Topic: Harmony Vocals in Classic Country Blues

[Flatd7]

I perform in a band that delves into the string band material of the early country blues bands like the Sheiks, State Street Boys, Hokum Boys, Mississippi Mudstepers, et al. In exploring this material, I am not very knowledgeable about harmony. There is often ensemble singing, but my question is when is it harmony and when is it just doubling with two or more distinctive voices. Some of the players I work with have come from the Bluegrass world where harmony vocals are a big ingredient. They sometimes get hung up on whether we are singing true harmony parts. Did Kansas Joe and Minnie sing harmony? How about the Sheiks?

I would love to hear John Miller, Waxwing or some others players opinions?

[banjochris]

Harmony means singing more than one note, and to my mind implies more than just one voice singing a higher octave than another. It doesn't have to be a strict "part" IMO to be harmony. So something like Bo Carter's "Corrina" is definitely harmony singing, with a distinct "part" for the high voice. Some of the Memphis Jug Band's material has fairly tight harmony, like "Stealin'," some very loose, like "On the Road Again," where some folks are singing in unison some times but break into bits of harmony. But loose or tight, it's still harmony singing.
Chris

[Flatd7]

I guess maybe the question is how prevalent is Harmony singing in early recorded works? There is a dichotomy in country blues between being very simple and primitive and at the same time very sophisticated and complex. We know these were often highly skilled professional musicians. So my question is not really "What" is harmony or whether they had the skills to do it, but whether it is typical or utilized in recordings. My other question is, if you have two or more vocalists that have different registers or qualities to their voice, they can have a pleasing sound while singing the same actual notes. Not intervals. Is this typical? Is it "harmony".

[waxwing]

Chris described  pretty much exactly what our experience was with Stealin' and On the Road Again, as well as KC Moan, which the Hohoppas covered a few years ago. Another way that multiple voices come into a piece are with call and response situations, like say, Tearin' it Down or I Whipped my Woman with a Singletree, where you will also find sort of a spoken response to some lines ("What'd you do then?) A lot of JB music may not exactly be Classic Country Blues, but it is certainly part of a broader folk/pop tradition within the same cultural scape. (how's that for dodging a bullet?)

I'm sure Chez can come up with quite a few more examples in the JB oeuvre and your right, Johnm, or others, can probably touch on some of the CB duos. Picked Poor Robin Clean comes to mind as a possible vocal duet, but I can't hear how it works out in my memory's ear.-G-

[Edit to add] - Above written before seeing your second post, Jon.

I guess maybe the question is how prevalent is Harmony singing in early recorded works? There is a dichotomy in country blues between being very simple and primitive and at the same time very sophisticated and complex. We know these were often highly skilled professional musicians.

Well, I dodged this above, but in talking to Elijah about Escaping the Delta, I asked him what his criteria was for calling these performers "professionals". His said if they made more than 50% of their income from music, they were pros. I said, Gee, it wouldn't take too many fish fries to make more than what they were eking out share cropping at that time. Well, yeah? So. I don't think the idea that they were "highly trained" is a necessary conclusion from Escaping the Delta. Certainly many had a very strong understanding of music and particularly harmony, but not so much from training as from experience, or informal mentoring.

This is why I see it as a folk/pop music. I don't think these are mutually exclusive and there are certainly aspects of both within the Blues and JB music, as well as the songster material. It's a folk culture, because, due to Jim Crow, the population that it occurred within was somewhat isolated, even living in the same region, on the same plantations, with another cultural population. At the same time, with the growth of the recording industry and it's attendant influence on  the interplay of different cultures, no form of music was free from a commercial influence.

Just my current take on that issue.

Wax

[banjochris]

So my question is not really "What" is harmony or whether they had the skills to do it, but whether it is typical or utilized in recordings.

