blues is illuminated through the proposal that these recordings struggle with contentious narratives of primitivism, racial stereotyping, and authenticity, whereby canonical 78 rpm records are reified to fit a prevailing narrative of the country blues as atavistic and authentic.