The male singers often became migrant workers, moving from the plantations of the Mississippi delta to larger towns and cities such as Memphis, St. Bessie Smith, for example, worked alongside Louis Armstrong who is better known as one of the great early jazz pioneers. They worked in clubs, speakeasies and bars and often teamed up with male colleagues who acted as accompanists or band leaders. The famous female singers tended to stay within their home communities and often had a matriarchal role within it. The careers of early blues musicians were defined in part by gender. It cemented the community while at the same time, for those who had talent, it was also a means of earning a living. Music provided a channel for expressing every possible emotion from shared joys to communal desperation. Gathering together to listen to music and also to dance created communities with a strong sense of identity. Other important sources for blues songs were the work songs and field hollers from the days of slavery and ballads and dances from music hall-type entertainments. Church services became a source of strength and a place of shared experiences while also providing an outlet for emotions, especially through song.
Black people could access some measure of education in church schools and acquire status as community leaders in the church. The Church often became a focus point in poor rural communities. The musical sources of the blues included religious songs, broadly called spirituals, which were songs on Christian themes that frequently also addressed aspects of the lives of slaves.
Figure 5 Slave family picking cotton in the fields near Savannah, c.1860s (stereograph photo) (via Britannica Image Quest). This is a photograph from the 1860s of a family standing in a cotton field.
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