To this I would say yes, it is typical and used, especially in jug band/hokum and religious material, but I would think that it was likely whenever two or more musicians got together; obviously we have a lot of solo recordings of country blues artists, plus some where the 2nd guitar wasn't known as a singer, like Willie Brown and Patton or House. But we also have Geechie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, Josh White and Buddy Moss, McTell and Weaver, McGhee and Terry, even a miniscule segment of Charlie Patton and (I assume) Buddy Boy Hawkins (on I'm Going Home), Georgia Tom and Jane Lucas, etc. etc. etc. I think you tend to hear harmony more on songs with repeatable refrains rather than on AAB blues.

I would imagine that harmony singing was just as prevalent in black churches as in white, and as the vast majority of blues performers at least grew up in the church, they would have been steeped in it. Does anyone know if the singing school tradition so common in white churches was also common in black ones? The harmony taught at these schools could be extremely sophisticated.

My other question is, if you have two or more vocalists that have different registers or qualities to their voice, they can have a pleasing sound while singing the same actual notes. Not intervals. Is this typical? Is it "harmony".

Typical and pleasing, yes, I think so, esp. in things like the Memphis Jug Band -- even A.P. Carter sang unison with Sara sometimes. Sometimes different registers or qualities to voices can make even dead-on-tune harmony sound most unharmonious, for example check some of the more egregious recordings of Fiddlin' John Carson. On the other hand, that same contrast can sound great, for example check some of the less egregious recordings of Fiddlin' John Carson.

This is a great topic, by the way.
Chris

[dj]

What a great discussion topic!

One of the things that's always interested me about harmony singing on early blues, jug band, and hokum records is how "loose" it is.  By loose, I mean how the notes sung by different voices don't strictly line up vertically if written out, but instead the parts "breathe" a bit compared to one another.  We know from interviews with surviving members that bands like the Memphis Jug Band and Canon's Jug Stompers would get together and practice for a week or so before a recording unit hit town, so this looseness among the vocal parts wasn't from lack of practice, so it must have been what the musicians wanted to sound like.  It's not a sound that comes easily to most of us in the early 21st century, though.           

[Johnm]

Hi Jon,
As has been pointed out, crossing vocal parts in which unison notes are passed through were pretty common in the singing of the Carter Family and other groups in the Old-Time and Blues traditions.  It is considerably less common to hear vocal parts crossing in the singing of many of the slick present-day Bluegrass bands, like Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver. 
In a way, thinking of singing other than the lead role as being "harmony" singing creates confusion, because it may not actually be harmonizing with the melody (it may be in unison with the lead or chanted), and it may operate independent of the song's underlying harmony, or chord changes.  For singing that has the chordally static, chanting quality, I always think of Versey Smith, who in her songs with her husband, William Smith, sings the same melody in her response lines over and over, regardless of what the underlying chord changes may be or what William's melody is.
There is some wonderful four-part hymn singing that can be found on the "Old-Time Music at Clarence Ashley's" set on Smithsonian/Folkways, in which Clarence Ashley, Fred Price, Doc Watson and Clint Howard (a great singer!) do complex call-and-response lines and harmonizing.  "Old Daniel Prayed" is a particularly great one.  On the recently re-issued Reverend Pearly Brown CD in the Rounder Archive series, "It's a Mean Old World To Try to Live In", he does some multi-tracked 3-part singing of hymns that is the best use of this recording technique that I have ever heard, especially on "How About You".  I'm also very partial to the recordings of Joseph Spence with the Pinder Family and anything else from the Bahamas sung by Bruce and Tweetie Green.  On the George Mitchell Collection, the songs on which Robert Johnson is backed by his three daughters singing in unison, as on "Hold My Body Down", are hair-raising.
The Country Blues tradition doesn't appear to abound in examples of recorded harmony singing, though there is stuff out there, and I think if you use the ways people sang harmony on the Blues recordings that do have harmony singing, or the ways people sang harmony on religious recordings as models, you won't go far wrong, even if you're adding harmony singing to a song that did not have it on the original recording. 
All best,
Johnm

[Cleoma]

