Big Band Swing took the raw, rough sound of the Mississippi Delta bluesmen and made it something white folk could dance to without worrying about going to hell. But then the history of the Blues has always followed the two separate tracks best personified by its earliest progenitors: Robert Johnson and W.C. Handy.
Here is an hour of the W.C. Handy track – the one that softens the rawness of the wailing in the gin joints but keeps every bit of the heartache and loss and misery. This path takes advantage of the advances in audio reproduction in the 1950s: first hi-fidelity recording on reel-to-reel tape and then stereophonic reproduction to the micro-grooves of vinyl LPs. It also takes advantage of the maturing vocalists and musicians who had previously honed their chops travelling the country playing for Big Band dances night after night, week after week.