Some styles of music simply don't have a lot of harmony singing, and some (like the old style Cajun music) don't have any at all.  When I have looked closely at the group harmonies on MJB songs like Stealin' or KC Moan, or Louisville jug band songs like Under the CHicken Tree (which only has harmony on one line as I remember, at the end, but it's a killer!), I hear that the harmony style has this in common with the Carter Family:  the harmony parts tend to start at one place and then not jump around a whole lot.  Whether the harmony parts double, or have octaves, or cross each other, is irrelevant -- I think the singers probably would just find a place that was comfortable in their range, and just sing notes that were right around there, and that sounded good.  I love this way of singing harmonies, it works great on duets and if you have singers that are fairly flexible, it can work out great with trios or quartets too.

Another connection is the more arranged sort of quartet singing that I think was popular among both blacks and whites around the turn of the century and probably before that too.  The Fisk Quartet, for example.  Or, Billy Murray with the American Quartet.  It's related to barbershop quartet singing but (at least to my ear) has more soul -- although I've always loved barbershop quartets!  MJB's KC  Moan and other jug bands' harmony singing reminds me of this much more than of any kind of hillbilly music.  I'm figuring that this style of singing probably had its roots in African American singing and got co-opted by tin pan alley, but I don't really know for sure.

Another thing I hear in this kind of group singing is that rather than singing in a tight trio, as bluegrass musicians would do, the parts are  often more spread out.  If it's a trio, sometimes the person singing the low part is more than an octave below the person singing the high part. 

It's so much fun to do this kind of singing and I have gotten to do quite a bit with WB Reid and Frannie Leopold in the Todalo Shakers.  We definitely do practice, but we don't exactly "work out parts" in the same way that I have done with bluegrass bands.  We just sort of find our way, and it's not always the same, which adds to the fun.  It can be hard for people who come out of bluegrass to get used to this much looser method of harmony singing but it is so much fun, and seems right for the music.  And, I notice that many of the  REALLY good bluegrass harmony singers don't always sing their parts exactly the same way either. Listen to the Stanley Brothers and you will hear unisons, octaves, etc.  and you can do a lot with suspension...

Then there's that super-cool chanting kind of harmony singing like the McTells or the Smiths or Bertha Lee with Charley Patton.  That stuff sounds really foreign to me and I wonder if it has its roots in African music?

There are those female duets too,  like the Bessie & Clara Smith ones, but those are more call and response, not so much harmony singing.  I enjoy singing them but I don't get the same kind of "buzz" as with a big group harmony song.

I could go on about this topic forever but I won't.
Suzy

[sustaireblues]

Good thread guys! One of my favorite "duet" songs of all time is McTell and Weaver doing "Wee Midnight Hours". I've wondered if it is actually harmony or not, but it sure works for me! Somehow these two, "normal" guy voices, as opposed to the sweet, perfect voices that come to mind when you think "harmony", combine to make the sweetest music I've heard.

So, is it harmony? Works for me.

Joe

[Pan]

I agree, this is a great thread.

One CB act that comes to mind are Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. They sometimes have this kind of loose harmony vocal thing going on, which sounds absolutely fabulous.
Thinking of this, I can't think offhand of a Blind Boy Fuller & Sonny Terry duet with vocal harmonies -can you? Maybe they only started the harmony thing with McGhee (and by vocal harmonies I don't mean the great falsetto whooping Terry throws in, between his harmonica licks, every once and in a while ).

I'm really looking forward what songs and artists others recommend in this thread.

Cheers

Pan

[dj]

One of the things that surprises me is how little harmony Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell sang.  Off hand, I can think of 6 songs where they harmonized: Gettin' All Wet, Papa Wants A Cookie, Memphis Town, Papa Wants to Knock A Jug, The Dirty Dozen, and That's Tellin' 'Em, with Leroy and Scrapper singing unison on that last one.  They're all uptempo songs. and the duet vocals are always on a chorus.  I'll have to check, but right now I can't think of any pop songs they sang harmonies on, though harmonies would have fit easily on those, and no slow or medium tempo blues.         

[Bunker Hill]

Thinking of this, I can't think offhand of a Blind Boy Fuller & Sonny Terry duet with vocal harmonies -can you? Maybe they only started the harmony thing with McGhee (and by vocal harmonies I don't mean the great falsetto whooping Terry throws in, between his harmonica licks, every once and in a while ).
Pan

I've got a Fuller Travelin' Man compilation and feel certain that there's a couple of religious titles on that where the pair harmonize. 

Terry did on a few harmonies on the recordings of washboard player George Washington' (Oh Red) but not sure where to look to locate them (i.e vinyl or CD).

[Flatd7]

Thanks for everyone's input and enthusiasm. I'll need to check out these tunes and absorb all this good discussion.

Music is such a deep well to swim in, it's easy to get lost. My inquiry has a lot to due with my lack of skill as a harmony singer and whether I want to work on improving this. My singing partners in the Second Fiddles are very good harmony singers. I primarily sing the main melody and they will sing a harmony. However, I have difficulty reciprocating the favor. I get a lot of "you're singing my part". I have a decent rage, but I find it very hard to sing a set part consistently. I was backstage at a Robin and Linda Wiliiam's show and was pretty blown away by their abilities in this area. Much like the Bluegrass acts that John points out.

But this got me thinking whether the roots artists I admired from the thirties were concerned with this type of accompaniment. There is a looseness in those recordings even if they have, as DJ points out, rehearsed extensively. And then because my ear is not really trained for it, I have a hard time discerning when they are singing intervals and which. (I have the same problem with constructing harmony lead lines although there is a great Twin Mandolin book that Robert Bowlin did. . .  but that's another thread)

Wax - I guess the words "Skilled" or "professional" are ripe for differing opinions. And it's also easy to group very different performers into the same category. A Tampa Red or Broonzy, who did scores of sides with lot's of ensembles is very different from someone who only cut a few field recordings. I guess the heart of what I'm getting at is that it's easy to under estimate how sophisticated they may have been as musicians. And this leads back to the question of whether it was a decision of choice or ability. I've got to go listen to all this great reference points now. Thank you all!

[frankie]

Wantonly generalizing here, it seems that while it may not be completely accurate to describe "blues" as improvised music, spontaneity is a big part of what makes the music exciting.  Singers often phrase things a little differently from verse to verse, then again from performance to performance.  You do have to lose a little bit of this spontaneity if you're going to use a lot of harmony.  I'm not saying that harmony singing or instrumental parts are "bad," or that they have no place, just that you do have to make trade-offs to other aspects of the music that are also interesting.  That's also not to say you can't have a more relaxed attitude toward harmony singing - you can...  it just may not always be tight, and may not always be exactly what you expect at a given moment.

Singing harmony is definitely a skill that requires practice and experience.  The people that I know who are really good at it have been doing it since before they started playing instruments.  In addition to that, I've found that there are some singers that, for some reason, I just gel with.  With others, even though I might really want to sing harmony, I just can't seem to get it together.  I can usually play along with just about anybody (for a while, anyway), but singing with someone is very different for me.

[uncle bud]

Re. Fuller and Terry, they harmonized on the Brother George and His Sanctified Singers sides, along with Oh Red's voice as well. It's less harmony to me than guys singing similar melodies using different notes, if you get my meaning. This can be really cool, IMO, since it doesn't sound worked out like tight harmonies can, but has great depth. I think this is the style Suzy refers to above in her first example.

Others harmonize quite deliberately and sound that way. The Dallas String Band vocal stylings really sound like they come straight from vaudeville and/or theatre. You'd probably find more harmony examples in hokum stuff, like Somebody's Been Using That Thing by the Famous Hokum Boys (Broonzy et al).

Long Cleve Reed and Papa Harvey Hull and the gang had harmony parts on stuff like Original Stack O' Lee, Two Little Tommies, The France Blues though still sound pretty "country". To me, at times they sound like whoever is harmonizing may be winging it, picking a note to start on and then seeing where it ends up by the end of the line.